In terms of their professions, John Galliano, Andy Gray and Richard Keys couldn’t be more dissimilar. The first was, till recently, the creative director of the couture house Christian Dior. The second and third were, respectively, a former footballer and commentator and football show host with Sky Sports. Yet they have two things in common. All three were stars in the organisations for which they worked. And all three were dismissed for what their employers deemed unacceptable behaviour.
British designer Galliano’s pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic remarks in the course of a bar brawl in Paris and subsequent dismissal attracted, and continues to attract, considerable global attention. That is not surprising since the controversy has all the elements of a thoroughly satisfactory scandal: glamour, a big name haute couture label and an individual whose soaring talent was matched by an excitingly decadent lifestyle.
As for Gray and Keys, both respected football pundits, they were sacked by Sky Sports for making blatantly sexist remarks about a female assistant referee’s offside decision in a Liverpool versus Wolverhampton match (replays showed it was spot-on, however). Gray and Keys, who thought they were off air at the time, grumbled about how female officials didn’t know the offside rule, and Gray even asked the sideline reporter whether Sian Massey, the assistant referee in question, was “a looker”.
The point to note about both incidents is that they occurred outside the work sphere. Gray and Keys thought the mikes had been switched off when they exchanged this admittedly tasteless banter; Galliano was in a bar near his Paris home. In the latter case, Galliano’s employers may not even have been aware of these misdemeanors were it not for the Internet. Galliano’s drunken rant was recorded on video and posted on a website. Likewise, Gray and Keys’ unwittingly recorded remarks were posted on YouTube, literally for all the world to see. Both Sky Sports and Dior acted swiftly in dismissing their star employees the better to protect their images as responsible, politically correct institutions.
The dismissals have undoubtedly burnished the credentials of both Sky and Dior — but here’s the thing. Galliano had an established, public history of alcohol and substance abuse, none of which Dior deemed unacceptable enough to warrant a dismissal. His anti-Semitic rants were not new either. He had also made more virulent rants several months before, in December. In a video posted on the website of British tabloid The Sun he is shown slurring “I love Hitler,” and your mothers, your forefathers would all be gassed”. But it was only when the Paris bar incident drew public outrage that Dior thought fit to dismiss him. Even so, the case for Galliano’s dismissal is clear cut: it is a crime in France to incite racial hatred, so Dior had, at the very least, a legal case against him.
Similarly, Gray and Keys’ chauvinism was hardly news in the football world. Female employees regularly complained about their off-colour remarks and there is any amount of evidence of their jeers about women’s football, women footballers and just about anything feminine that intruded on their boisterous locker-room world — that too on-air. Yet, it was only when their behaviour was subjected to public scrutiny and censure that their employers asked them to leave.
The big message that these incidents convey — which occurred just months apart — is that the corporate version of the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT) rules no longer apply. It is not that corporations themselves have turned more responsible; they are being forced to widen the ambit of their reputation-building outside the brand, the product or the manufacturing unit to their employees.
Indeed, the Internet has transformed the rules of engagement between corporations and the public so drastically that every employee’s behaviour has the potential to come under scrutiny even in the private sphere, just as it would a public servant or a politician. The higher the designation or the profile, the bigger the danger. The days when managements winked at misbehaviour by its senior employees in, say, a club or a hotel or hushed it up are receding.
Employees these days sign codes of conduct and ethics that are wide-ranging enough to warrant dismissal if they are breached. Mark Hurd of Hewlett Packard learnt that the hard way, even though his was a borderline case. Like Galliano, Gray and Keys, he paid the price of thinking he was bigger than the organisation he headed. In today’s rigidly politically correct world, that’s a risky way to think.
