Assignment 7 Wald

AuthenticWorkplacesAreMoreEthical.pdf

Home >Business & Finance homework help >Management homework help >Assignment 7 Wald

Digital Article

Ethics

Why Authentic Workplaces Are More Ethical by Maryam Kouchaki

This document is authorized for use only by Tylecia Westbrook in WMBA-6010B-1/WMBA-6010-1/MSPM-6010-1/COMM-6504-1/MGMT-6010-1/MMSL-6010-1/MHRM-6611-1-2021-Fall-SEM- Term-wks-9-thru-16-(11/01/2021-12/26/2021)-PT4 at Laureate Education - Walden University, 2021.

Why Authentic Workplaces Are More Ethical

by Maryam Kouchaki Published on HBR.org / June 19, 2019 / Reprint H050FF

C. J. Burton/Getty Images

People want to feel authentic at work. If an employee or candidate cares

about the environment or access to education or being a caring parent, for

example, they don’t want their professional responsibilities to interfere

with these values or force them to compromise on them. They want to feel

like they can express who they are fully at work, without being judged

negatively or missing out on development and advancement opportunities;

that’s the idea of enabling people to bring their “whole selves” to work.

This general concept has gained momentum of late because of the large

number of Millennials in the workforce. In fact, this population segment

HBR / Digital Article / Why Authentic Workplaces Are More Ethical

https://hbr.org/2019/06/why-authentic-workplaces-are-more-ethical

now represents the greatest proportion of the U.S. workforce of any

generation: as of 2017, a full 35% of U.S. employees was Millennials, just

ahead of Generation Xers (about 33%) and well ahead of Baby Boomers

(25%). And Millennials are known for their strong focus on consuming and

working for brands with values that match their own.

But aligning the values your company represents with those of the

employees within it is also important for a very specific reason: it helps

prevent ethical lapses. My recent research with Mahdi Ebrahimi and

Vanessa Patrick suggests that enabling people to bring their whole selves

to work endows them with a greater sense of authenticity that ultimately

leads to more ethical behavior, reducing business risk.

Identity, Integration, and Integrity Across four studies (about 800 participants total), our research found that

low identity integration led to greater feelings of inauthenticity and, in

turn, a higher likelihood of engaging in unethical behavior.

That result emerged from an experiment in which we randomly assigned

people to conditions that either promoted a sense of identity integration or

did not. Specifically, we informed our participants that every person has

“multiple selves or identities”: as a typical professional, they have two

major identities, a “professional/work” identity and a “non-work” identity.

We then prompted each individual to think about these two identities as

either segmented/incompatible or integrated/compatible, and to give an

example of a specific time they experienced the identities in this way.

We found that participants thinking about their identities as segmented/

incompatible (low integration) felt more inauthentic, and engaged in more

dishonest behavior compared to those prompted to think about integrated/

compatible identities (high integration). The low-integration group, in this

case, was more likely to cheat in reporting how many coin tosses they

predicted correctly than was the high-integration group.

HBR / Digital Article / Why Authentic Workplaces Are More Ethical

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.pewresearch.org_fact-2Dtank_2018_04_11_millennials-2Dlargest-2Dgeneration-2Dus-2Dlabor-2Dforce_&d=DwMGaQ&c=yHlS04HhBraes5BQ9ueu5zKhE7rtNXt_d012z2PA6ws&r=64f_48JMqHu545IpdKPMHtEmuc0vDYa1cXAqUU2o5mqP8Hw1WeNijooCND949ZM0&m=KvGVKGgkDwN4WlueLDF-o_H9dvO8Nu43PvtwSqWMRM0&s=3fxw6HqEoVmWZhaDICFfgnjjk_Wm7UKu2bBdeWKGeRw&e=

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forrester/2018/05/23/millennials-call-for-values-driven-companies-but-theyre-not-the-only-ones-interested/#671106ab5464

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749597817308373?via%3Dihub

In a separate, workplace-based survey study we showed that employees

(across industries) who reported lower identity integration felt more

inauthentic and were more likely to behave unethically, as measured by

their supervisors’ reports of their workplace misconduct. For example,

supervisors rated the likelihood the employee would engage in dishonest

financial (e.g., “falsified a receipt to get reimbursed for more than they

spent on business expenses”) and social (“played a mean prank on

someone at work”) behavior.

Our overall finding, then, is that low identity integration — or an inability

to be one’s whole self — leads to feelings of inauthenticity that are

associated with unethical behavior in the workplace and elsewhere. That

makes it worthwhile for employers to help employees bring their whole

selves to work.

Promote Identity Integration Here are several practical ways to promote identity integration for your

people.

Give them some control. Enabling employees to take control — or craft — key elements of their responsibilities goes a long way to boosting their

sense of authenticity. Such “job-crafting” can extend to tasks,

relationships and interactions (such as mentorships and meetings), and

even how employees think about their roles.

Explicate—and live—your mission and values. Making your organization’s mission and values clear helps connect employees better to

these, and should go well beyond posting them on the wall or talking

about them in the annual report. Living by stated values means sharing

stories of them in action, recognizing people for exemplifying them, and

working with suppliers and other partners who share them. Employees

notice when business practices go against the organization’s mission or

values, so look for obvious or more subtle (such as valuing “respect” but

HBR / Digital Article / Why Authentic Workplaces Are More Ethical

https://hbr.org/2010/06/managing-yourself-turn-the-job-you-have-into-the-job-you-want

allowing negative interactions between supervisors and employees) ways

that might be happening.

Promote transparency about process and policy. In line with the point above, how things are done should be clear to everyone in the

organization, whether in regard to hiring, promotion, supply chain, or

other areas. A stated policy of transparency, with the actions to back it up,

is a key part of the authenticity employees value and need.

Don’t force it. Be wary of making everything about fulfilling needs for authenticity. Not everyone may feel strongly about identity integration,

especially employees from more senior generations. So seek to promote

the mission and values, for example, but don’t force people to share their

whole selves in all interactions. There’s a limit to the value of frequent

team-building exercises, for instance. Recognize there will be

heterogeneity among employee needs, and work to understand and

address these the best you can, on a person-by-person basis.

The takeaway here is that understanding the value of authenticity in the

workplace and taking active steps to promote it can reduce the risk of

unethical behavior in your business. In short, fulfilling people’s need for

identity integrity will serve your organization’s need for strong ethics on

every front.

Maryam Kouchaki is an associate professor of management and organizations at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. Her research focuses on decision-making and ethics.

HBR / Digital Article / Why Authentic Workplaces Are More Ethical