Gerald D. Biby
509 Shugart Street
Beatrice, NE 68310
Setareh Makinejad
Duane Eversoll
Susan Nichols
RE: Grievances against Don Helmuth
Attached are five items:
Nevertheless, I am also mind-full of the University's need to assure the integrity of this grievance process. Don Helmuth was apprized of his options continuous during the 10 months that have elapsed since this controversy between Corn Card International and the University began. He was advised by Dick Wood, in-house-counsel for the University, two law firms that reviewed the agreement with Corn Card, Tim Dougherty (outside legal counsel for the arbitration with Corn Card International), the Director of the University Police and probably many others that I do not know. Nevertheless he chose to assume that he could revoke Corn Cards International agreement with the University and given the information that he had, it was particularly knowing. What happened between Corn Card International and the University was not my fault that of Milford Hanna or the IAPC.
Why the secrecy, why the hiding of reports from the IAPC or other administrators or with holding documents from Corn Card International it was entitled to have access too under the rules of discovery, the University had agreed to during the arbitration process?
Why not just be up-front with what they had, with what they had been told, with what that believed the facts to be at the meeting in January 1999? Mistakes and a cover-up are two different things.
Why? Did he believe that they will lose the opportunity they think they have to do a deal with Cargill and First Data Resources? Did he and members of his staff want to be heros' and take credit for a major research and licensing agreement with the Cargill and First Data Resources?
Their actions were not to benefit the University, not to gain research dollars or licensing fees. If it where they had taken an open and pro-active position and looked for a way for the Corn Card International and Gemplus relations to have been completed, not destroyed. Even now it means nothing to him to make the IAPC look like it was at fault. Depositions given by Don Helmuth, Walter O'Farrell and Turan Odabasi outline the cover-up and attempt to revoke Corn Card International's agreement in great detail with the university.
Little did I know what I would have in store for myself when I went down this road 10 months ago when I disagreed with Don Helmuth. He has attacked my credibility and attempted to make
me a laughing stock. I understand that the University has agreed to settle the arbitration dispute it had with Corn Card International. Now, only the tactics used by Don Helmuth need to be decided, where they appropriate or part of a campaign to find-out what I knew and attempt to identify ways to disagree or discredit any testimony or documents that I would bring to the arbitration hearing.
Who ordered this to begin?
Who insisted that Corn Card International's agreement be revoked?
When you get the answer to these questions, you will know why this grievance has been filed against Don Helmuth.
We need to start here - start now to reestablish the credibility of public institutions and their administrators. We work for the University and we must stand for integrity. We must stand as an example to students and the state.
The best administrators I have had have been the ones who stop to ask, "Is this the right thing to do?" They were willing to be questioned and sought to avoid the arrogance of certainty. ...ethics has everything to do with management. Rarely do the character flaws of a lone actor fully explain corporate misconduct. More typically, unethical practice involves tacit, if not explicit, cooperation of others and reflects the values, attitudes, beliefs, language, and behavioral patterns that define an organization's operating culture. Ethics, then, is as much an organizational as a personal issue. Administrators who fail to provide proper leadership and to institute systems that facilitate ethical conduct share responsibility with those who conceive, execute, and knowingly benefit from misdeeds. Lynn Sharp Paine, "Managing for Organizational Integrity," Harvard Business Review, March-April 1994,p. 106.
After three months working through this grievance process, I believe that what has happened focuses more broadly on integrity than on ethics. The word "integrity" more clearly connotes commitment without coercion to deeply held priorities and values. Integrity also carries the idea that this commitment to values is maintained even when it goes against one's self-interest to do so. In this sense, being ethical infers doing the right thing; having integrity infers doing the right thing even when it hurts.
If one accepts the premise that ethical or unethical behavior most often reflects an organization's operating culture, then that culture has to be examined continually through the lens of integrity. It was this kind of forward-looking approach that left Johnson & Johnson Corporation well prepared to act quickly and with integrity in the 1982 Tylenol tampering case, a crisis that could have put the company out of business. As recent history has shown, from the Exxon Valdez to insider trading on Wall Street to Iran-Contra, organizations that fail to monitor and adjust their operating cultures for integrity pay a high price for their mistaken assumption that good ethics "happen" without constant organizational effort.
"What for us as a University and as a professional constitutes integrity?"
Computer scientist and management theorist Jay Forrester of MIT once remarked that the hallmark of a great organization is how quickly bad news travels upward (Quoted in Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization (New York: Doubleday/Currency, 1990), p. 226). If an organization is to deal with problems effectively, they have to be brought out into the open before they become too serious to manage. For this to happen, employees must know that managers will respond to the bad news itself, rather than shoot the messenger. They also have to know that, although it may not result in management action, all thoughtful dissent will receive a fair and honest hearing. This kind of open environment is particularly crucial if an organization is to surface potential ethical dilemmas, which there is a great incentive to cover up.
"People do not like being challenged and consider a request to see the proof behind an assertion to be aggressive behavior."
Pressure is created to do whatever it takes to achieve that outcome, including cutting ethical corners and covering up mistakes, including compromising their integrity when things go badly.
"Is this management by intimidation?"
While this may be the case, to a certain extent perception is what matters here, as employees take their cues about what behavior is rewarded in the organization from their reading of how top managers got where they are. Given this, managers should understand that they cannot "start over" with integrity once they become managers; to a great extent, they have already sent the most powerful message.
"Integrity" is "adherence to moral and ethical principles; honesty." The key to integrity is consistency--not only setting high personal standards for oneself (honesty, responsibility, respect for others, fairness) but also living up to those standards each day. One who has integrity is bound by and follows moral and ethical standards even when making life's hard choices, choices which may be clouded by stress, pressure to succeed, or temptation.
We are each responsible for our own decisions, even if the decision-making process has been undermined by stress or peer pressure. The real test of character is whether we can learn from our mistake, by understanding why we acted as we did, and then exploring ways to avoid similar problems in the future.
However, the fact that such a violation is "unintentional" does not excuse the misconduct. Ignorance is not a defense.
In sum, we all have a common stake in our school, our community, and our society. Our actions do matter. It is essential that we act with integrity to build the kind of world in which we want to live. In any activity in which people interact, moral codes are developed. This is true of any group of any size - a family, a team, a company, a nation, a race.
We have all heard people attempt to justify their actions and all of us have known instinctively that justification amounted to a confession of guilt. This is a downward spiral. One commits overt acts unwittingly. He then seeks to justify them by finding fault or displacing blame. This leads him into further overt actions against the same people which leads to degradation of himself and sometimes those people.
With the arrival of the "corrective action" proposed by Darrell Nelson on September 23rd it appears that not only Don Helmuth and his Technology Transfer Office are responsible for what has happened, but other administrators too. My initial request was for nothing more than an apology and having to have both my name and records cleared. That is no longer the case. Justice needs to be swift in dealing with the Don Helmuth, Walter O'Farrell and Turan Odabasi.
It is my understanding that a reporter has read all the depositions in the arbitration case and will be writing an expose about what has happened. The University needs to be pro active and not reactive regarding the treatment Corn Card International received.
How the University wants to play out my grievance is up to them. I can only say that any offer I have made to settle for anything less than full vindication of both my actions and that of Dr. Milford Hanna and the Industrial Agricultural Products Center represent is only a small part of what is needed, for what has happened to me. How will this final play out, will it be in the new papers, the courts, both or neither, I do not know. Yet one this is certain. The Center with the most prolific publication record and the most successful record of research with businesses on the East Campus has been destroyed and will never be the same. Too high a price has been paid by to many. Or was the price to high?
This is probably the one and only time that you may serve of a grievance appeal committee. I believe that you take this seriously and will not rush to judgement with some assumptions, and therein lies my only hope. Not with my department, not with Human Resources. It's with you. You have two choices here. You can hold up the integrity of the University, or not. Maybe Don Helmuth and the Technology Transfer Office are supposed to get away with what he has done.
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Gerald D. Biby
© 1999-2000 Gerald D. Biby. All rights reserved.
