Welcome to the Nexus of Ethics, Psychology, Morality, Philosophy and Health Care

Welcome to the nexus of ethics, psychology, morality, technology, health care, and philosophy
Showing posts with label Ethical Culture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ethical Culture. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 2, 2019

Will You Forgive Your Supervisor’s Wrongdoings? The Moral Licensing Effect of Ethical Leader Behaviors

Rong Wang and Darius K.-S. Chan
Front. Psychol., 05 March 2019
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00484

Abstract

Moral licensing theory suggests that observers may liberate actors to behave in morally questionable ways due to the actors’ history of moral behaviors. Drawing on this view, a scenario experiment with a 2 (high vs. low ethical) × 2 (internal vs. external motivation) between-subject design (N = 455) was conducted in the current study. We examined whether prior ethical leader behaviors cause subordinates to license subsequent abusive supervision, as well as the moderating role of behavior motivation on such effects. The results showed that when supervisors demonstrated prior ethical behaviors, subordinates, as victims, liberated them to act in abusive ways. Specifically, subordinates showed high levels of tolerance and low levels of condemnation toward abusive supervision and seldom experienced emotional responses to supervisors’ abusive behaviors. Moreover, subordinates tended to attribute abusive supervision, viewed as a kind of mistreatment without an immediate intent to cause harm, to characteristics of the victims and of the organization rather than of the supervisors per se. When supervisors behaved morally out of internal rather than external motivations, the aforementioned licensing effects were stronger.

Here is a portion of the Discussion

The main findings of this research have some implications for organizational practice. Subordinates have a tendency to liberate leaders’ morally questionable behaviors after observing leaders’ prior ethical behaviors, which may tolerate and even encourage the existence of destructive leadership styles. First, organizations can take steps including training and interventions to strengthen ethical climate. Organizations’ ethical climate is not only helpful to manage the ethical behaviors within the organizations, but also has impact on shaping organizational members’ zero-tolerance attitude to leaders’ mistreatments and questionable behaviors (Bartels et al., 1998).

Thursday, November 15, 2018

The Impact of Leader Moral Humility on Follower Moral Self-Efficacy and Behavior

Owens, B. P., Yam, K. C., Bednar, J. S., Mao, J., & Hart, D. W.
Journal of Applied Psychology. (2018)

Abstract

This study utilizes social–cognitive theory, humble leadership theory, and the behavioral ethics literature to theoretically develop the concept of leader moral humility and its effects on followers. Specifically, we propose a theoretical model wherein leader moral humility and follower implicit theories about morality interact to predict follower moral efficacy, which in turn increases follower prosocial behavior and decreases follower unethical behavior. We furthermore suggest that these effects are strongest when followers hold an incremental implicit theory of morality (i.e., believing that one’s morality is malleable). We test and find support for our theoretical model using two multiwave studies with Eastern (Study 1) and Western (Study 2) samples. Furthermore, we demonstrate that leader moral humility predicts follower moral efficacy and moral behaviors above and beyond the effects of ethical leadership and leader general humility.

Here is the conclusion:

We introduced the construct of leader moral humility and theorized its effects on followers. Two studies with samples from both Eastern and Western cultures provided empirical support that leader moral humility enhances followers’ moral self-efficacy, which in turn leads to increased prosocial behavior and decreased unethical behavior. We further demonstrated that these effects depend on followers’ implicit theories of the malleability of morality. More important, we found that these effects were above and beyond the influences of general humility, ethical leadership, LMX, and ethical norms of conduct, providing support for the theoretical and practical importance of this new leadership construct. Our model is based on the general proposal that we need followers who believe in and leaders who model ongoing moral development. We hope that the current research inspires further exploration regarding how leaders and followers interact to shape and facilitate a more ethical workplace.

The article is here.

Friday, August 10, 2018

SAS officers given lessons in ‘morality’

Paul Maley
PM Malcolm Turnbull with Defence Minister Marise Payne and current Chief of the Defence Force Air Chief Marshal Mark Binskin. Picture: Kym SmithThe Australian
Originally posted July 9, 2018

SAS officers are being given ­additional training in ethics, ­morality and courage in leadership as the army braces itself for a potentially damning report ­expected to find that a small number of troops may have committed war crimes during the decade-long fight in Afghanistan.

With the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force due within months to hand down his report into ­alleged battlefield atrocities committed by Diggers, The Australian can reveal that the SAS Regiment has been quietly instituting a series of reforms ahead of the findings.

The changes to special forces training reflect a widely held view within the army that any alleged misconduct committed by Australian troops was in part the ­result of a failure of leadership, as well as the transgression of individual soldiers.

Many of the reforms are ­focused on strengthening operational leadership and regimental culture, while others are designed to help special operations officers make ethical ­decisions even under the most challenging conditions.

Thursday, July 19, 2018

Ethics Policies Don't Build Ethical Cultures

Dori Meinert
www.shrm.org
Originally posted June 19, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

Most people think they would never voluntarily commit an unethical or illegal act. But when Gallagher asked how many people in the audience had ever received a speeding ticket, numerous hands were raised. Similarly, employees rationalize their misuse of company supplies all the time, such as shopping online on their company-issued computer during work hours.

"It's easy to make unethical choices when they are socially acceptable," he said.

But those seemingly small choices can start people down a slippery slope.

Be on the Lookout for Triggers

No one plans to destroy their career by breaking the law or violating their company's ethics policy. There are usually personal stressors that push them over the edge, triggering a "fight or flight" response. At that point, they're not thinking rationally, Gallagher said.

Financial problems, relationship problems or health issues are the most common emotional stressors, he said.

"If you're going to be an ethical leader, are you paying attention to your employees' emotional triggers?"

The information is here.

Thursday, May 10, 2018

A Two-Factor Model of Ethical Culture

Caterina Bulgarella
ethicalsystems.org

Making Progress in the Field of Business Ethics

Over the past 15 years, behavioral science has provided practitioners with a uniquely insightful
perspective on the organizational elements companies need to focus on to build an ethical culture.
Pieced together, this research can be used to address the growing challenges business must tackle
today.

Faced with unprecedented complexity and rapid change, more and more organizations are feeling the
limitations of an old-fashioned approach to ethics. In this new landscape, the importance of a proactive ethical stance has become increasingly clear. Not only is a strong focus on business integrity likely to reduce the costs of misconduct, but it can afford companies a solid corporate reputation, genuine employee compliance, robust governance, and even increased profitability.

The need for a smarter, deeper, and more holistic approach to ethical conduct is also strengthened by
the inherent complexity of human behavior. As research continues to shed light on the factors that
undermine people’s ability to ‘do the right thing,’ we are reminded of how difficult it is to solve for
ethics without addressing the larger challenge of organizational culture.

The components that shape the culture of an organization exercise a constant and unrelenting influence on how employees process information, make decisions, and, ultimately, respond to ethical dilemmas.  This is why, in order to help business achieve a deeper and more systematic ethical focus, we must understand the ingredients that make up an ethical culture.

The information is here.

Sunday, January 14, 2018

The Criminalization of Compliance

Todd Haugh
92 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1215 (2017).

Abstract

Corporate compliance is becoming increasingly “criminalized.” What began as a means of industry self-regulation has morphed into a multi-billion-dollar effort to avoid government intervention in business, specifically criminal and quasi-criminal investigations and prosecutions. In order to avoid application of the criminal law, companies have adopted compliance programs that are motivated by and mimic that law, using the precepts of criminal legislation, enforcement, and adjudication to advance their compliance goals. This approach to compliance is inherently flawed, however—it can never be fully effective in abating corporate wrongdoing. Criminalized compliance regimes are inherently ineffective because they impose unintended behavioral consequences on corporate employees. Employees subject to criminalized compliance have greater opportunities to rationalize their future unethical or illegal behavior. Rationalizations are a key component in the psychological process necessary for the commission of corporate crime—they allow offenders to square their self-perception as “good people” with the illegal behavior they are contemplating, thereby allowing the behavior to go forward. Criminalized compliance regimes fuel these rationalizations, and in turn, bad corporate conduct. By importing into the corporation many of the criminal law’s delegitimizing features, criminalized compliance creates space for rationalizations, facilitating the necessary precursors to the commission of white collar and corporate crime. The result is that many compliance programs, by mimicking the criminal law in hopes of reducing employee misconduct, are actually fostering it. This insight, which offers a new way of conceptualizing corporate compliance, explains the ineffectiveness of many compliance programs and also suggests how companies might go about fixing them.

The article is here.

Thursday, November 2, 2017

Culture and Business Ethics

Marshall Schminke
www.ethicalsystems.com
Originally published October 3, 2017

Here is an excerpt:

What do most companies overlook when it comes to organizational design?

Supervisors. Despite some high profile missteps, organizations generally do a pretty good job of making ethics a front-and-center issue at the upper levels.  Likewise, they invest heavily in education and training at the level of the rank-and-file worker.  But as with so many strategically important issues, low-to-mid-level supervisors are often ignored.  This is troublesome, because research shows the single most important factor in driving employees’ ethical actions is not what top managers or coworkers say or do.  Rather, it is the immediate supervisor—and whether he or she is capable of creating an ethically supportive work culture that employees experience every day—that matters most.  Yet in most cases, these “sergeants and lieutenants” of the workplace receive relatively little attention when it comes to ethics and ethics training.

How can E&C teams better emphasize ethics vs. compliance?

Culture. It’s not that rules aren’t important.  They are.  And they must be understood and followed.  But complex business environments—and complex ethical rules and standards—cannot address every situation employees might encounter.  Therefore, the only real insurance organizations have for getting the best ethical effort possible from their employees is to bake it into the culture and climate, where it becomes second nature to employees trying to do their best in a tough business world.

What have you learned as a part of the ES culture measurement working group?

As a culture and climate researcher for years, this experience has been truly eye-opening for me.  It has introduced me to different perspectives on culture and, in turn, exposed me to completely different ways of thinking about how to create and maintain effective ethical cultures.  For example, of the eight components of ethical culture identified by the Ethical Systems culture measurement working group, I had only a passing familiarity with the ethical awareness and ethical leadership components.  This experience has not only improved my understanding of those components, but has also heightened my awareness of how they fit and interact with the other six components.

The information is here.

Monday, May 8, 2017

Improving Ethical Culture by Measuring Stakeholder Trust

Phillip Nichols and Patricia Dowden
Compliance and Ethics Blog
Originally posted April 10, 2017

Here is an excerpt:

People who study how individuals behave in organizations find that norms are far more powerful than formal rules, even formal rules that are backed up by legal sanctions.[ii] Thus, a norm that guides people to not steal is going to be more effective than a formal rule that prohibits stealing. Therein lies the benefit to a business firm. A strong ethical culture will be far more effective than formal rules (although of course there is still a need for formal rules).

When the “ethical culture” component of a business firm’s overall culture is strong – when norms and other things guide people in that firm to make sound ethical and social decisions – the firm benefits in two ways: it enhances the positive and controls the negative. In terms of enhancing the positive,  a strong ethical culture increases the amount of loyalty and commitment that people associated with a business firm have towards that firm. A strong ethical culture also contributes to higher levels of job satisfaction. People who are loyal and committed to a business firm are more likely to make “sacrifices” for that firm, meaning they are more likely to do things like working late or on weekends in order to get a project done, or help another department when that department needs extra help. People who are loyal and committed to a firm are more likely to defend that firm against accusers, and to stand by the firm in times of crisis. Workers who have high levels of job satisfaction are more likely to stay with a firm, and are more likely to refer customers to that firm and to recruit others to work for that firm.

The blog post is here.

Monday, October 17, 2016

Do It Well and Do It Right: The Impact of Service Climate and Ethical Climate on Business Performance and theBoundary Conditions

Jiang, K., Hu, J., Hong, Y., Liao, H., & Liu, S.
Journal of Applied Psychology. Advance online publication.

Abstract

Prior research has demonstrated that service climate can enhance unit performance by guiding employees’ service behavior to satisfy customers. Extending this literature, we identified ethical climate toward customers as another indispensable organizational climate in service contexts and examined how and when service climate operates in conjunction with ethical climate to enhance business performance of service units. Based on data collected in 2 phases over 6 months from multiple sources of 196 movie theaters, we found that service climate and ethical climate had disparate impacts on business performance, operationalized as an index of customer attendance rate and operating income per labor hour, by enhancing service behavior and reducing unethical behavior, respectively. Furthermore, we found that service behavior and unethical behavior interacted to affect business performance, in such a way that service behavior was more positively related to business performance when unethical behavior was low than when it was high. This interactive effect between service and unethical behaviors was further strengthened by high market turbulence and competitive intensity. These findings provide new insight into theoretical development of service management and offer practical implications about how to maximize business performance of service units by managing organizational climates and employee behaviors synergistically.

The article is here.

Monday, March 28, 2016

Taking Ethics Seriously: By Setting Up Board Committees?

Dina Medland
Forbes.com
Originally published March 9, 2016

Here is an excerpt:

However, the report does not recommend that all companies should form a committee. “While the need for more detailed oversight may favor the creation of a committee, there is a risk of the board’s own responsibilities being diluted  – and of unnecessary overlap with other committees. What remains critical is that boards address the issues of ethics and values in the context of their approach to risk oversight, even when they do not have a committee”, it says.

One could argue that the creation of a committee in a boardroom is in fact a death knell to a broader discussion of the issue of company culture – which surely includes creating attitudes to corporate values, sustainability and realistic profit targets from an ethical base implicit in the business plan.

The article is here.

Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Ways to Build Strong Ethical Cultures

By Keith Darcy
Risk and Compliance Journal

Here is an excerpt:

Not surprisingly, the group found strong support for the idea that culture needs top-down support and bottom-up buy-in. Senior managers need to be confident that in addition to following the letter of the law, the people they manage “get” the larger aim of a compliance and ethics initiative. That makes them more responsive to the necessary coaching and training. As for top leaders, one compliance panelist shared, “I view sales as a big part of my job. I have to sell senior management on why this is important—why they have to do this. I don’t expect them to know every rule, policy and procedure, but if they can more easily identify values, and make decisions based upon those values, we have a better chance to avoid a disaster.” Another executive added the importance of the tone at the top, “You have to show people the way. If it’s not important to senior leadership, it’s not important to the third level down.”

The entire article is here.

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

When Leaders Lie

By Cynthia Schoeman
The Ethics Monitor
Originally published September 2014

Telling a lie is arguably something that everyone does from time to time. This can amount to a small exaggeration or a “white” lie that is apparently harmless. A lie can even be shaped by good intentions, for example to avoid hurting someone. (“Of course you look good in that new dress.” / "No, you have definitely not gained weight.”) But the “slippery slope” argument maintains that a relatively small first step can develop gradually until it amounts to something much more significant, when the lie is no longer harmless.

The other factor that exacerbates the impact of lying is when leaders lie. This stems from the fact that leaders exert the greatest influence on the conduct of others. But the ideal of being a good role model who influences his/her followers positively is, unfortunately, not always the case.

The entire blog post is here.

Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Ethics and the Brains of Psychopaths

The Significance of Psychopaths for Ethical and Legal Reasoning

William Hirstein and Katrina Sifferd
Elmhurst College

Abstract

The emerging neuroscience of psychopathy will have several important implications for our attempts to construct an ethical society. In this article we begin by describing the list of criteria by which psychopaths are diagnosed. We then review four competing neuropsychological theories of psychopathic cognition.  The first of these models, Newman‘s attentional model, locates the problem in a special type of attentional narrowing that psychopaths have shown in experiments. The second and third, Blair‘s amygdala model and Kiehl‘s paralimbic model represent the psychopath‘s problem as primarily emotional , including reduced tendency to experience fear in normally fearful situations, and a failure to attach the proper significance to the emotions of others. The fourth model locates the problem at a higher level: a failure of  psychopaths to notice and correct for their attentional or emotional problems using ―executive processes.  In normal humans, decisions are accomplished via these executive processes, which are responsible for planning actions, or inhibiting unwise actions, as well as allowing emotions to influence cognition in the proper way. We review the current state of knowledge of the executive capacities of psychopaths. We then evaluate psychopaths in light of the three major  philosophical theories of ethics, utilitarianism, deontological theory, and virtue ethics. Finally,we turn to the difficulty psychopath offenders pose to criminal law, because of the way psychopathy interacts with the various justifications and functions of punishment. We concludewith a brief consideration of the effects of psychopaths on contemporary social structures.

The entire article is here.

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Research: We Should Speak Up About Ethical Violations More Often

by Joseph Grenny
Harvard Business Review
Originally published on January 8, 2014

Whistle-blowing reveals not just acute misdeeds, but chronic and longstanding patterns of misconduct. For example, Edward Snowden’s bombshell release of more than 200,000 documents revealed questionable government surveillance programs that existed for years. Miami Dolphins player Jonathan Martin withdrew from play, alleging more than a year of emotional abuse from teammate Richie Incognito. These high-profile cases are just a few examples of what happens in organizations large and small every day.

And yet, many leaders wrongly believe the path to consistent, proper conduct is special methods to reward whistle-blowing — offering incentives to truth-tellers who report major lapses. The SEC, for example, offers up to 30 percent of recovered funds as payment to those whose testimony aids in prosecution of corporate wrongdoing. One payment recently topped $14 million. Is a multimillion-dollar payday the key to corporate ethics?

The entire article is here.

Monday, January 6, 2014

Should Medical Schools be Schools for Virtue?

By Daniel Sulmasy
The Journal of Internal Medicine
Originally posted in July, 2000 and still relevant today

Here is an excerpt:

As Branch writes, “Medicine, after all, is a moral profession.” Yet medicine is increasingly viewed as just another business, and the concept of medicine as a profession, as a “special” endeavor with a different set of moral obligations and expectations, has been denounced as elitist, self-serving, and detrimental to the spirit of the competitive marketplace. Some fear that the recent financial reorganization of health care, premised upon the notion that there is nothing special about medicine, poses a particularly grave threat to the essence of medicine as a profession. Others argue that the professionalism of medicine can be reconstructed in such a way that it can guard against the financial forces that threaten to undermine its moral potency.

The entire article is here.