Graduate Level: Culture, Climate, and Ethical Decisions

Step 1 Notes:

Project 3 Final Deliverable: Culture, Climate, and Ethical Decisions

Create a seven- to eight-slide narrated PowerPoint presentation. Include a cover page and reference section (these are not included in the length requirement) and write a two- to three-page memo to the COO (CAO, CEO, or comparable leader) that highlights the main points of your project’s findings. Include your notes for each slide in the note section of your presentation for each slide. The presentation and memo must both include proper in-text citations and a references section in APA format. In designing your presentation, refer to the guide on creating a narrated PowerPoint presentation. The memo and narrated PowerPoint are submitted in the last step.

Consider the following among the key things your presentation will need to address:

· Define concepts—Define organizational culture, climate, and ethical decisions and practices. Use the academic sources embedded in the steps or other resources of like quality, written by authoritative sources.

· Identify consequences—Describe the likely consequences of these concepts for an organization’s operations. See sample questions below.

· Describe culture and climate—Describe and differentiate between the current organizational culture and climate of your organization. See sample questions below.

· Describe approach to ethical decisions and practices—Think about the meaning of ethics and how they are applied in your organization. Does your leadership model them? Are employees placed in uncomfortable situations? How are ethics communicated?

· Assess implications for organization—Assess the implications of the above issues for your organization. For example, what does it mean to your organization’s practices that the organization has the type of culture, climate, and ethics you identified?

· Recommend actions—Recommend actions your COO (CAO, CEO, or comparable leader) should consider implementing to facilitate a shift in the organization’s culture, climate, and ethics to ensure desired or improved outcomes for your organization such as meeting its mission and values. If you don’t see a need for any changes, why?

Use these sample questions to guide your work:

· What is organizational culture? How do authorities on culture define it? How does it relate to my organization? How would I describe the culture of my organization? Does the culture need to be changed? How can that be accomplished? If not, why not?

· What is organizational climate? How do authorities define climate? Do people enjoy working here? If so, why? If not, why not? Are our motivation, evaluation and reward system perceived as fair and equitable? What effect do such measures have on climate? Do we do climate surveys? What do they indicate as key concerns? Should we measure climate? How?

· What are organizational ethics? How do authorities define ethics? How does my organization enforce ethics? Do we have fair employment practices? Are we provided clear ethical guidelines? Do we receive ethics training? How do we measure compliance? Do our leaders shape ethical decision making or not? Do we ask or imply certain marginal practices are okay? Any past scandals? How were they dealt with? What steps have been or need to be taken to eliminate recurrences?

Narrated PowerPoint Presentation

One of the things you will need to be able to do in this course is create a narrated PowerPoint presentation. What that means is that you will be recording an audio track—your spoken voice—for each slide in your presentation. First, here are some general guidelines that should help you with this task. Later in this document you will find specific instructions for various types of hardware and versions of PowerPoint.

As with any project, it is good to begin by creating an outline. This will help you determine how many slides you will need to develop and how much information you will need to present on each slide. It should also help you determine a logical order in which to present your material.

Now you are ready to begin work on your slides and your script. You may find it easiest to create a slide based on your outline and then write the script for that slide. Or you may decide to create all of your slides and then write your full script. Another alternative is to write a full script first and then create your slides.

Here are some recommendations for your slides:

· Keep slides uncluttered by using very brief bullet points—only a few key words each.

· An easy way to make your presentation look more appealing is to use one of the designs provided within PowerPoint.

· Adding images and/or clipart is another good way to add some visual interest to your presentation, but don't overuse these.

· When you are citing your sources of information on a slide, use a small font size so the citations don't detract from the primary points you are making.

·  Be sure to proofread carefully: Any errors on a slide will be particularly noticeable because of the relatively small number of words.

· When you record your audio for each slide, a loudspeaker icon will appear in the middle of the slide. You can drag this icon to a better position (often the bottom right corner of the slide) so it doesn't interfere with the bullet points you have included.

Presentation Script

The script for your presentation can be a complete word-for-word documentation of what you intend to say as each slide is displayed, or it can be a much briefer set of notes that you will use as a reminder while you are recording to ensure that you cover all the points you intend to make. The latter approach is preferable, because this makes it less likely that you will sound rushed or overly scripted when you are speaking. Keep in mind that if you were making your presentation in person, you would not want to be reading your comments; instead, you would want to make eye contact with your audience.

Here are some additional recommendations for your script:

· Try to keep the amount of narration to less than two minutes per slide. If you find that you need to say more than that, it is probably a good idea to create another slide so your audience doesn't get bored.

· Make sure your script and what appears on your slide are closely related so your audience can easily follow what you have to say.

· Don't simply read the material on your slide—add value by providing additional information.

Recording the Narration

At this point, you have created and saved your slides as a PowerPoint presentation, and you have your script ready. Now it's time to record your audio.

Here are a few general recommendations before you record:

· If you are using a computer to record, consider using a headset/microphone combination rather than the computer's built-in speakers and microphone. It isn't necessary to spend a lot on a headset/mic (typically $20 or less), and you will be rewarded with better sound quality and less background noise.

· Make sure your headset/mic is installed and working. There are simple programs on both Macs and PCs that allow you to test whether recording is occurring and whether the sound quality is acceptable.

· Choose a quiet location to do your recording so that background noise is minimal.

· When you begin recording, speak clearly and conversationally without rushing.

· Remember that it's easy to redo the audio for a slide. If you're not happy with the way it sounds, you can do it over.

· Once you have completed and narrated your presentation, it is a good idea to email the file to another computer. If you are able to watch and listen to the slide show successfully on the second computer, you will know that the audio files have been successfully embedded in the presentation.

Recording Instructions

For a PC with Windows 7 or Windows 10 and PowerPoint 2010:

1. Open your presentation file in PowerPoint.

2. Click on Slide 1.

3. Click the Insert tab in your menu bar, and then choose Audio (the speaker icon at the far right).

4. When you click on the Audio icon, you should see three options. Choose "Record audio."

5. A new window will open with three recording controls. When you are ready to record, click the red "record" circle. You'll see the "total sound length" counter start to increment so you know how long you've been speaking. When you're finished, click the square "stop" button. If you now click the arrow, you'll be able to hear what you just recorded. And before you close this pop-up box, rename the audio file to something appropriate (e.g., Slide 1 Audio).

6. Now you can follow the same process (steps 2–5) for each of your remaining slides.

7. When you are finished, save the presentation. In fact, you may wish to do this after you record each slide.

8. Now play the full presentation back as a check on both your slides and your narration. To do this, click "Slide Show" in the menu bar at the top, and choose "From beginning."

9. Once you have made any final changes, save the presentation again.

For a PC with PowerPoint 2003:

1. Open your presentation file in PowerPoint.

2. Then in the slide sorter click on your first slide. (There are other ways to do this; this is just the easiest!)

3. Then go to the top of your screen in Microsoft PowerPoint. Go to Slideshow and select that. Scroll down and select Record Narration.

4. Check the microphone level and set the quality (remember that you want the quality to be good enough for your audience to hear, but it's not necessary to choose the top quality because that may make the file unmanageably large).

Warning: Do not click on the option to link the narrations; this will create a separate (not embedded) sound file. When you upload your presentation to the classroom, the sound file will be left behind on your computer.

1. Click OK and begin recording. When you finish with one slide click the left mouse button one time. Continue with your presentation one slide at a time until you are finished.

2. At the end, click Save.

3. Now play back your presentation by going to the Slideshow Menu again and select View > View Show or just press F5. If the show progresses through on its own with sound, you are 95% of the way there. Save the presentation immediately with a new file name to prevent loss.

For a Mac with PowerPoint 2010:

1. Open your presentation in PowerPoint.

2. Click on your first slide.

3. On the menu at the top of your screen, click "Insert."

4. Then choose "Audio: Record Audio."

5. This will pop up a recording window. Make sure your headset microphone, not the computer's internal microphone, is selected as the sound input device.

6. When you're ready to begin recording, click the red record button, and start speaking naturally. When you're finished recording the audio for that slide, press the stop button. "Save" the file.

7. Click on the next slide, and repeat the process.

8. Continue with your remaining slides until you are finished.

9. Do a slideshow of your presentation, listening to ensure that audio is playing back correctly for all slides. If you want to change the audio for one or more slides, just click on the slide and go through the "Insert: Audio: Record Audio" process again. The original audio will be overwritten.

10. When you are done, save the file. You can check the size of the file by choosing the "File" menu at the top, clicking "Properties" at the bottom of the list, and choosing "General."

11. You will need to be mindful of file size, since the audio component of a narrated file on a Mac can be very large. For example, in a 48MB narrated PowerPoint, 44MB might be accounted for by the audio alone. It is possible to upload very large files to LEO discussion areas, but patience will be needed because it is a time-consuming process.

For an iPhone (to record audio only):

1. The Voice Memos app that comes standard on the iPhone can be used to record your voice. Just speak normally as if you are talking on the phone. Do this for each slide.

2. Once you are finished, the app allows you to email the recorded files to yourself.

3. The files are in MPEG4 audio format which can be played on Macs or Windows.

4. Save the emailed audio files on the computer where you have your PowerPoint presentation, being sure to note the files' location.

5. Open the presentation in PowerPoint.

6. Click slide 1, then click "insert," "audio," and "audio from file."

7. Do the same with your remaining slides, matching them up with the emailed audio files.

8. Run the slide show to make sure the audio has been successfully inserted on each slide.

Conducting Research on Your Organization

If at any point in this project you find yourself wanting information about your organization that is not publicly available, it is important to discuss the situation and your proposed solution with your professor. Your professor will help you explore the best approach for your particular organization and situation. One possible outcome of this discussion may be an agreement to make some minor modifications to the project report. Modifications must be approved by your professor.

In most cases, you will want to discuss your project with your employer and explain that you are completing this organizational profile as one requirement for your MBA. You should explain that this assignment does not require you to disclose any proprietary or sensitive information about the organization. Our experience is that managers are generally happy to support their employees and also look forward to benefiting from the results of projects like this one.

You will likely want to begin by reviewing annual reports and other publicly available information. You will have other opportunities in this program to apply what you are learning to your organization, and it is therefore important that you take care in planning and implementing your research for this project and in communicating about it with others.

Using an Outside Organization

Requirement: Consult with your instructor

If you are not currently employed or believe your employer is not an appropriate choice for this project, you must contact your professor immediately and book a time to discuss the possible alternatives. If either of these situations apply, you must receive approval from your professor before proceeding with any steps in this project.

1. If you are not currently employed, it will be important to consult with your professor and obtain prior approval to complete this project for a specific organization you believe may be appropriate. Here are some guidelines to help you prepare for your discussion with your professor:

a. After reviewing the project requirements, find and select a possible alternative organization. Briefly describe the organization and your relationship with it.

b. Explain your rationale for believing the organization is a good choice.

c. Identify and make note of specific challenges you envisage encountering if the professor supports your suggested choice of organization for this project. Explain your plan for addressing these challenges.

2. If you are employed but believe you may not be able to use your organization for this project here are some guidelines to help you prepare for your discussion with your professor:

a. Review the project deliverables carefully and make note of those for which you expect you will not be able to get the needed information.

b. Identify an alternative organization you believe would work for this project and jot down the key points that support your conclusion.

c. Consider both the advantages and possible disadvantages of doing this assignment on an alternative organization. Note that this project requires no gathering or sharing of confidential or sensitive information so it is usually easy to address and resolve concerns.

Step 2 Notes:

Organizational Culture

Read Organizational Culture in the Resources section below for an overview of organizational culture. For your own practice as a current or future manager, it is important to develop a good understanding of what organizational culture is, why it is important, how to create a healthy and ethical culture, and how to deal with the challenges that are likely to arise when attempting to change a culture. Also read "Culture as the 800 lb Gorilla in Your Organization” (see Resources section), which offers some thoughts about why this is and will be an important topic for you and your organization.

As you will see in the readings, scholars have been interested in the relationships between types of organizational cultures and the likelihood of excellent organizational performance and employee commitment. You might want to examine whether there is work that focuses on the relationship between types of organizational cultures and the likelihood of ethical behaviors. One source for useful work on this topic is the Journal of Business Ethics. You can go to the UMUC Library website and use the OneSearch functionality to search for this journal. You can then search within the journal for organizational culture and then further refine your search depending upon your situation and specific interests.

Another strategy that will probably yield even better information is to go to the UMUC Library website again, but this time, select the link to Databases by Title.

Once in the list of databases, select S and then select Scopus. When in Scopus, enter “Journal of Business Ethics” and select source title in the first search field. Then enter “organizational culture” in the second search field. Select Social Sciences & Humanities for the subject area. These search parameters should give you a manageable number of hits, and you can then further limit your search. One of the several advantages of Scopus is that it shows you how many times an article has been cited by others, which is often an indicator that it is an important work. Of course, very recent work will not yet have been cited by others, so it should not be discounted. Another advantage of Scopus is that you can see easily who the main contributors (authors) have been. This resource also gives you a good idea of the kinds of questions scholars have been exploring and the contexts they have been using to explore their propositions or test their hypotheses.

Organizational Climate

Read the Dickson & Mitchelson (2007) article on organizational climate from the Resources section below. As you can see from this article, there is debate about exactly what organizational climate is and how to best differentiate among different types of climates. Organizational climate has been defined several ways. The reseachers Reichers and Schneider have defined it as "shared perceptions of organizational policies, practices, and procedures, both formal and informal" (Vardi, 2001). Ostroff, Kinicki, and Muhammad (2012) distinguish between psychological and organizational climate, explaining that the latter requires agreement by employees about their perceptions of the work environment. Describing an organization's climate requires an understanding of employees' shared perceptions of what people are feeling and thinking about work and the workplace. In other words, while culture is about "the way things are done around here," climate is simply "the way things are around here” (Vardi, 2001, p. 327).

Many factors contribute to climate, including the following:

· managerial and leadership styles, approaches to decision making, and methods of communicating

· relationships among employees at the group and organizational levels

· leader and manager attitudes about what employees can and should do

· attitudes about how customers should be served

Evidence that climate is perceived as relatively important, even if many find it difficult to put into words, explains why it is fairly common for organizations to ask their employees to complete a climate survey (sometimes also referred to as a general satisfaction survey). Sometimes, this request happens when organizations are experiencing conflict and leaders are under pressure to figure out what is wrong and make needed changes (a reactive approach). There are also organizations that make it a practice to conduct a climate survey on a regular basis and then use the information gathered to help identify areas of strength and those needing improvement (a proactive approach).

One type of organizational climate, sociomoral climate (SMC), shifts the focus away from traditional means of encouraging or requiring ethical conduct (for example, use of codes or penalties for misconduct) to one that emphasizes the importance of creating a workplace environment where employees want to do the right thing (Pircher Verdorfer, Steinheider, & Burkus, 2014). You might have heard people in some organizations referring to having to deal with a "climate of fear," meaning that people may be afraid to speak up and share what they are thinking or feeling because they worry about retaliation. The idea behind SMC is to seek to eliminate fear-based climates and instead create ones that emphasize care, respect, trust, and a shared commitment to ethical decisions and behaviors.

Finally, you will almost inevitably discover multiple climates in your organization, and they might not be aligned or mutually supportive. Imagine, for example, an organization where those in senior leadership positions have a shared perception that employees are generally happy, feel respected and valued, understand what is happening and why, and are completely or mostly on board with upcoming changes. Now shift to elsewhere in the same organization where you find a shared perception that leaders have absolutely no idea what they are doing, do not care about employees, and cause employees to feel confused and anxious about changes they have heard about through the grapevine. If we use climate in the natural environment as an analogy, in one group everything is sunny and beautiful, but just a little distance away, a storm is looming. Recognizing that you are likely to find multiple climates within an organization is good, but this problem adds to the complexity of figuring out how to create a situation where a commitment to ethical decisions and behavior is both a shared perception and a reality.

Business Ethics

Weber (2008) offers a practical seven-step framework for ethical decision making. His illustrative example of a plant closing and layoff decision is helpful in understanding how this framework may be applied when confronted with an ethical dilemma for which there is no perfect solution.

The task of creating and nurturing an ethical organizational culture requires leaders and managers to be proactive and strive to reduce the likelihood of ethical misconduct and the need to address an ethical dilemma. As Meinert (2014) writes, this is not a small challenge. Referencing the 2013 National Business Ethics Survey, she reports that "41 percent of US workers said they observed unethical or illegal misconduct on the job." What makes this an even bigger challenge is that managers may be the primary contributors to workplace misconduct, according to Ethics Compliance Initiative president Patricia Harned (Meinert, 2014). In response to this challenge, the Society for Human Resource Professionals (SHRM) Foundation published a book titled Shaping an Ethical Workplace Culture as a complementary resource. The author, Stephen Olson (2013), offers a simple explanation of ethics, provides guidance on how to assess one's workplace culture, identifies the building blocks of an ethical workplace, and describes three types of cultures typically found in organization—those focused on compliance, those that adopt a positive perspective toward ethics, and those that qualify as virtuous (i.e., those pursuing the "highest standards and levels of compliance").

Treviño (2008), one of the leading scholarly contributors to the work on ethical culture and climate, emphasizes the importance of integration between an organization's formal and informal systems and processes. She defines ethical culture as a "subset of the overall organizational culture that represents the interplay of multiple formal and informal cultural systems that either work together or at cross-purposes to support ethical or unethical conduct." Formal systems consist of ethics codes, ethics training, and specific incorporation of attention to ethics in the organization's decision-making processes and in performance appraisals. Informal systems include leaders and managers modeling behaviors, and shared organizational stories of success in handling difficult ethical situations. Another very simple explanation of an ethical culture and climate is offered by Michael C. Hyter, a senior partner at Korn Ferry: "What it means to me is an environment that makes it easy to do the right thing and makes it difficult to do the wrong thing" (Meinert, 2014, p.3).

Step 3 : Notes

Developing a Consultant's Perspective

When examining an organization you know well, one of the challenges is achieving sufficient distance to ensure you are being as objective as possible. It can be helpful to think about what you would expect of an outside consultant if one were hired by your organization. Then imagine yourself in that role, assuming those same responsibilities and needing to meet the same expectations. This is what is meant by developing a consultant’s perspective.

We expect consultants to have the expert knowledge required to address a particular project or task. We also expect and need consultants to be skilled at recognizing how their own experiences, beliefs, and values, as well as those of others, can influence thinking and decisions. When thinking about situations at work, it is typical for us to have ideas about why they are as they are and, sometimes, how they might be made better. When a consultant is brought in to look at the same situation he or she may have some good preliminary ideas thanks to expert knowledge, but will need to conduct a careful investigation before reaching any conclusions or recommendations. This is what you will want to do for this project. In other words, you will need to develop the required expertise and make every effort to ensure your approach, findings, conclusions, and recommendations are sound and supportable.

To achieve sufficient distance it can be helpful to imagine that you are a consultant for another organization that is similar to yours but that you do not know. In addition, actually write down your beginning assumptions, ideas, and possible biases, and then figure out what you can do to avoid being influenced by them. Depending upon the situation, you might imagine what would happen if the organization accepted your initial hunches, analysis, or recommendations and the situation was made worse. In other words, take the time to imagine the harm you might do if your initial ideas are wrong, and then take the necessary steps to limit this possible outcome. Discussing any issues or concerns with your professor is also important.

Step 4: Notes

Creating an Annotated Bibliography

In your past studies, you might have been asked to create an annotated bibliography. While the task you will complete next is similar, for this particular project, think of yourself as a consultant and strive to explain the key points you discover from your research in a way that will be most meaningful for a practicing manager. Imagine therefore that you are compiling a reading list with notes about each item.

Here is an example:

Ardichvili, A., Mitchell, J. A., & Jondle, D. (2009). Characteristics of ethical business cultures. Journal of Business Ethics, 85(4), 445-451. doi:10.1007/s10551-008-9782-4 http://ezproxy.umgc.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=37042727&site=ehost-live&scope=site

A beginning assumption is that an ethical business culture is one where employees know the difference between right and wrong and are able to implement ethical decisions in situations where there are no apparent differences in options. Leadership is widely accepted as important in creating and maintaining an ethical culture and this has been well supported by research. Important leader competencies include the ability to communicate what constitutes “high ethical standards,” model expected behaviors, and serve as an ongoing champion of an ethical corporate culture.

Creating and nurturing an ethical culture also requires a supportive structure, systems, and policies. This includes a structure that ensures authority is distributed appropriately and that all employees take ownership of and are accountable for maintaining high ethical standards. Important policies and procedures include creating and communicating a code of conduct and providing mechanisms that allow concerns about potential ethical misconduct to be reported without fear of negative consequences.

Also important for creating an ethical corporate culture are incorporation of attention to expected ethical standards in incentive initiatives, performance reviews, and in critical decision processes. The authors emphasize that in ethical cultures attention to ethical ramifications of decisions takes precedence over cost-benefit analysis.

And perhaps most challenging is the need for informal and less tangible elements that are found in ethical corporate cultures. Examples include sharing stories of strong ethical decisions and successes, opportunities to celebrate and recognize the organization’s ethical culture as a source of mutual pride, leaders who incorporate attention to and care about ethical conduct of business in their daily conversations and actions, and of course, the many small decisions and actions that serve as concrete evidence that the commitment is to more than just stories and words.

This study included interviews with 54 business executives and 13 academics. The interviews produced an extensive list of characteristics of ethical organizations that were analyzed and organized in the following five categories (or clusters):

1. Clarity and strength of mission and values.

2. Stakeholder inclusion, commitment, and actions.

3. Leader effectiveness.

4. Integrity of processes.

5. Long-term perspective and commitment.

While the findings reported in this article are not new, the authors do a nice job of summarizing key points (derived from individual interviews) upon which practicing corporate leaders and academics agree. The article was published in 2008 in the top journal focusing on business ethics. The authors have all published, two extensively, on this topic and are affiliated with reputable institutions. The authors continue to contribute to this body of work.