Ethical Principles, Influences, and Motivation in Behavior

Ethics

Ethics refer to the study of moral principles or values that determine whether actions are right or wrong and outcomes are good or bad.

Three Ethical Principles

Utilitarianism: Greatest good for the greatest number of people

Individual Rights: Fundamental entitlements in society

Distributive Justice: People who are similar should receive similar benefits

Influences on Ethical Conduct

• Moral intensity

• degree that issue demands ethical principles

• Ethical sensitivity

• ability to recognize the presence and determine the relative importance of an ethical issue

• Situational influences

• competitive pressures and other conditions affect ethical behavior

Four Factors that Directly Influence Individual Behavior and Performance (MARS)

Motivation:

• Internal forces that affect a person’s voluntary choice of behavior

• direction

• intensity

• persistence

Ability:

• Natural aptitudes and learned capabilities required to successfully complete a task
• Competencies - personal characteristics that lead to superior performance
• Person - job matching

• selecting

• developing

• redesigning

Role:

• Beliefs about what behavior is required to achieve the desired results:

• understanding what tasks to perform

• understanding relative importance of tasks

• understanding preferred behaviors to accomplish tasks

Situational Factors:

• Environmental conditions beyond the individual’s short-term control that constrain or facilitate behavior

• time

• people

• budget

• work facilities

Globalization

• Economic, social, and cultural connectivity with people in other parts of the world
• Effects of globalization on organizations

• New structures

• Increasing diversity

• Increasing competitive pressures, intensification

Perceptual Process and Three Ways to Improve Perceptions

• The process of receiving information about and making sense of the world around us

• deciding which information to notice

• how to categorize this information

• how to interpret information within our existing knowledge framework

Strategies to Improve Perceptions

1. Awareness of perceptual biases
2. Improving self-awareness

• Applying Johari Window

3. Meaningful interaction

• Close and frequent interaction toward a shared goal

• Equal status

• Engaged in a meaningful task

Johari Window: A model of mutual understanding that encourages disclosure and feedback to increase our own open area and reduce the blind, hidden, and unknown areas.

How Drives and Motivation Influence Employee Motivation

Drives (aka-primary needs, fundamental needs, innate motives)

• Neural states that energize individuals to correct deficiencies or maintain an internal equilibrium

• Prime movers of behavior by activating emotions.

Needs

• Goal-directed forces that people experience.

• Drive-generated emotions directed toward goals

• Goals formed by self-concept, social norms, and experience

Drives -> needs -> Decisions and behavior

Elements of Self-Leadership

Some of the intentional behaviors that characterize Self-leadership are;

• self-awareness

• self-goal setting

• self-motivation

• positive self-talk assertive communication and the ability to receive and act on feedback.

Personalities

• Extroversion versus introversion

• similar to five-factor dimension

• Sensing versus intuition

• collecting information through senses versus through intuition, inspiration, or subjective sources

• Thinking versus feeling

• processing and evaluating information

• using rational logic versus personal values

• Judging versus perceiving

• orient themselves to the outer world

• order and structure or flexibility and spontaneity

Stereotyping

• Assigning traits to people based on their membership in a social category
• Occurs because:

• Categorical thinking

• Innate drive to understand and anticipate others’ behavior

• Enhances our self-concept

• Problems with stereotyping
• Overgeneralizes

• Stereotypes don’t represent all or most people in the category

• Discrimination

• Systemic (unintentional)

• Prejudice (intentional)

• Overcoming stereotype biases

• Difficult to prevent stereotype activation

• Possible to minimize stereotype application.

Motivation:

1. The forces within a person that affect the direction, intensity, and persistence of voluntary behavior

2. Exerting a particular effort level (intensity), for a certain amount of time (persistence), toward a particular goal (direction).

Reward Practices

• Financial rewards: -- fundamental part of the employment relationship
• Pay has multiple meanings

• symbol of success

• reinforcer and motivator

• reflection of performance

• can reduce anxiety

• Men value money more than women
• Cultural values influence the meaning and value of money

Types of Rewards:

• Membership and seniority: Fixed wages, seniority increases
  • Advantages
  • Guaranteed wages may attract job applicants
  • Seniority-based rewards reduce turnover
  • Disadvantages
  • Doesn’t motivate job performance
  • Discourages poor performers from leaving
  • May act as golden handcuffs (tie people to the job)
• Job status: Includes job evaluation and status perks
  • Advantages:
  • Job evaluation tries to maintain pay equity
  • Motivates competition for promotions
  • Disadvantages:
  • Employees exaggerate duties, hoard resources
  • Reinforces status, hierarchy
  • Inconsistent with workplace flexibility
• Competencies: Pay increases with competencies acquired and demonstrated
  • Skill-based pay
  • Pay increases with skill modules learned
  • Advantages
  • More flexible workforce, better quality, consistent with employability
  • Disadvantages
  • Potentially subjective, higher training costs
• Performance-based: Pay increases with competencies acquired and demonstrated
  • Skill-based pay
    • Pay increases with skill modules learned
  • Advantages
    • More flexible workforce, better quality, consistent with employability
  • Disadvantages
    • Potentially subjective, higher training costs

Effective Feedback

1. Specific – connected to goal details
2. Relevant – Relates to person’s behavior
3. Timely – to improve the link from behavior to outcomes
4. Sufficiently frequent

• Employee’s knowledge/experience

• task cycle

5. Credible – trustworthy source