Motivating Employees to Behave Ethically

1.0 Introduction: How Might an Organisation Motivate it's Employees to Behave Ethically? This essay will explore and examine how an individual's own Ethic's might affect him/her to behave in an organisation who's company ettiquete or ethic's might be similar or different from that of the individuals.

Three different motivational theories will then be explored in depth and applied to encouraging Employee's to behave ethically as well as some of the potential cons of applying these theories.The three theories that will be explored in the essay are 1. Expectancy Theory 2. Social Cognitive Theory 3. Goal SettingExpectancy Theory at it's most basic level is a motivation theory that is based on the idea that work effort that is direceted toward different behaviours will result in desired outcomes.

Unlike some other motivaional theories Expectancy Theory is grounded in rational logic to predict the chosen direction, level and persistence of motivation. Expectancy Theory involves the use of 3 different elements. Effort to Performance Expectancy, Performance to Outcome Expectancy and Outcome Valences.Social Cognitive Theory is a theory that states that most of the learning an idividual does occurs by observing others, copying certain behaviors that lead to favourable outcomes and avoiding behavior types that lead to negative consequences.

Social Cognitive Theory consists of Behaviour Modelling, Learning Behavior Consequences and Self-Reinforcement.Goal Setting is the process of motivating individuals and clarifying their role perceptions by establishing their role perceptions. Though the idea telling someone what they must ultimately achieve may sound simple Goal Setting is divided into six different parts. Specific Goals, Relevant Goals, Challenging Goals, Goal Commitment, Goal Participaion (Sometimes) and Goal Feedback.The theories explored need not be used exclusively as they can often compliment each other's strengths and weaknesses.

Take for example how Expectancy Theory operates largely on an internal level as the individual himself may choose to devote his efforts to a certain behavior that may result in an expected outcome. However, to have first arrived at this “expected outcome” the individual could have been influenced by having observed other employees in his/her workplace and the resulting consequences.The individual could then have his expectancies influenced or molded by what he has learnt through the ideas implied by the Social Cognitive Theory. Another potential link up that could be used between different theories would be that of Goal Setting and Expectancy Theory. During the Goal Commitment portion of Goal Setting the goals set should ideally be set to so that employees do not lose the motivation to actually achieve them.

As the lower the expectancy that a employee might have to actually accomplishing the goal the less motivated he/she would be to actually do so.1.1 What is Ethical Behavior?Before moving on to further explore the three theories introduced in the previous section we must first define what exactly is Ethical Behavior or Ethics. Ethics as defined by the Cambridge dictionary as “A system of accepted beliefs that control behavior, especially such a system based in morals.

”Ethics in Organisational Behavior can also be explained by three different Ethical Principles.The first of these three principles is Utilitrianism. Utilitrianism is the belief that an individual would make choices that benefit the good of his fellow men at the expense of himself or that the choices he would make would bring upon more joy than suffering. A probable example of this in the workplace would be an employee taking upon himself extra responsibility even if it is not entirely expected of him to help benefit his colleagues e.g. Working overtime to cover another person's shift or doing work that is not within his job scope but could help improve work productivity or efficiency.

The second being Distributive Justice. Distibutive Justice being the idea that two individuals of comparable similarity in their work effort or capabilities should be rewarded identically and if there were any differences between the two the rewards or tasks given would also reflect as such. In the workplace, this would most commonly be giving employees performance based rewards. Identical levels of work production or meeting a sales quota would ensure that the two separate individuals gain similar rewards as well. Vice Versa, an individual that does not perform as well as his peers should not be given the same rewards or ensured the same benefits.The third and final being Individual Rights.

This is the belief that individuals should be allowed, within reason, to act according to their own individual behavioral patterns or personalities. An example of this in the workplace would be to attribute the work successes of failures of an individual to their actual efforts or any possible situiational factors that could have influenced it. As opposed to attributing them to any personality quirks and/or appearance.1.2 Why Does Ethical Behavior Matter?Before discussing the implementation of the three different motivational techniques it would be best to understand why exactly Ethical Behavior is considered a plus to have in the workplace as well as how it might change the work enviroment.

Introduction of Ethical Behavior into a workplace often initiates several changes. The presence of Ethics also need not be confined to one section of the workforce in an organisation as it benefits throughout all levels of an organisation. Most notably when it comes to leadership positions, employee's often see signs of honesty or ethics as characteristics of a good leader. However, more importantly at the main bulk of the work force it is suggested by studies that Ethical Behavior also has a direct link between Creativity and Ethics. Evidence suggests that creativity is related to ethics because employee's develop a stronger sense of Organisational Idenitity when they are encouraged to think creatively, and part of this identity is tied to ethical business practices (Oliver et al.

, 2009).Aside from a possible increase of creativity in the workplace another potential boon from introducing Ethical Behavior in the workplace would be a reduced turnover intention. “...

an individual's attraction to and retention in a company can be at least partly explained by individual and organizational value matches and mismatches that some of these matches and mistmatches reside in perceptions of corporate social responsibility” (Coldwell et al., 2008). In addition to this it is also suggested that Ethical Behavior from the company itself also decreases the turnover intention “ Companies that are socially responsible 'can attract and retain quality employees because the organisations' values and practices are more closely aligned to the values that such individuals hold,'...

” (Cacciope, 2008)2.0 The Argument: Motivating Employees into Ethical Behavior Having gone through the three different motivational theories as well understanding why Ethical Behavior is considered desirable in the workplace we can now explore possible ways to implement each of the three different motivational theories and weight out any limitations it might have.2.1: Expectancy Theory and Manipulating ItAs shown in the figure above, Expectancy Theory is broken into 2 distinct processes. The first part of this process is called the E-to-P (Effort to Performance) Expectancy This is the individual's perception on how the effort he invests will lead to a particular level of performance. During this stage the individual may believe that there is a 100% success rate of accomplishing the task and in others a 0% success rate even if they were to put in.

The second being the P-to-O (Performance to Outcome) which is the perception on how if a certain task or performance or conducted it will lead to various outcomes depending on how well the performance was.Implementing this in the workplace to help motivate a desired trend of action can be done in the following ways. Assigning tasks to individuals possessing the appropriately skilled individuals and clarifying what exactly is required to complete the task. Constructive criticism and/or praise can also be used to strengthen the employee's belief that he is able to complete the task. Providing performance based rewards would also ensure that employees are aware that better performances ensure better rewards.

By providing positive reinforcement when an employee performs ethically or even a reward when a task or performance is completed ethically it could potentially mold the employees behavior to perform ethically in his/her daily work. A possible problem using this motivational technique would be that the rewards must be substantial enough to matter to the employee to necessarily modify his/her behavior as well as the fact that the theory does not account for any external motivations that are not present within the workplace itself.2.2 Implementing Social Cognitive Theory Social Cognitive Theory, as explained earlier, is a theory that states that most learning occurs through observation of other people's behavior and then adapting this behavior to the individual's own so as to achieve favourable outcomes and avoid punishing ones. This process is split into three different stages of which two might be applicable for behavior modelling in the work place. The First being Behaviour Modelling.

During this stage Individuals observe the behaviours of role models as they work on critical tasks. During this stage individual's gain more self confidence as they now “know” how to perform the task.The Second stage being Learning Behavior Consequences where the individual begins to observe how these behaviors their role models or others affect them in terms of reward and punishment. This allows the observer to note what behavior types should he engage in for reward and others to avoid if punishment is due.An obvious way of implementing this into the workplace would be to place experienced ethical employees into various project teams and by visibly rewarding them for desirable behavior and action to be set as the Role Model that is required during the Behavior Modelling phase.

An obvious downside to this theory is that if the Role Model himself does not engage in ethical behavior but instead in unethical behavior to meet targets and receive rewards it is likely that other will follow suit.2.3 Clarifying Tasks with Goal SettingGoal Setting as explained in section 1 is the process of motivating employees and clarifying their role perceptions by establishing proper performance objectives. Goal setting is made out of five distinct elements.The First being Specific Goals.

By eliminating ambiguity from within the goal and providing measurable levels of change over a proper established timeline employees will be able to more efficiently direct their effort.Relevant Goals as it's name implies means that the goal set must be relevant to the employee's own job and it must be something within his/her control.Challenging Goals cause individuals to pick up the tempo and increase the intentsity and persistence of their work effort and to think through information more actively. This also fulfills a persons own achievement needs when the goal is achieved.

Goal Commitment as mentioned in section 1 is to set a goal that does not cause the employee to lose motivation in when performing it as is the case when bringing Expectancy Theory to link up with this portion, primarily the E-to-P expectancy.Goal Feedback is the presence of a proper constructive feedback that let's individuals know whether they have achieved the goals within expectations and if they are indeed on the right track if they are still in the process of doing so.A problem with Goal Setting in the workplace is that while it can be used to influence efficency and effectiveness it does not do much in terms of changing behavior and an individuals actions. Goal Setting must be used in conjunction with one of the other 2 theories presented.

3.0 ConclusionIn conclusion, it can be seen that Ethical Behavior is a desirable trait within organisations due to the potential increase in creativity and organisational commitment that comes along with its presence and it can be brought into the workplace by using a combination of the three presented motivational theories. While each of the theories have their own flaws they can still be ultimately used to motivate employees to not just Ethical Behavior but other behaviorial types by tweaking their expectancies, rewarding/punishing certain behaviors and clearly outling what is expected of them.