Nonprofit Organizations Becoming Business- Like a Systematic Review
Idea in Brief
The Opportunity
Just as people entering the workforce can develop chore-related skills and abilities over fourth dimension, they tin can learn to exist more ethical every bit well.
Why Information technology's Oft Missed
Many organizations relegate ethics training to the onboarding process, perchance also issuing codes of conduct and establishing whistleblower hotlines. Such steps may curb specific unethical acts merely don't necessarily assist workers grow as moral people.
How to Capitalize on It
Managers can provide experiential preparation in ethical dilemmas, foster psychological condom when (minor) lapses occur, deport pre- and postmortems for initiatives with ethical components, and create a culture of service by encouraging volunteer work and mentoring in ethics.
People don't enter the workforce with a fixed moral grapheme. Just as employees can nurture (or neglect) their skills and abilities over time, they can learn to exist more or less ethical. All the same rather than accept a long-term view of employees' moral evolution, many organizations care for ethics training every bit a quondam outcome, oftentimes limiting it to the onboarding process. If they exercise address ethics thereafter, it may be but by espousing codes of conduct or establishing whistleblower hotlines. Such steps may curb specific unethical actions, but they don't necessarily help employees develop every bit moral people.
Ethical learning is a lifelong process, and it doesn't happen by rote (do this, don't do that). Neuroscientific enquiry suggests that when faced with moral quandaries, nosotros autumn back on prototypes, or mental models. Our moral evolution requires us to add to and update those prototypes as we gain experience. So in improver to preparing people for erstwhile moral challenges, employers should foster an surroundings that encourages them to become more ethical in the long run by practicing moral reflection.
The benefits of ethical organizations are well documented: Such organizations are more than attractive than others to employees, are less probable to become embroiled in scandals, and are more likely to be rewarded by investors, who increasingly focus on good governance and strong cultures as sources of sustainable value creation. In a previous commodity, "Building an Upstanding Career" (HBR, January–February 2020), we wrote about a bottom-up arroyo to ethics, describing how individuals could accept ownership of their moral development at work. In this article nosotros depict on evidence from hundreds of research studies in business organisation, psychology, and ethics to present a top-down arroyo to helping workers build moral character. Together the two approaches highlight the workplace's potential to be a moral laboratory where people tin find the opportunities and support to acquire and grow.
Recognize the Function of Work in Our Lives
Some Protestant theologians hold that work is inherently edifying. We would not become that far, but we exercise concord with the thought that piece of work is an effective place for ethical learning, for several reasons.
First, work plays a huge part in many people's lives. Houses of worship, therapists' offices, and conversations with close friends and family are traditionally where moral learning occurs. We're not suggesting that those settings are no longer relevant or important. Just a typical full-time employee spends far more time at piece of work than in a mosque, church, or advisor'southward office. Indeed, many of us spend the bulk of our waking hours there. How could work not bear on our moral thinking and actions?
Second, work and life are more tightly intertwined than ever earlier (a trend exacerbated past the pandemic). The boundaries between our personal and professional person lives have get blurred. That has happened not only considering we spend so much time at work but likewise because of a push button, especially among Millennials and younger workers, for greater actuality—a want to "bring one's whole self to work." Activism on the job is on the rise, with employees banding together at companies including Facebook and Google to encourage leaders to address issues such as diversity, clearing, and political discourse.
Ethical learning doesn't happen by rote. Employers should foster an environment that encourages workers to become more upstanding past practicing moral reflection.
Third, we are probable to face up ethical situations at piece of work that nosotros might not meet anywhere else. Will we ransom a government official to secure a lucrative contract? Volition we pad our expense account or "cook the books?" Will nosotros speak upwardly if we witness a boss bullying or harassing a subordinate? And more recently, should we enforce mask wearing? Tin can our employees piece of work from home? At our jobs we have regulations to follow, customers to serve, contracts to uphold, and communities to engage with. Feel with each tin foster ethical learning over time.
How can employers help their employees utilise the workplace as a laboratory for graphic symbol development? To answer that question, we'll start past examining the role that experience and reflection play in the evolution of moral character.
Let Experience Be a Instructor
The University of Washington's Scott Reynolds has described a model of upstanding conclusion-making based on inquiry into how the encephalon processes novel stimuli. According to his model, we all accept sure prototypes in our minds that guide our moral judgments. When facing a morally relevant situation, we automatically—ofttimes unconsciously—engage in a pattern-seeking process, looking to lucifer the situation with 1 of our prototypes. If we find a match, nosotros make an intuitive judgment. We then utilize our more witting, higher-order reasoning to justify that gut reaction.
When we confront a moral decision for which we lack a image, our higher-gild reasoning kicks in sooner, to assess and resolve the situation. Our existing prototypes then undergo an updating process. The more experience nosotros have with varied moral situations, the more opportunities we have to learn and to refine our prototypes.
Still, many employees—specially those new to an industry or an system or to work itself—lack experience with or training about the unique ethical problems that may arise on the job. Approaching the workplace every bit a moral laboratory, then, requires giving employees opportunities to larn from new experiences, both simulated and existent. The goal is to help them build prototypes that they can apply to an array of circumstances.
Jon Cowan/Courtesy Naked Good Galley
Ane fashion to do this is through experiential training. Whereas traditional instruction is didactic (think of a textbook, or a instructor at a blackboard), experiential training is easily-on and immersive, with the teacher playing a guiding role. To larn the laws of buoyancy through experiential training, for instance, one would build a boat rather than read Archimedes.
Despite its proven effectiveness in academia and in corporate grooming programs, experiential learning has been slow to catch on as a tool for organizational ideals and compliance preparation. When researchers examined the ethics training at 71 large U.Southward.-based companies, they institute that much of it was delivered in brusk doses and infrequently, such equally annually or just during new-rent orientations. And ofttimes the training was solely online or lecture-based.
What would an effective experiential-training programme expect similar? Companies could regularly offer classroom-based programs using real-earth case studies. At Lockheed Martin, employees lookout videos of scenarios involving everyday upstanding challenges they might come across at work. Modest groups discuss the scenarios and explore techniques for upholding moral values, such as asking questions, reframing issues to take diverse perspectives into account, and developing guidelines about when and how to report violations.
Create a Rubber Place for Reflection
To turn your organization into a moral laboratory, however, you must move beyond scenarios and simulations and let employees learn on the job. Reflection is cardinal. As the philosopher John Kekes has written, "bereft reflection leads to loss of self-command, ignorance of oneself, and to a failure to marshal i's ideals and moral vision." Management scholars have identified reflection equally a disquisitional chapters for developing ethical expertise at work. Drawing on psychological concepts such counterfactual thinking (envisioning alternatives to events that have already occurred), social comparisons (evaluating one'southward attitude, abilities, and traits in relation to others'), and mental simulation (projecting oneself into hypothetical realities), they have persuasively argued that employees cannot larn from experience without engaging in moral reflection.
Honestly contemplating one'south actions tin be an uncomfortable process. Simply a at present-familiar management concept can help overcome resistance to doing and so: psychological safety, or an environment in which people aren't afraid to speak upward, enquire questions, admit mistakes, and seek assistance. Organizational leaders can create psychological safety by framing workplace ethics as a learning process and acknowledging that nosotros must learn from failures every bit well every bit successes. Managers can encourage employees to speak upwards when they witness moral indiscretions. They tin reassure workers that it's OK to ask questions when facing moral uncertainties—preferably before making any consequential decisions. And they can model humility by acknowledging that they don't have all the answers.
Of grade, psychological rubber is not a green light allowing employees to make every bit many egregious mistakes as they want to. Clear violations of upstanding standards should be handled promptly and punished consistently. Research shows that tolerating unethical behavior sends the wrong signal to employees and tin spark further misdeeds. Having a psychologically safe environment for upstanding learning doesn't mean granting deviants gratis rein; it means giving well-intentioned people a space where they can learn through reflection.
Institutionalize Group Discussions Nearly Ethics
Research has identified iii core features of systematic reflection that atomic number 82 to learning. The first is self-caption—a process in which learners analyze their behavior to sympathise what happened and why. The 2d is data verification, whereby learners think through multiple interpretations of a given experience or experiences. The third is feedback, significant both reactions to past functioning and recommendations for future improvement.
To maximize learning, managers can make ideals an explicit function of postmortem meetings, also known as afterward-action reviews. They might inquire: Did the procedure and outcomes of this projection align with our values and lawmaking of behave? Did we cross any ethical lines? Were whatever stakeholders unduly harmed? Reflecting on such questions can assist seasoned members of the organization evaluate their current practices and decisions and assistance new members learn from their more than experienced colleagues.
Postmortems can as well be helpful in situations involving ethical dilemmas: instances in which correct and wrong are not clearly defined. Sometimes employees must do something uncomfortable—lay off an underperforming worker who has a ill child, for instance, or cancel a contract with a longtime supplier afterwards a more attractive pick comes along. They may face quandaries when asked to balance the legitimate but competing interests of employees, shareholders, suppliers, and customers. In such situations, discussing how and why they reached their decisions can add together nuance and wisdom to their upstanding worldviews.
Conduct Upstanding Premortems
Companies can as well institutionalize a preemptive type of moral reflection—what the psychologist Gary Klein calls a premortem (see "Performing a Project Premortem," HBR, September 2007). Central decision-makers meet before a project to think through ways in which it could pb to upstanding lapses. Consider the experience of a young strategy consultant working in-house for a big health intendance system. During his first twelvemonth on the job he identified an opportunity for the organization to legally sell anonymized utilization data on a secure third-party marketplace. His colleagues commended him for the thought, but in keeping with the arrangement's standard practice, the key decision-makers held a two- to three-hour premortem to ensure that the proposed initiative was ethical and aligned with the organization'southward values.
Jon Cowan/Courtesy Naked Skillful Galley
At the start of the meeting, all participants were asked to identify their strategic goals around the initiative and to reflect on how their ain agendas might bias their perspective. For instance, those representing the organization's financial interests might exist motivated to overlook whatever morally questionable aspects of the project if it appeared that it would add significantly to the bottom line. The participants were then told to prepare aside those goals and biases equally the group discussed the moral implications of the initiative and its bear upon on all stakeholders. To the surprise of the freshly minted strategy consultant, by the finish of the coming together participants had determined that although selling such data was legal, third parties might use it in ways that were inconsistent with the health intendance organization's values. The grouping decided non to motion alee.
The premortem allowed the young consultant to participate in ethical learning: He acknowledged his potential biases, heard others' points of view, and reflected on moral considerations that he had not accounted for in his strategic model. By following a formal procedure of moral reflection, leaders of the health care system try to ensure that its employees and contractors always uphold the system'due south stated values.
Focus on Serving Others
Edifice a truly upstanding civilisation involves more than merely helping people to avoid doing bad things; it also requires empowering them to practice skillful things. Research has shown that serving other people can reduce self-focus and raise sensation of moral concerns. Information technology also contributes to psychological flourishing; studies have demonstrated a link between volunteer service and improved mood and well-being.
Universities oftentimes provide students with service-learning opportunities, such as consulting projects with nonprofit organizations, to aid them gain applied skills while making a positive difference in the world and, it is hoped, becoming committed to service forth the manner. Research finds that such programs have a spillover effect on moral graphic symbol. In one report undergraduate students who participated in a summer service-learning projection outperformed their peers on a moral-reasoning assessment.
Companies can likewise provide opportunities to serve—something Salesforce has washed since its founding, in 1999. Each year employees receive vii paid days off for volunteer piece of work in their communities. They are as well encouraged to offering their skills, free of accuse, to help nonprofits meliorate utilize cloud technologies. And they tin can utilise for Salesforce Foundation grants to assistance organizations they care about. The company reports that since its inception, employees accept donated more vi million hours of service. It encourages other companies to bring together it in pledging ane% of equity, fourth dimension, products, and profits to deserving organizations, communities, and causes. Although corporate volunteerism is not a foolproof inoculation against scandal, it'southward probably no coincidence that of all the Silicon Valley tech giants, Salesforce has been one of the least tainted by scandal in recent years.
The Pay It Forward campaign at the Savings Banking concern of Walpole, in which teams of employees are given $700 to perform random acts of kindness in the customs, is another good example. The teams then report back and share uplifting stories with their colleagues.
Another style of nudging employees to expect outward—and keep their selfishness in bank check—is to assist them meet the positive social touch on of their everyday work. The Wharton professor Adam Grant has shown that connecting employees with the beneficiaries of their work helps them see the positive impact they are having and increases what psychologists telephone call prosocial motivation—a want to expend effort to help others. Deere & Company has invited farmers to speak to associates-line workers well-nigh the difference its equipment makes to their farms and families. The fine stationery manufacturer William Arthur has shown employees video testimonials by customers (often the owners of jotter boutiques) expressing gratitude for the reliability and quality of the firm's offerings and for how its products aid people prepare for some of the well-nigh important days of their lives.
Encourage Mentors to Address Ethics
Dozens of studies have demonstrated the positive effects of mentoring on employee outcomes such as job satisfaction, promotions, and salaries. Yet nosotros suspect that very few organizations explicitly incorporate ethical issues into their mentoring programs and relationships—a missed opportunity.
Formal and informal mentors alike should be encouraged to discuss ethics and moral grapheme with their protégés. By developing stiff, trusting relationships, mentors tin can bring their vast feel to bear on the upstanding learning of others. They can ask questions, share experiences, and offer meaningful insights that help mentees reflect on their own actions. They can also encourage mentees to conduct postmortems, again in an temper of psychological condom.
. . .
Some believe that a competitive business context brings out the worst in people. We debate that with the right environment and support, workplace experiences can also bring out the best. Organizations can exist designed to help workers acquire and evolve into their most moral selves. And as we've discussed, explicitly focusing on employees' ethical growth might not merely keep an organization out of the spotlight for scandals but also lead to rewards from investors.
Although nosotros have presented practical suggestions for creating an environment conducive to upstanding learning, our intention was not to write a definitive "how to" article only to spark a shift in mindset near character development in the workplace. Acknowledging that piece of work can serve equally a laboratory for lifelong ethical learning highlights the role an organization can play in helping employees get their best selves. Organizations may not be obliged to provide such aid—only nosotros think that the chance to do so is a very promising opportunity.
A version of this commodity appeared in the November–December 2022 issue of Harvard Business concern Review.
Source: https://hbr.org/2021/11/building-an-ethical-company
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