A code of conduct says what should happen. An investigation procedure tells what is really happening. The difference is there.
On November 1, 2018, 20,000 employees of Google leave their posts simultaneously in seventeen countries. They are protesting against the internal management of cases of sexual harassment, after the revelation that leaders accused of assault had benefited from discreet negotiated departures. The #MeToo movement had just entered the organizational chart.
A few months later, after the death of George Floyd, Nike, MicrosoftAmazon, Airbnb and dozens of other major companies release statements in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. Financial commitments are announced. Diversity manager positions are created. Anti-bias training is deployed.
Several years have passed. The question we can ask now is no longer: who reacted? She is: who has changed?
The code of conduct, a mirage of good intention
All organizations have codes of conduct. They all know, on paper, what their members have the right to do and what they do not have the right to do. Harassment is prohibited. Discrimination is prohibited. Respect for everyone’s dignity is displayed in the corridors, intranets and welcome booklets.
These documents are not useless. They establish a frame of reference, they name what is acceptable and what is not, they legally protect the organization in the event of a dispute.
But they don’t change behavior.
A code of conduct says what should happen. It says nothing about what actually happens, or what happens when someone breaks the stated rules. Proclamation without procedure is not a commitment. It is a statement of intent.
The procedure as a real dividing line
The real question is not: do you have a code of conduct? It is: what happens when someone rapes him?
Is there an accessible, confidential reporting mechanism, independent of direct reporting? Who investigates complaints? When? According to what criteria? With what guarantees for the complainant? With what effective consequences for those involved, whatever their level in the organization?
These questions are uncomfortable because they demand specific answers. They leave no room for general good will. They constrain. They cost. They expose the organization to having to act against influential, well-integrated people who produce economic or symbolic value.
This is precisely why most organizations stick to the code of conduct.
Measuring impact is the other blind spot. How many reports were filed this year? How many ended up with an education? What decisions were made? What percentage of employees consider that the organization handles these situations fairly? This data rarely exists. When they exist, they are rarely published. When they are published, they often reveal a considerable gap between the stated commitments and the reality of practices.
Without measurement, there is no accountability. Without accountability, the change remains cosmetic.
Crossed organizations, not immune
The humanitarian sector is no exception to this dynamic. It is even particularly exposed to it, for a structural reason: its model is based on a permanent asymmetry of power between the teams and the populations assisted, between headquarters and the fields, between expatriates and national teams.
MeToo and Black Lives matter crossed the NGOs as they crossed all the large organizations. They highlighted behaviors that the culture of the sector made invisible: paternalism in relations with local teams, silence around abuses committed by expatriates far from any institutional control, gendered power dynamics in coordination positions.
MSF, like other organizations in the sector, has undertaken in-depth work on these issues: strengthening the role of national staff in management, reviewing approaches to leadershipexplicit work on neocolonial dynamics. These construction sites are real. Their progress is measured by the same yardstick as everywhere else: by the procedures put in place, by the data collected, by the decisions taken when the principles displayed come into tension with institutional interests.
Consistency before proclamations
There is a simple indicator to distinguish organizations that have changed from those that have communicated: their relationship to discomfort.
Real change involves addressing situations where applying principles is costly. Suspending a high-performing manager during an investigation. Make unfavorable figures public. Recognize that problematic behaviors occurred under the responsibility of the organization. Compensate victims without waiting to be forced to do so by a court.
These decisions are rare. However, they are the only tangible sign of a commitment that goes beyond crisis communication.
Organizations that have strong values (and this is the case of the humanitarian sector as much as certain private companies) are more exposed than others to this gap between discourse and practice. Their stakeholders look at them with a requirement proportional to their stated ambitions.
Organizational wishful thinking has a limited shelf life. Employees, beneficiaries, lessors funds and the general public now know the difference between a policy and a procedure, between a commitment and a measure, between an intention and a result.
The good news is that the organizations that have done the serious work know it too. And they don’t need to proclaim it.
