The Study Of Moral Principles Or Values

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Introduction

Ethical Values

Ethics is the study of moral principles or values that determine whether actions are right or wrong and whether outcomes are good or bad (McShane, 2012).

There are three ethical principles. Utilitarianism follows the principle "greatest good for the greatest number of people". In management, an example is executives making decisions that benefit the greatest number of people affected; for example, employees and shareholders. However, it can be difficult to determine the needs of everyone and who will benefit. Furthermore, a decision that will benefit the greatest number of people may not always be perceived as ethical by the decision makers – it may disregard individuals’ rights, particularly those of the minority.

The second ethical principle is individual rights that everyone is entitled to. These include freedom of speech and movement, a right to fair trial and freedom from torture. However within management, individual rights may conflict between different individuals or groups. For example, a shareholder’s right to be informed about corporate activities may conflict with the executive’s right to privacy (McShane, 2012).

Lastly, the third ethical principle is distributive justice. It follows that similar people should receive similar benefits; for example, employees who have similar difficulty or task jobs should receive similar benefits (wages) for similar hours worked. However in management, it can be hard to determine a comparison other (someone who is similar) and take into account relevant factors such as task difficulty, intensity and dampening external factors.

Motivation

Motivation is the internal forces that determine the direction, intensity and persistence of effort towards a particular task – direction being where the effort is directed, intensity being the level of effort, and persistence being the duration the effort is directed towards the task (McShane 2012). Three process motivational theories examined in relation to motivating ethical behaviour are expectancy theory, social cognitive theory, and goal setting.

Expectancy Theory

Expectancy theory proposes that individuals are motivated to act in a certain way by their conscious expectations of what outcomes will result from a certain level of effort and performance. It contains three components: effort-to-performance expectancy (the individual’s perception that a certain degree of effort that will lead to a particular performance), performance-to-outcome expectancy (the individual’s belief that a certain level of performance will lead to an outcome), and valence outcome (the individual’s positive or negative evaluation of an outcome). All components are equally important – if any weakens, then motivation as a whole will decrease. It is therefore important to examine all three when determining at how management can motivate their employees to act ethically.

Management can firstly look towards increasing effort-to-performance expectancy (referred to hereafter as "E-to-P expectancy"). The objective would be to increase the employees’ beliefs that attempts to act ethically will lead to performance of ethical behaviour. Fudge and Schlacter (1999) stated that employees must be first taught the ethical principles through training programs. Whilst not all situations involving ethical issues can be covered, employees should become familiar with the basic principles discussed earlier. Applications should also be emphasised to increase the effectiveness of the training programs (Frudge & Schlacter 1999). Through this, the employees’ E-to-P expectancy that effort put towards acting ethically results in ethical behaviour will improve.

However E-to-P expectancy cannot motivate employees by itself. Performance-to-outcome expectancy (referred to hereafter as "P-to-O expectancy") must also be positively impacted upon. Management will want to increase employees’ beliefs that level of performance in ethical behaviour relates to rewards, which can be either extrinsic (satisfying "lower order needs" such as bonuses) or intrinsic (satisfying "higher order needs" such as job satisfaction) (Frudge & Schlacter 1999). To do so, organisations must be structured in a way that links desired ethical behaviour to rewards desired by the employees. Social and non-social sources, such as supervisors and letters respectively, can help foster this link by providing employees quick and timely feedback on their performance of ethical behaviour. If feedback is positive, it will furthermore enhance the employee’s self-image and potentially lead to greater engagement and confidence to act ethically and therefore result in more frequent ethical performance. Objective performance measures can also be utilised to determine

Examples of ethical behaviour displayed by employees should also be recorded in their files. Upon performance evaluation, employees past ethical behaviour can be rewarded to further strengthen the link between ethical behaviour and personal rewards (Fudge & Schlacter 1999). Failing to create this link may give the impression that the organisation is not concerned with how employees accomplish their goals and potentially drive unethical behaviour by employees (further discussion of failing to foster this link will be discoursed in relation to social cognitive theory and poor manager role models). Building on from this, one may also think to increase the E-to-P expectancy that unethical behaviour leads to no rewards. Managers can punish or not reward employees for unethical behaviours despite benefitting the company. For example, overlooking safety defects in a company’s products could lead to fines and a ruined reputation if caught that may exceed potential profit if they hadn’t carried out unethically. Rewards that employees potentially could have obtained, such as pay bonuses and increased salary would no longer be available (Fudge & Schlacter 1999). Managers can provide such examples during the ethics training program to increase employee belief that ethical/unethical behaviour leads to rewards/no rewards.

The last step in motivating employee ethical behaviour is increasing valence outcomes. Rewards for ethical behaviours should be desired by the employees as reasons to act ethically. Questionnaires and surveys can help determine what rewards employees desire and the rank order in which these rewards are desired.

Managers should be cautious however. When a need is satisfied, the valence of a reward will decrease and may no longer be a motivating reward for the employee at act ethically. Managers can overcome this by varying rewards from time to time or redistributing questionnaires and surveys to update what rewards employees most desire.

Social Cognitive Theory

Social cognitive theory proposes that "learning and motivation occurs by observing and modelling others as well as by anticipating the consequences of our behaviour" (McShane 2012, pg. 150). The three components most relevant to employee motivation are learning behaviour consequences, behavioural modelling and self-regulation.

Learning behaviour consequences involves employees observing the behaviours of others and determining what behaviours are acceptable from the reward or punishment others receive. It is therefore crucial for management to reward ethical behaviour and ignore or punish unethical behaviour to increase employee perception that ethical behaviour is rewarded and vice versa. Individuals who observe others being punished for their (unethical) behaviour will store the memory and be less likely to imitate the same behaviours (Trevino and Ball 1992, as cited in O’Fallon & Butterfield 2012). Badaracco and Web’s (1995) study (as cited in Fudge & Schlacter 1999) observed that individual’s feelings of obligations to act ethically were strongly moulded by the example set by managers. They also found that formal ethics training programs were only effective when they actively reinforced ethical behaviour.

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