Text: Guido Camps
The Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and his third cabinet have fallen over the benefits affair and have got to explain to the Lower House of parliament how things could have gone so wrong. There are already numerous theories about why the government was able to crush these families in its bureaucratic machinery so terribly. The most interesting feature of the case is that everyone – from the minister to the most minor civil servant – collaborated in the system without a murmur, while they now say they had an uneasy feeling about it. How can everyone in a large organization join forces on something when each individual feels it’s not quite right? How is it possible that an employee thinks ‘There’s something odd about this’, or even ‘this is totally wrong’, but that nothing changes because nobody else says anything, or even worse, everyone seems to think it’s normal and points the finger at someone else. A kind of bystander effect within the organization, whereby everyone does nothing as they wait to see what others do.
Luckily, we’re working at WUR and not for the benefits department in the tax office, so we don’t have to weigh up these kinds of considerations. What’s more, WUR employees signed the integrity code, pledging to act in accordance with the letter and the spirit of this code. We need never doubt how we should act, because article 1 of the code states: ‘Honesty means, among other things, reporting the research process accurately’. So we never get carried along in that kind of groupthink, making us do things that don’t feel right.
We never go along with groupthink, making us do things that don’t feel right
I’ve got to finish off this column quickly now because it’s the end of the month and I’ve got to record my hours. No matter that it’s 10 pm, because I’ve been working on various grant applications for weeks, on weekdays and at weekends. I’d better have a quick look at the instructions on time recording so that I fill in exactly 40 hours for the work I’ve done this week on the projects I’m involved in.
Guido Kamps (36) is a vet and a postdoc at Human Nutrition. He enjoys baking, beekeeping and unusual animals.
