1 / 26

Ethics in organisational behaviour by Gert Kriel

Ethics in organisational behaviour by Gert Kriel. Where to from here?. Presentation flow. Setting the scene Defining the construct “ethical change” and presenting the origins of organisational ethics Characteristics of ethical issues surrounding large scale change interventions

giles
Download Presentation

Ethics in organisational behaviour by Gert Kriel

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Ethics in organisational behaviourby Gert Kriel Where to from here?

  2. Presentation flow • Setting the scene • Defining the construct “ethical change” and presenting the origins of organisational ethics • Characteristics of ethical issues surrounding large scale change interventions • Success stories • Conclusions

  3. Setting the scene… • Planned change initiatives by any name, have a 65% to 75% failure rate. The financial cost is exceptionally high and the unintended traumatic consequences, hard to fully appreciate or calculate (Van Tonder, 2004:41).

  4. Setting the scene… • Disruptive and unexpected changes (Kotter, 1996:3; Van Tonder, 2004:56; Van Tonder, 2004:89) in the business environment, according to Heifetz, Grashow and Linsky (2009:62) will be the norm in the future. Srivastva (1988:1)talks about the “age of terror”, based on the human option for letting live or destroying human lives.

  5. Setting the scene… • This evidence, contrasted against the investments made, argues that business does not know how to deal with change ethically. The question then is, why does this happen and where to from here?

  6. Defining the concept • Bhaskar, Bhal and VenkataRatnam (2003:21) define ethics in the context of change management as “a set of principles prescribing a behaviour that can explain what is good and right or bad and wrong; and may even outline moral duty and obligations”. The assumption made here is that the authors refer to the moral duties and obligations of management during the process of change to ensure fairness.

  7. Defining the concept… • Tulloch et al. (1990:505) defines ethics as “the science of morals in human conduct…moral principles; rules of conduct”, whilst Wehmeyer et al. (2005:498) defines ethics as the “branch of philosophy that deals with moral principles”.

  8. Defining the concept… • None of the available definitions touch on the emotional side of ethical change such as perceived fairness and emotional buy-in which should be present if the participants are to believe that the change process have been conducted ethically or morally correct…this is also the reason why so many change interventions fail

  9. Origins of ethics • such as the utilitarian approach (Williams, 1992:16) where we argue that ethical behaviour would be measured by the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Shareholders want share value increased, management argues that the most jobs were saved but employees would like to feel valued, cared for and being listened to…

  10. Origins of ethics… • …or we use the “rights” approach which argues that everyone has certain basic human rights. In a change intervention, the business owners may argue they have an ethical right to make profit whilst the employees may argue they have an ethical right to withhold their labour, bringing the “rights” argument then into the highly cognitive legal domain.

  11. Origins of ethics… • We can argue according to the virtue approach which says all people have inherent worth and dignity and our decisions when it affects others, such as deciding on major organisational change, have to be backed up by good reasoning Socrates calls the practise of ethics “The examined life, a life of self reflection about who we are, the way we live, and how we treat others” (Wicks et al, 2010:4)

  12. Origins of ethics… • From just a couple of the philosophical roots of ethical reasoning, we clearly see that cognitive paradigms are used to manage emotional journeys, should we apply these types of reasoning to change interventions and are surprised when it does not work. What about having management integrity, an individual and collective sense of justice and fairness throughout the change process?

  13. Ethical issues surrounding large scale change interventions • Reducing operating cost is double edged sword…On the balance sheet, people are the most costly item, for this reason, businesses shed substantial portions of their workforce to control cost and optimise efficiency. However , employee commitment is the main link in the leadership to business performance value chain. (Bass, Avolio, Jung & Berson, 2003:208-215) Gaining this commitment is an emotional process

  14. Ethical issues surrounding large scale change interventions • The size, speed and momentum of large scale change is unpredictable, often unmanageable and triggers emotional stress responses from those that should manage and live with this change • Pressure induced by change will get employees to perform, but constant pressure demoraIises and incapacitates employees. (Vaishnav, 2005:4)

  15. Ethical issues surrounding large scale change interventions • Pater and Van Gils (2003:768) point to the fact that in 1992, 90% of all organisations in the US have adopted ethical codes, notwithstanding this, found that the presence and enforcement of an ethical code had no positive impact on ethical behaviour, The authors found that: • words such as integrity and honesty means nothing if the senior leadership do not live these values • Ethical codes designed by top management and forced down onto employees create resentment due to their non-involvement in the design • Business overestimates and overuse the power of punishment, this breeds employees who comply out of fear and not because the believe in the decisions business has taken. Employees value the example of top management more than any ethical code.

  16. Ethical issues surrounding large scale change interventions… • Managerial thought stemming from the classical management theory, (Van Tonder, 2004:44), believes management is a manager’s prerogative. Once the manager has made up his mind about the content & process of change, there is no going back. The leadership notion of having all the answers, mitigates against asking advice and an inclusive and emotionally satisfying process of decision-making.

  17. Ethical issues surrounding large scale change interventions… • “Bottom-line above everything else disease” causes leadership to be satisfied when the short term numbers looks good. This myopic view of the consequences of large scale change is supported through the short life cycles which CEO’s generally are appointed for, but the longer term consequences such as hurt, pain, deep sense of loss, anger, resentment and feelings of deprivation and de-humanisation are simply never accounted for.

  18. Ethical issues surrounding large scale change interventions… • Net profit • Operating income • Cost reduction • Return on equity • Return on investment • Return on assets • Cost to income • Expenses • Distrust • Decreased commitment • Fear • Lack of focus • Perceptions of betrayal • Rejection • Withdrawal Source: De Klerk (2007:50)

  19. On the importance of transparency during a major change process… Ricardo Semler (2003:6) said “we want everybody to know what happens everywhere at the company”

  20. on building trust as a requisite for ethical change Vineet Nayar (2010:61) CEO of HCL Technologies India, said “before we did anything, we would have to find a way to build trust throughout the organization”

  21. on using both the emotional and cognitive paradigm when executing change When asked about his management philosophy, Jan Wallender (2003:11)said we work “in accordance with human nature, not against it”

  22. Success stories • Ricardo Semler Engineering Brazil • VineetNayar IT India • Jan Wallender Banking Sweden • All three success stories are typified by handing power over to the employees during the change process, creating trust through transparency and listening with the intent to implement (deep listening)

  23. Summary • Redefine the ethics of change to include both a cognitive and emotive paradigm • Turn over the decision-making power to the people when the decisions touch their lives • Enforce absolute transparency before, during and after the change process • Select CEO’s for integrity above all else Kouzes and Posner (2002:25-28) in surveying thousands of business executives over twenty years found that honesty is the single most sought after trait any CEO can possess, irrespective the country.

  24. Summary… • Change the measurement framework which is used to determine the ethical success of large scale change interventions to include emotional words such as employee buy-in, retention of trust, emotional health and optimism about the future of the company

  25. Questions?

More Related