Automakers: Apology Accepted

This week GM printed a full page ad in Automotive News magazine to make a public apology. They said:

While we're still the U.S. sales leader, we acknowledge we have disappointed you. At times we violated your trust by letting our quality fall below industry standards and our designs become lackluster. We proliferated our brands and dealer network to the point where we lost adequate focus on our core U.S. market. We also biased our product mix toward pickup trucks and SUVs. And we made commitments to compensation plans that have proven to be unsustainable in today's globally competitive industry. We have paid dearly for these decisions, learned from them and are working hard to correct them by restructuring our U.S. business to be viable for the long-term.

This gesture could easily be interpreted as "too little too late", a desperate P.R. campaign, or as a "bizarre" and "pointless exercise" as some analysts have put it. While I do not know the hearts of the executives at GM, I would like to take this apology at face value and accept it.

The heart of our faith is about relationships. How they are broken and how they are fixed. Righteousness is the term we use that means "right relationships." It may sound like an oversimplification, especially in light of all of the complex market instruments that are in use today, but the root of all of this financial mess and turmoil are broken relationships, broken social covenants.

The relationship between employer and employee. The relationship between corporations and community. The relationship between stock holders and executives. The relationship between consumers and their creditors. The relationship between the businesses, the government, and our civic institutions. The relationship between people and the planet we live on. These relationships are broken, distorted, and even abandoned. All of them are in need of redemption.

If all that come out of this crisis are some new regulations on naked short-selling, transparency in hedge funds, realistic credit ratings for mortgage backed securities, and a slap on the wrist for those who spent more than they had, then we have missed the point. All or some of these actions may be good and may be necessary, but no maze of regulations or army of watch dogs can ever change the fact that we have broken and abandoned the relationships that build up the foundations of a good society. As I have said before, this economic crisis is both structural and spiritual.

If we only treat the symptoms of the problems without also seeking personal and communal transformation, we will find ourselves on the losing side of this battle. However, if we fail to regulate our markets and hope that the "invisible hand" will turn all our vices into virtues, we fall into the painful naiveté that brought us to this place to begin with.

Part of what scares us when we see a company like GM collapsing is that we can see our own vices writ large against the sky. When we hear that these companies have been producing not the best that they could, but only what would just get by, we think of our own failings. When credit freezes up and lenders do not trust borrowers or borrowers trust their lenders, we think of all the times that we have refused trust to others and the times that we've broken the trust that has been extended to us. When we watch the bubble burst, we see the futility of our own greed and our inability to say that enough is enough.

If we are honest with ourselves, we realize that the very mistakes the leadership of GM, Chrysler, and Ford have made are all too recognizable in ourselves--even if there are drastic differences of scale. All I can say is, apology accepted. Maybe we all need the chance to make a fresh start and begin to slowly dig our way out of this crisis.

Being from Detroit, I hope that Congress will pass the loan package for the auto companies--with a whole range of tough conditions, clear oversight, and a goal of becoming the world's leading innovators in green automotive technology. Because bailouts without apologies, penance, and true change are never a good idea for any of us.

Jim Wallis is the author of The Great Awakening, Editor-in-Chief of Sojourners and blogs at www.godspolitics.com.

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Comments

[leeman79]

Off subject, but the picture reminded me of something. Whatever happened to the thousands of unused FEMA trailers that were sitting in Arkansas? Man, you talk about incompetence. Somebody should have been goin' to jail over that one.

[peterg76]

Apology has to mean actions, not words.

[bioluminescence]

The only thing affirmed here is the hypocrisy of big business. When they are in trouble and need public help they want to put their arm around your shoulder and talk about partnerships. But when they are making billions they'll extol the virtues of private enterprise and the virtues of an unregulated environment.

[tbone99]

Evidently you must agree with the Supreme Court who has ruled that corporations have the same free speech rights as individuals, including the right to use. their ( exponentialy larger) voice in the form of candidate donations to get what they want.

If these companies were seriously contrite they would drop the cases they are pursuing in courts at this very moment to challenge stricter emmissins policies for American vehicles. These emisions and particulates are responsible for more deaths among the American populace than car crashes .

Where's the apology for these deaths and more seriously, where are the actions demonstrating sincerity.?

[jkador]

Where's the apology?

While the company admits mistakes, concedes it has disappointed consumers, and promises to do better, there is no real apology here. Not yet. In due course, GM will issue a genuine apology, but this is not it. Not even close. And when it does we will know it. A genuine apology is unmistakable. .

A genuine apology meets five requirements. I call these the Five Rs: Recognition, Responsibility, Regret, Restitution, and Repetition. The GM statement meets only two of them.

An apology is effective when it specifies what the offender is apologizing for, accepts responsibility for the outcome, expresses regret by using the words "I"m sorry" or "I apologize," offers appropriate restitution, and promises not to repeat the offensive behavior. The GM statement recognizes some of the mistakes the company made. It also suggests that it has learned from its mistakes and will not repeat them. But the statement falls short of effective apology by failing to explicitly accept responsibility for its predicament. Indeed, later in its statement it blames a "perfect storm" of economic conditions. There may be truth in this, but it"s more of an explanation than an apology.

John Kador is the author of Effective Apology: Mending Fences, Building Bridges, and Restoring Trust