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• 16.1: Intrapersonal Communication
Intrapersonal communication can be defined as communication with one’s self, and that may include self-talk, acts of imagination and visualization, and even recall and memory. Communications expert Leonard Shedletsky examines intrapersonal communication through the eight basic components of the communication process (i.e., source, receiver, message, channel, feedback, environment, context, and interference) as transactional, but all the interaction occurs within the individual.
• 16.2: Self-Concept and Dimensions of Self
Our self-concept is “what we perceive ourselves to be,” (McLean, S., 2005) and involves aspects of image and esteem. How we see ourselves and how we feel about ourselves influences how we communicate with others. What you are thinking now and how you communicate impacts and influences how others treat you. Charles Cooley calls this concept the looking-glass self.
• 16.3: Interpersonal Needs
We communicate with others in order to meet basic needs, and our meetings, interactions, and relationships help us meet those needs. We may also recognize that not all our needs are met by any one person, job, experience, or context; instead, we diversify our communication interactions in order to meet our needs. At first, you may be skeptical of the idea that we communicate to meet our basic needs, but let’s consider two theories on the subject.
• 16.4: Social Penetration Theory
Communication allows us to share experiences, come to know ourselves and others, and form relationships, but it requires time and effort. You don’t get to know someone in a day, a month, or even a year. At the same time you are coming to know them, they are changing, adapting, and growing—and so are you. Irwin Altman and Dalmas Taylor describe this progression from superficial to intimate levels of communication in social penetration theory, which is often called the Onion Theory.
• 16.5: Rituals of Conversation and Interviews
A skilled business communicator knows when to speak, when to remain silent, and to always stop speaking before the audience stops listening. Further, understanding conversation provides a solid foundation for our next discussion on employment interviewing. Employment interviews follow similar ritual patterns and have their own set of expectations. Expectations may differ based on field, level, knowledge, and experience, but they generally follow the five steps of a basic conversation.
• 16.6: Conflict in the Work Environment
Conflict is the physical or psychological struggle associated with the perception of opposing or incompatible goals, desires, demands, wants, or needs. When incompatible goals, scarce resources, or interference are present, conflict is a typical result, but it doesn’t mean the relationship is poor or failing. All relationships progress through times of conflict and collaboration. How we navigate and negotiate these challenges influences, reinforces, or destroys the relationship.
• 16.7: Additional Resources
Thumbnail: pixabay.com/photos/business-...rking-2884023/
16: Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Business Communication
Learning Objectives
• Discuss intrapersonal communication.
When you answer the question, “What are you doing?” what do you write? Eating at your favorite restaurant? Working on a slow evening? Reading your favorite book on a Kindle? Preferring the feel of paper to keyboard? Reading by candlelight? In each case you are communicating what you are doing, but you may not be communicating why, or what it means to you. That communication may be internal, but is it only an internal communication process?
Intrapersonal communication can be defined as communication with one’s self, and that may include self-talk, acts of imagination and visualization, and even recall and memory (McLean, S., 2005). You read on your cell phone screen that your friends are going to have dinner at your favorite restaurant. What comes to mind? Sights, sounds, and scents? Something special that happened the last time you were there? Do you contemplate joining them? Do you start to work out a plan of getting from your present location to the restaurant? Do you send your friends a text asking if they want company? Until the moment when you hit the “send” button, you are communicating with yourself.
Communications expert Leonard Shedletsky examines intrapersonal communication through the eight basic components of the communication process (i.e., source, receiver, message, channel, feedback, environment, context, and interference) as transactional, but all the interaction occurs within the individual (Sheletsky, L. J., 1989). Perhaps, as you consider whether to leave your present location and join your friends at the restaurant, you are aware of all the work that sits in front of you. You may hear the voice of your boss, or perhaps of one of your parents, admonishing you about personal responsibility and duty. On the other hand, you may imagine the friends at the restaurant saying something to the effect of “you deserve some time off!”
At the same time as you argue with yourself, Judy Pearson and Paul Nelson would be quick to add that intrapersonal communication is not only your internal monologue but also involves your efforts to plan how to get to the restaurant (Pearson, J. and Nelson, P., 1985). From planning to problem solving, internal conflict resolution, and evaluations and judgments of self and others, we communicate with ourselves through intrapersonal communication.
All this interaction takes place in the mind without externalization, and all of it relies on previous interaction with the external world. If you had been born in a different country, to different parents, what language would you speak? What language would you think in? What would you value, what would be important to you, and what would not? Even as you argue to yourself whether the prospect of joining your friends at the restaurant overcomes your need to complete your work, you use language and symbols that were communicated to you. Your language and culture have given you the means to rationalize, act, and answer the question, “What are you doing?” but you are still bound by the expectations of yourself and the others who make up your community.
Key Takeaway
In intrapersonal communication, we communicate with ourselves.
Exercises
1. Describe what you are doing, pretending you are another person observing yourself. Write your observations down or record them with a voice or video recorder. Discuss the exercise with your classmates.
2. Think of a time when you have used self-talk—for example, giving yourself “I can do this!” messages when you are striving to meet a challenge, or “what’s the use?” messages when you are discouraged. Did you purposely choose to use self-talk, or did it just happen? Discuss your thoughts with classmates.
3. Take a few minutes and visualize what you would like your life to be like a year from now, or five years from now. Do you think this visualization exercise will influence your actions and decisions in the future? Compare your thoughts with those of your classmates. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Communication_for_Business_Success_(LibreTexts)/16%3A_Intrapersonal_and_Interpersonal_Business_Communication/16.01%3A_Intrapersonal_Communication.txt |
Learning Objectives
1. Define and discuss self-concept.
Again we’ll return to the question “what are you doing?” as one way to approach self-concept. If we define ourselves through our actions, what might those actions be, and are we no longer ourselves when we no longer engage in those activities? Psychologist Steven Pinker defines the conscious present as about three seconds for most people. Everything else is past or future (Pinker, S., 2009). Who are you at this moment in time, and will the self you become an hour from now be different from the self that is reading this sentence right now?
Just as the communication process is dynamic, not static (i.e., always changing, not staying the same), you too are a dynamic system. Physiologically your body is in a constant state of change as you inhale and exhale air, digest food, and cleanse waste from each cell. Psychologically you are constantly in a state of change as well. Some aspects of your personality and character will be constant, while others will shift and adapt to your environment and context. That complex combination contributes to the self you call you. We may choose to define self as one’s own sense of individuality, personal characteristics, motivations, and actions (McLean, S., 2005), but any definition we create will fail to capture who you are, and who you will become.
Self-Concept
Our self-concept is “what we perceive ourselves to be,” (McLean, S., 2005) and involves aspects of image and esteem. How we see ourselves and how we feel about ourselves influences how we communicate with others. What you are thinking now and how you communicate impacts and influences how others treat you. Charles Cooley calls this concept the looking-glass self. We look at how others treat us, what they say and how they say it, for clues about how they view us to gain insight into our own identity. Leon Festinger added that we engage in social comparisons, evaluating ourselves in relation to our peers of similar status, similar characteristics, or similar qualities (Festinger, L., 1954).
The ability to think about how, what, and when we think, and why, is critical to intrapersonal communication. Animals may use language and tools, but can they reflect on their own thinking? Self-reflection is a trait that allows us to adapt and change to our context or environment, to accept or reject messages, to examine our concept of ourselves and choose to improve.
Internal monologue refers to the self-talk of intrapersonal communication. It can be a running monologue that is rational and reasonable, or disorganized and illogical. It can interfere with listening to others, impede your ability to focus, and become a barrier to effective communication. Alfred Korzybski suggested that the first step in becoming conscious of how we think and communicate with ourselves was to achieve an inner quietness, in effect “turning off” our internal monologue (Korzybski, A., 1933). Learning to be quiet inside can be a challenge. We can choose to listen to others when they communicate through the written or spoken word while refraining from preparing our responses before they finish their turn is essential. We can take mental note of when we jump to conclusions from only partially attending to the speaker or writer’s message. We can choose to listen to others instead of ourselves.
One principle of communication is that interaction is always dynamic and changing. That interaction can be internal, as in intrapersonal communication, but can also be external. We may communicate with one other person and engage in interpersonal communication. If we engage two or more individuals (up to eight normally), group communication is the result. More than eight normally results in subdivisions within the group and a reversion to smaller groups of three to four members (McLean, S., 2005) due to the ever-increasing complexity of the communication process. With each new person comes a multiplier effect on the number of possible interactions, and for many that means the need to establish limits.
Dimensions of Self
Who are you? You are more than your actions, and more than your communication, and the result may be greater than the sum of the parts, but how do you know yourself? In the first of the Note 16.1 “Introductory Exercises” for this chapter, you were asked to define yourself in five words or less. Was it a challenge? Can five words capture the essence of what you consider yourself to be? Was your twenty to fifty description easier? Or was it equally challenging? Did your description focus on your characteristics, beliefs, actions, or other factors associated with you? If you compared your results with classmates or coworkers, what did you observe? For many, these exercises can prove challenging as we try to reconcile the self-concept we perceive with what we desire others to perceive about us, as we try to see ourselves through our interactions with others, and as we come to terms with the idea that we may not be aware or know everything there is to know about ourselves.
Joseph Luft and Harry Ingram, gave considerable thought and attention to these dimensions of self, which are represented in Figure \(1\). In the first quadrant of the figure, information is known to you and others, such as your height or weight. The second quadrant represents things others observe about us that we are unaware of, like how many times we say “umm” in the space of five minutes. The third quadrant involves information that you know, but do not reveal to others. It may involve actively hiding or withholding information, or may involve social tact, such as thanking your Aunt Martha for the large purple hat she’s given you that you know you will never wear. Finally, the fourth quadrant involves information that is unknown to you and your conversational partners. For example, a childhood experience that has been long forgotten or repressed may still motivate you. As another example, how will you handle an emergency after you’ve received first aid training? No one knows because it has not happened.
These dimensions of self serve to remind us that we are not fixed—that freedom to change combined with the ability to reflect, anticipate, plan, and predict allows us to improve, learn, and adapt to our surroundings. By recognizing that we are not fixed in our concept of “self,” we come to terms with the responsibility and freedom inherent in our potential humanity.
In the context of business communication, the self plays a central role. How do you describe yourself? Do your career path, job responsibilities, goals, and aspirations align with what you recognize to be your talents? How you represent “self,” through your résumé, in your writing, in your articulation and presentation—these all play an important role as you negotiate the relationships and climate present in any organization.
Key Takeaway
Self-concept involves multiple dimensions and is expressed in internal monologue and social comparisons.
Exercises
1. Examine your academic or professional résumé—or, if you don’t have one, create one now. According to the dimensions of self described in this section, which dimensions contribute to your résumé? Discuss your results with your classmates.
2. How would you describe yourself in terms of the dimensions of self as shown in Figure \(1\)? Discuss your thoughts with a classmate.
3. Can you think of a job or career that would be a good way for you to express yourself? Are you pursuing that job or career? Why or why not? Discuss your answer with a classmate. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Communication_for_Business_Success_(LibreTexts)/16%3A_Intrapersonal_and_Interpersonal_Business_Communication/16.02%3A_Self-Concept_and_Dimensions_of_Self.txt |
Learning Objectives
1. Understand the role of interpersonal needs in the communication process.
You may have had no problem answering the question, “What are you doing?” and simply pulled a couple of lines from yesterday’s Twitter message or reviewed your BlackBerry calendar. But if you had to compose an entirely original answer, would it prove to be a challenge? Perhaps at first this might appear to be a simple task. You have to work and your job required your participation in a meeting, or you care about someone and met him or her for lunch.
Both scenarios make sense on the surface, but we have to consider the why with more depth. Why that meeting, and why that partner? Why not another job, or a lunch date with someone else? If we consider the question long enough, we’ll come around to the conclusion that we communicate with others in order to meet basic needs, and our meetings, interactions, and relationships help us meet those needs. We may also recognize that not all our needs are met by any one person, job, experience, or context; instead, we diversify our communication interactions in order to meet our needs. At first, you may be skeptical of the idea that we communicate to meet our basic needs, but let’s consider two theories on the subject and see how well they predict, describe, and anticipate our tendency to interact.
Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, represented in Figure \(1\), may be familiar to you (Maslow, A., 1970). Perhaps you saw it in negotiation or international business classes and came to recognize its universal applicability. We need the resources listed in level one (i.e., air, food, and water) to survive. If we have met those basic needs, we move to level two: safety. We want to make sure we are safe and that our access to air, food, and water is secure. A job may represent this level of safety at its most basic level. Regardless of how much satisfaction you may receive from a job well done, a paycheck ultimately represents meeting basic needs for many. Still, for others, sacrifice is part of the job. Can you think of any professions that require individuals to make decisions where the safety of others comes first? “First responders” and others who work in public safety often place themselves at risk for the benefit of those they serve.
If we feel safe and secure, we are more likely to seek the companionship of others. Humans tend to form groups naturally, and if basic needs are met, love and belonging occur in level three. Perhaps you’ve been new at work and didn’t understand the first thing about what was really going on. It’s not that you weren’t well trained and did not receive a solid education, but rather that the business or organization is made up of groups and communities that communicate and interact in distinct and divergent ways. You may have known how to do something, but not how it was done at your new place of work. Colleagues may have viewed you as a stranger or “newbie” and may have even declined to help you. Conflict may have been part of your experience, but if you were lucky, a mentor or coworker took the first step and helped you find your way.
As you came to know what was what and who was who, you learned how to negotiate the landscape and avoid landmines. Your self-esteem (level four) improved as you perceived a sense of belonging, but still may have lacked the courage to speak up.
Over time, you may have learned your job tasks and the strategies for succeeding in your organization. Perhaps you even came to be known as a reliable coworker, one who did go the extra mile, one who did assist the “newbies” around the office. If one of them came to you with a problem, you would know how to handle it. You are now looked up to by others and by yourself within the role, with your ability to make a difference. Maslow calls this “self-actualization” (level five), and discusses how people come to perceive a sense of control or empowerment over their context and environment. Where they look back and see that they once felt at the mercy of others, particularly when they were new, they can now influence and direct aspects of the work environment that were once unavailable.
Beyond self-actualization, Maslow recognizes our innate need to know (level six) that drives us to grow and learn, explore our environment, or engage in new experiences. We come to appreciate a sense of self that extends beyond our immediate experiences, beyond the function, and into the community and the representational. We can take in beauty for its own sake, and value aesthetics (level seven) that we previously ignored or had little time to consider.
Now that you have reached a sense of contentment in your job and can take in a museum tour, the news of a possible corporate merger is suddenly announced in the mainstream media. It may have been just gossip before, but now it is real. You may feel a sense of uncertainty and be concerned about your status as a valued employee. Do you have reason to worry about losing your job? How will you handle the responsibilities that you’ve acquired and what about the company and its obligations to those who have sacrificed over time for common success? Conflict may be more frequent in the workplace, and you may feel compelled to go over your personal budget and reprioritize your spending. You may eliminate museum visits and donations, and you may decide to start saving money as the future is less certain. You may dust off your résumé and start communicating with colleagues in related fields as you network, reaching out to regain that sense of stability, of control, that is lost as you feel your security threatened. You will move through Maslow’s hierarchy as you reevaluate what you need to survive.
This theory of interpersonal needs is individualistic, and many cultures are not centered on the individual, but it does serve to start our discussion about interpersonal needs. What do we need? Why do we communicate? The answers to both questions are often related.
William Schutz offers an alternate version of interpersonal needs. Like Maslow, he considers the universal aspects of our needs, but he outlines how they operate within a range or continuum for each person (Schutz, W., 1966). According to Schutz, the need for affection, or appreciation, is basic to all humans. We all need to be recognized and feel like we belong, but may have differing levels of expectations to meet that need. When part of the merger process is announced and the news of layoffs comes, those coworkers who have never been particularly outgoing and have largely kept to themselves may become even more withdrawn. Schutz describes underpersonals as people who seek limited interaction. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you may know people where you work that are often seeking attention and affirmation. Schutz describes overpersonals as people who have a strong need to be liked and constantly seek attention from others. The person who strikes a healthy balance is called a personal individual.
Humans also have a need for control, or the ability to influence people and events. But that need may vary by the context, environment, and sense of security. You may have already researched similar mergers, as well as the forecasts for the new organization, and come to realize that your position and your department are central to the current business model. You may have also of taken steps to prioritize your budget, assess your transferable skills, and look for opportunities beyond your current context. Schutz would describe your efforts to control your situation as autocratic, or self-directed. At the same time there may be several employees who have not taken similar steps who look to you and others for leadership, in effect abdicating their responsibility. Abdicrats shift the burn of responsibility from themselves to others, looking to others for a sense of control. Democrats share the need between the individual and the group, and may try to hold a departmental meeting to gather information and share.
Finally, Schutz echoes Maslow in his assertion that belonging is a basic interpersonal need, but notes that it exists within a range or continuum, where some need more and others less. Undersocials may be less likely to seek interaction, may prefer smaller groups, and will generally not be found on center stage. Oversocials, however, crave the spotlight of attention and are highly motivated to seek belonging. A social person is one who strikes a healthy balance between being withdrawn and being the constant center of attention.
Schutz describes these three interpersonal needs of affection, control, and belonging as interdependent and variable. In one context, an individual may have a high need for control, while in others he or she may not perceive the same level of motivation or compulsion to meet that need. Both Maslow and Schutz offer us two related versions of interpersonal needs that begin to address the central question: why communicate?
We communicate with each other to meet our needs, regardless how we define those needs. From the time you are a newborn infant crying for food or the time you are a toddler learning to say “please” when requesting a cup of milk, to the time you are a adult learning the rituals of the job interview and the conference room, you learn to communicate in order to gain a sense of self within the group or community, meeting your basic needs as you grow and learn.
Key Takeaway
Through communication, we meet universal human needs.
Exercises
1. Review the types of individuals from Schutz’s theory described in this section. Which types do you think fit you? Which types fit some of your coworkers or classmates? Why? Share your opinions with your classmates and compare your self-assessment with the types they believe describe you.
2. Think of two or more different situations and how you might express your personal needs differently from one situation to the other. Have you observed similar variations in personal needs in other people from one situation to another? Discuss your thoughts with a classmate. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Communication_for_Business_Success_(LibreTexts)/16%3A_Intrapersonal_and_Interpersonal_Business_Communication/16.03%3A_Interpersonal_Needs.txt |
Learning Objectives
1. Discuss social penetration theory and self-disclosure and its principles.
2. Describe interpersonal relations.
How do you get to know other people? If the answer springs immediately to mind, we’re getting somewhere: communication. Communication allows us to share experiences, come to know ourselves and others, and form relationships, but it requires time and effort. You don’t get to know someone in a day, a month, or even a year. At the same time you are coming to know them, they are changing, adapting, and growing—and so are you. Irwin Altman and Dalmas Taylor describe this progression from superficial to intimate levels of communication in social penetration theory, which is often called the Onion Theory because the model looks like an onion and involves layers that are peeled away (Altman, I. and Taylor, D., 1973). According to social penetration theory, we fear that which we do not know. That includes people. Strangers go from being unknown to known through a series of steps that we can observe through conversational interactions.
If we didn’t have the weather to talk about, what would we say? People across cultures use a variety of signals to indicate neutral or submissive stances in relation to each other. A wave, a nod, or a spoken reference about a beautiful day can indicate an open, approachable stance rather than a guarded, defensive posture. At the outermost layer of the onion, in this model, there is only that which we can observe. We can observe characteristics about each other and make judgments, but they are educated guesses at best. Our nonverbal displays of affiliation, like a team jacket, a uniform, or a badge, may communicate something about us, but we only peel away a layer when we engage in conversation, oral or written.
As we move from public to private information we make the transition from small talk to substantial, and eventually intimate, conversations. Communication requires trust and that often takes time. Beginnings are fragile times and when expectations, roles, and ways of communicating are not clear, misunderstandings can occur. Some relationships may never proceed past observations on the weather, while others may explore controversial topics like politics or religion. A married couple that has spent countless years together may be able to finish each other’s sentences, and as memory fades, the retelling of stories may serve to bond and reinforce the relationship. Increasingly, intimate knowledge and levels of trust are achieved over time, involving frequency of interaction as well as length and quality. Positive interactions may lead to more positive interactions, while negative ones may lead to less overall interaction.
This may appear to be common sense at first, but let’s examine an example. You are new to a position and your supervisor has been in his or her role for a number of years. Some people at your same level within the organization enjoy a level of knowledge and ease of interaction with your supervisor that you lack. They may have had more time and interactions with the supervisor, but you can still use this theory to gain trust and build a healthy relationship. Recognize that you are unknown to your supervisor and vice versa. Start with superficial conversations that are neutral and nonthreatening, but demonstrate a willingness to engage in communication. Silence early in a relationship can be a sign of respect, but it can also send the message that you are fearful, shy, or lack confidence. It can be interpreted as an unwillingness to communicate, and may actually discourage interaction. If the supervisor picks up the conversation, keep your responses short and light. If not, keep an upbeat attitude and mention the weather.
Over time, the conversations may gradually grow to cross topics beyond the scope of the office, and a relationship may form that involves trust. To a degree, you and your coworkers learn to predict one another’s responses and relax in the knowledge of mutual respect. If, however, you skip from superficial to intimate topics too quickly, you run risk of violating normative expectations. Trust takes time, and with that comes empathy and understanding. But if you share with your supervisor your personal struggles on day one, it may erode your credibility. According to the social penetration theory, people go from superficial to intimate conversations as trust develops through repeated, positive interactions. Self-disclosure is “information, thoughts, or feelings we tell others about ourselves that they would not otherwise know” (McLean, S., 2005). Taking it step by step, and not rushing to self-disclose or asking personal questions too soon, can help develop positive business relationships.
Principles of Self-Disclosure
Write down five terms that describe your personal self, and five terms that describe your professional self. Once you have completed your two lists, compare the results. They may have points that overlap, or may have words that describe you in your distinct roles that are quite different. This difference can be easy to address, but at times it can be a challenge to maintain. How much of “you” do you share in the workplace? Our personal and professional lives don’t exist independently, and in many ways are interdependent.
How do people know more about us? We communicate information about ourselves, whether or not we are aware of it. You cannot not communicate (Watzlawick, P., 1993). From your internal monologue and intrapersonal communication, to verbal and nonverbal communication, communication is constantly occurring. What do you communicate about yourself by the clothes (or brands) you wear, the tattoos you display, or the piercing you remove before you enter the workplace? Self-disclosure is a process by which you intentionally communicate information to others, but can involve unintentional, but revealing slips. Steven Beebe, Susan Beebe, and Mark Redmond offer us five principles of self-disclosure that remind us that communication is an integral part of any business or organizational setting. Let’s discuss them one by one (Beebe, S., Beebe S., and Redmond, M., 2002).
Self-Disclosure Usually Moves in Small Steps
Would you come to work on your first day wearing a large purple hat? If you knew that office attire was primarily brown and gray suits? Most people would say, “Of course not!” as there is a normative expectation for dress, sometimes called a dress code. After you have worked within the organization, earned trust and established credibility, and earned your place in the community, the purple hat might be positively received with a sense of humor. But if you haven’t yet earned your place, your fashion statement may be poorly received. In the same way, personal information is normally reserved for those of confidence, and earned over time. Take small steps as you come to know your colleagues, taking care to make sure who you are does not speak louder than what you say.
Self-Disclosure Moves from Impersonal to Intimate Information
So you decided against wearing the purple hat to work on your first day, but after a successful first week you went out with friends from your college days. You shut down the bar late in the evening and paid for it on Sunday. At work on Monday, is it a wise strategy to share the finer tips of the drinking games you played on Saturday night? Again, most people would say, “Of course not!” It has nothing to do with work, and only makes you look immature. Some people have serious substance abuse issues, and your stories could sound insensitive, producing a negative impact. How would you know, as you don’t really know your coworkers yet? In the same way, it is not a wise strategy to post photos from the weekend’s escapades on your MySpace, Facebook, or similar social networking Web page. Employers are increasingly aware of their employees’ Web pages, and the picture of you looking stupid may come to mind when your supervisor is considering you for a promotion. You represent yourself, but you also represent your company and its reputation. If you don’t represent it well, you run the risk of not representing it at all.
Self-Disclosure Is Reciprocal
Monday morning brings the opportunity to tell all sorts of stories about the weekend, and since you’ve wisely decided to leave any references to the bar in the past, you may instead choose the wise conversational strategy of asking questions. You may ask your coworkers what they did, what it was like, who they met, and where they went, but eventually all conversations form a circle that comes back to you. The dance between source and receiver isn’t linear, it’s transactional. After a couple of stories, sooner or later, you’ll hear the question, “What did you do this weekend?” It’s now your turn. This aspect of conversation is universal. We expect when we reveal something about ourselves that others will reciprocate. The dyadic effect is the formal term for this process, and is often thought to meet the need to reduce uncertainty about conversational partners. If you stay quiet or decline to answer after everyone else has taken a turn, what will happen? They may be put off at first, they may invent stories and let their imaginations run wild, or they may reject you. It may be subtle at first, but reciprocity is expected.
You have the choice of what to reveal and when. You may choose to describe your weekend by describing the friends and conversations while omitting any reference to the bar. You may choose to focus on your Sunday afternoon gardening activities. You may just say you read a good book and mention the title of the one you are reading. Regardless of what option you choose, you have the freedom and responsibility within the dyadic effect to reciprocate, but you have a degree of control. You can learn to anticipate when your turn will come, and to give some thought to what you will say before the moment arrives.
Self-Disclosure Involves Risk
If you decided to go with the “good book” option, or perhaps mention that you watched a movie, you just ran the risk that whatever you are reading or watching may be criticized. If the book you are enjoying is controversial, you might anticipate a bit of a debate, but if you mentioned a romance novel, or one that has a science fiction theme, you may have thought it wouldn’t generate criticism. Sometimes the most innocent reference or comment can produce conflict when the conversational partners have little prior history. At the same time, nothing ventured, nothing gained. How are you going to discover that the person you work with appreciates the same author or genre if you don’t share that information? Self-disclosure involves risk, but can produce positive results.
Self-Disclosure Involves Trust
Before you mention the title of the book or movie you saw this weekend, you may consider your audience and what you know about them. If you’ve only known them for a week, your awareness of their habits, quirks, likes and dislikes may be limited. At the same time, if you feel safe and relatively secure, you may test the waters with a reference to the genre but not the author. You may also decide that it is just a book, and they can take it or leave it.
“Trust is the ability to place confidence in or rely on the character or truth of someone” (McLean, S., 2005). Trust is a process, not a badge to be earned. It takes time to develop, and can be lost in a moment. Even if you don’t agree with your coworker, understand that self-revelation communicates a measure of trust and confidence. Respect that confidence, and respect yourself.
Also, consider the nature of the information. Some information communicated in confidence must see the light of day. Sexual harassment, fraud, theft, and abuse are all issues in the workplace, and if you become aware of these behaviors you will have a responsibility to report them according to your organization’s procedures. A professional understands that trust is built over time, and understands how valuable this intangible commodity can be to success.
Interpersonal Relationships
Interpersonal communication can be defined as communication between two people, but the definition fails to capture the essence of a relationship. This broad definition is useful when we compare it to intrapersonal communication, or communication with ourselves, as opposed to mass communication, or communication with a large audience, but it requires clarification. The developmental view of interpersonal communication places emphasis on the relationship rather than the size of the audience, and draws a distinction between impersonal and personal interactions.
For example, one day your coworker and best friend, Iris, whom you’ve come to know on a personal as well as a professional level, gets promoted to the position of manager. She didn’t tell you ahead of time because it wasn’t certain, and she didn’t know how to bring up the possible change of roles. Your relationship with Iris will change as your roles transform. Her perspective will change, and so will yours. You may stay friends, or she may not have as much time as she once did. Over time, you and Iris gradually grow apart, spending less time together. You eventually lose touch. What is the status of your relationship?
If you have ever had even a minor interpersonal transaction such as buying a cup of coffee from a clerk, you know that some people can be personable, but does that mean you’ve developed a relationship within the transaction process? For many people the transaction is an impersonal experience, however pleasant. What is the difference between the brief interaction of a transaction and the interactions you periodically have with your colleague, Iris, who is now your manager?
The developmental view places an emphasis on the prior history, but also focuses on the level of familiarity and trust. Over time and with increased frequency we form bonds or relationships with people, and if time and frequency are diminished, we lose that familiarity. The relationship with the clerk may be impersonal, but so can the relationship with the manager after time has passed and the familiarity is lost. From a developmental view, interpersonal communication can exist across this range of experience and interaction.
Review the lists you made for the third of the Note 16.1 “Introductory Exercises” for this chapter. If you evaluate your list of what is important to you, will you find objects or relationships? You may value your home or vehicle, but for most people relationships with friends and family are at the top of the list. Interpersonal relationships take time and effort to form, and they can be challenging. All relationships are dynamic, meaning that they transform and adapt to changes within the context and environment. They require effort and sacrifice, and at times, give rise to the question, why bother? A short answer may be that we, as humans, are compelled to form bonds. But it still fails to answer the question, why?
Uncertainty theory states that we choose to know more about others with whom we have interactions in order to reduce or resolve the anxiety associated with the unknown (Berger, C. and Calabrese, R., 1975; Berger, C., 1986; Gudykunst, W., 1995). The more we know about others, and become accustomed to how they communicate, the better we can predict how they will interact with us in future contexts. If you learn that Monday mornings are never a good time for your supervisor, you quickly learn to schedule meetings later in the week. The predicted outcome value theory asserts that not only do we want to reduce uncertainty, we also want to maximize our possible benefit from the association (Sunnafrank, M., 1986; Sunnafrank, M., 1990; Kellerman, K and Reynolds, R., 1990). This theory would predict that you would choose Tuesday or later for a meeting in order to maximize the potential for positive interaction and any possible rewards that may result. One theory involves the avoidance of fear while the other focuses on the pursuit of reward. Together, they provide a point of reference as we continue our discussion on interpersonal relationships.
Regardless of whether we focus on collaboration or competition, we can see that interpersonal communication is necessary in the business environment. We want to know our place and role within the organization, accurately predict those within our proximity, and create a sense of safety and belonging. Family for many is the first experience in interpersonal relationships, but as we develop professionally, our relationships at work may take on many of the attributes we associate with family communication. We look to each other with similar sibling rivalries, competition for attention and resources, and support. The workplace and our peers can become as close, or closer, than our birth families, with similar challenges and rewards.
Key Takeaways
• Interpersonal relationships are an important part of the work environment.
• We come to know one another gradually.
• Self-disclosure involves risk and reward, and is a normal part of communication.
Exercises
1. Write down five terms that describe your personal self, and five terms that describe your professional self. Compare your results with a classmate.
2. Think of someone you trust and who trusts you. How did you come to have a mutually trusting relationship? Did it take effort on both people’s part? Discuss your thoughts with a classmate.
3. How important do you think self-disclosure is in business settings? Give some examples. Discuss your thoughts with a classmate. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Communication_for_Business_Success_(LibreTexts)/16%3A_Intrapersonal_and_Interpersonal_Business_Communication/16.04%3A_Social_Penetration_Theory.txt |
Learning Objectives
1. Understand the five steps in any conversation.
2. Discuss employment interviewing.
You no doubt have participated in countless conversations throughout your life, and the process of how to conduct a conversation may seem so obvious that it needs no examination. Yet, all cultures have rituals of various kinds, and conversation is one of these universal rituals. A skilled business communicator knows when to speak, when to remain silent, and to always stop speaking before the audience stops listening. Further, understanding conversation provides a solid foundation for our next discussion on employment interviewing. Employment interviews follow similar ritual patterns and have their own set of expectations. Expectations may differ based on field, level, knowledge, and experience, but they generally follow the five steps of a basic conversation.
Conversation as a Ritual
Why discuss the ritual of conversation? Because it is one of the main ways we interact in the business environment, and it is ripe for misunderstandings. Our everyday familiarity with conversations often makes us blind to the subtle changes that take place during the course of a conversation. Examining it will allow you to consider its components, predict the next turn, anticipate an opening or closing, and make you a better conversationalist. Steven Beebe, Susan Beebe, and Mark Redmond offer us five stages of conversation that are adapted here for our discussion (Beebe, S., Beebe, S., and Redmond, M., 2002).
Initiation
The first stage of conversation is called initiation, and requires you to be open to interact. How you communicate openness is up to you; it may involve nonverbal signals like eye contact or body positions, such as smiling or even merely facing the other person and making eye contact. A casual reference to the weather, a light conversation about the weekend, or an in-depth conversation about how the financial markets are performing this morning requires a source to start the process: someone has to initiate the exchange. For some, this may produce a degree of anxiety. If status and hierarchical relationships are present, it may be a question of who speaks when according to cultural norms. The famous anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski called small talk “phatic communion,” (Malinowski, B., 1935) reinforcing the idea that there is a degree of ritual across cultures on how we initiate, engage, and conclude conversations.
Preview
The preview is an indication, verbal or nonverbal, of what the conversation is about, both in terms of content and in terms of the relationship. A word or two in the subject line of an e-mail may signal the topic, and the relationship between individuals, such as an employee-supervisor relationship, may be understood. A general reference to a topic may approach a topic indirectly, allowing the recipient to either pick up on the topic and to engage in the discussion or to redirect the conversation away from a topic they are not ready to talk about. People are naturally curious, and also seek certainty. A preview can serve to reduce uncertainty and signal intent.
Talking Point(s)
Joseph DeVito characterizes this step as getting down to business, reinforcing the goal orientation of the conversation (DeVito, J., 2003). In business communication, we often have a specific goal or series of points to address, but we cannot lose sight of the relationship messages within the discussion of content. You may signal to your conversation partner that there are three points to address, much like outlining an agenda at a meeting. This may sound formal at first, but if you listen to casual conversations you’ll often find there is an inherent list or central point where the conversational partners arrive. By clearly articulating, either in written or oral form, the main points, you provide an outline or structure to the conversation.
Feedback
Similar to a preview step, this stage allows the conversational partners to clarify, restate, or discuss the points of the conversation to arrive a sense of mutual understanding. In some cultures the points and their feedback may recycle several times, which may sound repetitious to Western ears. In Western cultures we often get to the point rather quickly and once we’ve arrived at an understanding, we move quickly to the conclusion. Communication across cultures often requires additional cycles of statement and restatement to insure transmission of information as well as reinforcement of the relationship. Time may be money in some cultures, but time is also a representation of respect. Feedback is an opportunity to make sure the interaction was successful the first time. Failure to attend to this stage can lead to the need for additional interactions, reducing efficiency across time.
Closing
The acceptance of feedback on both sides of the conversation often signals the transition to the conclusion of the conversation. Closings are similar to the initiation step (Knapp, M. and Vangelisti, A., 2000), and often involve ritual norms (Malinowski, B., 1935). Verbal clues are sometimes present, but you may also notice the half step back as conversational partners create additional space in preparation to disengage.
There are times when a conversational partner introduces new information in the conclusion, which can start the process all over again. You may also note that if words like “in conclusion” or “oh—one more thing” are used, a set of expectations is now in force. A conclusion has been announced and the listener expects it. If the speaker continues to recycle at this point, the listener’s listening skills are often not as keen as they were during the heat of the main engagement, and it may even produce frustration. People mentally shift to the next order of business and this transition must be negotiated successfully.
By mentioning a time, date, or place for future communication you can clearly signal that the conversation, although currently concluded, will continue later. In this way, you can often disengage successfully while demonstrating respect.
Employment Interviewing
We all join communities, teams, and groups across our lifetimes (McLean, S., 2005). We go from an unknown outsider to a new member and eventually a full member. Businesses and organizations are communities consisting of teams and groups, and if we decide to switch teams or communities, or if that decision is made for us with a reduction in force layoff, for example, we’ll be back on the job market. In order to make the transition from a outsider to an insider, you’ll have to pass a series of tests, both informal and formal. One of the most common tests is otherwise known as an employment interview. An employment interview is an exchange between a candidate and a prospective employer (or their representative). It is a formal process with several consistent elements that you can use to guide your preparation.
Employment interviews come in all shapes and sizes, and may not be limited to only one exchange but one interaction. A potential employee may very well be screened by a computer (as the résumé is scanned) and interviewed online or via the telephone before the applicant ever meets a representative or panel of representatives. The screening process may include formal tests that include personality tests, background investigations, and consultations with previous employers. Depending on the type of job you are seeking, you can anticipate answering questions, often more than once, to a series of people as you progress through a formal interview process. Just as you have the advantage of preparing for a speech with anticipation, you can apply the same research and public speaking skills to the employment interview.
The invitation to interview means you have been identified as a candidate who meets the minimum qualifications and demonstrate potential as a viable candidate. Your cover letter, résumé, or related application materials may demonstrate the connection between your preparation and the job duties, but now comes the moment where you will need to articulate those points out loud.
If we assume that you would like to be successful in your employment interviewing, then it makes sense to use the communication skills gained to date with the knowledge of interpersonal communication to maximize your performance. There is no one right or wrong way to prepare and present at your interview, just as each audience is unique, but we can prepare and anticipate several common elements.
Preparation
The right frame of mind is an essential element for success in communication, oral or written. For many if not most, the employment interview is surrounded with mystery and a degree of fear and trepidation. Just as giving a speech may produce a certain measure of anxiety, you can expect that a job interview will make you nervous. Anticipate this normal response, and use your nervous energy to your benefit. To place your energies where they will be put to best use, the first step is preparation.
Would you prepare yourself before writing for publication or speaking in public? Of course. The same preparation applies to the employment interview. Briefly, the employment interview is a conversational exchange (even if it is in writing at first) where the participants try to learn more about each other. Both conversational partners will have goals in terms of content, and explicitly or implicitly across the conversational exchange will be relational messages. Attending to both points will strengthen your performance.
On the content side, if you have been invited for an interview, you can rest assured that you have met the basic qualifications the employer is looking for. Hopefully, this initiation signal means that the company or organization you have thoroughly researched is one you would consider as a potential employer. Perhaps you have involved colleagues and current employees of the organization in your research process and learned about several of the organization’s attractive qualities as well as some of the challenges experienced by the people working there.
Businesses hire people to solve problems, so you will want to focus on how your talents, expertise, and experience can contribute to the organization’s need to solve those problems. The more detailed your analysis of their current challenges, the better. You need to be prepared for standard questions about your education and background, but also see the opening in the conversation to discuss the job duties, the challenges inherent in the job, and the ways in which you believe you can meet these challenges. Take the opportunity to demonstrate the fact that you have “done your homework” in researching the company. Table \(1\) presents a checklist of what you should try to know before you consider yourself prepared for an interview.
Table \(1\): Interview Preparation Checklist
What to Know Examples
Type of Interview Will it be a behavioral interview, where the employer watches what you do in a given situation? Will you be asked technical questions or given a work sample? Or will you be interviewed over lunch or coffee, where your table manners and social skills will be assessed?
Type of Dress Office attire varies by industry, so stop by the workplace and observe what workers are wearing if you can. If this isn’t possible, call and ask the human resources office what to wear—they will appreciate your wish to be prepared.
Company or Organization Do a thorough exploration of the company’s Web site. If it doesn’t have one, look for business listings in the community online and in the phone directory. Contact the local chamber of commerce. At your library, you may have access to subscription sites such as Hoover’s Online (www.hoovers.com).
Job Carefully read the ad you answered that got you the interview, and memorize what it says about the job and the qualifications the employer is seeking. Use the Internet to find sample job descriptions for your target job title. Make a written list of the job tasks and annotate the list with your skills, knowledge, and other attributes that will enable you to perform the job tasks with excellence.
Employer’s Needs Check for any items in the news in the past couple of years involving the company name. If it is a small company, the local town newspaper will be your best source. In addition, look for any advertisements the company has placed, as these can give a good indication of the company’s goals.
Performance
You may want to know how to prepare for an employment interview, and we’re going to take it for granted that you have researched the company, market, and even individuals in your effort to learn more about the opportunity. From this solid base of preparation, you need to begin to prepare your responses. Would you like some of the test questions before the test? Luckily for you, employment interviews involve a degree of uniformity across their many representations. Here are eleven common questions you are likely to be asked in an employment interview (McLean, S., 2005):
1. Tell me about yourself.
2. Have you ever done this type of work before?
3. Why should we hire you?
4. What are your greatest strengths? Weaknesses?
5. Give me an example of a time when you worked under pressure.
6. Tell me about a time you encountered (X) type of problem at work. How did you solve the problem?
7. Why did you leave your last job?
8. How has your education and/or experience prepared you for this job?
9. Why do you want to work here?
10. What are your long-range goals? Where do you see yourself three years from now?
11. Do you have any questions?
When you are asked a question in the interview, look for its purpose as well as its literal meaning. “Tell me about yourself” may sound like an invitation for you to share your text message win in last year’s competition, but it is not. The employer is looking for someone who can address their needs. Telling the interviewer about yourself is an opportunity for you make a positive professional impression. Consider what experience you can highlight that aligns well with the job duties and match your response to their needs.
In the same way, responses about your strengths are not an opening to brag, and your weakness not an invitation to confess. If your weakness is a tendency towards perfectionism, and the job you are applying for involves a detail orientation, you can highlight how your weaknesses may serve you well in the position.
Consider using the “because” response whenever you can. A “because” response involves the restatement of the question followed by a statement of how and where you gained education or experience in that area. For example, if you are asked about handling difficult customers, you could answer that you have significant experience in that area because you’ve served as a customer service representative with X company for X years. You may be able to articulate how you were able to turn an encounter with a frustrated customer into a long-term relationship that benefited both the customer and the organization. Your specific example, and use of a “because” response, can increase the likelihood that the interviewer or audience will recall the specific information you provide.
You may be invited to participate in a conference call, and be told to expect it will last around twenty minutes. The telephone carries your voice and your words, but doesn’t carry your nonverbal gestures. If you remember to speak directly into the telephone, look up and smile, your voice will come through clearly and you will sound competent and pleasant. Whatever you do, don’t take the call on a cell phone with an iffy connection—your interviewers are guaranteed to be unfavorably impressed if you keep breaking up during the call. Use the phone to your advantage by preparing responses on note cards or on your computer screen before the call. When the interviewers ask you questions, keep track of the time, limiting each response to about a minute. If you know that a twenty-minute call is scheduled for a certain time, you can anticipate that your phone may ring may be a minute or two late, as interviews are often scheduled in a series while the committee is all together at one time. Even if you only have one interview, your interviewers will have a schedule and your sensitivity to it can help improve your performance.
You can also anticipate that the last few minutes will be set aside for you to ask your questions. This is your opportunity to learn more about the problems or challenges that the position will be addressing, allowing you a final opportunity to reinforce a positive message with the audience. Keep your questions simple, your attitude positive, and communicate your interest.
At the same time as you are being interviewed, know that you too are interviewing the prospective employer. If you have done your homework you may already know what the organization is all about, but you may still be unsure whether it is the right fit for you. Listen and learn from what is said as well as what is not said, and you will add to your knowledge base for wise decision making in the future.
Above all, be honest, positive, and brief. You may have heard that the world is small and it is true. As you develop professionally, you will come to see how fields, organizations, and companies are interconnected in ways that you cannot anticipate. Your name and reputation are yours to protect and promote.
Postperformance
You completed your research of the organization, interviewed a couple of employees, learned more about the position, were on time for the interview (virtual or in person), wore neat and professional clothes, and demonstrated professionalism in your brief, informative responses. Congratulations are in order, but so is more work on your part.
Remember that feedback is part of the communication process: follow up promptly with a thank-you note or e-mail, expressing your appreciation for the interviewer’s time and interest. You may also indicate that you will call or e-mail next week to see if they have any further questions for you. (Naturally, if you say you will do this, make sure you follow through!) In the event that you have decided the position is not right for you, the employer will appreciate your notifying them without delay. Do this tactfully, keeping in mind that communication occurs between individuals and organizations in ways you cannot predict.
After you have communicated with your interviewer or committee, move on. Candidates sometimes become quite fixated on one position or job and fail to keep their options open. The best person does not always get the job, and the prepared business communicator knows that networking and research is a never-ending, ongoing process. Look over the horizon at the next challenge and begin your research process again. It may be hard work, but getting a job is your job. Budget time and plan on the effort it will take to make the next contact, get the next interview, and continue to explore alternate paths to your goal.
You may receive a letter, note, or voice mail explaining that another candidate’s combination of experience and education better matched the job description. If this happens, it is only natural for you to feel disappointed. It is also only natural to want to know why you were not chosen, but be aware that for legal reasons most rejection notifications do not go into detail about why one candidate was hired and another was not. Contacting the company with a request for an explanation can be counterproductive, as it may be interpreted as a “sore loser” response. If there is any possibility that they will keep your name on file for future opportunities, you want to preserve your positive relationship.
Although you feel disappointed, don’t focus on the loss or all the hard work you’ve produced. Instead, focus your energies where they will serve you best. Review the process and learn from the experience, knowing that each audience is unique and even the most prepared candidate may not have been the right “fit.” Stay positive and connect with people you who support you. Prepare, practice, and perform. Know that you as a person are far more than just a list of job duties. Focus on your skill sets: if they need improvement, consider additional education that will enhance you knowledge and skills. Seek out local resources and keep networking. Have your professional interview attire clean and ready, and focus on what you can control—your preparation and performance.
Key Takeaway
Conversations have universal aspects we can predict and improve. We can use the dynamics of the ritual of conversation to learn to prepare for employment interviews and evaluations, both common contexts of communication in the work environment. Employment interviews involve preparation, performance, and feedback.
Exercises
1. How does the employment interview serve both interviewer and interviewee? Explain and present your thoughts to the class.
2. Identify a company that you might be interested in working for. Use the resources described in this section to research information about the company, the kinds of jobs it hires people to do, and the needs and goals of the organization. Share your findings with your classmates.
3. Find a job announcement of a position that might interest you after you graduate or reach your professional goal. Write a brief statement of what experience and education you currently have that applies to the position and note what you currently lack.
4. What are the common tasks and duties of a job you find interesting? Create a survey, identify people who hold a similar position, and interview them (via e-mail or in person). Compare your results with your classmates.
5. What has been your employment interview experience to date? Write a brief statement and provide examples.
6. What employment-related resources are available on your campus or in your community? Investigate and share your findings.
7. Prepare for a job that you would like to do by finding a job announcement, preparing sample responses, and enlisting a friend or colleague in playing the role of a mock interviewer. Limit your interview to fifteen minutes and record it (audio or audio/visual) and post it in class. If your instructor indicates this exercise will be an in-class exercise or assessment, dress the part and be completely prepared. Use this exercise to prepare you for the moment when you will be required to perform and when you want the job. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Communication_for_Business_Success_(LibreTexts)/16%3A_Intrapersonal_and_Interpersonal_Business_Communication/16.05%3A_Rituals_of_Conversation_and_Interviews.txt |
Learning Objectives
• Understand evaluations and criticism in the workplace, and discuss several strategies for resolving workplace conflict.
The word “conflict” produces a sense of anxiety for many people, but it is part of the human experience. Just because conflict is universal does not mean that we cannot improve how we handle disagreements, misunderstandings, and struggles to understand or make ourselves understood. Joyce Hocker and William Wilmot offer us several principles on conflict that have been adapted here for our discussion:
• Conflict is universal.
• Conflict is associated with incompatible goals.
• Conflict is associated with scarce resources.
• Conflict is associated with interference.
• Conflict is not a sign of a poor relationship.
• Conflict cannot be avoided.
• Conflict cannot always be resolved.
• Conflict is not always bad.
Conflict is the physical or psychological struggle associated with the perception of opposing or incompatible goals, desires, demands, wants, or needs (McLean, S., 2005). When incompatible goals, scarce resources, or interference are present, conflict is a typical result, but it doesn’t mean the relationship is poor or failing. All relationships progress through times of conflict and collaboration. How we navigate and negotiate these challenges influences, reinforces, or destroys the relationship. Conflict is universal, but how and when it occurs is open to influence and interpretation. Rather than viewing conflict from a negative frame of reference, view it as an opportunity for clarification, growth, and even reinforcement of the relationship.
Conflict Management Strategies
As professional communicators, we can acknowledge and anticipate that conflict will be present in every context or environment where communication occurs. To that end, we can predict, anticipate, and formulate strategies to address conflict successfully. How you choose to approach conflict influences its resolution. Joseph DeVito offers us several conflict management strategies that we have adapted and expanded for our use.
Avoidance
You may choose to change the subject, leave the room, or not even enter the room in the first place, but the conflict will remain and resurface when you least expect it. Your reluctance to address the conflict directly is a normal response, and one which many cultures prize. In cultures where independence is highly valued, direct confrontation is more common. In cultures where the community is emphasized over the individual, indirect strategies may be more common. Avoidance allows for more time to resolve the problem, but can also increase costs associated with problem in the first place. Your organization or business will have policies and protocols to follow regarding conflict and redress, but it is always wise to consider the position of your conversational partner or opponent and to give them, as well as yourself, time to explore alternatives.
Defensiveness versus Supportiveness
Jack Gibb discussed defensive and supportive communication interactions as part of his analysis of conflict management. Defensive communication is characterized by control, evaluation, and judgments, while supportive communication focuses on the points and not personalities. When we feel judged or criticized, our ability to listen can be diminished, and we may only hear the negative message. By choosing to focus on the message instead of the messenger, we keep the discussion supportive and professional.
Face-Detracting and Face-Saving
Communication is not competition. Communication is the sharing of understanding and meaning, but does everyone always share equally? People struggle for control, limit access to resources and information as part of territorial displays, and otherwise use the process of communication to engage in competition. People also use communication for collaboration. Both competition and collaboration can be observed in communication interactions, but there are two concepts central to both: face-detracting and face-saving strategies.
Face-detracting strategies involve messages or statements that take away from the respect, integrity, or credibility of a person. Face-saving strategies protect credibility and separate message from messenger. For example, you might say that “sales were down this quarter,” without specifically noting who was responsible. Sales were simply down. If, however, you ask, “How does the sales manager explain the decline in sales?” you have specifically connected an individual with the negative news. While we may want to specifically connect tasks and job responsibilities to individuals and departments, in terms of language each strategy has distinct results.
Face-detracting strategies often produce a defensive communication climate, inhibit listening, and allow for little room for collaboration. To save face is to raise the issue while preserving a supportive climate, allowing room in the conversation for constructive discussions and problem solving. By using a face-saving strategy to shift the emphasis from the individual to the issue, we avoid power struggles and personalities, providing each other space to save face (Donohue, W. and Klot, R., 1992).
In collectivist cultures, where the community’s well-being is promoted or valued above that of the individual, face-saving strategies are a common communicative strategies. In Japan, for example, to confront someone directly is perceived as humiliation, a great insult. In the United States, greater emphasis is placed on individual performance, and responsibility may be more directly assessed. If our goal is to solve a problem, and preserve the relationship, then consideration of a face-saving strategy should be one option a skilled business communicator considers when addressing negative news or information.
Empathy
Communication involves not only the words we write or speak, but how and when we write or say them. The way we communicate also carries meaning, and empathy for the individual involves attending to this aspect of interaction. Empathetic listening involves listening to both the literal and implied meanings within a message. For example, the implied meaning might involve understanding what has led this person to feel this way. By paying attention to feelings and emotions associated with content and information, we can build relationships and address conflict more constructively. In management, negotiating conflict is a common task and empathy is one strategy to consider when attempting to resolve issues.
Gunnysacking
George Bach and Peter Wyden discuss gunnysacking (or backpacking) as the imaginary bag we all carry into which we place unresolved conflicts or grievances over time. If your organization has gone through a merger, and your business has transformed, there may have been conflicts that occurred during the transition. Holding onto the way things used to be can be like a stone in your gunnysack, and influence how you interpret your current context.
People may be aware of similar issues but might not know your history, and cannot see your backpack or its contents. For example, if your previous manager handled issues in one way, and your new manage handles them in a different way, this may cause you some degree of stress and frustration. Your new manager cannot see how the relationship existed in the past, but will still observe the tension. Bottling up your frustrations only hurts you and can cause your current relationships to suffer. By addressing, or unpacking, the stones you carry, you can better assess the current situation with the current patterns and variables.
We learn from experience, but can distinguish between old wounds and current challenges, and try to focus our energies where they will make the most positive impact.
Managing Your Emotions
Have you ever seen red, or perceived a situation through rage, anger, or frustration? Then you know that you cannot see or think clearly when you are experiencing strong emotions. There will be times in the work environment when emotions run high. Your awareness of them can help you clear your mind and choose to wait until the moment has passed to tackle the challenge.
“Never speak or make decision in anger” is one common saying that holds true, but not all emotions involve fear, anger, or frustration. A job loss can be a sort of professional death for many, and the sense of loss can be profound. The loss of a colleague to a layoff while retaining your position can bring pain as well as relief, and a sense of survivor’s guilt. Emotions can be contagious in the workplace, and fear of the unknown can influence people to act in irrational ways. The wise business communicator can recognize when emotions are on edge in themselves or others, and choose to wait to communicate, problem-solve, or negotiate until after the moment has passed.
Evaluations and Criticism in the Workplace
Mary Ellen Guffey wisely notes that Xenophon, a Greek philosopher, once said, “The sweetest of all sounds is praise” (Guffey, M., 2008). We have seen previously that appreciation, respect, inclusion, and belonging are all basic human needs across all contexts, and are particularly relevant in the workplace. Efficiency and morale are positively related, and recognition of good work is important. There may come a time, however, when evaluations involve criticism. Knowing how to approach this criticism can give you peace of mind to listen clearly, separating subjective, personal attacks from objective, constructive requests for improvement. Guffey offers us seven strategies for giving and receiving evaluations and criticism in the workplace that we have adapted here.
Listen without Interrupting
If you are on the receiving end of an evaluation, start by listening without interruption. Interruptions can be internal and external, and warrant further discussion. If your supervisor starts to discuss a point and you immediately start debating the point in your mind, you are paying attention to yourself and what you think they said or are going to say, and not that which is actually communicated. This gives rise to misunderstandings and will cause you to lose valuable information you need to understand and address the issue at hand.
External interruptions may involve your attempt to get a word in edgewise, and may change the course of the conversation. Let them speak while you listen, and if you need to take notes to focus your thoughts, take clear notes of what is said, also noting points to revisit later. External interruptions can also take the form of a telephone ringing, a “text message has arrived” chime, or a coworker dropping by in the middle of the conversation.
As an effective business communicator, you know all too well to consider the context and climate of the communication interaction when approaching the delicate subject of evaluations or criticism. Choose a time and place free from interruption. Choose one outside the common space where there may be many observers. Turn off your cell phone. Choose face-to-face communication instead of an impersonal e-mail. By providing a space free of interruption, you are displaying respect for the individual and the information.
Determine the Speaker’s Intent
We have discussed previews as a normal part of conversation, and in this context they play an important role. People want to know what is coming and generally dislike surprises, particularly when the context of an evaluation is present. If you are on the receiving end, you may need to ask a clarifying question if it doesn’t count as an interruption. You may also need to take notes and write down questions that come to mind to address when it is your turn to speak. As a manager, be clear and positive in your opening and lead with praise. You can find one point, even if it is only that the employee consistently shows up to work on time, to highlight before transitioning to a performance issue.
Indicate You Are Listening
In mainstream U.S. culture, eye contact is a signal that you are listening and paying attention to the person speaking. Take notes, nod your head, or lean forward to display interest and listening. Regardless of whether you are the employee receiving the criticism or the supervisor delivering it, displaying listening behavior engenders a positive climate that helps mitigate the challenge of negative news or constructive criticism.
Paraphrase
Restate the main points to paraphrase what has been discussed. This verbal display allows for clarification and acknowledges receipt of the message.
If you are the employee, summarize the main points and consider steps you will take to correct the situation. If none come to mind or you are nervous and are having a hard time thinking clearly, state out loud the main point and ask if you can provide solution steps and strategies at a later date. You can request a follow-up meeting if appropriate, or indicate you will respond in writing via e-mail to provide the additional information.
If you are the employer, restate the main points to ensure that the message was received, as not everyone hears everything that is said or discussed the first time it is presented. Stress can impair listening, and paraphrasing the main points can help address this common response.
If You Agree
If an apology is well deserved, offer it. Communicate clearly what will change or indicate when you will respond with specific strategies to address the concern. As a manager you will want to formulate a plan that addresses the issue and outlines responsibilities as well as time frames for corrective action. As an employee you will want specific steps you can both agree on that will serve to solve the problem. Clear communication and acceptance of responsibility demonstrates maturity and respect.
If You Disagree
If you disagree, focus on the points or issue and not personalities. Do not bring up past issues and keep the conversation focused on the task at hand. You may want to suggest, now that you better understand their position, a follow-up meeting to give you time to reflect on the issues. You may want to consider involving a third party, investigating to learn more about the issue, or taking time to cool off.
Do not respond in anger or frustration; instead, always display professionalism. If the criticism is unwarranted, consider that the information they have may be flawed or biased, and consider ways to learn more about the case to share with them, searching for a mutually beneficial solution.
If other strategies to resolve the conflict fail, consider contacting your human resources department to learn more about due process procedures at your workplace. Display respect and never say anything that would reflect poorly on yourself or your organization. Words spoken in anger can have a lasting impact and are impossible to retrieve or take back.
Learn from Experience
Every communication interaction provides an opportunity for learning if you choose to see it. Sometimes the lessons are situational and may not apply in future contexts. Other times the lessons learned may well serve you across your professional career. Taking notes for yourself to clarify your thoughts, much like a journal, serve to document and help you see the situation more clearly.
Recognize that some aspects of communication are intentional, and may communicate meaning, even if it is hard to understand. Also, know that some aspects of communication are unintentional, and may not imply meaning or design. People make mistakes. They say things they should not have said. Emotions are revealed that are not always rational, and not always associated with the current context. A challenging morning at home can spill over into the work day and someone’s bad mood may have nothing to do with you.
Try to distinguish between what you can control and what you cannot, and always choose professionalism.
Key Takeaway
Conflict is unavoidable and can be opportunity for clarification, growth, and even reinforcement of the relationship.
Exercises
1. Write a description of a situation you recall where you came into conflict with someone else. It may be something that happened years ago, or a current issue that just arose. Using the principles and strategies in this section, describe how the conflict was resolved, or could have been resolved. Discuss your ideas with your classmates.
2. Of the strategies for managing conflict described in this section, which do you think are the most effective? Why? Discuss your opinions with a classmate.
3. Can you think of a time when a conflict led to a new opportunity, better understanding, or other positive result? If not, think of a past conflict and imagine a positive outcome. Write a two- to three-paragraph description of what happened, or what you imagine could happen. Share your results with a classmate.
16.07: Additional Resources
A Literary Devices article describes the literary devices of “interior monologue” and stream of consciousness. http://literarydevices.net/stream-of-consciousness/
For another twist on the meaning of “stream of consciousness,” visit this blog from the retail merchant Gaiam. http://blog.gaiam.com
Read an informative article on self-concept and self-esteem by Arash Farzaneh. psychology.suite101.com/article.cfm/impact_of_selfconcept_and_selfesteem_on_life
PsyBlog offers an informative article on self-disclosure. Don’t miss the readers’ comments at the end! http://www.spring.org.uk/2007/02/getting-closer-art-of-self-disclosure.php
The job search site Monster.com offers a menu of articles about employment interviews. career-advice.monster.com/job-interview/careers.aspx
About.com offers an informative article about different types of job interviews. http://jobsearch.about.com/od/interviewsnetworking/a/interviewtypes.htm
The Boston Globe’s Boston.com site offers tips on handling conflict in the workplace. www.boston.com/jobs/advice/2013/12/30/tips-for-handling-workplace-conflict/HdjGXL7AqfH4G1bQQ0JITM/story.html#slide-1 | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Communication_for_Business_Success_(LibreTexts)/16%3A_Intrapersonal_and_Interpersonal_Business_Communication/16.06%3A_Conflict_in_the_Work_Environment.txt |
• 17.1: Delivering a Negative News Message
The negative news message delivers news that the audience does not want to hear, read, or receive. Delivering negative news is never easy. Whether you are informing someone they are being laid off or providing constructive criticism on their job performance, how you choose to deliver the message can influence its response. Some people prefer their bad news to be direct and concise. Others may prefer a less direct approach.
• 17.2: Eliciting Negative News
Eliciting negative news through feedback is an important way to avert problems, safeguard valuable relationships, and achieve paradigm shifts. Feedback may be qualitative or quantitative and may be requested through open-ended or closed-ended questions.
• 17.3: Crisis Communication Plan
Risk management seeks to address many risks, including prevention as well as liability, but emergency and crisis situations happen nevertheless. In addition, people make errors in judgment that can damage the public perception of a company. The mainstream media does not lack stories involving infidelity, addiction, or abuse that require a clear a response from a company’s standpoint. In this chapter we address the basics of a crisis communication plan.
• 17.4: Press Conferences
A press conference is a presentation of information to the media. It normally involves a written statement that is read exactly as written and is followed by questions and answers. The press conference normally requires a seasoned representative of the company or business with established credibility and integrity. It also requires a sense of calm in the confidence that you know your material, know how to tactfully say you don’t know or don’t wish to comment.
• 17.5: Additional Resources
Thumbnail: pixabay.com/illustrations/gr...ssion-3078540/
17: Negative News and Crisis Communication
Learning Objectives
• List and discuss seven goals of a negative news message.
• Write an effective negative news message.
The negative news message delivers news that the audience does not want to hear, read, or receive. Delivering negative news is never easy. Whether you are informing someone they are being laid off or providing constructive criticism on their job performance, how you choose to deliver the message can influence its response (Bovee, C. and Thill, J., 2010). Some people prefer their bad news to be direct and concise. Others may prefer a less direct approach. Regardless whether you determine a direct or indirect approach is warranted, your job is to deliver news that you anticipate will be unwelcome, unwanted, and possibly dismissed.
In this section we will examine several scenarios that can be communicated internally (within the organization) and externally (outside the organization), but recognize that the lines can be blurred as communication flows outside and through an organization or business. Internal and external communication environments often have a degree of overlap. The rumor of anticipated layoffs may surface in the local media, and you may be called upon to address the concern within the organization. In a similar way, a product that has failed internal quality control tests will require several more tests and improvements before it is ready for market, but if that information leaves the organization, it can hurt the business reputation, prospects for future contracts, and the company’s ability to secure financing.
Communication is constantly present, and our ability to manage, clarify, and guide understanding is key to addressing challenges while maintaining trust and integrity with employees, stakeholders, and the public.
There are seven goals to keep in mind when delivering negative news, in person or in written form:
1. Be clear and concise in order not to require additional clarification.
2. Help the receiver understand and accept the news.
3. Maintain trust and respect for the business or organization and for the receiver.
4. Avoid legal liability or erroneous admission of guilt or culpability.
5. Maintain the relationship, even if a formal association is being terminated.
6. Reduce the anxiety associated with the negative news to increase comprehension.
7. Achieve the designated business outcome.
Let’s examine our first scenario:
You are a supervisor and have been given the task of discussing repeated tardiness with an employee, Chris. Chris has frequently been late for work, and the problem has grown worse over the last two weeks. The tardiness is impairing not only Chris’s performance, but also that of the entire work team. Your manager has instructed you to put an end to it. The desired result is for Chris to stop his tardiness behavior and improve his performance.
You can
1. stop by Chris’s cubicle and simply say, “Get to work on time or you are out”;
2. invite Chris out to a nice lunch and let him have it;
3. write Chris a stern e-mail;
4. ask Chris to come to your office and discuss the behavior with him in private.
While there are many other ways you could choose to address the situation, let’s examine each of these four alternatives in light of the goals to keep in mind when presenting negative news.
First, you could approach Chris in his work space and speak to him directly. Advantages include the ability to get right to the point right away. Disadvantages include the strain on the supervisor-employee relationship as a result of the public display of criticism, the possibility that Chris may not understand you, the lack of a formal discussion you can document, and the risk that your actions may not bring about the desired results.
The goals include the desire to be clear and concise in order not to require additional clarification. This possible response does not provide the opportunity for discussion, feedback, or confirmation that Chris has clearly understood your concern. It fails to address the performance concern, and limits the correction to the tardiness. It fails to demonstrate respect for all parties. The lack of tact apparent in the approach may reflect negatively on you as the supervisor, not only with Chris but with your manager as well.
When you need to speak to an employee about a personnel concern, it is always best to do it in private. Give thought and concern to the conversation before it occurs, and make a list of points to cover with specific information, including grievances. Like any other speech, you may need to rehearse, particularly if this type of meeting is new to you. When it comes time to have the discussion, issue the warning, back it up in writing with documentation, and don’t give the impression that you might change your decision. Whether the issue at hand is a simple caution about tardiness or a more serious conversation, you need to be fair and respectful, even if the other person has been less than professional. Let’s examine the next alternative.
Let’s say you invite Chris to lunch at a nice restaurant. There is linen on the table, silverware is present for more than the main course, and the water glasses have stems. The environment says “good job” in its uniqueness, presentation, and luxury. Your word will contradict this nonverbal message. The juxtaposition between the environment and the verbal message will cause tension and confusion, which will probably be an obstacle to the receiver’s ability to listen. If Chris doesn’t understand the message, and the message requires clarification, your approach has failed. The contrast between the restaurant setting and the negative message does not promote understanding and acceptance of the bad news or correction. Furthermore, it does not build trust in the relationship, as the restaurant invitation might be interpreted as a “trap” or a betrayal. Let’s examine yet another approach.
You’ve written Chris a stern e-mail. You’ve included a list of all the recent dates when he was late and made several statements about the quality of his work. You’ve indicated he needs to improve, and stop being late, or else. But was your e-mail harassment? Could it be considered beyond the scope of supervision and interpreted as mean or cruel? And do you even know if Chris has received it? If there was no reply, do you know whether it achieved its desired business outcome? A written message may certainly be part of the desired approach, but how it is presented and delivered is as important as what it says. Let’s examine our fourth approach to this scenario.
You ask Chris to join you in a private conversation. You start the conversation with an expression of concern and an open-ended question: “Chris, I’ve been concerned about your work lately. Is everything all right?” As Chris answers, you may demonstrate that you are listening by nodding your head, and possibly taking notes. You may learn that Chris has been having problems sleeping, or that his living situation has changed. Or Chris may decline to share any issues, deny that anything is wrong, and ask why you are concerned. You may then state that you’ve observed the chronic tardiness, and name one or more specific mistakes you have found in Chris’s work, ending with a reiteration that you are concerned. This statement of concern may elicit more responses and open the conversation up into a dialogue where you come to understand the situation, Chris sees your concern, and the relationship is preserved. Alternatively, in case the conversation does not go well, you will still keep a positive attitude even as you document the meeting and give Chris a verbal warning.
Regardless of how well or poorly the conversation goes, if Chris tells other employees about it, they will take note of how you handled the situation, and it will contribute to their perception of you. It guides their expectations of how you operate and how to communicate with you, as this interaction is not only about you and Chris. You represent the company and its reputation, and your professional display of concern as you try to learn more sends a positive message. While the private, respectful meeting may not be the perfect solution, it is preferable to the other approaches we have considered.
One additional point to consider as you document this interaction is the need to present the warning in writing. You may elect to prepare a memo that outlines the information concerning Chris’s performance and tardiness and have it ready should you want to present it. If the session goes well, and you have the discretion to make a judgment call, you may elect to give him another week to resolve the issue. Even if it goes well, you may want to present the memo, as it documents the interaction and serves as evidence of due process should Chris’s behavior fail to change, eventually resulting in the need for termination.
This combined approach of a verbal and written message is increasingly the norm in business communication. In the next two sections, we’ll compare and contrast approaches, verbal and written, and outline several best practices in terms of approach. But first, we’ll outline the four main parts of a negative news message:
1. Buffer or cushion
2. Explanation
3. Negative news
4. Redirect
The first part of a negative news message, verbal or written, involves neutral or positive information. This sets the tone and often serves as a buffer or cushion for the information to come. Next, an explanation discusses why there is an issue in the first place. This may be relatively simple, quite complex, or uncomfortable. In a journal article titled “Further Conceptualization of Explanations in Negative News Messages,” (Limaye, Mohan R., 1997) Mohan Limaye makes the clear case that not only is an explanation a necessary part of any negative news message, it is an ethical and moral requirement. While an explanation is important, never admit or imply responsibility without written authorization from your company cleared by legal counsel. The third part of the negative news message involves the bad news itself, and the emphasis here is on clarity and accuracy. Finally, the redirect may refocus attention on a solution strategy, an alternative, or the subsequent actions that will take place. Table \(1\) provides an example that might apply in an external communication situation.
Table \(1\): Negative News Message Sample Script
Parts of the Negative News Message Example
Buffer or Cushion Thank you for your order. We appreciate your interest in our product.
Explanation We are writing to let you know that this product has been unexpectedly popular, with over 10,000 requests on the day you placed your order.
Negative News This unexpected increase in demand has resulted in a temporary out-of-stock/backorder situation. We will fulfill your order, received at 11:59 p.m. on 09/09/2009, in the order it was received.
Redirect We anticipate that your product will ship next Monday. While you wait, we encourage you to consider using the enclosed \$5 off coupon toward the purchase of any product in our catalog. We appreciate your business and want you to know that our highest priority is your satisfaction.
In Table \(1\), the neutral or positive news comes first and introduces the customer to the overall topic. The explanation provides an indication of the purpose of the communication, while the negative message directly addresses how it affects the customer. The redirect discusses specific actions to take place. In this case, it also includes a solution strategy enhanced with a soft sell message, a subtle, low-pressure method of selling, cross-selling, or advertising a product or service. Whether you are delivering negative news in person or in writing, the four main parts of a negative message can help you meet all seven goals.
Before we move to the verbal and written delivery of the negative news message, we need to offer a word of counsel. You want to avoid legal problems when communicating bad news. You cannot always predict how others are going to respond, but you can prepare for and deliver your response in ways that lower the risk of litigation in four ways:
1. Avoid abusive language or behavior.
2. Avoid contradictions and absolutes.
3. Avoid confusion or misinterpretation.
4. Maintain respect and privacy.
Sarcasm, profanity, shouting, or abusive or derogatory language is an obstacle to clear communication. Furthermore, such language can be interpreted as defamatory, or harming the reputation of the person, possibly having a negative impact on their future earnings. In written form, it is called libel. If you say it out loud, it is called slander. While slander may be harder to prove, no defamatory remarks should be part of your negative news message. Cell phones increasingly serve to record conversations, and you simply never know if your words will come back to you in short order. Represent yourself, the business, and the receiver of your message with professionalism and avoid abusive or defamatory language.
You also want to avoid contradictions, as they only serve to invite debate. Make sure your information is consistent and in agreement with the general information in the conversation. If one part of the information stands out as a contradiction, its importance will be magnified in the context and distract from your main message. Don’t provide more information that is necessary. Polarizing, absolute terms like “always” and “never” are often part of sweeping generalizations that are open to debate. Instead of saying, “You are always late,” choose to say, “You were late sixteen times in May.” To avoid confusion or misinterpretation, be precise and specific.
Always maintain respect and privacy. Making a negative statement about an employee in front of a group of coworkers can be considered ridicule or harm, and in the coming cases may be actionable and involve legal ramifications. In addition to the legal responsibility, you have the overall goal of demonstrating professionalism as you represent yourself and your company in maintaining the relationship with the employee, even if the end goal is termination. Employees have retaliated against their organizations in many ways, from discouraging remarks to vandalism and computer viruses. Your goal is to avoid such behavior, not out of fear, but out of professionalism and respect for yourself and your organization. Open lines of communication present in a relationship can help reduce the risk of relational deterioration or animosity. The sidebar below provides a checklist for delivering a negative message.
Negative Message Checklist
1. Clear goal in mind
2. Clear instructions from supervisor (legal counsel)
3. Clear understanding of message
4. Clear understanding of audience/reader
5. Clear understanding of procedure and protocol
6. Clear, neutral opening
7. Clear explanation without admission of guilt or culpability
8. Clear statement of impact or negative news
9. Clear redirect with no reminders of negative news
10. Clear results with acceptance or action on negative news
Presenting Negative News in Person
Most of us dislike conflict. It may be tempting to avoid face-to-face interaction for fear of confrontation, but delivering negative news in person can be quite effective, even necessary, in many business situations. When considering a one-on-one meeting or a large, formal meeting, consider the preparation and implementation of the discussion.
The first step involves a clear goal. Stephen Covey (1989) recommends beginning with the end in mind (Covey, S., 1989). Do you want your negative news to inform, or to bring about change, and if so what kind of change and to what degree? A clear conceptualization of the goal allows you to anticipate the possible responses, to plan ahead, and to get your emotional “house” in order.
Your emotional response to the news and the audience, whether it is one person or the whole company, will set the tone for the entire interaction. You may feel frustrated, angry, or hurt, but the display of these emotions is often more likely to make the problem worse than to help solve it. Emotions can be contagious, and people will respond to the emotional tone of the speaker.
If your response involves only one other person, a private, personal meeting is the best option, but it may not be available. Increasingly people work and contribute to projects from a distance, via the Internet, and may only know each other via e-mail, phone, or videophone/videoconferencing services. A personal meeting may be impractical or impossible. How then does one deliver negative news in person? By the best option available to both parties. Written feedback may be an option via e-mail, but it takes time to prepare, send, receive, process, and respond—and the written word has its disadvantages. Miscommunication and misinterpretation can easily occur, with little opportunity for constructive feedback to check meanings and clarify perceptions.
The telephone call allows both parties to hear each other’s voices, including the words, the inflection, the disfluencies, and the emotional elements of conversation. It is immediate in that the possibility of overlap is present, meaning not only is proximity in terms of voice as close as possible, but both parties may experience overlaps as they take turns and communicate. Telephone calls allow for quick feedback and clarification questions, and allow both parties an opportunity to recycle and revisit topics for elaboration or a better understanding. They also can cover long distances with reasonable clarity. Voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) allows you to do the same with relatively little cost.
While there are distinct advantages, the telephone lacks part of the nonverbal spectrum available to speakers in a live setting. On the telephone, proximity is a function of response time rather than physical space and the degree to which one person is near another. Time is also synchronous, though the telephone crosses time zones and changes the context as one party may have just arrived at work while the other party is leaving for lunch. Body language gets lost in the exchange as well, although many of us continue to make hand gestures on the phone, even when our conversational partners cannot see us. Paralanguage, or the sounds we hear that are not verbal, including pitch, tone, rate, rhythm, pace, articulation, and pronunciation are all available to the listener. As we can see, the telephone call allows for a richer communication experience than written communication, but cannot convey as much information as would be available in person. Just as a telephone interview may be used for screening purposes while a live interview is reserved for the final candidates, the live setting is often considered the best option for delivering negative news.
Live and in person may be the best option for direct communication with immediate feedback. In a live setting time is constant. The participants may schedule a breakfast meeting, for example, mirroring schedules and rhythms. Live, face-to-face communication comes in many forms. The casual exchange in the hallway, the conversation over coffee, and the formal performance review meeting all have interpersonal communication in common.
If you need to share the message with a larger audience, you may need to speak to a group, or you might even have to make a public presentation or speech. If it needs a feedback loop, we often call it a press conference, as the speech is followed by a question and answer session. From meeting in the hallway to live, onstage, under camera lights and ready for questions, the personal delivery of negative news can be a challenging task.
Presenting Negative News in Writing
Writing can be intrapersonal, between two people, group communication, public communication, or even mass communication. One distinct advantage of presenting negative news in writing is the planning and preparation that goes into the message, making the initial communication more predictable. When a message is delivered orally in an interpersonal setting, we may interrupt each other, we sometimes hear what we want to, and it often takes negotiation and listening skills to grasp meaning. While a written message, like all messages, is open to interpretation, the range of possibilities is narrowed and presented within the frame and format designed by the source or author.
The written message involves verbal factors like language and word choice, but it can also involve nonverbal factors like timing and presentation. Do you communicate the message on letterhead, do you choose the channel of e-mail over a hard copy letter, or do you compose your written message in your best penmanship? Each choice communicates meaning, and the choice of how you present your written message influences its reception, interpretation, and the degree to which it is understood. In this section we consider the written message that delivers negative news.
Let’s consider several scenarios:
1. A community disaster such as illness (e.g., a swine flu epidemic), earthquake, wildfire, plane crash, or a terrorism incident
2. An on-the-job accident with injuries or even death
3. A product defect resulting in injuries, illness, or even death to consumers
4. An unsuccessful product test (e.g., a new software system that isn’t going to be ready for launch as planned)
5. A company merger that may result in reductions in force or layoffs
In business communication we often categorize our communication as internal or external. Internal communication is the sharing and understanding of meaning between individuals, departments, or representatives of the same business. External communication is the sharing and understanding of meaning between individuals, departments, or representatives of the business and parties outside the organization. Across the five scenarios we’ll consider each of these categories in turn.
The confirmation of swine flu (H1N1) may first occur with a laboratory report (itself a written document), but it is normally preceded by conversations between health care professionals concerned over the symptoms exhibited by patients, including a high fever, a cough, sore throat, and a headache. According to Sally Redman, a registered nurse at Student Health Services at Washington State University–Pullman, over two thousand students (of nineteen thousand total student population) presented symptoms on or around August 21, 2009 (Yardley, W., 2009).
Communication will predictably occur among students, health care professionals, and the community, but parents at a distance will want to know not only the status of their child, but also of the university. A written message that necessarily contains negative news may be written in the form of a press release, for example, noting important information like the number of students affected, the capacity of the health care system to respond, the experience to date, and whom to contact for further details and updates. This message will be read over and over as parents, reporters, and people across the country want to learn more about the situation. Like all business communication, it needs to be clear and concise.
Our next scenario offers a learning opportunity as well. An on-the-job accident affects employees and the company, and like our previous example, there will be considerable interest. There may be interpersonal communication between company representatives and the individual’s family, but the company will want to communicate a clear record of the occurrence with an assurance, or statement that the contributing factors that gave rise to the situation has been corrected or were beyond the control of the company and its representatives.
In addition to a statement of record, and an assurance, the company will certainly want to avoid the implication or indication of guilt or culpability. In the case of a product defect resulting in injuries, illness, or even death to consumers, this will be a relevant point of consideration. Perhaps a voluntary recall will be ordered, proactively addressing the risk before an accident occurs. It may also be the case that the recall order is issued by a government agency. Again, a written statement delivering negative news, in this case the recall of a product that presents a risk, must be written with care and consultation of legal counsel.
If your company is publicly traded, the premature announcement of a software program full of bugs, or programming errors that result in less than perfect performance, can send the company’s stock price plummeting. How you release this information within the organization will influence how it is received. If your written internal memo briefly states that the software program development process has been extended to incorporate additional improvements, the emphasis shifts from the negative to the positive. While the negative news, the delay of release, remains, the focus on the benefits of the additional time can influence employees’ views, and can make a difference in how the message is received outside the organization.
The awareness of a merger, and the possibility of a reduction in force or layoffs, will be discussed along the grapevine at work, and will give rise to tension and anticipation of negative news. You could simply write a short memo “To All Employees,” not include any contact information, and have an assistant walk around and place copies on everyone’s chair or desk during the lunch hour. But let’s look at the message this would send to employees. The written communication includes nonverbal aspects like timing and presentation as well as verbal aspects like language and word choice. The timing itself suggests avoidance of conflict, and a reluctance to address the issue with transparency. The presentation of a memo in hard copy form on your chair from an unidentified company representative will certainly cause confusion, may be mistaken for a prank, and could cause considerable stress. It will contribute to increased tensions rather than solidarity, and if trust is the foundation for all effective communication, it violates this principle.
Negative news may not be easy to deliver, but it is necessary at times and should be done with clarity and brevity. All parties should be clearly identified. The negative news itself should be clear and concise. The presentation should be direct, with authority and credibility. Communication occurs between people, and all humans experience concern, fear, and trepidation of the unknown. The negative news message, while it may be unwelcome, can bring light to an issue.
As we mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, some people prefer their bad news to be direct and concise, while others prefer a less direct approach. Let’s weigh the pros and cons of each approach. Table \(2\) contrasts the elements of the two approaches.
Table \(2\) Direct and Indirect Delivery
Direct Delivery Direct Example Indirect Delivery Indirect Example
Positive introduction Thank you for your request for leave.
Negative news message as introduction Your request for leave has been denied. Negative news message We regret to inform you that your request has been denied.
Conclusion Please contact your supervisor if you need more information. Conclusion Please contact your supervisor if you need more information.
The direct approach places the negative news at the beginning of the message, while the indirect approach packages the negative news between a positive introduction, sometimes called a “buffer” or cushion, and a conclusion. Your negative message may include the rationale or reasons for the decision.
The direct approach is often associated with a message where the audience values brevity and the message needs to be concise. A positive introduction often introduces the topic but not the outcome. An effective negative news statement clearly states the message while limiting the possibility of misinterpretation. An effective closing statement may provide reasons, reference a policy, or indicate a procedure to follow for more information.
Key Takeaway
Delivering negative news involves a buffer or cushion statement, an explanation, the negative news itself, and a redirecting statement. Whether you choose a direct or an indirect approach, the message should be delivered clearly and concisely, with respect for the receiver and the organization.
Exercises
1. When should you use an indirect approach in delivering a negative news message? Explain your answer to the class.
2. Ask five friends which they would prefer: negative news in a direct or indirect format? Why? Discuss your results with a classmate.
3. Sales have decreased for two consecutive quarters at your business. You have been instructed to inform your sales team that their hours, and base pay, will be reduced by 20 percent. While you may have a few members of your sales team that are underperforming, you want to retain the entire team. Write a negative news message in a direct or indirect approach informing your sales team of the news.
4. You have observed and documented an employee being late and taking long breaks for the past two weeks. Write out a brief summary of the conversation you need to have. You may be assigned to another classmate for a role-playing exercise. Share and compare with your classmates. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Communication_for_Business_Success_(LibreTexts)/17%3A_Negative_News_and_Crisis_Communication/17.01%3A_Delivering_a_Negative_News_Message.txt |
Learning Objectives
1. Understand the importance of feedback, even if it is negative.
2. Describe and demonstrate the effective use of open- and closed-ended questions.
How do you know when you are doing a good job? How do you know when, where, and how you could do a better job? What makes the difference between business or organization that is stagnant and one that is dynamic? Often the response to all these questions involves one key, but often overlooked, company resource: feedback. Feedback is the verbal and/or nonverbal response to a message, and that message may involve a company product or service.
Employee surveys, for example, may be completed online, in written form, in small focus groups, and can involve both oral and written communication. In the same way, customer satisfaction surveys may involve similar options and both provide a valuable opportunity to take a critical look at what we are doing, how it is perceived, and what areas we can identify for improvement. They often measure opinions, satisfaction, attitude, brand affiliation, preference, and engagement of customers and employees. In this section we will consider negative news as a valuable tool in self, team, company, product, and service improvement.
Across the years there have been extensive studies on how to improve businesses and companies, from Total Quality Improvement to the Six Sigma approach to excellence. Regardless of the theory, approach, or label, they all rest on a foundation of effective communication. One way that communication is often described involves customer relationship management (Bauer, J. E., Duffy, G. L., and Westcott, R. T., 2006), or the relationship between the organization (sometimes represented by the product or service itself) and the customer.
This leads us to our first point: who is the customer? You might be tempted to say the end-user, the purchaser, or the decision-maker, but customers are often categorized as internal and external. Employees themselves represent internal customers, and their relationship with the business, product, or service has value to the organization. External customers may include the end-user, but can also include vendors and related businesses that are part of the supply chain. This expanded, global view of communication and customer service relationships will guide our discussion as we explore ways to effectively elicit negative news, critical feedback, and praise for a job well done.
Positive news is part of feedback, and indeed the difference between positive and negative news often lies more in the interpretation of information than the information itself. For example, if a software product that your company has been testing for some time, scheduled for a release date in the near future, has failed several tests, the tendency to view the news as negative is understood. The fact that the problems and issues were identified prior to release, however, provides an opportunity to correct them before their impact is magnified by negative news in the press, customer rejection of an inferior product, and a diminished view of your brand, all of which could ultimately damage customer loyalty and even your stock value. The chain reaction doesn’t stop there; these effects could in turn limit your ability to get additional financing as an organization, the perceived risk could elevate interest rates on your company debts, and this could reduce budgets across the organization, limiting the very research and development budget that gives rise to the new, innovative, or breakout products that will gain market share.
Viewed in this light, it could be a very positive development that the faults in the software were detected before release. In addition, by learning to view information in a dispassionate way, noting that there is more than one way to interpret much of what we gather as data, you as a business professional can enhance your ability to see new approaches to products or services.
Thomas Kuhn, author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1996), (Kuhn, T., 1996) states that communities operate on a set of beliefs. These beliefs form the foundation of the community, business, and organization. Employees and customers alike become socialized, learning the values, meaning, behaviors, cultural customs, expectations for excellence, and brand associations through interaction with the community. In business, we can clearly see the example of new employees becoming socialized into the company culture; they are training, learning about their jobs, and getting to know their coworkers.
We can also see how a customer interacts with a product or service, and comes to associate feelings, ideas, and expectations with a brand or company. This foundation or set of actualized beliefs becomes the norm or the status quo, and can become static or fixed. If a certain process is successful and an individual or company is rewarded, the process is often repeated. If a customer buys a certain product that works as they anticipate it will, they are more likely to make a similar purchase decision in the future.
Kuhn discusses research and the scientific method as a process that can affirm the status quo, but can also produce an anomaly, or something that doesn’t fit, challenges the existing norm, or stands apart from the anticipated results (Kuhn, T., 1996). This anomaly can challenge the status quo, and may not be greeted with open arms. Instead, it may be ignored or dismissed as irrelevant, but nothing could be further from the truth. As Kuhn (1996) notes, this outlying information that challenges the norm is precisely the necessary ingredient for a paradigm shift, or a change in overall view. The view itself can be as simple as the new awareness that a product has more uses than originally anticipated, or as significant as a new awareness of the brand and the company focus.
Is there a better way to produce a product? Is there a new feature that customers want? You’ll never know if you don’t ask, and you’ll never improve or change if you don’t listen to the feedback.
One story that articulates this power of the anomaly, of unanticipated information that results in a change in view, involves a common business product. A research chemist for the 3M Company, Spencer Silver, was used to trial and error as he pursued his goal of a new superglue (Kuhn, T., 1996). By mixing simple organic compounds in unusual ratios, he tried to create this superstrong glue, but one result in particular was a spectacular failure. This particular result, a polymer, would stick to many surfaces, but it was also easy to remove, leaving no trace of itself. This odd substance was considered useless until Arthur Fry, a fellow 3M scientist, found a new use for it: removable paper notes that could be used to mark pages in his hymnal when he sang in his church choir. Minor modifications resulted in sample note pads that were passed around at 3M, and soon a new form of written communication and information organization was created: the now-famous Post-it brand note (3M Company, 2009). Silver and Fry could have dismissed the negative result as a failure to reach the established goal of inventing a super glue, but by undergoing a paradigm shift, they revolutionized business communication. Learning to be open to information that challenges your views is a key business skill.
This now brings us to the question of how we elicit negative news, critical feedback, and assessment information. How do you learn more about the people around you? You watch, listen, and ask questions. Asking questions while watching, listening, and learning is the foundation of eliciting feedback. We can ask questions in interpersonal interviews, in small groups, and even large groups in person. We can use technology to help gather and process information, categorizing and classifying it. We can also create surveys with questions designed to elicit specific types of information.
Academic research often uses the terms “qualitative” and “quantitative” to categorize two types of information gathering. Qualitative research involves interactions, which by their very nature are subject to interpretation and, as a result, are less reliable and statistically valid. Their strength is in the raw data, the proximity to the source, and the possibility of unexpected results. The weakness in the results is often the inability to replicate the results the same way again. An example may be a focus group, where participants try a new beverage and report their experience in words and nonverbal expressions. By recording the group, we can replay and study their response to the new drink, and learn that many of the participants perceive it to be sour from their facial gestures. The written responses may not indicate this response to the same degree, and the recorded responses may portray a different story. If you replicate the focus group with new participants, you may very well have a different outcome.
Over time, patterns may emerge that produce reliable results, and indeed double-blind studies for many pharmaceuticals use a similar approach, but the number of participants has to be significantly increased while the confounding factors, or factors that can alter the results, must be anticipated and controlled. All of this involves a cost, and not every product, service, or study needs this type of investigation.
Quantitative research involves investigation and analysis of data and relationships between data that can be represented by numbers. The categorization and classification from the moment the investigation means that some aspects of the raw data will be necessarily lost in the process, but the information that remains will have a reliability and validity that compensates for this loss. Indeed, quantitative measures and representations of data are increasingly the norm in business communication, and are used to make decisions at all levels.
If your company produces automobiles, you may want qualitative information from potential consumers on their impression of the placement of the cupholders, but you will probably prefer quantitative information when it comes to engineering and safety. As you stress-test the steel in crash tests, assessing the force of the impact, the displacement of parts of the car as the crumple zones deform to absorb the energy, and the relative location of the crash-test dummy driver to the crush zone, you will measure it in terms of numbers. Each time your repeat the test, you should see similar results. If you don’t, you may need to test the welds and examine the production process to determine why there is an inconsistency. You may even need to test the steel itself to see if it is a materials issue, rather than a process and production problem. All this information would be measured in terms of numbers and symbols, representing velocity, tensile strength, and related factors.
Another factor in gathering feedback is confidentiality. Before you consider how to ask questions, you may want to consider to what degree you want identifying information in the process. If you are designing a campaign where employees submit suggestions to save the company money, increase production, or improve quality, and want to offer a financial incentive for ideas that are adopted, you will need to be able to identify the contributing employee for the reward. On the other hand, if you want a feedback system for employees to report coworkers who are under the influence or have substance abuse problems on the job, threatening the safety of all, then you would want an anonymous 1-800 number to give out, and to encourage its use by assuring employees that it carries no identifying markers.
Anonymous surveys can elicit information that would not be revealed otherwise, but they can also be a place for employees to vent, exaggerate, or invent responses. The validity is an issue, but the opportunity for insight may outweigh the risks. You can also provide an optional opportunity for the employee or customer to self-identify by providing a place where they could indicate contact information. A customer that completes a postpurchase survey may be offered a coupon if they register, and that contact information may be useful for follow-up contacts. Some customers will prefer, however, to write a direct complaint without identifying themselves. When designing a survey, brochure, or procedure to elicit feedback, you need to consider identification and anonymity.
In order to gather information, we often ask questions. For this application there are two types of questions: open and closed (Fink, A., 1995). Open-ended questions allow for interpretation and a range of responses in the respondent’s own words. Closed-ended questions limit the responses to a preselected range of options or choices. Your choice of open or closed questions depends on what type of information you plan to gather.
Open-ended questions may sound like the following:
1. What do you like about the product?
2. How was the service today?
3. How does the product make you feel?
4. What does our brand mean to you?
5. Why did you choose our product?
In each case, the question can be answered many ways, depending on the word choice of the respondent. The value is placed on the personal response and the range of data gathered may well be quite diverse, presenting challenge to categorize and group. Open-ended questions cannot be answered with a simple yes or no response.
Closed-ended questions, however, can be answered with a yes/no response. Here are five examples of closed-ended questions:
1. Have you purchased our product previously?
___ Yes
___ No
2. Why did you choose our product?
1. Price/low cost
2. Quality
3. Reputation
4. Previous experience
3. How was the service today?
1 2 3 4 5
Poor Below average Neutral Good Excellent
4. What do you like about the product? (Please indicate in rank order.)
___ Low cost
___ Quality
___ Reputation
___ Features
___ Low maintenance
5. Please indicate the year you were born.
_________
The first closed-ended question is simply a closed question with its yes/no response options, but it is also an example of a categorical question. Categorical questions limit the responses to two categories. For example, you may ask a customer to indicate their sex in the response survey, allowing them to choose from two categories: male or female. Multiple choice questions allow for specific choices and limit the range of options. Likert Scale questions allow for the conversion of feelings, attitudes, and perceptions into numbers in a range. Ordinal questions request the respondent to rank order specific options. Numerical questions request a specific number, often a birth date or a serial number, that itself carries meaning. For example, age may be correlated to disposable income, and while the respondent may not be willing to respond to a direct question about their income level, they may be willing to indicate their year of birth.
To summarize the pros and cons of the two basic question types: open-ended questions are best when you want all possible responses in the respondent’s own words. Closed-ended questions limit the responses to a few choices, and they can be categorized, placed in order, assess degrees of attitudes and feelings, and request specific information (Fink, A., 1995).
Key Takeaway
Eliciting negative news through feedback is an important way to avert problems, safeguard valuable relationships, and achieve paradigm shifts. Feedback may be qualitative or quantitative and may be requested through open-ended or closed-ended questions.
Exercises
1. Describe a time when you received negative feedback in time to correct your error. How did you feel about the correction at the time? Looking back, how do you feel about it in retrospect? Discuss your thoughts with a classmate.
2. Find a negative message online and write a brief review. Share and compare with classmates.
3. Prepare a sample customer satisfaction survey with at least ten questions. Make sure you include a couple of questions to learn more about your audience as well as their opinions of the product or service. Post your results in class and compare them with classmates. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Communication_for_Business_Success_(LibreTexts)/17%3A_Negative_News_and_Crisis_Communication/17.02%3A_Eliciting_Negative_News.txt |
Learning Objectives
1. Understand how to prepare a crisis communication plan.
A rumor that the CEO is ill pulls down the stock price. A plant explosion kills several workers and requires evacuating residents on several surrounding city blocks. Risk management seeks to address these many risks, including prevention as well as liability, but emergency and crisis situations happen nevertheless. In addition, people make errors in judgment that can damage the public perception of a company. The mainstream media does not lack stories involving infidelity, addiction, or abuse that require a clear a response from a company’s standpoint. In this chapter we address the basics of a crisis communication plan.
Focus on key types of information during an emergency: (Mallet, L., Vaught, C., and Brinch, M., 1999)
• What is happening?
• Is anyone in danger?
• How big is the problem?
• Who reported the problem?
• Where is the problem?
• Has a response started?
• What resources are on-scene?
• Who is responding so far?
• Is everyone’s location known?
You will be receiving information from the moment you know a crisis has occurred, but without a framework or communication plan to guide you, valuable information may be ignored or lost. These questions help you quickly focus on the basics of “who, what, and where” in the crisis situation.
Developing Your Crisis Communication Plan
A crisis communication plan is the prepared scenario document that organizes information into responsibilities and lines of communication prior to an event. With a plan in place, if an emergency arises, each person knows his or her role and responsibilities from a common reference document. Overall effectiveness can be enhanced with a clear understanding of roles and responsibilities for an effective and swift response.
The plan should include four elements:
1. Crisis communication team members with contact information
2. Designated spokesperson
3. Meeting place/location
4. Media plan with procedures
A crisis communication team includes people who can
1. decide what actions to take,
2. carry out those actions,
3. offer expertise or education in the relevant areas.
By designating a spokesperson prior to an actual emergency, your team addresses the inevitable need for information in a proactive manner. People will want to know what happened and where to get further details about the crisis. Lack of information breeds rumors, which can make a bad situation worse. The designated spokesperson should be knowledgeable about the organization and its values; be comfortable in front of a microphone, camera, and media lights; and be able to stay calm under pressure.
Part of your communication crisis plan should focus on where you will meet to coordinate communicate and activities. In case of a fire in your house, you might meet in the front yard. In an organization, a designated contingency building or office some distance away from your usual place of business might serve as a central place for communication in an emergency that requires evacuating your building. Depending on the size of your organization and the type of facilities where you do business, the company may develop an emergency plan with exit routes, hazardous materials procedures, and policies for handling bomb threats, for example. Safety, of course, is the priority, but in terms of communication, the goal is to eliminate confusion about where people are and where information is coming from.
Whether or not evacuation is necessary, when a crisis occurs, your designated spokesperson will gather information and carry out your media plan. He or she will need to make quick judgments about which information to share, how to phrase it, and whether certain individuals need to be notified of facts before they become public. The media and public will want to know information and reliable information is preferable to speculation. Official responses help clarify the situation for the public, but an unofficial interview can make the tragedy personal, and attract unwanted attention. Remind employees to direct all inquiries to the official spokesperson and to never speak “off the record.”
Enable your spokesperson to have access to the place you indicated as your crisis contingency location to coordinate communication and activities, and allow that professional to prepare and respond to inquiries. When crisis communication is handled in a professional manner, it seeks not to withhold information or mislead, but to minimize the “spin damage” from the incident by providing necessary facts, even if they are unpleasant or even tragic.
Key Takeaway
Because crises are bound to happen despite the best planning, every organization should have a crisis communication plan, which includes designating a crisis communication team and spokesperson.
Exercises
1. Locate the crisis communication plan where you go to school or work, or find one online. Briefly describe the overall plan and please note at least one part, element, or point of emphasis we have not discussed. Post and compare with classmates.
2. When people don’t know what to do in a crisis situation, what happens? How can you address probable challenges before the crisis occurs? Discuss your ideas with classmates.
3. As a case study, research one crisis that involves your area of training or career field. What communication issues were present and how did they affect the response to the crisis? Compare your results with classmates.
4. Locate a crisis communication online and review it. Share and compare with classmates.
5. Do you always have to be on guard with members of the media? Why or why not? Explain your answer to the class as if they were members of the media. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Communication_for_Business_Success_(LibreTexts)/17%3A_Negative_News_and_Crisis_Communication/17.03%3A_Crisis_Communication_Plan.txt |
Learning Objectives
1. Discuss the purpose of a press conference.
2. Discuss how to prepare and conduct a press conference.
Holding a press conference when you are unprepared can feel like standing in front of a firing squad, where all the journalists are armed so no one will carry the guilt of the winning shot. It can make you nervous, scared, and reluctant to speak at all. It can take your fear of a misquote, or a stumble, or a misstatement replayed across the Internet thousands of times in the next twenty-four hours and make you wish for a blindfold and a cigarette, but that won’t help. The way to calm your nerves is to be confident in your material. This section discusses the press conference, from preparation to execution (pun intended).
A press conference is a presentation of information to the media. It normally involves a written statement that is read exactly as written and is followed by questions and answers. The press conference normally requires a seasoned representative of the company or business with established credibility and integrity. It also requires a sense of calm in the confidence that you know your material, know how to tactfully say you don’t know or don’t wish to comment, and a sense of humor to handle the “gotcha” questions.
Press conferences can be held for positive news like the announcement of a new hospital wing that will increase the health care services available to the community. It can also be held to clarify information regarding the CEO’s trip to Chile with an alleged mistress, the recent law enforcement sting operation on the illegal sale of controlled substances from the hospital, or to announce the layoff of employees as part of a reduction in force.
Positive or negative, your role as a speaker at a press conference is to deliver the prepared message and to represent the business or organization in a professional manner. You understand that there may be moments of tension, but you also know you have a choice in how to respond. First we’ll examine preparation, then discuss the actual press conference.
You should have a good reason for holding a press conference. Wasting the media’s time on a frivolous issue will only set you up for challenges later on. You should also have a brief prepared statement that you will read and restate if necessary. Today’s press conference messages are often drafted by someone in public relations or media, and reviewed by legal counsel when warranted. If the task falls to you, keep it short and simple, addressing the following:
• Who?
• What?
• Where?
• When?
• How?
• Why?
As a follow-up to why the press conference needs to occur in the first place, you need to consider the location. If it is a ribbon-cutting ceremony, the choice is obvious. If the announcement is less than positive, and you’ve been instructed by your supervisors or counsel to not offer additional remarks, you’ll want a podium strategically located next to a stage exit. Your press release or invitation to the media will contain the time, date, and location of the press conference, and may contain a title or subject line as well as contact information for follow-up information.
As you prepare your background materials, learning as much as needed for the announcement, you may also want to consider using a moderator. Perhaps that will be your role as you introduce senior management to read the prepared statement. A moderator can serve to influence the process and redirect if questions go off topic or if a transition is needed. A moderator can also call a formal close the press conference and thank everyone for attending.
Finally, visual aids are an excellent way to reinforce and communicate your message. They need to be big, they need to be relevant (not just decorative), and (from a technical standpoint) they need to work. If they will be projected onto a screen, make sure the screen is available (not stuck), the laptop has power (as well as battery backup), the presentation or visual aid is on the laptop, and that the projector can and does project what you want it to. Don’t forget sound equipment if necessary, and make sure everything works the day of the presentation.
Holding a Press Conference
Someone should be designated as the greeter for the media. Be ready at least fifteen minutes before the scheduled time of the event. Provide each member of the media with a print copy of the actual statement that will be read before or after the event. If there is an element of surprise, you may want to hold the copies of the statement back until after the press conference has been concluded, but otherwise distributing them beforehand is standard.
The moderator opens the press conference with a welcome, indicates the purpose of the press conference and reminds everyone that there will (or will not) be an opportunity for questions following the press conference. The moderator introduces the spokesperson who will read the statement and welcomes him or her to the podium. The moderator may need to assist with sound equipment but otherwise stands back but near the speaker.
The speaker will read the statement. If there are to be no questions, the moderator will retake the podium and indicate that press kits, containing background material, fact sheets, the news release, sample photos, or related materials will be available; or simply indicate that copies of the press release are available at the back of the room. If there are questions, the moderator may still take the podium and outline ground rules for questions such as: they should pertain to the subject, be brief, and may or may not include follow-up questions. Members of the media will often ask a question and state that they have a follow-up question as a way of reserving two turns.
The moderator may indicate which member of the media is to ask a question, and typically they will stand and address the speaker directly. The speaker can take notes, but this isn’t common. Instead, they should be aware that every movement is being recorded and that by maintaining eye contact, they are demonstrating that they are listening. They may reiterate the statement from the press release or refer to the background material, but should limit the scope of their response. Your team may have anticipated several questions and the speaker may have several sound bites ready to deliver. Visual media will want it visual, audio will want clarity, and print will want descriptive quotes. Meet the needs of your audience as you deliver your message.
Invariably the “gotcha” question, or the question that attempts to catch the speaker off guard, will be asked. “We’re not ready to discuss the matter at this time,” “When more information becomes available we will let you know,” “Our company has no position on that issue,” or “We’re not prepared to speculate on that issue at this time” are all common response phrases. Don’t use “I think,” “I believe,” or “I don’t know” comments as they invite speculation, and refrain from “no comment” if at all possible as it is increasingly perceived as if the company or representative is “hiding something.”
You want to appear professional, knowledgeable, and credible—not as if you are sneaking or hiding something. Don’t display a nonverbal gesture or make a face at a question, as this can also be misinterpreted. Keep your poise and balance at all times, and if you are the speaker and the question puts you off, establish eye contact with the moderator. Their role is to step in and they may move to the conclusion.
Never say anything you wouldn’t want the world to hear, as microphones are increasingly powerful, video captures lips movement, and there will be a communication professional available to analyze your nonverbal gestures on the evening news. Being cool, calm, and collected is the best policy whether you are delivering positive or negative news.
Key Takeaway
A press conference is an important presentation of information that requires you to anticipate questions and prepare possible responses.
Exercises
Your role as spokesperson is to write and present a prepared statement, and respond to no less than five questions. You will select one of the scenarios below based on your birth month, and prepare your statement. You are allowed to improve on facts, but should recognize that each scenario is serious and treat the assignment with professionalism.
1. January—Healthcare, Inc.
A hacker illegally accessed thousands of the new digital health care records on file with Healthcare, Inc. and posted them directly to the Internet in an early morning protest against invasion of privacy. The hacker has not been identified, but local law enforcement is on the scene investigating the incident and the offending Web sites have been taken offline. Your company has received hundreds of calls concerning the incident. The federal government required the conversion to digital records last year, and your company complied with the order. Your company used a government-approved vendor for a no-bid installation of hardware and software to secure the digital records. You represent Healthcare, Inc.
2. February—Educational Services, Inc.
Half the senior class in your private magnet high school cheated on the graduation exam, and the rest were apparently aware of the cheating, as were many of the parents. An employee, a secretary with several employee passwords, allegedly gained access to the exam before its release and provided the questions and responses to her son, who then provided it to his friends. The employee was often provided login names and passwords to facilitate records processing for several administrators when they were off site, often at conferences. Headquarters wants to minimize the publicity but cannot in good faith issue diplomas to students who cheated. The employee has been dismissed for conduct, and an investigation is underway, but graduation is next week and the evidence against the cheating seniors is clear. They won’t be receiving their diplomas unless they pass an alternate version of the test that won’t be ready for sixty days. You represent Educational Services, Inc.
Exercises (cont.)
3. March—Software, Inc.
Your company recently released its latest version of a popular business and industry software program. Programs always have a few bugs or problems upon release, even after the most rigorous laboratory testing, but this program is apparently infested with bugs. Stories are popping up across the Internet about how the program doesn’t work, or specific features don’t work, and your customer service team has been responding to customer complaints. The software designers report it is an exaggeration to say “infested,” and point out that in all the trial tests it has worked perfectly. Your company is working on finding and addressing the issues, and is ready to create patch programs and issue refunds if necessary, but wants to prevent a recall and a loss of consumer confidence. You represent Software, Inc.
4. April—Electric Company, Inc.
An employee was consuming alcohol on the job and failed to adjust the voltage regulator. The voltage was increased by a considerable amount, causing several house fires, significant loss of property (appliances) and the death of an eleven-year-old child. The local media interviewed the employee’s spouse who stated the employee was working a double shift, that they had called someone to relieve them, and no one came. Your company is investigating, but has no new information. You represent Electric Company, Inc.
5. May—Online Market, Inc.
An online marketplace company has been accused by law enforcement of knowingly allowing users to sell stolen goods on their Web site. Since the company never handles any of the goods themselves, and simply facilitates the exchange of goods between buyer and seller via the short-term creation of a Web page with text and images provided by the seller, the company denies all responsibility. You represent Online Market, Inc.
6. June—ABC Engineering, Inc.
A 4.2-million-dollar, two-lane bridge recently completed collapsed into the local Blue River, taking with it three vehicles. The loss of life included four men, three women, and one unborn baby. Local media has interviewed workers who indicated they were rushed to complete the bridge to get a bonus for the construction firm. The construction firm indicates that their internal investigation points to a faulty design, but the architects, engineers, and government inspectors deny the charge. You represent ABC Engineering.
7. July—Package Delivery, Inc.
A class-action lawsuit has been filed in federal court against Package Delivery, Inc. A group of employees, all female, allege sexual harassment and discriminatory promotion practices against the company. They cite photos and calendars of a sexual nature hung in the workplace and allege that male colleagues with less seniority were promoted ahead of the female workers. You represent Package Delivery, Inc.
8. August—Hamburgers, Inc.
Hamburgers, Inc. is pleased to announce a new menu practice where the nutritional information and the calorie counts will be prominently displayed, helping consumers make healthy choices from the menu. Your supervisors have heard that there may be representatives of the Cow Liberation Group (which advocates vegetarianism) and several nutritionists (who perceive the company has not done enough to improve its products) at the press conference. You represent Hamburgers, Inc.
9. September—Headache Pills, Inc.
A person in New York died of cyanide poisoning, supposedly after taking a 200-mg Headache Pill made by your company. Your headache pills come in sealed, tamper-resistant packaging with child-proof protective caps. Some stores are voluntarily taking your product off the market. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has announced an investigation, and the family of the person who died has threatened to sue. You represent Headache Pills, Inc.
10. October—Maisy Mayflower, Star Actress
You represent Maisy Mayflower as her spokesperson. She has recently returned from Bolivia where she adopted a two-year-old child. She already has three adopted children representing several countries. She is not married. Upon her return, a man claiming to be the child’s father came forward to the media in La Paz, Bolivia protesting the adoption, and the U.S. media has picked up on it. It is all over the Internet. The Bolivian government issued a statement that while they cannot confirm the legitimacy of his claim, the father of the child did not present himself at court during the announced hearing, nor did he present himself in the six months preceding the adoption. The child was legally declared abandoned, and legally adopted. You represent Maisy Mayflower.
11. November—Fast Food Restaurants, Inc.
A customer reported finding a severed human fingertip in soup purchased from Fast Food Restaurants, Inc. The soup and sandwich package was purchased at a Fast Food Restaurant as a take-out order. Your company has several quality controls in place to prevent accidents like this. Local law enforcement is investigating. The customer has taken pictures and posted them all over the Web, and made both libelous and slanderous comments against your company in media interviews and blogs. The customer has never been an employee of Fast Food Restaurants or its affiliates. You represent Fast Food Restaurants, Inc.
12. December—Congressman “Honest” Abe Johnson.
The honorable Congressman from the State of Denial was apprehended in Ecuador for solicitation of a minor. The local media reports that a young girl approached him when he was with his traveling group and he offered to take a picture of her. The mother appeared, spoke to him, and slapped him in the face. She says the congressman offered her money for time alone with her daughter. The congressman stated to local law enforcement, according to a conversation with his spouse from jail, that all he did was compliment her on her daughter, something like “what a fine daughter you have,” in his best Spanish. You represent the Congressman.
17.05: Additional Resources
“Good Ways to Deliver Bad News” by Curtis Sittenfeld from Fast Company.www.fastcompany.com/36993/good-ways-deliver-bad-news
“How to Deliver Bad News to a Group” by Kevin Daley, a Harvard Business article. https://hbr.org/2009/10/how-to-deliver-bad-news-to-a-g
How to deliver bad news to your employees. https://hbr.org/2015/03/how-to-deliver-bad-news-to-your-employees
“Top 7 Ways To Elicit Constructive Web site Feedback” by Adam Senour. http://top7business.com/?id=555
Visit this Northern Illinois University site for a guide to preparing a generic crisis communication plan and adapting it to your needs. www3.niu.edu/newsplace/crisis.html
To see an actual crisis communication plan, visit this North Carolina State University Web site. www.cals.ncsu.edu/agcomm/PDFs/Crisis3.pdf
Western Organization of Research Councils presents “How to Hold a Press Conference.” http://www.worc.org/userfiles/Hold-a-Press-Conference.pdf | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Communication_for_Business_Success_(LibreTexts)/17%3A_Negative_News_and_Crisis_Communication/17.04%3A_Press_Conferences.txt |
• 18.1: Intercultural Communication
Intercultural communication is an aspect of all communicative interactions, and attention to your perspective is key to your effectiveness. Ethnocentrism is a major obstacle to intercultural communication.
• 18.2: How to Understand Intercultural Communication
Ethnocentric tendencies, stereotyping, and assumptions of similarity can make it difficult to learn about cultural differences.
• 18.3: Common Cultural Characteristics
What aspects of culture do we have in common and how do they relate to business communication? Researchers who have studied cultures around the world have identified certain characteristics that define a culture. These characteristics are expressed in different ways, but they tend to be present in nearly all cultures. Let’s examine them. All cultures have characteristics such as initiations, traditions, history, values and principles, purpose, symbols, and boundaries.
• 18.4: Divergent Cultural Characteristics
Cultures reflect this inequality, this diversity, and the divergent range of values, symbols, and meanings across communities. Cultures have distinct orientations when it comes to rules, uncertainty, time and time horizon, masculinity, directness, materialism, and power distance.
• 18.5: International Communication and the Global Marketplace
People create systems that reflect cultural values. These systems reduce uncertainty for the culture, creating and perpetuating the rules and customs, but may prove a significant challenge to the entrepreneur entering a new market. Political, legal, economic, and ethical systems vary from culture to culture, and may or may not reflect formal boundaries.
• 18.6: Styles of Management
People and their relationships to dominant and subordinate roles are a reflection of culture and cultural viewpoint. They are communicated through experience and create expectations for how and when managers interact with employees. The three most commonly discussed management theories are often called X, Y, and Z. In this section we’ll briefly discuss them and their relationship to intercultural communication.
• 18.7: The International Assignment
Preparation is key to a successful international assignment. Living and working abroad takes time, effort, and patience.
• 18.8: Additional Resources
Thumbnail: pixabay.com/illustrations/fl...america-69190/
18: Intercultural and International Business Communication
Learning Objectives
1. Define and discuss how to facilitate intercultural communication.
2. Define and discuss the effects of ethnocentrism.
Communication is the sharing of understanding and meaning (Pearson, J. and Nelson, P., 2000), but what is intercultural communication? If you answered, “The sharing of understanding and meaning across cultures,” you’d be close, but the definition requires more attention. What is a culture? Where does one culture stop and another start? How are cultures created, maintained, and dissolved? Donald Klopf described culture as “that part of the environment made by humans” (Klopf, D., 1991). From the building we erect that represents design values to the fences we install that delineate borders, our environment is a representation of culture, but it is not all that is culture.
Culture involves beliefs, attitudes, values, and traditions that are shared by a group of people. Thus, we must consider more than the clothes we wear, the movies we watch, or the video games we play, all representations of environment, as culture. Culture also involves the psychological aspects of our expectations of the communication context. For example, if we are raised in a culture where males speak while females are expected to remain silent, the context of the communication interaction governs behavior, which in itself is a representation of culture. From the choice of words (message), to how we communicate (in person, or by e-mail), to how we acknowledge understanding with a nod or a glance (nonverbal feedback), to the internal and external interference, all aspects of communication are influenced by culture.
In defining intercultural communication, we only have eight components of communication to work with and yet we must bridge divergent cultures with distinct values across languages and time zones to exchange value, a representation of meaning. It may be tempting to consider only the source and receiver within a transaction as a representation of intercultural communication, but if we do that, we miss the other six components—the message, channel, feedback, context, environment, and interference—in every communicative act. Each component influences and is influenced by culture. Is culture context? Environment? Message? Culture is represented in all eight components every time we communicate. All communication is intercultural.
We may be tempted to think of intercultural communication as interaction between two people from different countries. While two distinct national passports may be artifacts, or nonverbal representations of communication, what happens when two people from two different parts of the same country communicate? From high and low Germanic dialects, to the perspective of a Southerner versus a Northerner in the United States, to the rural versus urban dynamic, our geographic, linguistic, educational, sociological, and psychological traits influence our communication.
It is not enough to say that someone from rural Southern Chile and the capital, Santiago, both speak Castellano (the Chilean word for the Spanish language), so that communication between them must be intracultural communication, or communication within the same culture. What is life like for the rural Southerner? For the city dweller? Were their educational experiences the same? Do they share the same vocabulary? Do they value the same things? To a city dweller, all the sheep look the same. To the rural Southerner, the sheep are distinct, with unique markings; they have value as a food source, a source of wool with which to create sweaters and socks that keep the cold winters at bay, and in their numbers they represent wealth. Even if both Chileans speak the same language, their socialization will influence how they communicate and what they value, and their vocabulary will reflect these differences.
Let’s take this intranational comparison a step further. Within the same family, can there be intercultural communication? If all communication is intercultural, then the answer would be yes, but we still have to prove our case. Imagine a three-generation family living in one house. The grandparents may represent another time and different values from the grandchildren. The parents may have a different level of education and pursue different careers from the grandparents; the schooling the children are receiving may prepare them for yet another career. From music, to food preferences, to how work is done may vary across time; Elvis Presley may seem like ancient history to the children. The communication across generations represents intercultural communication, even if only to a limited degree.
But suppose we have a group of students who are all similar in age and educational level. Do gender and the societal expectations of roles influence interaction? Of course. And so we see that among these students not only do the boys and girls communicate in distinct ways but also not all boys and girls are the same. With a group of sisters, there may be common characteristics, but they will still have differences, and these differences contribute to intercultural communication. We are each shaped by our upbringing and it influences our worldview, what we value, and how we interact with each other. We create culture, and it creates us.
Everett Rogers and Thomas Steinfatt define intercultural communication as the exchange of information between individuals who are “unalike culturally” (Rogers, E. and Steinfatt, T., 1999). If you follow our discussion and its implications, you may arrive at the idea that ultimately we are each a “culture of one”—we are simultaneously a part of a community and its culture(s) and separate from it in the unique combination that represents us as an individual. All of us are separated by a matter of degrees from each other even if we were raised on the same street or by parents of similar educational background and profession, and yet, we have many other things in common.
Communication with yourself is called intrapersonal communication, which may also be intracultural, as you may only represent one culture. But most people belong to many groups, each with their own culture. Within our imaginary intergenerational home, how many cultures do you think we might find? If we only consider the parents and consider work one culture, and family another, we now have two. If we were to examine the options more closely, we would find many more groups, and the complexity would grow exponentially. Does a conversation with yourself ever involve competing goals, objectives, needs, wants, or values? How did you learn of those goals, or values? Through communication within and between individuals, they themselves representatives of many cultures. We struggle with the demands of each group and their expectations and could consider this internal struggle intercultural conflict or simply intercultural communication.
Culture is part of the very fabric of our thought, and we cannot separate ourselves from it, even as we leave home, defining ourselves anew in work and achievements. Every business or organization has a culture, and within what may be considered a global culture, there are many subcultures or co-cultures. For example, consider the difference between the sales and accounting departments in a corporation. We can quickly see two distinct groups with their own symbols, vocabulary, and values. Within each group, there may also be smaller groups, and each member of each department comes from a distinct background that in itself influences behavior and interaction.
Intercultural communication is a fascinating area of study within business communication, and it is essential to your success. One idea to keep in mind as we examine this topic is the importance of considering multiple points of view. If you tend to dismiss ideas or views that are “unalike culturally,” you will find it challenging to learn about diverse cultures. If you cannot learn, how can you grow and be successful?
Ethnocentrism is the tendency to view other cultures as inferior to one’s own. Having pride in your culture can be healthy, but history has taught us that having a predisposition to discount other cultures simply because they are different can be hurtful, damaging, and dangerous. Ethnocentrism makes us far less likely to be able to bridge the gap with others and often increases intolerance of difference. Business and industry are no longer regional, and in your career, you will necessarily cross borders, languages, and cultures. You will need tolerance, understanding, patience, and openness to difference. A skilled business communicator knows that the process of learning is never complete, and being open to new ideas is a key strategy for success.
Key Takeaway
Intercultural communication is an aspect of all communicative interactions, and attention to your perspective is key to your effectiveness. Ethnocentrism is a major obstacle to intercultural communication.
Exercises
1. Please list five words to describe your dominant culture. Please list five words to describe a culture with which you are not a member, have little or no contact, or have limited knowledge. Now, compare and contrast the terms noting their inherent value statements.
2. Identify a country you would like to visit. Research the country and find one interesting business fact and share it with the class.
3. Write a brief summary about a city, region, state, or country you have visited that is not like where you live. Share and compare with classmates. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Communication_for_Business_Success_(LibreTexts)/18%3A_Intercultural_and_International_Business_Communication/18.01%3A_Intercultural_Communication.txt |
Learning Objectives
1. Describe strategies to understand intercultural communication, prejudice, and ethnocentrism.
The American anthropologist Edward T. Hall is often cited as a pioneer in the field of intercultural communication (Chen, G. and Starosta, W., 2000). Born in 1914, Hall spent much of his early adulthood in the multicultural setting of the American Southwest, where Native Americans, Spanish-speakers, and descendents of pioneers came together from diverse cultural perspectives. He then traveled the globe during World War II and later served as a U.S. State Department official. Where culture had once been viewed by anthropologists as a single, distinct way of living, Hall saw how the perspective of the individual influences interaction. By focusing on interactions rather than cultures as separate from individuals, he asked us to evaluate the many cultures we ourselves belong to or are influenced by as well as those with whom we interact. While his view makes the study of intercultural communication far more complex, it also brings a healthy dose of reality to the discussion. Hall is generally credited with eight contributions to our study of intercultural communication (Chen, G. and Starosta, W., 2000; Leeds-Hurwitz, W., 1990; McLean, S., 2005):
1. Compare cultures. Focus on the interactions versus general observations of culture.
2. Shift to local perspective. Local level versus global perspective.
3. You don’t have to know everything to know something. Time, space, gestures, and gender roles can be studied, even if we lack a larger understanding of the entire culture.
4. There are rules we can learn. People create rules for themselves in each community that we can learn from, compare, and contrast.
5. Experience counts. Personal experience has value in addition to more comprehensive studies of interaction and culture.
6. Perspectives can differ. Descriptive linguistics serves as a model to understand cultures, and the U.S. Foreign Service adopted it as a base for training.
7. Intercultural communication can be applied to international business. U.S. Foreign Service training yielded applications for trade and commerce and became a point of study for business majors.
8. It integrates the disciplines. Culture and communication are intertwined and bring together many academic disciplines.
Hall shows us that emphasis on a culture as a whole, and how it operates, may lead us to neglect individual differences. Individuals may hold beliefs or practice customs that do not follow their own cultural norm. When we resort to the mental shortcut of a stereotype, we lose these unique differences. Stereotypes can be defined as a generalization about a group of people that oversimplifies their culture (Rogers, E. and Steinfatt, T., 1999).
The American psychologist Gordon Allport explored how, when, and why we formulate or use stereotypes to characterize distinct groups. His results may not surprise you. Look back at the third of the Note 18.1 “Introductory Exercises” for this chapter and examine the terms you used to describe a culture with which you are unfamiliar. Were the terms flattering or pejorative? Did they reflect respect for the culture or did they make unfavorable value judgments? Regardless of how you answered, you proved Allport’s main point. When we do not have enough contact with people or their cultures to understand them well, we tend to resort to stereotypes (Allport, G., 1958).
As Hall notes, experience has value. If you do not know a culture, you should consider learning more about it firsthand if possible. The people you interact with may not be representative of the culture as a whole, but that is not to say that what you learn lacks validity. Quite the contrary; Hall asserts that you can, in fact, learn something without understanding everything, and given the dynamic nature of communication and culture, who is to say that your lessons will not serve you well? Consider a study abroad experience if that is an option for you, or learn from a classmate who comes from a foreign country or an unfamiliar culture. Be open to new ideas and experiences, and start investigating. Many have gone before you, and today, unlike in generations past, much of the information is accessible. Your experiences will allow you to learn about another culture and yourself, and help you to avoid prejudice.
Prejudice involves a negative preconceived judgment or opinion that guides conduct or social behavior (McLean, S., 2005). As an example, imagine two people walking into a room for a job interview. You are tasked to interview both, and having read the previous section, you know that Allport rings true when he says we rely on stereotypes when encountering people or cultures with which we have had little contact. Will the candidates’ dress, age, or gender influence your opinion of them? Will their race or ethnicity be a conscious or subconscious factor in your thinking process? Allport’s work would indicate that those factors and more will make you likely to use stereotypes to guide your expectations of them and your subsequent interactions with them.
People who treat other with prejudice often make assumptions, or take preconceived ideas for granted without question, about the group or communities. As Allport illustrated for us, we often assume characteristics about groups with which we have little contact. Sometimes we also assume similarity, thinking that people are all basically similar. This denies cultural, racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, and many other valuable, insightful differences.
Key Takeaway
Ethnocentric tendencies, stereotyping, and assumptions of similarity can make it difficult to learn about cultural differences.
Exercises
1. People sometimes assume that learning about other cultures is unnecessary if we simply treat others as we would like to be treated. To test this assumption, try answering the following questions.
1. When receiving a gift from a friend, should you open it immediately, or wait to open it in private?
2. When grocery shopping, should you touch fruits and vegetables to evaluate their freshness?
3. In a conversation with your instructor or your supervisor at work, should you maintain direct eye contact?
Write down your answers before reading further. Now let’s explore how these questions might be answered in various cultures.
1. In Chile, it is good manners to open a gift immediately and express delight and thanks. But in Japan it is a traditional custom to not open a gift in the giver’s presence.
2. In the United States, shoppers typically touch, hold, and even smell fruits and vegetables before buying them. But in northern Europe this is strongly frowned upon.
3. In mainstream North American culture, people are expected to look directly at each other when having a conversation. But a cultural norm for many Native Americans involves keeping one’s eyes lowered as a sign of respect when speaking to an instructor or supervisor.
No one can be expected to learn all the “dos and don’ts” of the world’s myriad cultures; instead, the key is to keep an open mind, be sensitive to other cultures, and remember that the way you’d like to be treated is not necessarily the way others would appreciate.
2. Please write a short paragraph where your perception of someone was changed once you got to know them. Share and compare with your classmates | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Communication_for_Business_Success_(LibreTexts)/18%3A_Intercultural_and_International_Business_Communication/18.02%3A_How_to_Understand_Intercultural_Communication.txt |
Learning Objectives
1. Understand the concept of common cultural characteristics and list several examples of such characteristics in your life.
While we may be members of many different cultures, we tend to adhere to some more than others. Perhaps you have become friendly with several of your fellow students as you’ve pursued your studies in college. As you take many of the same classes and share many experiences on campus, you begin to have more and more in common, in effect forming a small group culture of your own. A similar cultural formation process may happen in the workplace, where coworkers spend many hours each week sharing work experiences and getting to know each other socially in the process.
Groups come together, form cultures, and grow apart across time. How does one become a member of a community, and how do you know when you are full member? What aspects of culture do we have in common and how do they relate to business communication? Researchers who have studied cultures around the world have identified certain characteristics that define a culture. These characteristics are expressed in different ways, but they tend to be present in nearly all cultures. Let’s examine them.
Rites of Initiation
Cultures tend to have a ritual for becoming a new member. A newcomer starts out as a nonentity, a stranger, an unaffiliated person with no connection or even possibly awareness of the community. Newcomers who stay around and learn about the culture become members. Most cultures have a rite of initiation that marks the passage of the individual within the community; some of these rituals may be so informal as to be hardly noticed (e.g., the first time a coworker asks you to join the group to eat lunch together), while others may be highly formalized (e.g., the ordination of clergy in a religion). The nonmember becomes a member, the new member becomes a full member, and individuals rise in terms of responsibility and influence.
Business communities are communities first, because without communication interaction, no business will occur. Even if sales and stock are processed by servers that link database platforms to flow, individuals are still involved in the maintenance, repair, and development of the system. Where there is communication, there is culture, and every business has several cultures.
Across the course of your life, you have no doubt passed several rites of initiation but may not have taken notice of them. Did you earn a driver’s license, register to vote, or acquire the permission to purchase alcohol? In North American culture, these three common markers indicate the passing from a previous stage of life to a new one, with new rights and responsibilities. As a child, you were not allowed to have a driver’s license. At age fourteen to eighteen, depending on your state and location (rural versus urban), you were allowed to drive a tractor, use farm equipment, operate a motor vehicle during daylight hours, or have full access to public roads. With the privilege of driving comes responsibility. It is your responsibility to learn what the signs and signals mean and to obey traffic laws for the common safety. In order for stop signs to work, we all have to agree on the behavior associated with them and observe that behavior.
Sometimes people choose to ignore a stop sign, or accidentally miss one, and it places the public in danger. Law enforcement officials reinforce that common safety as representatives of the culture, empowered by the people themselves based on a common agreement of what a stop sign means and what a driver is supposed to do when approaching one. Some people may argue that law enforcement serves some while it prosecutes others. This point of debate may deserve some consideration, but across cultures, there are rules, signs, and symbols that we share.
Rites of initiation mark the transition of the role or status of the individual within the group. Your first day on the job may have been a challenge as you learned your way around the physical space, but the true challenge was to learn how the group members communicate with each other. If you graduate from college with a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree, you will already have passed a series of tests, learned terms and theories, and possess a symbol of accomplishment in your diploma, but that only grants you the opportunity to look for a job—to seek access to a new culture.
In every business, there are groups, power struggles, and unspoken ways that members earn their way from the role of a “newbie” to that of a full member. The newbie may get the tough account, the office without a window, or the cubicle next to the bathroom, denoting low status. As the new member learns to navigate through the community—establishing a track record and being promoted—he passes the rite of initiation and acquires new rights and responsibilities.
Over time, the person comes to be an important part of the business, a “keeper of the flame.” The “flame” may not exist in physical space or time, but it does exist in the minds of those members in the community who have invested time and effort in the business. It is not a flame to be trusted to a new person, as it can only be earned with time. Along the way, there may be personality conflicts and power struggles over resources and perceived scarcity (e.g., there is only one promotion and everyone wants it). All these challenges are to be expected in any culture.
Common History and Traditions
Think for a moment about the history of a business like Ford Motor Company—what are your associations with Henry Ford, the assembly line manufacturing system, or the Model T? Or the early days of McDonald’s? Do you have an emotional response to mental images of the “golden arches” logo, Ronald McDonald, or the Big Mac sandwich? Traditions form as the organization grows and expands, and stories are told and retold to educate new members on how business should be conducted. The history of every culture, of every corporation, influences the present. There are times when the phrase “we’ve tried that before” can become stumbling block for members of the organization as it grows and adapts to new market forces. There may be struggles between members who have weathered many storms and new members, who come armed with new educational perspectives, technological tools, or experiences that may contribute to growth.
Common Values and Principles
Cultures all hold values and principles that are commonly shared and communicated from older members to younger (or newer) ones. Time and length of commitment are associated with an awareness of these values and principles, so that new members, whether they are socialized at home, in school, or at work, may not have a thorough understanding of their importance. For example, time (fast customer service) and cleanliness are two cornerstone values of the McDonald’s corporation. A new employee may take these for granted, while a seasoned professional who inspects restaurants may see the continued need to reinforce these core values. Without reinforcement, norms may gradually change, and if this were the case it could fundamentally change the customer experience associated with McDonald’s.
Common Purpose and Sense of Mission
Cultures share a common sense of purpose and mission. Why are we here and whom do we serve? These are fundamental questions of the human condition that philosophers and theologians all over the world have pondered for centuries. In business, the answers to these questions often address purpose and mission, and they can be found in mission and vision statements of almost every organization. Individual members will be expected to acknowledge and share the mission and vision, actualize them, or make them real through action. Without action, the mission and vision statements are simply an arrangement of words. As a guide to individual and group behavioral norms, they can serve as a powerful motivator and a call to action.
Common Symbols, Boundaries, Status, Language, and Rituals
Most of us learn early in life what a stop sign represents, but do we know what military stripes represent on a sleeve, or a ten-year service pin on a lapel, or a corner office with two windows? Cultures have common symbols that mark them as a group; the knowledge of what a symbol stands for helps to reinforce who is a group member and who is not. You may have a brand on your arm from your fraternity, or wear a college ring—symbols that represent groups you affiliate with temporarily, while you are a student. They may or may not continue to hold meaning to you when your college experience is over. Cultural symbols include dress, such as the Western business suit and tie, the Scottish kilt, or the Islamic headscarf. Symbols also include slogans or sayings, such as “you’re in good hands” or “you deserve a break today.” The slogan may serve a marketing purpose but may also embrace a mission or purpose within the culture. Family crests and clan tartan patterns serve as symbols of affiliation. Symbols can also be used to communicate rank and status within the group.
Space is another common cultural characteristic; it may be a nonverbal symbol that represents status and power. In most of the world’s cultures, a person occupying superior status is entitled to a physically elevated position—a throne, a dais, a podium from which to address subordinates. Subordinates may be expected to bow, curtsy, or lower their eyes as a sign of respect. In business, the corner office may offer the best view with the most space. Movement from a cubicle to a private office may also be a symbol of transition within an organization, involving increased responsibility as well as power. Parking spaces, the kind of vehicle you drive, and the transportation allowance you have may also serve to communicate symbolic meaning within an organization.
The office serves our discussion on the second point concerning boundaries. Would you sit on your boss’s desk or sit in his chair with your feet up on the desk in his presence? Most people indicate they would not, because doing so would communicate a lack of respect, violate normative space expectations, and invite retaliation. Still, subtle challenges to authority may arise in the workplace. A less than flattering photograph of the boss at the office party posted to the recreational room bulletin board communicates more than a lack of respect for authority. By placing the image anonymously in a public place, the prankster clearly communicates a challenge, even if it is a juvenile one. Movement from the cubicle to the broom closet may be the result for someone who is found responsible for the prank. Again, there are no words used to communicate meaning, only symbols, but those symbols represent significant issues.
Communities have their own vocabulary and way in which they communicate. Consider the person who uses a sewing machine to create a dress and the accountant behind the desk; both are professionals and both have specialized jargon used in their field. If they were to change places, the lack of skills would present an obstacle, but the lack of understanding of terms, how they are used, and what they mean would also severely limit their effectiveness. Those terms and how they are used are learned over time and through interaction. While a textbook can help, it cannot demonstrate use in live interactions. Cultures are dynamic systems that reflect the communication process itself.
Cultures celebrate heroes, denigrate villains, and have specific ways of completing jobs and tasks. In business and industry, the emphasis may be on effectiveness and efficiency, but the practice can often be “because that is the way we have always done it.” Rituals serve to guide our performance and behavior and may be limited to small groups or celebrated across the entire company. A pink Cadillac has a special meaning for a Mary Kay cosmetics representative. How that car is received is ritualistic, recognizing current success while honoring past performances across the company.
Rituals can serve to bind a group together, or to constrain it. Institutions tend to formalize processes and then have a hard time adapting to new circumstances. While the core values or mission statement may hold true, the method of doing things that worked in the past may not be as successful as it once was. Adaptation and change can be difficult for individuals and companies, and yet all communities, cultures, and communication contexts are dynamic, or always changing. As much as we might like things to stay the same, they will always change—and we will change with (and be changed by) them.
Key Takeaway
All cultures have characteristics such as initiations, traditions, history, values and principles, purpose, symbols, and boundaries.
Exercises
1. Compile a list or group of pictures of symbols that characterize some of the cultural groups you belong to. Share and discuss your list with your classmates.
2. Compile a list of pictures or symbols that your group or community finds offensive. Share and compare with classmates. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Communication_for_Business_Success_(LibreTexts)/18%3A_Intercultural_and_International_Business_Communication/18.03%3A_Common_Cultural_Characteristics.txt |
Learning Objectives
1. Discuss divergent cultural characteristics and list several examples of such characteristics in the culture(s) you identify with.
We are not created equal. We are born light- or dark-skinned, to parents of education or parents without access to education, and we grow up short or tall, slender or stocky. Our life chances or options are in many ways determined by our birth. The Victorian “rags to riches” novels that Horatio Alger wrote promoted the ideal that individuals can overcome all obstacles, raising themselves up by their bootstraps. Some people do have amazing stories, but even if you are quick to point out that Microsoft founder Bill Gates became fabulously successful despite his lack of a college education, know that his example is exception, not the rule. We all may use the advantages of our circumstances to improve our lives, but the type and extent of those advantages vary greatly across the planet.
Cultures reflect this inequality, this diversity, and the divergent range of values, symbols, and meanings across communities. Can you tie a knot? Perhaps you can tie your shoes, but can you tie a knot to secure a line to a boat, to secure a heavy load on a cart or truck, or to bundle a bale of hay? You may not be able to, but if you were raised in a culture that place a high value on knot-tying for specific purposes, you would learn that which your community values. We all have viewpoints, but they are shaped by our interactions with our communities. Let’s examine several points of divergence across cultures.
Individualistic versus Collectivist Cultures
People in individualistic cultures value individual freedom and personal independence, and cultures always have stories to reflect their values. You may recall the story of Superman, or John McLean in the Diehard series, and note how one person overcomes all obstacles. Through personal ingenuity, in spite of challenges, one person rises successfully to conquer or vanquish those obstacles. Sometimes there is an assist, as in basketball or football, where another person lends a hand, but still the story repeats itself again and again, reflecting the cultural viewpoint.
The Dutch researcher Geert Hofstede explored the concepts of individualism and collectivism across diverse cultures (Hofstede, G., 1982; Hofstede, G., 2001; Hofstede, G., 2005). He found that in individualistic cultures like the United States, people perceived their world primarily from their own viewpoint. They perceived themselves as empowered individuals, capable of making their own decisions, and able to make an impact on their own lives.
Cultural viewpoint is not an either/or dichotomy, but rather a continuum or range. You may belong to some communities that express individualistic cultural values, while others place the focus on a collective viewpoint. Collectivist cultures (Hofstede, G., 1982), including many in Asia and South America, focus on the needs of the nation, community, family, or group of workers. Ownership and private property is one way to examine this difference. In some cultures, property is almost exclusively private, while others tend toward community ownership. The collectively owned resource returns benefits to the community. Water, for example, has long been viewed as a community resource, much like air, but that has been changing as business and organizations have purchased water rights and gained control over resources. Public lands, such as parks, are often considered public, and individual exploitation of them is restricted. Copper, a metal with a variety of industrial applications, is collectively owned in Chile, with profits deposited in the general government fund. While public and private initiatives exist, the cultural viewpoint is our topic. How does someone raised in a culture that emphasizes the community interact with someone raised in a primarily individualistic culture? How could tensions be expressed and how might interactions be influenced by this point of divergence?
Explicit-Rule Cultures versus Implicit-Rule Cultures
Do you know the rules of your business or organization? Did you learn them from an employee manual or by observing the conduct of others? Your response may include both options, but not all cultures communicate rules in the same way. Carley Dodd discusses this difference and has found quite a range of difference. In an explicit-rule culture, where rules are clearly communicated so that everyone is aware of them, the guidelines and agenda for a meeting are announced prior to the gathering. In an implicit-rule culture, where rules are often understood and communicated nonverbally, there may be no agenda. Everyone knows why they are gathered and what role each member plays, even though the expectations may not be clearly stated. Power, status, and behavioral expectations may all be understood, and to the person from outside this culture, it may prove a challenge to understand the rules of the context.
Outsiders often communicate their “otherness” by not knowing where to stand, when to sit, or how to initiate a conversation if the rules are not clearly stated. While it may help to know that implicit-rule cultures are often more tolerant of deviation from the understood rules, the newcomer will be wise to learn by observing quietly—and to do as much research ahead of the event as possible.
Uncertainty-Accepting Cultures versus Uncertainty-Rejecting Cultures
When we meet each other for the first time, we often use what we have previously learned to understand our current context. We also do this to reduce our uncertainty. Some cultures, such as the United States and Britain, are highly tolerant of uncertainty, while others go to great lengths to reduce the element of surprise. Cultures in the Arab world, for example, are high in uncertainty avoidance; they tend to be resistant to change and reluctant to take risks. Whereas a U.S. business negotiator might enthusiastically agree to try a new procedure, the Egyptian counterpart would likely refuse to get involved until all the details are worked out.
Charles Berger and Richard Calabrese developed uncertainty reduction theory to examine this dynamic aspect of communication. Here are seven axioms of uncertainty:
1. There is a high level of uncertainty at first. As we get to know one another, our verbal communication increases and our uncertainty begins to decrease.
2. Following verbal communication, nonverbal communication increases, uncertainty continues to decrease, and more nonverbal displays of affiliation, like nodding one’s head to indicate agreement, will start to be expressed.
3. When experiencing high levels of uncertainty, we tend to increase our information-seeking behavior, perhaps asking questions to gain more insight. As our understanding increases, uncertainty decreases, as does the information-seeking behavior.
4. When experiencing high levels of uncertainty, the communication interaction is not as personal or intimate. As uncertainty is reduced, intimacy increases.
5. When experiencing high levels of uncertainty, communication will feature more reciprocity, or displays of respect. As uncertainty decreases, reciprocity may diminish.
6. Differences between people increase uncertainty, while similarities decrease it.
7. Higher levels of uncertainty are associated with a decrease in the indication of liking the other person, while reductions in uncertainty are associated with liking the other person more.
Time Orientation
Edward T. Hall and Mildred Reed Hall state that monochronic time-oriented cultures consider one thing at a time, whereas polychronic time-oriented cultures schedule many things at one time, and time is considered in a more fluid sense. In monochromatic time, interruptions are to be avoided, and everything has its own specific time. Even the multitasker from a monochromatic culture will, for example, recognize the value of work first before play or personal time. The United States, Germany, and Switzerland are often noted as countries that value a monochromatic time orientation.
Polychromatic time looks a little more complicated, with business and family mixing with dinner and dancing. Greece, Italy, Chile, and Saudi Arabia are countries where one can observe this perception of time; business meetings may be scheduled at a fixed time, but when they actually begin may be another story. Also note that the dinner invitation for 8 p.m. may in reality be more like 9 p.m. If you were to show up on time, you might be the first person to arrive and find that the hosts are not quite ready to receive you.
When in doubt, always ask before the event; many people from polychromatic cultures will be used to foreigner’s tendency to be punctual, even compulsive, about respecting established times for events. The skilled business communicator is aware of this difference and takes steps to anticipate it. The value of time in different cultures is expressed in many ways, and your understanding can help you communicate more effectively.
Short-Term versus Long-Term Orientation
Do you want your reward right now or can you dedicate yourself to a long-term goal? You may work in a culture whose people value immediate results and grow impatient when those results do not materialize. Geert Hofstede discusses this relationship of time orientation to a culture as a “time horizon,” and it underscores the perspective of the individual within a cultural context. Many countries in Asia, influenced by the teachings of Confucius, value a long-term orientation, whereas other countries, including the United States, have a more short-term approach to life and results. Native American cultures are known for holding a long-term orientation, as illustrated by the proverb attributed to the Iroquois that decisions require contemplation of their impact seven generations removed.
If you work within a culture that has a short-term orientation, you may need to place greater emphasis on reciprocation of greetings, gifts, and rewards. For example, if you send a thank-you note the morning after being treated to a business dinner, your host will appreciate your promptness. While there may be a respect for tradition, there is also an emphasis on personal representation and honor, a reflection of identity and integrity. Personal stability and consistency are also valued in a short-term oriented culture, contributing to an overall sense of predictability and familiarity.
Long-term orientation is often marked by persistence, thrift and frugality, and an order to relationships based on age and status. A sense of shame for the family and community is also observed across generations. What an individual does reflects on the family and is carried by immediate and extended family members.
Masculine versus Feminine Orientation
There was a time when many cultures and religions valued a female figurehead, and with the rise of Western cultures we have observed a shift toward a masculine ideal. Each carries with it a set of cultural expectations and norms for gender behavior and gender roles across life, including business.
Hofstede describes the masculine-feminine dichotomy not in terms of whether men or women hold the power in a given culture, but rather the extent to which that culture values certain traits that may be considered masculine or feminine. Thus, “the assertive pole has been called ‘masculine’ and the modest, caring pole ‘feminine.’ The women in feminine countries have the same modest, caring values as the men; in the masculine countries they are somewhat assertive and competitive, but not as much as the men, so that these countries show a gap between men’s values and women’s values” (Hofstede, G., 2009).
We can observe this difference in where people gather, how they interact, and how they dress. We can see it during business negotiations, where it may make an important difference in the success of the organizations involved. Cultural expectations precede the interaction, so someone who doesn’t match those expectations may experience tension. Business in the United States has a masculine orientation—assertiveness and competition are highly valued. In other cultures, such as Sweden, business values are more attuned to modesty (lack of self-promotion) and taking care of society’s weaker members. This range of difference is one aspect of intercultural communication that requires significant attention when the business communicator enters a new environment.
Direct versus Indirect
In the United States, business correspondence is expected to be short and to the point. “What can I do for you?” is a common question when a business person receives a call from a stranger; it is an accepted way of asking the caller to state his or her business. In some cultures it is quite appropriate to make direct personal observation, such as “You’ve changed your hairstyle,” while for others it may be observed, but never spoken of in polite company. In indirect cultures, such as those in Latin America, business conversations may start with discussions of the weather, or family, or topics other than business as the partners gain a sense of each other, long before the topic of business is raised. Again, the skilled business communicator researches the new environment before entering it, as a social faux pas, or error, can have a significant impact.
Materialism versus Relationships
Does the car someone drives say something about them? You may consider that many people across the planet do not own a vehicle and that a car or truck is a statement of wealth. But beyond that, do the make and model reflect their personality? If you are from a materialistic culture, you may be inclined to say yes. If you are from a culture that values relationships rather than material objects, you may say no or focus on how the vehicle serves the family. From rocks that display beauty and wealth—what we call jewelry—to what you eat—will it be lobster ravioli or prime rib?—we express our values and cultural differences with our purchase decisions.
Members of a materialistic culture place emphasis on external goods and services as a representation of self, power, and social rank. If you consider the plate of food before you, and consider the labor required to harvest the grain, butcher the animal, and cook the meal, you are focusing more on the relationships involved with its production than the foods themselves. Caviar may be a luxury, and it may communicate your ability to acquire and offer a delicacy, but it also represents an effort. Cultures differ in how they view material objects and their relationship to them, and some value people and relationships more than the objects themselves. The United States and Japan are often noted as materialistic cultures, while many Scandinavian nations feature cultures that place more emphasis on relationships.
Low-Power versus High-Power Distance
How comfortable are you with critiquing your boss’s decisions? If you are from a low-power distance culture, your answer might be “no problem.” In low-power distance cultures, according to Hofstede, people relate to one another more as equals and less as a reflection of dominant or subordinate roles, regardless of their actual formal roles as employee and manager, for example.
In a high-power distance culture, you would probably be much less likely to challenge the decision, to provide an alternative, or to give input. If you are working with people from a high-power distance culture, you may need to take extra care to elicit feedback and involve them in the discussion because their cultural framework may preclude their participation. They may have learned that less powerful people must accept decisions without comment, even if they have a concern or know there is a significant problem. Unless you are sensitive to cultural orientation and power distance, you may lose valuable information.
Key Takeaway
Cultures have distinct orientations when it comes to rules, uncertainty, time and time horizon, masculinity, directness, materialism, and power distance.
Exercises
1. Take a business letter or a page of a business report from a U.S. organization and try rewriting it as someone from a highly indirect, relational culture might have written it. Share and discuss your result with your classmates.
2. Conduct an online search for translated movie titles. Share and compare your results with your classmates.
3. Consider the movie you noted in the first of the Note 18.1 “Introductory Exercises” for this chapter. In what ways does it exemplify this individualistic viewpoint? Share your observations with your classmates.
4. Think of a movie where one or more characters exemplify individualism. Write a brief statement and share with classmates.
5. Think of a movie where one or more characters exemplify community-oriented values. Write a brief statement and share with classmates. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Communication_for_Business_Success_(LibreTexts)/18%3A_Intercultural_and_International_Business_Communication/18.04%3A_Divergent_Cultural_Characteristics.txt |
Learning Objectives
1. Describe international communication and the global marketplace, including political, legal, economic, and ethical systems.
People create systems that reflect cultural values. These systems reduce uncertainty for the culture, creating and perpetuating the rules and customs, but may prove a significant challenge to the entrepreneur entering a new market. Political, legal, economic, and ethical systems vary from culture to culture, and may or may not reflect formal boundaries. For example, disputes over who controls what part of their shoreline are common and are still a matter of debate, interpretation, and negotiation in many countries.
To a large extent, a country’s culture is composed of formal systems. Formal systems often direct, guide, constrain, or promote some behaviors over others. A legal system, like taxation, may favor the first-time homebuyer in the United States, and as a consequence, home ownership may be pursued instead of other investment strategies. That same legal system, via tariffs, may levy import taxes on specific goods and services, and reduce their demand as the cost increases. Each of these systems reinforces or discourages actions based on cultural norms, creating regulations that reflect ways that each culture, through its constituents, views the world.
In this section, we’ll examine intercultural communication from the standpoint of international communication. International communication can be defined as communication between nations, but we recognize that nations do not exist independent of people. International communication is typically government to government or, more accurately, governmental representatives to governmental representatives. It often involves topics and issues that relate to the nations as entities, broad issues of trade, and conflict resolution. People use political, legal, and economic systems to guide and regulate behavior, and diverse cultural viewpoints necessarily give rise to many variations. Ethical systems also guide behavior, but often in less formal, institutional ways. Together these areas form much of the basis of international communication, and warrant closer examination.
Political Systems
You may be familiar with democracy, or rule by the people; and theocracy, or rule of God by his or her designates; but the world presents a diverse range of how people are governed. It is also important to note, as we examine political systems, that they are created, maintained, and changed by people. Just as people change over time, so do all systems that humans create. A political climate that was once closed to market forces, including direct and indirect investment, may change over time.
Centuries ago, China built a physical wall to keep out invaders. In the twentieth century, it erected another kind of wall: a political wall that separated the country from the Western world and limited entrepreneurship due to its adherence to its interpretation of communism. In 2009, that closed market is now open for business. To what extent it is open may be a point of debate, but simple observation provides ample evidence of a country, and a culture, open to investment and trade. The opening and closing ceremonies for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing symbolized this openness, with symbolic representations of culture combined with notable emphasis on welcoming the world. As the nature of global trade and change transforms business, so it also transforms political systems.
Political systems are often framed in terms of how people are governed, and the extent to which they may participate. Democracy is one form of government that promotes the involvement of the individual, but even here we can observe stark differences. In the United States, people are encouraged to vote, but it is not mandatory, and voter turnout is often so low that voting minorities have great influence on the larger political systems. In Chile, voting is mandatory, so that all individuals are expected to participate, with adverse consequences if they do not. This doesn’t mean there are not still voting minorities or groups with disproportionate levels of influence and power, but it does underscore cultural values and their many representations.
Centralized rule of the people also comes in many forms. In a dictatorship, the dictator establishes and enforces the rules with few checks and balances, if any. In a totalitarian system, one party makes the rules. The Communist states of the twentieth century (although egalitarian in theory) were ruled in practice by a small central committee. In a theocracy, one religion makes the rules based on their primary documents or interpretation of them, and religious leaders hold positions of political power. In each case, political power is centralized to a small group over the many.
A third type of political system is anarchy, in which there is no government. A few places in the world, notably Somalia, may be said to exist in a state of anarchy. But even in a state of anarchy, the lack of a central government means that local warlords, elders, and others exercise a certain amount of political, military, and economic power. The lack of an established governing system itself creates the need for informal power structures that regulate behavior and conduct, set and promote ideals, and engage in commerce and trade, even if that engagement involves nonstandard strategies such as the appropriation of ships via piracy. In the absence of appointed or elected leaders, emergent leaders will rise as people attempt to meet their basic needs.
Legal Systems
Legal systems also vary across the planet and come in many forms. Some legal systems promote the rule of law while others promote the rule of culture, including customs, traditions, and religions. The two most common systems are civil and common law. Civil law draws from a Roman history and common law from an English tradition. In civil law the rules are spelled out in detail, and judges are responsible for applying the law to the given case. In common law, the judge interprets the law and considers the concept of precedent, or previous decisions. Common law naturally adapts to changes in technology and modern contexts as precedents accumulate, while civil law requires new rules to be written out to reflect the new context even as the context transforms and changes. Civil law is more predictable and is practiced in the majority of countries, while common law involves more interpretation that can produce conflict with multiple views on the application of the law in question. The third type of law draws its rules from a theological base rooted in religion. This system presents unique challenges to the outsider, and warrants thorough research.
Economic Systems
Economic systems vary in similar ways across cultures, and again reflect the norms and customs of people. Economies are often described on the relationship between people and their government. An economy with a high degree of government intervention may prove challenging for both internal and external businesses. An economy with relatively little government oversight may be said to reflect more of the market(s) and to be less restricted. Along these same lines, government may perceive its role as a representative of the common good, to protect individual consumers, and to prevent fraud and exploitation.
This continuum or range, from high to low degrees of government involvement, reflects the concept of government itself. A government may be designed to give everyone access to the market, with little supervision, in the hope that people will regulate transactions based on their own needs, wants, and desires; in essence, their own self-interest. If everyone operates in one’s self-interest and word gets out that one business produces a product that fails to work as advertised, it is often believed that the market will naturally gravitate away from this faulty product to a competing product that works properly. Individual consumers, however, may have a hard time knowing which product to have faith in and may look to government to provide that measure of safety.
Government certification of food, for example, attempts to reduce disease. Meat from unknown sources would lack the seal of certification, alerting the consumer to evaluate the product closely or choose another product. In terms of supervision, we can see an example of this when Japan restricts the sale of U.S. beef for fear of mad cow disease. The concern may be warranted from the consumer’s viewpoint, or it may be protectionist from a business standpoint, protecting the local producer over the importer.
From meat to financial products, we can see both the dangers and positive attributes of intervention and can also acknowledge that its application may be less than consistent. Some cultures that value the community may naturally look to their government for leadership in economic areas, while those that represent an individualistic tendency may take a more “hands off” approach.
Ethical Systems
Ethical systems, unlike political, legal, and economic systems, are generally not formally institutionalized. This does not imply, however, that they are less influential in interactions, trade, and commerce. Ethics refers to a set of norms and principles that relate to individual and group behavior, including businesses and organizations. They may be explicit, in the form of an organization’s code of conduct; may be represented in religion, as in the Ten Commandments; or may reflect cultural values in law. What is legal and what is ethical are at times quite distinct.
For example, the question of executive bonuses was hotly debated when several U.S. financial services companies accepted taxpayer money under the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) in 2008. It was legal for TARP recipient firms to pay bonuses—indeed, some lawyers argued that failing to pay promised bonuses would violate contract law—but many taxpayers believed it was unethical.
Some cultures have systems of respect and honor that require tribute and compensation for service, while others may view payment as a form of bribe. It may be legal in one country to make a donation or support a public official in order to gain influence over a decision, but it may be unethical. In some countries, it may be both illegal and unethical. Given the complexity of human values and their expression across behaviors, it is wise to research the legal and ethical norms of the place or community where you want to do business.
Global Village
International trade has advantages and disadvantages, again based on your viewpoint and cultural reference. If you come from a traditional culture, with strong gender norms and codes of conduct, you may not appreciate the importation of some Western television programs that promote what you consider to be content that contradicts your cultural values. You may also take the viewpoint from a basic perspective and assert that basic goods and services that can only be obtained through trade pose a security risk. If you cannot obtain the product or service, it may put you, your business, or your community at risk.
Furthermore, “just in time” delivery methods may produce shortages when the systems break down due to weather, transportation delays, or conflict. People come to know each other through interactions (and transactions are fundamental to global trade), but cultural viewpoints may come into conflict. Some cultures may want a traditional framework to continue and will promote their traditional cultural values and norms at the expense of innovation and trade. Other cultures may come to embrace diverse cultures and trade, only to find that they have welcomed some who wish to do harm. In a modern world, transactions have a cultural dynamic that cannot be ignored.
Intercultural communication and business have been related since the first exchange of value. People, even from the same community, had to arrive at a common understanding of value. Symbols, gestures, and even language reflect these values. Attention to this central concept will enable the skilled business communicator to look beyond his or her own viewpoint.
It was once the privilege of the wealthy to travel, and the merchant or explorer knew firsthand what many could only read about. Now we can take virtual tours of locations we may never travel to, and as the cost of travel decreases, we can increasingly see the world for ourselves. As global trade has developed, and time to market has decreased, the world has effectively grown smaller. While the size has not changed, our ability to navigate has been dramatically decreased. Time and distance are no longer the obstacles they once were. The Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan, a pioneer in the field of communication, predicted what we now know as the “global village.” The global village is characterized by information and transportation technologies that reduce the time and space required to interact (McLuhan, M., 1964).
Key Takeaway
People create political, legal, economic, and ethical systems to guide them in transacting business domestically and internationally.
Exercises
1. Choose one country you would like to visit and explore its political system. How is it different from the system in your country? What are the similarities? Share your findings with classmates.
2. Think of an ethical aspect of the economic crisis of 2008 that involved you or your family. For example, did you or a relative get laid off at work, have difficulty making mortgage or rent payments, change your spending habits, or make donations to help those less fortunate? Is there more than one interpretation of the ethics of the situation? Write a short essay about it and discuss it with your classmates.
3. Choose one country you would like to visit and explore its economic system, including type of currency and its current value in relation to the U.S. dollar. Share and compare your results with classmates. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Communication_for_Business_Success_(LibreTexts)/18%3A_Intercultural_and_International_Business_Communication/18.05%3A_International_Communication_and_the_Global_Marketplace.txt |
Learning Objectives
1. Understand and discuss how various styles of management, including Theory X, Y, and Z, influence workplace culture.
People and their relationships to dominant and subordinate roles are a reflection of culture and cultural viewpoint. They are communicated through experience and create expectations for how and when managers interact with employees. The three most commonly discussed management theories are often called X, Y, and Z. In this section we’ll briefly discuss them and their relationship to intercultural communication.
Theory X
In an influential book titled The Human Side of Enterprise, M. I. T. management professor Douglas McGregor described two contrasting perceptions on how and why people work, formulating Theory X and Theory Y; they are both based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (Maslow, A., 1954; Maslow, A., 1970). According to this model, people are concerned first with physical needs (e.g., food, shelter) and second with safety. At the third level, people seek love, acceptance, and intimacy. Self-esteem, achievement, and respect are the fourth level. Finally, the fifth level embodies self-actualization.
McGregor’s Theory X asserts that workers are motivated by their basic (low-level) needs and have a general disposition against labor. In this viewpoint, workers are considered lazy and predicted to avoid work if they can, giving rise to the perceived need for constant, direct supervision. A Theory X manager may be described as authoritarian or autocratic, and does not seek input or feedback from employees. The view further holds that workers are motivated by personal interest, avoid discomfort, and seek pleasure. The Theory X manager uses control and incentive programs to provide punishment and rewards. Responsibility is the domain of the manager, and the view is that employees will avoid it if at all possible to the extent that blame is always deflected or attributed to something other than personal responsibility. Lack of training, inferior machines, or failure to provide the necessary tools are all reasons to stop working, and it is up to the manager to fix these issues.
Theory Y
In contrast to Theory X, Theory Y views employees as ambitious, self-directed, and capable of self-motivation. Employees have a choice, and they prefer to do a good job as a representation of self-actualization. The pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain are part of being human, but work is also a reward in itself and employees take pride in their efforts. Employees want to reach their fullest potential and define themselves by their profession. A job well done is reward in and of itself, and the employee may be a valuable source of feedback. Collaboration is viewed as normal, and the worker may need little supervision.
Theory Z
Theory X and Y may seem like two extremes across the range of management styles, but in fact they are often combined in actual work settings. William Ouchi’s Theory Z combines elements of both, and draws from American and Japanese management style. It promotes worker participation and emphasizes job rotation, skills development, and loyalty to the company (Luthans, F., 1989). Workers are seen as having a high need for reinforcement, and belonging is emphasized. Theory Z workers are trusted to do their jobs with excellence and management is trusted to support them, looking out for their well-being (Massie J. and Douglas, J., 1992).
Each of these theories of management features a viewpoint with assumptions about people and why they do what they do. While each has been the subject of debate, and variations on each have been introduced across organizational communication and business, they serve as a foundation for understanding management in an intercultural context.
Key Takeaway
Management Theories X, Y, and Z are examples of distinct and divergent views on worker motivation, need for supervision, and the possibility of collaboration.
Exercises
1. Imagine that you are a manager in charge of approximately a dozen workers. Would you prefer to rely primarily on Theory X, Y, or Z as your management style? Why? Write a short essay defending your preference, giving some concrete examples of management decisions you would make. Discuss your essay with your classmates.
2. Describe your best boss and write a short analysis on what type of management style you perceive they used. Share and compare with classmates.
3. Describe your worst boss and write a short analysis on what type of management style you perceive they used. Share and compare with classmates. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Communication_for_Business_Success_(LibreTexts)/18%3A_Intercultural_and_International_Business_Communication/18.06%3A_Styles_of_Management.txt |
Learning Objectives
1. Describe how to prepare for an international assignment.
2. Discuss the acculturation process as an expatriate.
3. Describe effective strategies for living and working abroad.
Suppose you have the opportunity to work or study in a foreign country. You may find the prospect of an international assignment intriguing, challenging, or even frightening; indeed, most professionals employed abroad will tell you they pass through all three stages at some point during the assignment. They may also share their sense of adjustment, even embrace of their host culture, and the challenges of reintegration into their native country.
An international assignment, whether as a student or a career professional, requires work and preparation, and should be given the time and consideration of any major life change. When you lose a loved one, it takes time to come to terms with the loss. When someone you love is diagnosed with a serious illness, the news may take some time to sink in. When a new baby enters your family, a period of adjustment is predictable and prolonged. All these major life changes can stress an individual beyond their capacity to adjust. Similarly, in order to be a successful “expat,” or expatriate, one needs to prepare mentally and physically for the change.
International business assignments are a reflection of increased global trade, and as trade decreases, they may become an expensive luxury. As technology allows for instant face-to-face communication, and group collaboration on documents via cloud computing and storage, the need for physical travel may be reduced. But regardless of whether your assignment involves relocation abroad, supervision of managers in another country at a distance, or supervision by a foreign manager, you will need to learn more about the language, culture, and customs that are not your own. You will need to compare and contrast, and seek experiences that lend insight, in order to communicate more effectively.
An efficient, effective manager in any country is desirable, but one with international experience even more so. You will represent your company and they will represent you, including a considerable financial investment, either by your employer (in the case of a professional assignment) or by whoever is financing your education (in the case of studying abroad). That investment should not be taken lightly. As many as 40 percent of foreign-assigned employees terminate their assignments early (Tu, H. and Sullivan, S., 1994), at a considerable cost to their employers. Of those that remain, almost 50 percent are less than effective (Tu, H. and Sullivan, S., 1994).
Preparation
With this perspective in mind, let’s discuss how to prepare for the international assignment and strategies to make you a more effective professional as a stranger in a strange land. First we’ll dispel a couple of myths associated with an idealized or romantic view of living abroad. Next we’ll examine traits and skills of the successful expatriate. Finally, we’ll examine culture shock and the acculturation process.
Your experience with other cultures may have come firsthand, but for most, a foreign location like Paris is an idea formed from exposure to images via the mass media. Paris may be known for its art, as a place for lovers, or as a great place to buy bread. But if you have only ever known about a place through the lens of a camera, you have only seen the portraits designed and portrayed by others. You will lack the multidimensional view of one who lives and works in Paris, and even if you are aware of its history, its economic development, or its recent changes, these are all academic observations until the moment of experience.
That is not to say that research does not form a solid foundation in preparation for an international assignment, but it does reinforce the distinction between a media-fabricated ideal and real life. Awareness of this difference is an important step as you prepare yourself for life in a foreign culture.
If the decision is yours to make, take your time. If others are involved, and family is a consideration, you should take even more care with this important decision. Residence abroad requires some knowledge of the language, an ability to adapt, and an interest in learning about different cultures. If family members are not a part of the decision, or lack the language skills or interest, the assignment may prove overwhelming and lead to failure. Sixty-four percent of expatriate respondents who terminated their assignment early indicated that family concerns were the primary reason (Contreras, C. D., 2009).
Points to consider include the following:
• How flexible are you?
• Do you need everything spelled out or can you go with the flow?
• Can you adapt to new ways of doing business?
• Are you interested in the host culture and willing to dedicate the time and put forth the effort to learn more about it?
• What has been your experience to date working with people from distinct cultures?
• What are your language skills at present, and are you interested in learning a new language?
• Is your family supportive of the assignment?
• How will it affect your children’s education? Your spouse’s career? Your career?
• Will this assignment benefit your family?
• How long are you willing to commit to the assignment?
• What resources are available to help you prepare, move, and adjust?
• Can you stand being out of the loop, even if you are in daily written and oral communication with the home office?
• What is your relationship with your employer, and can it withstand the anticipated stress and tension that will result as not everything goes according to plan?
• Is the cultural framework of your assignment similar to—or unlike—your own, and how ready are you to adapt to differences in such areas as time horizon, masculinity versus femininity, or direct versus indirect styles of communication?
This list of questions could continue, and feel free to add your own as you explore the idea of an international assignment. An international assignment is not like a domestic move or reassignment. Within the same country, even if there are significantly different local customs in place, similar rules, laws, and ways of doing business are present. In a foreign country, you will lose those familiar traditions and institutions and have to learn many new ways of accomplishing your given tasks. What once took a five-minute phone call may now take a dozen meetings and a month to achieve, and that may cause you some frustration. It may also cause your employer frustration as you try to communicate how things are done locally, and why results are not immediate, as they lack even your limited understanding of your current context. Your relationship with your employer will experience stress, and your ability to communicate your situation will require tact and finesse.
Successful expatriates are adaptable, open to learning new languages, cultures, and skilled at finding common ground for communication. Rather than responding with frustration, they learn the new customs and find the advantage to get the job done. They form relationships and are not afraid to ask for help when it is warranted or required. They feel secure in their place as explorer, and understand that mistakes are a given, even as they are unpredictable. Being a stranger is no easy task, but they welcome the challenge with energy and enthusiasm.
Acculturation Process
Acculturation, or the transition to living abroad, is often described as an emotional rollercoaster. Steven Rhinesmith provides ten steps that show the process of acculturation, including culture shock, that you may experience:
1. Initial anxiety
2. Initial elation
3. Initial culture shock
4. Superficial adjustment
5. Depression-frustration
6. Acceptance of host culture
7. Return anxiety
8. Return elation
9. Reentry shock
10. Reintegration
Humans fear the unknown, and even if your tolerance for uncertainty is high, you may experience a degree of anxiety in anticipation of your arrival. At first the “honeymoon” period is observed, with a sense of elation at all the newfound wonders. You may adjust superficially at first, learning where to get familiar foods or new ways to meet your basic needs. As you live in the new culture, divergence will become a trend and you’ll notice many things that frustrate you. You won’t anticipate the need for two hours at a bank for a transaction that once took five minutes, or could be handled over the Internet, and find that businesses close during midday, preventing you from accomplishing your goals. At this stage, you will feel that living in this new culture is simply exhausting. Many expats advise that this is the time to tough it out—if you give in to the temptation to make a visit back home, you will only prolong your difficult adjustment.
Over time, if you persevere, you will come to accept and adjust to your host culture, and learn how to accomplish your goals with less frustration and ease. You may come to appreciate several cultural values or traits and come to embrace some aspects of your host culture. At some point, you will need to return to your first, or home, culture, but that transition will bring a sense of anxiety. People and places change, the familiar is no longer so familiar, and you too have changed. You may once again be elated at your return and the familiar, and experience a sense of comfort in home and family, but culture shock may again be part of your adjustment. You may look at your home culture in a new way and question things that are done in a particular way that you have always considered normal. You may hold onto some of the cultural traits you adopted while living abroad, and begin the process of reintegration.
You may also begin to feel that the “grass is greener” in your host country, and long to return. Expatriates are often noted for “going native,” or adopting the host culture’s way of life, but even the most confirmed expats still gather to hear the familiar sound of their first language, and find community in people like themselves who have blended cultural boundaries on a personal level.
Living and Working Abroad
In order to learn to swim you have to get in the water, and all the research and preparation cannot take the place of direct experience. Your awareness of culture shock may help you adjust, and your preparation by learning some of the language will assist you, but know that living and working abroad take time and effort. Still, there are several guidelines that can serve you well as you start your new life in a strange land:
1. Be open and creative. People will eat foods that seem strange or do things in a new way, and your openness and creativity can play a positive role in your adjustment. Staying close to your living quarters or surrounding yourself with similar expats can limit your exposure to and understanding of the local cultures. While the familiar may be comfortable, and the new setting may be uncomfortable, you will learn much more about your host culture and yourself if you make the effort to be open to new experiences. Being open involves getting out of your comfort zone.
2. Be self-reliant. Things that were once easy or took little time may now be challenging or consume your whole day. Focus on your ability to resolve issues, learn new ways to get the job done, and be prepared to do new things.
3. Keep a balanced perspective. Your host culture isn’t perfect. Humans aren’t perfect, and neither was your home culture. Each location and cultural community has strengths you can learn from if you are open to them.
4. Be patient. Take your time, and know a silent period is normal. The textbook language classes only provide a base from which you will learn how people who live in the host country actually communicate. You didn’t learn to walk in a day and won’t learn to successfully navigate this culture overnight either.
5. Be a student and a teacher. You are learning as the new member of the community, but as a full member of your culture, you can share your experiences as well.
6. Be an explorer. Get out and go beyond your boundaries when you feel safe and secure. Traveling to surrounding villages, or across neighboring borders, can expand your perspective and help you learn.
7. Protect yourself. Always keep all your essential documents, money, and medicines close to you, or where you know they will be safe. Trying to source a medicine in a country where you are not fluent in the language, or where the names of remedies are different, can be a challenge. Your passport is essential to your safety and you need to keep it safe. You may also consider vaccination records, birth certificates, or business documents in the same way, keeping them safe and accessible. You may want to consider a “bug-out bag,” with all the essentials you need, including food, water, keys, and small tools, as an essential part of planning in case of emergency.
Key Takeaways
Preparation is key to a successful international assignment. Living and working abroad takes time, effort, and patience.
Exercises
1. Research one organization in a business or industry that relates to your major and has an international presence. Find a job announcement or similar document that discusses the business and its international activities. Share and compare with classmates.
2. Conduct a search on expat networks including online forum. Briefly describe your findings and share with classmates.
3. What would be the hardest part of an overseas assignment for you and why? What would be the easiest part of an overseas assignment for you and why?
4. Find an advertisement for an international assignment. Note the qualifications, and share with classmates.
5. Find an article or other first-person account of someone’s experience on an international assignment. Share your results with your classmates.
18.08: Additional Resources
Visit the Web site of culture scholar Edward T. Hall. www.edwardthall.com/index.html
Learn about intercultural awareness in the classroom by reading this article by Mark Pedelty — Pedelty, M. (2001). Self as Other: An Intercultural Performance Exercise. Multicultural Education, 8, 29-32.
Visit these sites to explore the history and traditions of some famous American businesses. http://corporate.ford.com/company/history.html; www.aboutmcdonalds.com/content/mcd/our_company/mcdonalds-history.html
Learn more about Geert Hofstede’s research on culture by exploring his Web site. http://geert-hofstede.com/
Read advice from the U.S. Department of State on living abroad http://travel.state.gov/
Visit ExpatExchange: A World of Friends Abroad to learn about the opportunities, experiences, and emotions of people living and working in foreign countries and cultures worldwide. http://www.expatexchange.com/newsarchiveall.cfm | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Communication_for_Business_Success_(LibreTexts)/18%3A_Intercultural_and_International_Business_Communication/18.07%3A_The_International_Assignment.txt |
• 19.1: What is a Group?
Forming groups fulfills many human needs, such as the need for affiliation, affection, and control; individuals also need to cooperate in groups to fulfill basic survival needs. We form self-identities through our communication with others, and much of that interaction occurs in a group context. A group may be defined as three or more individuals who affiliate, interact, or cooperate in a familial, social, or work context.
• 19.2: Group Life Cycles and Member Roles
Groups are dynamic systems in constant change. Groups grow together and eventually come apart. People join groups and others leave. This dynamic changes and transforms the very nature of the group. Group socialization involves how the group members interact with one another and form relationships. Just as you were once born and changed your family, they changed you. You came to know a language and culture, a value system, and set of beliefs that influence you to this day.
• 19.3: Group Problem Solving
No matter who you are or where you live, problems are an inevitable part of life. This is true for groups as well as for individuals. Some groups—especially work teams—are formed specifically to solve problems. Other groups encounter problems for a wide variety of reasons. Group problem solving can be an orderly process when it is broken down into seven specific stages.
• 19.4: Business and Professional Meetings
Business and professional meetings are a part of the communication climate of any business. Some view meetings as boring, pointless, and futile exercises, while others see them as opportunities to exchange information and produce results.
• 19.5: Teamwork and Leadership
Two important aspects of group communication—especially in the business environment—are teamwork and leadership. You will work in a team and at some point may be called on to lead. You may emerge to that role as the group recognizes your specific skill set in relation to the task, or you may be appointed to a position of responsibility for yourself and others. Your communication skills will be your foundation for success as a member and as a leader.
• 19.6: Additional Resources
Thumbnail: pixabay.com/photos/men-emplo...eting-1979261/
19: Group Communication Teamwork and Leadership
Learning Objectives
1. Define groups and teams.
2. Discuss how primary and secondary groups meet our interpersonal needs.
3. Discuss how groups tend to limit their own size and create group norms.
Let’s get into a time machine and travel way, way back to join early humans in prehistoric times. Their needs are like ours today: they cannot exist or thrive without air, food, and water—and a sense of belonging. How did they meet these needs? Through cooperation and competition. If food scarcity was an issue, who got more and who got less? This serves as our first introduction to roles, status and power, and hierarchy within a group. When food scarcity becomes an issue, who gets to keep their spoon? In some Latin American cultures, having a job or earning a living is referred to by the slang term cuchara, which literally means “spoon” and figuratively implies food, safety, and security.
Now let’s return to the present and enter a modern office. Cubicles define territories and corner offices denote status. In times of economic recession or slumping sales for the company, there is a greater need for cooperation, and there is competition for scarce resources. The loss of a “spoon”—or of one’s cubicle—may now come in the form of a pink slip, but it is no less devastating.
We form self-identities through our communication with others, and much of that interaction occurs in a group context. A group may be defined as three or more individuals who affiliate, interact, or cooperate in a familial, social, or work context. Group communication may be defined as the exchange of information with those who are alike culturally, linguistically, and/or geographically. Group members may be known by their symbols, such as patches and insignia on a military uniform. They may be known by their use of specialized language or jargon; for example, someone in information technology may use the term “server” in reference to the Internet, whereas someone in the food service industry may use “server” to refer to the worker who takes customer orders in a restaurant. Group members may also be known by their proximity, as in gated communities. Regardless of how the group defines itself, and regardless of the extent to which its borders are porous or permeable, a group recognizes itself as a group. Humans naturally make groups a part of their context or environment.
Types of Groups in the Workplace
As a skilled business communicator, learning more about groups, group dynamics, management, and leadership will serve you well. Mergers, forced sales, downsizing, and entering new markets all call upon individuals within a business or organization to become members of groups. In the second of the Note 19.1 “Introductory Exercises” for this chapter, you were asked to list the professional (i.e., work-related) groups you interact with in order of frequency. What did your list include? Perhaps you noted your immediate coworkers, your supervisor and other leaders in your work situation, members of other departments with whom you communicate, and the colleagues who are also your personal friends during off-work times. Groups may be defined by function. They can also be defined, from a developmental viewpoint, by the relationships within them. Groups can also be discussed in terms of their relationship to the individual and the degree to which they meet interpersonal needs.
Some groups may be assembled at work to solve problems, and once the challenge has been resolved, they dissolve into previous or yet to be determined groups. Functional groups like this may be immediately familiar to you. You take a class in sociology from a professor of sociology, who is a member of the discipline of sociology. To be a member of a discipline is to be a disciple, and adhere to a common framework to for viewing the world. Disciplines involve a common set of theories that explain the world around us, terms to explain those theories, and have grown to reflect the advance of human knowledge. Compared to your sociology instructor, your physics instructor may see the world from a completely different perspective. Still, both may be members of divisions or schools, dedicated to teaching or research, and come together under the large group heading we know as the university.
In business, we may have marketing experts who are members of the marketing department, who perceive their tasks differently from a member of the sales staff or someone in accounting. You may work in the mailroom, and the mailroom staff is a group in itself, both distinct from and interconnected with the larger organization.
Relationships are part of any group, and can be described in terms of status, power, control, as well as role, function, or viewpoint. Within a family, for example, the ties that bind you together may be common experiences, collaborative efforts, and even pain and suffering. The birth process may forge a relationship between mother and daughter, but it also may not. An adoption may transform a family. Relationships are formed through communication interaction across time, and often share a common history, values, and beliefs about the world around us.
In business, an idea may bring professionals together and they may even refer to the new product or service as their “baby,” speaking in reverent tones about a project they have taken from the drawing board and “birthed” into the real world. As in family communication, work groups or teams may have challenges, rivalries, and even “birthing pains” as a product is developed, adjusted, adapted, and transformed. Struggles are a part of relationships, both in families and business, and form a common history of shared challenged overcome through effort and hard work.
Through conversations and a shared sense that you and your coworkers belong together, you meet many of your basic human needs, such as the need to feel included, the need for affection, and the need for control (Schutz, W., 1966). In a work context, “affection” may sound odd, but we all experience affection at work in the form of friendly comments like “good morning,” “have a nice weekend,” and “good job!” Our professional lives also fulfill more than just our basic needs (i.e., air, food, and water, as well as safety). While your work group may be gathered together with common goals, such as to deliver the mail in a timely fashion to the corresponding departments and individuals, your daily interactions may well go beyond this functional perspective.
In the same way, your family may provide a place for you at the table and meet your basic needs, but they also may not meet other needs. If you grow to understand yourself and your place in a way that challenges group norms, you will be able to choose which parts of your life to share and to withhold in different groups, and to choose where to seek acceptance, affection, and control.
Primary and Secondary Groups
There are fundamentally two types of groups that can be observed in many contexts, from church to school, family to work. These two types are primary and secondary groups. The hierarchy denotes the degree to which the group(s) meet your interpersonal needs. Primary groups meet most, if not all, of one’s needs. Groups that meet some, but not all, needs are called secondary groups. Secondary groups often include work groups, where the goal is to complete a task or solve a problem. If you are a member of the sales department, your purpose is to sell.
In terms of problem solving, work groups can accomplish more than individuals can. People, each of whom have specialized skills, talents, experience, or education come together in new combinations with new challenges, find new perspectives to create unique approaches that they themselves would not have formulated alone.
Secondary groups may meet your need for professional acceptance and celebrate your success, but they may not meet your need for understanding and sharing on a personal level. Family members may understand you in ways that your coworkers cannot, and vice versa.
If Two’s Company and Three’s a Crowd, What Is a Group?
This old cliché refers to the human tendency to form pairs. Pairing is the most basic form of relationship formation; it applies to childhood best friends, college roommates, romantic couples, business partners, and many other dyads (two-person relationships). A group, by definition, includes at least three people. We can categorize groups in terms of their size and complexity.
When we discuss demographic groups as part of a market study, we may focus on large numbers of individuals that share common characteristics. If you are the producer of an ecologically innovative car such as the Smart ForTwo, and know your customers have an average of four members in their family, you may discuss developing a new model with additional seats. While the target audience is a group, car customers don’t relate to each other as a unified whole. Even if they form car clubs and have regional gatherings, a newsletter, and competitions at their local race tracks each year, they still subdivide the overall community of car owners into smaller groups.
The larger the group grows, the more likely it is to subdivide. Analysis of these smaller, or microgroups, is increasingly a point of study as the Internet allows individuals to join people of similar mind or habit to share virtually anything across time and distance. A microgroup is a small, independent group that has a link, affiliation, or association with a larger group. With each additional group member the number of possible interactions increases (Harris, T., and Sherblom, J., 1999; McLean, S., 2003).
Small groups normally contain between three and eight people. One person may involve intrapersonal communication, while two may constitute interpersonal communication, and both may be present within a group communication context. You may think to yourself before making a speech or writing your next post, and you may turn to your neighbor or coworker and have a side conversation, but a group relationship normally involves three to eight people, and the potential for distraction is great.
In Table \(1\), you can quickly see how the number of possible interactions grows according to how many people are in the group. At some point, we all find the possible and actual interactions overwhelming and subdivide into smaller groups. For example, you may have hundreds of friends on MySpace or Facebook, but how many of them do you regularly communicate with? You may be tempted to provide a number greater than eight, but if you exclude the “all to one” messages, such as a general tweet to everyone (but no one person in particular), you’ll find the group norms will appear.
Table \(1\) Possible Interaction in Groups
Number of Group Members 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Number of Possible Interactions 2 9 28 75 186 441 1,056
Group norms are customs, standards, and behavioral expectations that emerge as a group forms. If you post an update every day on your Facebook page and your friends stop by to post on your wall and comment, not posting for a week will violate a group norm. They will wonder if you are sick or in the hospital where you have no access to a computer to keep them updated. If, however, you only post once a week, the group will come to naturally expect your customary post. Norms involve expectations that are self and group imposed and that often arise as groups form and develop.
If there are more than eight members, it becomes a challenge to have equal participation, where everyone has a chance to speak, listen, and respond. Some will dominate, others will recede, and smaller groups will form. Finding a natural balance within a group can also be a challenge. Small groups need to have enough members to generate a rich and stimulating exchange of ideas, information, and interaction, but not so many people that what each brings cannot be shared (Galanes, G., Adams, K., and Brilhart, J., 2000).
Key Takeaway
Forming groups fulfills many human needs, such as the need for affiliation, affection, and control; individuals also need to cooperate in groups to fulfill basic survival needs.
Exercises
1. Think of the online groups you participate in. Forums may have hundreds or thousands of members, and you may have hundreds of friends on MySpace or Facebook, but how many do you regularly communicate with? Exclude the “all-to-one” messages, such as a general tweet to everyone (but no one person in particular). Do you find that you gravitate toward the group norm of eight or fewer group members? Discuss your answer with your classmates.
2. What are some of the primary groups in your life? How do they compare with the secondary groups in your life? Write a two- to three-paragraph description of these groups and compare it with a classmate’s description.
3. What group is most important to people? Create a survey with at least two questions, identify a target sample size, and conduct your survey. Report how you completed the activity and your findings. Compare the results with those of your classmates.
4. Are there times when it is better to work alone rather than in a group? Why or why not? Discuss your opinion with a classmate. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Communication_for_Business_Success_(LibreTexts)/19%3A_Group_Communication_Teamwork_and_Leadership/19.01%3A_What_is_a_Group.txt |
Learning Objectives
1. Identify the typical stages in the life cycle of a group.
2. Describe different types of group members and group member roles.
Groups are dynamic systems in constant change. Groups grow together and eventually come apart. People join groups and others leave. This dynamic changes and transforms the very nature of the group. Group socialization involves how the group members interact with one another and form relationships. Just as you were once born and changed your family, they changed you. You came to know a language and culture, a value system, and set of beliefs that influence you to this day. You came to be socialized, to experience the process of learning to associate, communicate, or interact within a group. A group you belong to this year—perhaps a soccer team or the cast of a play—may not be part of your life next year. And those who are in leadership positions may ascend or descend the leadership hierarchy as the needs of the group, and other circumstances, change over time.
Group Life Cycle Patterns
Your life cycle is characterized with several steps, and while it doesn’t follow a prescribed path, there are universal stages we can all recognize. You were born. You didn’t choose your birth, your parents, your language, or your culture, but you came to know them through communication. You came to know yourself, learned skills, discovered talents, and met other people. You learned, worked, lived, and loved, and as you aged, minor injuries took longer to heal. You competed in ever-increasing age groups in your favorite sport, and while your time for each performance may have increased as you aged, your experience allowed you to excel in other ways. Where you were once a novice, you have now learned something to share. You lived to see some of your friends pass before you, and the moment will arrive when you too must confront death.
In the same way, groups experience similar steps and stages and take on many of the characteristics we associate with life (Moreland, R. and Levine, J., 1982). They grow, overcome illness and dysfunction, and transform across time. No group, just as no individual, lives forever.
Your first day on the job may be comparable to the first day you went to school. At home, you may have learned some of the basics, like how to write with a pencil, but knowledge of that skill and its application are two different things. In school, people spoke and acted in different ways than at home. Gradually, you came to understand the meaning of recess, the importance of raising your hand to get the teacher’s attention, and how to follow other school rules. At work, you may have had academic training for your profession, but the knowledge you learned in school only serves as your foundation—much as your socialization at home served to guide you at school. On the job they use jargon terms, have schedules that may include coffee breaks (recess), have a supervisor (teacher), and have rules, explicit and understood. On the first day, it was all new, even if many of the elements were familiar.
In order to better understand group development and its life cycle, many researchers have described the universal stages and phases of groups. While there are modern interpretations of these stages, most draw from the model proposed by Bruce Tuckman. This model, shown in Table \(1\), specifies the usual order of the phases of group development, and allows us to predict several stages we can anticipate as we join a new group.
Table \(1\): Tuckman’s Linear Model of Group Development
Stages Activities
Forming Members come together, learn about each other, and determine the purpose of the group.
Storming Members engage in more direct communication and get to know each other. Conflicts between group members will often arise during this stage.
Norming Members establish spoken or unspoken rules about how they communicate and work. Status, rank, and roles in the group are established.
Performing Members fulfill their purpose and reach their goal.
Adjourning Members leave the group.
Tuckman begins with the forming stage as the initiation of group formation. This stage is also called the orientation stage because individual group members come to know each other. Group members who are new to each other and can’t predict each other’s behavior can be expected to experience the stress of uncertainty. Uncertainty theory states that we choose to know more about others with whom we have interactions in order to reduce or resolve the anxiety associated with the unknown (Berger, C. and Calabrese, R., 1975; Berger, C., 1986; Gudykunst, W., 1995). The more we know about others and become accustomed to how they communicate, the better we can predict how they will interact with us in future contexts. If you learn that Monday mornings are never a good time for your supervisor, you quickly learn to schedule meetings later in the week. Individuals are initially tentative and display caution as they begin to learn about the group and its members.
If you don’t know someone very well, it is easy to offend. Each group member brings to the group a set of experiences, combined with education and a self-concept. You won’t be able to read this information on a nametag, but instead you will only come to know it through time and interaction. Since the possibility of overlapping and competing viewpoints and perspectives exists, the group will experience a storming stage, a time of struggles as the members themselves sort out their differences. There may be more than one way to solve the problem or task at hand, and some group members may prefer one strategy over another. Some members of the group may be more senior to the organization than you, and members may treat them differently. Some group members may be as new as you are and just as uncertain about everyone’s talents, skills, roles, and self-perceptions. The wise business communicator will anticipate the storming stage and help facilitate opportunities for the members to resolve uncertainty before the work commences. There may be challenges for leadership, and conflicting viewpoints. The sociology professor sees the world differently than the physics professor. The sales agent sees things differently than someone from accounting. A manager who understands and anticipates this normal challenge in the group’s life cycle can help the group become more productive.
A clear definition of the purpose and mission of the group can help the members focus their energies. Interaction prior to the first meeting can help reduce uncertainty. Coffee and calories can help bring a group together. Providing the group with what they need and opportunities to know each other prior to their task can increase efficiency.
Groups that make a successful transition from the storming stage will next experience the norming stage, where the group establishes norms, or informal rules, for behavior and interaction. Who speaks first? Who takes notes? Who is creative, who is visual, and who is detail-oriented? Sometimes our job titles and functions speak for themselves, but human beings are complex. We are not simply a list of job functions, and in the dynamic marketplace of today’s business environment you will often find that people have talents and skills well beyond their “official” role or task. Drawing on these strengths can make the group more effective.
The norming stage is marked by less division and more collaboration. The level of anxiety associated with interaction is generally reduced, making for a more positive work climate that promotes listening. When people feel less threatened and their needs are met, they are more likely to focus their complete attention on the purpose of the group. If they are still concerned with who does what, and whether they will speak in error, the interaction framework will stay in the storming stage. Tensions are reduced when the normative expectations are known, and the degree to which a manager can describe these at the outset can reduce the amount of time the group remains in uncertainty. Group members generally express more satisfaction with clear expectations and are more inclined to participate.
Ultimately, the purpose of a work group is performance, and the preceding stages lead us to the performing stage, in which the group accomplishes its mandate, fulfills its purpose, and reaches its goals. To facilitate performance, group members can’t skip the initiation of getting to know each other or the sorting out of roles and norms, but they can try to focus on performance with clear expectations from the moment the group is formed. Productivity is often how we measure success in business and industry, and the group has to produce. Outcome assessments may have been built into the system from the beginning to serve as a benchmark for success. Wise managers know how to celebrate success, as it brings more success, social cohesion, group participation, and a sense of job satisfaction. Incremental gains toward a benchmark may also be cause for celebration and support, and failure to reach a goal should be regarded as an opportunity for clarification.
It is generally wiser to focus on the performance of the group rather than individual contributions. Managers and group members will want to offer assistance to underperformers as well as congratulate members for their contributions. If the goal is to create a community where competition pushes each member to perform, individual highlights may serve your needs, but if you want a group to solve a problem or address a challenge as a group, you have to promote group cohesion. Members need to feel a sense of belonging, and praise (or the lack thereof) can be a sword with two edges: one stimulates and motivates while the other demoralizes and divides.
Groups should be designed to produce and perform in ways and at levels that individuals cannot, or else you should consider compartmentalizing the tasks. The performing stage is where the productivity occurs, and it is necessary to make sure the group has what it needs to perform. Missing pieces, parts, or information can stall the group, and reset the cycle to storming all over again. Loss of performance is inefficiency, which carries a cost. Managers will be measured by the group’s productivity and performance. Make sure the performing stage is one that is productive and healthy for its members.
Imagine that you are the manager of a group that has produced an award-winning design for an ecologically innovative four-seat car. Their success is your success. Their celebrations are yours even if the success is not focused on you. A manager manages the process while group members perform. If you were a member of the group that helped design the belt line, you made a fundamental contribution to the style of the car. Individual consumers may never consider the line from the front fender, across the doors, to the rear taillight as they make a purchase decision, but they will recognize beauty. You will know that you could not have achieved that fundamental part of car design without help from the engineers in the group, and if the number-crunching accountants had not seen the efficiency of the production process that produced it, it may never have survived the transition from prototype to production. The group came together and accomplished its goals with amazing results.
Now, as typically happens, all groups will eventually have to move on to new assignments. In the adjourning stage, members leave the group. The group may cease to exist or it may be transformed with new members and a new set of goals. Your contributions in the past may have caught the attention of the management, and you may be assigned to redesign the flagship vehicle, the halo car of your marque or brand. It’s quite a professional honor, and it’s yours because of your successful work in a group. Others will be reassigned to tasks that require their talents and skills, and you may or may not collaborate with them in the future.
You may miss the interactions with the members, even the more cantankerous ones, and will experience both relief and a sense of loss. Like life, the group process is normal, and mixed emotions are to be expected. A wise manager anticipates this stage and facilitates the separation with skill and ease. We often close this process with a ritual marking its passing, though the ritual may be as formal as an award or as informal as a “thank you” or a verbal acknowledgement of a job well done over coffee and calories.
On a more sober note, it is important not to forget that groups can reach the adjourning stage without having achieved success. Some businesses go bankrupt, some departments are closed, and some individuals lose their positions after a group fails to perform. Adjournment can come suddenly and unexpectedly, or gradually and piece by piece. Either way, a skilled business communicator will be prepared and recognize it as part of the classic group life cycle.
Life Cycle of Member Roles
Just as groups go through a life cycle when they form and eventually adjourn, so the group members fulfill different roles during this life cycle. These roles, proposed by Richard Moreland and John Levine, are summarized in Table \(2\).
Table \(2\): Life Cycle of Member Roles
1. Potential Member Curiosity and interest
2. New Member Joined the group but still an outsider, and unknown
3. Full Member Knows the “rules” and is looked to for leadership
4. Divergent Member Focuses on differences
5. Marginal member No longer involved
6. Ex-Member No longer considered a member
Suppose you are about to graduate from school and you are in the midst of an employment search. You’ve gathered extensive information on a couple of local businesses and are aware that they will be participating in the university job fair. You’ve explored their Web sites, talked to people currently employed at each company, and learned what you can from the public information available. At this stage, you are considered a potential member. You may have an electrical, chemical, or mechanical engineering degree soon, but you are not a member of an engineering team.
You show up at the job fair in professional attire and completely prepared. The representatives of each company are respectful, cordial, and give you contact information. One of them even calls a member of the organization on the spot and arranges an interview for you next week. You are excited at the prospect and want to learn more. You are still a potential member.
The interview goes well the following week. The day after the meeting, you receive a call for a follow-up interview that leads to a committee interview. A few weeks later, the company calls you with a job offer. However, in the meantime, you have also been interviewing with other potential employers, and you are waiting to hear back from two of them. You are still a potential member.
After careful consideration, you decide to take the job offer and start the next week. The projects look interesting, you’ll be gaining valuable experience, and the commute to work is reasonable. Your first day on the job is positive, and they’ve assigned you a mentor. The conversations are positive, but you feel lost at times, as if they are speaking a language you can’t quite grasp. As a new group member, your level of acceptance will increase as you begin learning the groups’ rules, spoken and unspoken (Fisher, B. A., 1970). You will gradually move from the potential member role to the role of new group member as you learn to fit into the group.
Over time and projects, you gradually increase your responsibilities. You are no longer looked at as the new person, and you can follow almost every conversation. You can’t quite say, “I remember when” because your tenure hasn’t been that long, but you are a known quantity and know your way around. You are a full member of the group. Full members enjoy knowing the rules and customs, and can even create new rules. New group members look to full members for leadership and guidance. Full group members can control the agenda and have considerable influence on the agenda and activities.
Full members of a group, however, can and do come into conflict. When you were a new member, you may have remained silent when you felt you had something to say, but now you state your case. There is more than one way to get the job done. You may suggest new ways that emphasize efficiency over existing methods. Coworkers who have been working in the department for several years may be unwilling to adapt and change, resulting in tension. Expressing different views can cause conflict and may even interfere with communication.
When this type of tension arises, divergent group members pull back, contribute less, and start to see themselves as separate from the group. Divergent group members have less eye contact, seek out each other’s opinion less frequently, and listen defensively. In the beginning of the process, you felt a sense of belonging, but now you don’t. Marginal group members start to look outside the group for their interpersonal needs.
After several months of trying to cope with these adjustments, you decide that you never really investigated the other two companies; that your job search process was incomplete. Perhaps you should take a second look at the options. You will report to work on Monday, but will start the process of becoming an ex-member, one who no longer belongs. You may experience a sense of relief upon making this decision, given that you haven’t felt like you belonged to the group for awhile. When you line up your next job and submit your resignation, you make it official.
This process has no set timetable. Some people overcome differences and stay in the group for years; others get promoted and leave the group only when they get transferred to regional headquarters. As a skilled business communicator, you will recognize the signs of divergence, just as you have anticipated the storming stage, and do your best to facilitate success.
Positive and Negative Member Roles
If someone in your group always makes everyone laugh, that can be a distinct asset when the news is less than positive. At times when you have to get work done, however, the class clown may become a distraction. Notions of positive and negative will often depend on the context when discussing groups. Table \(3\) (Beene, K. and Sheats, P., 1948; McLean, S., 2005) and Table \(4\) (Beene, K. and Sheats, P., 1948; McLean, s., 2005) list both positive and negative roles people sometimes play in a group setting (Beene, K. and Sheats, P., 1948; McLean, S., 2005).
Table \(3\): Positive Roles
Initiator-Coordinator Suggests new ideas or new ways of looking at the problem
Elaborator Builds on ideas and provides examples
Coordinator Brings ideas, information, and suggestions together
Evaluator-Critic Evaluates ideas and provides constructive criticism
Recorder Records ideas, examples, suggestions, and critiques
Table \(4\): Negative Roles
Dominator Dominates discussion, not allowing others to take their turn
Recognition Seeker Relates discussion to their accomplishments; seeks attention
Special-Interest Pleader Relates discussion to special interest or personal agenda
Blocker Blocks attempts at consensus consistently
Joker or Clown Seeks attention through humor and distracts group members
Now that we’ve examined a classical view of positive and negative group member roles, let’s examine another perspective. While some personality traits and behaviors may negatively influence groups, some are positive or negative depending on the context.
Just as the class clown can have a positive effect in lifting spirits or a negative effect in distracting members, a dominator may be exactly what is needed for quick action. An emergency physician doesn’t have time to ask all the group members in the emergency unit how they feel about a course of action; instead, a self-directed approach based on training and experience may be necessary. In contrast, the pastor of a church may have ample opportunity to ask members of the congregation their opinions about a change in the format of Sunday services; in this situation, the role of coordinator or elaborator is more appropriate than that of dominator.
The group is together because they have a purpose or goal, and normally they are capable of more than any one individual member could be on their own, so it would be inefficient to hinder that progress. But a blocker, who cuts off collaboration, does just that. If a group member interrupts another and presents a viewpoint or information that suggests a different course of action, the point may be well taken and serve the collaborative process. But if that same group member repeatedly engages in blocking behavior, then the behavior becomes a problem. A skilled business communicator will learn to recognize the difference, even when positive and negative aren’t completely clear.
Key Takeaway
Groups and their individual members come together and grow apart in predictable patterns.
Exercises
1. Is it possible for an outsider (a nongroup member) to help a group move from the storming stage to the norming stage? Explain your answer and present it to the class.
2. Think of a group of which you are a member and identify some roles played by group members, including yourself. Have your roles, and those of others, changed over time? Are some roles more positive than others? Discuss your answers with your classmates.
3. In the course where you are using this book, think of yourself and your classmates as a group. At what stage of group formation are you currently? What stage will you be at when the school year ends?
4. Think of a group you no longer belong to. At what point did you become an ex-member? Were you ever a marginal group member or a full member? Write a two- to three-paragraph description of the group, how and why you became a member, and how and why you left. Share your description with a classmate. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Communication_for_Business_Success_(LibreTexts)/19%3A_Group_Communication_Teamwork_and_Leadership/19.02%3A_Group_Life_Cycles_and_Member_Roles.txt |
Learning Objectives
1. Identify and describe how to implement seven steps for group problem solving.
No matter who you are or where you live, problems are an inevitable part of life. This is true for groups as well as for individuals. Some groups—especially work teams—are formed specifically to solve problems. Other groups encounter problems for a wide variety of reasons. Within a family group, a problem might be that a daughter or son wants to get married and the parents do not approve of the marriage partner. In a work group, a problem might be that some workers are putting in more effort than others, yet achieving poorer results. Regardless of the problem, having the resources of a group can be an advantage, as different people can contribute different ideas for how to reach a satisfactory solution.
Once a group encounters a problem, the questions that come up range from “Where do we start?” to “How do we solve it?” While there are many ways to approach a problem, the American educational philosopher John Dewey’s reflective thinking sequence has stood the test of time. This seven-step process (Adler, R., 1996) has produced positive results and serves as a handy organizational structure. If you are member of a group that needs to solve a problem and don’t know where to start, consider these seven simple steps:
1. Define the problem
2. Analyze the problem
3. Establish criteria
4. Consider possible solutions
5. Decide on a solution
6. Implement the solution
7. Follow up on the solution
Let’s discuss each step in detail.
Define the Problem
If you don’t know what the problem is, how do you know you can solve it? Defining the problem allows the group to set boundaries of what the problem is and what it is not and to begin to formalize a description or definition of the scope, size, or extent of the challenge the group will address. A problem that is too broadly defined can overwhelm the group. If the problem is too narrowly defined, important information will be missed or ignored.
In the following example, we have a Web-based company called Favorites that needs to increase its customer base and ultimately sales. A problem-solving group has been formed, and they start by formulating a working definition of the problem.
Too broad: “Sales are off, our numbers are down, and we need more customers.”
More precise: “Sales have been slipping incrementally for six of the past nine months and are significantly lower than a seasonally adjusted comparison to last year. Overall, this loss represents a 4.5 percent reduction in sales from the same time last year. However, when we break it down by product category, sales of our nonedible products have seen a modest but steady increase, while sales of edibles account for the drop off and we need to halt the decline.”
Analyze the Problem
Now the group analyzes the problem, trying to gather information and learn more. The problem is complex and requires more than one area of expertise. Why do nonedible products continue selling well? What is it about the edibles that is turning customers off? Let’s meet our problem solvers at Favorites.
Kevin is responsible for customer resource management. He is involved with the customer from the point of initial contact through purchase and delivery. Most of the interface is automated in the form of an online “basket model,” where photographs and product descriptions are accompanied by “buy it” buttons. He is available during normal working business hours for live chat and voice chat if needed, and customers are invited to request additional information. Most Favorites customers do not access this service, but Kevin is kept quite busy, as he also handles returns and complaints. Because Kevin believes that superior service retains customers while attracting new ones, he is always interested in better ways to serve the customer. Looking at edibles and nonedibles, he will study the cycle of customer service and see if there are any common points—from the main Web page, through the catalog, to the purchase process, and to returns—at which customers abandon the sale. He has existing customer feedback loops with end-of-sale surveys, but most customers decline to take the survey and there is currently no incentive to participate.
Mariah is responsible for products and purchasing. She wants to offer the best products at the lowest price, and to offer new products that are unusual, rare, or exotic. She regularly adds new products to the Favorites catalog and culls underperformers. Right now she has the data on every product and its sales history, but it is a challenge to represent it. She will analyze current sales data and produce a report that specifically identifies how each product—edible and nonedible—is performing. She wants to highlight “winners” and “losers” but also recognizes that today’s “losers” may be the hit of tomorrow. It is hard to predict constantly changing tastes and preferences, but that is part of her job. It’s not all science, and it’s not all art. She has to have an eye for what will catch on tomorrow while continuing to provide what is hot today.
Suri is responsible for data management at Favorites. She gathers, analyzes, and presents information gathered from the supply chain, sales, and marketing. She works with vendors to make sure products are available when needed, makes sales predictions based on past sales history, and assesses the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.
The problem-solving group members already have certain information on hand. They know that customer retention is one contributing factor. Attracting new customers is a constant goal, but they are aware of the well-known principle that it takes more effort to attract new customers than to keep existing ones. Thus, it is important to insure a quality customer service experience for existing customers and encourage them to refer friends. The group needs to determine how to promote this favorable customer behavior.
Another contributing factor seems to be that customers often abandon the shopping cart before completing a purchase, especially when purchasing edibles. The group members need to learn more about why this is happening.
Establish Criteria
Establishing the criteria for a solution is the next step. At this point, information is coming in from diverse perspectives, and each group member has contributed information from their perspective, even though there may be several points of overlap.
Kevin: Customers who complete the postsale survey indicate that they want to know (1) what is the estimated time of delivery, (2) why a specific item was not in stock and when it will be available, and (3) why their order sometimes arrives with less than a complete order, with some items back-ordered, without prior notification.
He notes that a very small percentage of customers complete the postsale survey, and the results are far from scientific. He also notes that it appears the interface is not capable of cross-checking inventory to provide immediate information concerning back orders, so that the customer “buys it” only to learn several days later that it was not in stock. This seems to be especially problematic for edible products, because people may tend to order them for special occasions like birthdays and anniversaries. But we don’t really know this for sure because of the low participation in the postsale survey.
Mariah: There are four edible products that frequently sell out. So far, we haven’t been able to boost the appeal of other edibles so that people would order them as a second choice when these sales leaders aren’t available. We also have several rare, exotic products that are slow movers. They have potential, but currently are underperformers.
Suri: We know from a zip code analysis that most of our customers are from a few specific geographic areas associated with above-average incomes. We have very few credit cards declined, and the average sale is over \$100. Shipping costs represent on average 8 percent of the total sales cost. We do not have sufficient information to produce a customer profile. There is no specific point in the purchase process where basket abandonment tends to happen; it happens fairly uniformly at all steps.
Consider Possible Solutions to the Problem
The group has listened to each other and now starts to brainstorm ways to address the challenges they have addressed while focusing resources on those solutions that are more likely to produce results.
Kevin: Is it possible for our programmers to create a cross-index feature, linking the product desired with a report of how many are in stock? I’d like the customer to know right away whether it is in stock, or how long they may have to wait. As another idea, is it possible to add incentives to the purchase cycle that won’t negatively impact our overall profit? I’m thinking a small volume discount on multiple items, or perhaps free shipping over a specific dollar amount.
Mariah: I recommend we hold a focus group where customers can sample our edible products and tell us what they like best and why. When the best sellers are sold out, could we offer a discount on related products to provide an instant alternative? We might also cull the underperforming products with a liquidation sale to generate interest.
Suri: If we want to know more about our customers, we need to give them an incentive to complete the postsale survey. How about a 5 percent off coupon code for the next purchase to get them to return and to help us better identify our customer base? We may also want to build in a customer referral rewards program, but it all takes better data in to get results out. We should also explore the supply side of the business by getting a more reliable supply of the leading products and trying to get discounts that are more advantageous from our suppliers, especially in the edible category.
Decide on a Solution
Kevin, Mariah, and Suri may want to implement all the solution strategies, but they do not have the resources to do them all. They’ll complete a cost-benefit analysis, which ranks each solution according to its probable impact. The analysis is shown in Table \(1\).
Table \(1\): Cost-Benefit Analysis
Source Proposed Solution Cost Benefit Comment
Kevin Integrate the cross-index feature High High Many of our competitors already have this feature
Volume discount Low Medium May increase sales slightly
Free shipping Low Low This has a downside in making customers more aware of shipping costs if their order doesn’t qualify for free shipping
Mariah Hold a focus group to taste edible products High Medium Difficult to select participants representative of our customer base
Search for alternative products to high performers Medium Medium We can’t know for sure which products customers will like best
Liquidate underperformers Low Low Might create a “bargain basement” impression inconsistent with our brand
Suri Incentive for postsale survey completion Low Medium Make sure the incentive process is easy for the customer
Incentive for customer referrals Low Medium People may feel uncomfortable referring friends if it is seen as putting them in a marketing role
Find a more reliable supply of top-selling edibles Medium High We already know customers want these products
Negotiate better discounts from vendors Low High If we can do this without alienating our best vendors, it will be a win-win
Now that the options have been presented with their costs and benefits, it is easier for the group to decide which courses of action are likely to yield the best outcomes. The analysis helps the group members to see beyond the immediate cost of implementing a given solution. For example, Kevin’s suggestion of offering free shipping won’t cost Favorites much money, but it also may not pay off in customer goodwill. And even though Mariah’s suggestion of having a focus group might sound like a good idea, it will be expensive and its benefits are questionable.
A careful reading of the analysis indicates that Kevin’s best suggestion is to integrate the cross-index feature in the ordering process so that customers can know immediately whether an item is in stock or on back order. Mariah, meanwhile, suggests that searching for alternative products is probably the most likely to benefit Favorites, while Suri’s two supply-side suggestions are likely to result in positive outcomes.
Implement the Solution
Kevin is faced with the challenge of designing the computer interface without incurring unacceptable costs. He strongly believes that the interface will pay for itself within the first year—or, to put it more bluntly, that Favorites’ declining sales will get worse if the Web site does not have this feature soon. He asks to meet with top management to get budget approval and secures their agreement, on one condition: he must negotiate a compensation schedule with the Information Technology consultants that includes delayed compensation in the form of bonuses after the feature has been up and running successfully for six months.
Mariah knows that searching for alternative products is a never-ending process, but it takes time and the company needs results. She decides to invest time evaluating products that competing companies currently offer, especially in the edible category, on the theory that customers who find their desired items sold out on the Favorites Web site may have been buying alternative products elsewhere instead of choosing an alternative from Favorites’s product lines.
Suri decides to approach the vendors of the four frequently sold-out products and ask point blank, “What would it take to get you to produce these items more reliably in greater quantities?” By opening the channel of communication with these vendors, she is able to motivate them to make modifications that will improve the reliability and quantity. She also approaches the vendors of the less popular products with a request for better discounts in return for their cooperation in developing and test-marketing new products.
Follow Up on the Solution
Kevin: After several beta tests, the cross-index feature was implemented and has been in place for thirty days. Now customers see either “in stock” or “available [mo/da/yr]” in the shopping basket. As expected, Kevin notes a decrease in the number of chat and phone inquiries to the effect of, “Will this item arrive before my wife’s birthday?” However, he notes an increase in inquiries asking, “Why isn’t this item in stock?” It is difficult to tell whether customer satisfaction is higher overall.
Mariah: In exploring the merchandise available from competing merchants, she got several ideas for modifying Favorites’ product line to offer more flavors and other variations on popular edibles. Working with vendors, she found that these modifications cost very little. Within the first thirty days of adding these items to the product line, sales are up. Mariah believes these additions also serve to enhance the Favorites brand identity, but she has no data to back this up.
Suri: So far, the vendors supplying the four top-selling edibles have fulfilled their promise of increasing quantity and reliability. However, three of the four items have still sold out, raising the question of whether Favorites needs to bring in one or more additional vendors to produce these items. Of the vendors with which Favorites asked to negotiate better discounts, some refused, and two of these were “stolen” by a competing merchant so that they no longer sell to Favorites. In addition, one of the vendors that agreed to give a better discount was unexpectedly forced to cease operations for several weeks because of a fire.
This scenario allows us to see that the problem may have several dimensions as well as solutions, but resources can be limited and not every solution is successful. Even though the problem is not immediately resolved, the group problem-solving pattern serves as a useful guide through the problem-solving process.
Key Takeaway
Group problem solving can be an orderly process when it is broken down into seven specific stages.
Exercises
1. Think of a problem encountered in the past by a group of which you are a member. How did the group solve the problem? How satisfactory was the solution? Discuss your results with your classmates.
2. Consider again the problem you described in Exercise 1. In view of the seven-step framework, which steps did the group utilize? Would following the full seven-step framework have been helpful? Discuss your opinion with a classmate.
3. Research one business that you would like to know more about and see if you can learn about how they communicate in groups and teams. Compare your results with those of classmates.
4. Think of a decision you will be making some time in the near future. Apply the cost-benefit analysis framework to your decision. Do you find this method helpful? Discuss your results with classmates. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Communication_for_Business_Success_(LibreTexts)/19%3A_Group_Communication_Teamwork_and_Leadership/19.03%3A_Group_Problem_Solving.txt |
Learning Objectives
1. Understand how to prepare for and conduct business meetings.
2. Understand how to use technology to aid in group communications.
3. Understand the basic principles of organizational communication.
Business and professional meetings are a part of the communication climate of any business. Some view meetings as boring, pointless, and futile exercises, while others see them as opportunities to exchange information and produce results. A combination of preparation and execution makes all the difference. Remember, too, that meetings do not have to take place in a physical space where the participants meet face to face. Instead, a number of technological tools make it possible to hold virtual meetings in which the participants are half a world away from one another. Virtual meetings are formally arranged gatherings where participants, located in distinct geographic locations, come together via the Internet.
Preparation
A meeting, like a problem-solving group, needs a clear purpose statement. The specific goal for the specific meeting will clearly relate to the overall goal of the group or committee. Determining your purpose is central to an effective meeting and getting together just to get together is called a party, not a meeting. Do not schedule a meeting just because you met at the same time last month or because it is a standing committee. Members will resent the intrusion into their schedules and quickly perceive the lack of purpose.
Similarly, if the need for a meeting arises, do not rush into it without planning. A poorly planned meeting announced at the last minute is sure to be less than effective. People may be unable to change their schedules, may fail to attend, or may impede the progress and discussion of the group because of their absence. Those who attend may feel hindered because they needed more time to prepare and present comprehensive results to the group or committee.
If a meeting is necessary, and a clear purpose can be articulated, then you’ll need to decide how and where to meet. Distance is no longer an obstacle to participation, as we will see later in this section when we explore some of the technologies for virtual meetings. However, there are many advantages to meeting in person. People communicate not just with words but also with their body language—facial expressions, hand gestures, head nodding or head shaking, and posture. These subtleties of communication can be key to determining how group members really feel about an issue or question. Meeting in real time can be important, too, as all group members have the benefit of receiving new information at the same time. For purposes of our present discussion, we will focus on meetings taking place face to face in real time.
If you have a purpose statement for the meeting, then it also follows that you should be able to create an agenda, or a list of topics to be discussed. You may need to solicit information from members to formulate an agenda, and this premeeting contact can serve to encourage active participation. The agenda will have a time, date, place, and method of interaction noted, as well as a list of participants. It will also have a statement of purpose, a list of points to be considered, and a brief summary of relevant information that relates to each point. Somewhere on the agenda the start and end times need to be clearly indicated, and it is always a good idea to leave time at the end for questions and additional points that individual members may want to share. If the meeting has an emotional point or theme, or the news is negative, plan for additional time for discussion, clarification, and recycling of conversations as the participants process the information.
If you are planning an intense work session, you need to consider the number of possible interactions among the participants and limit them. Smaller groups are generally more productive. If you are gathering to present information or to motivate the sales staff, a large audience, where little interaction is expected, is appropriate. Each member has a role, and attention to how and why they are interacting will produce the best results. Review the stages of group formation in view of the idea that a meeting is a short-term group. You can anticipate a “forming” stage, and if roles are not clear, there may be a bit of “storming” before the group establishes norms and becomes productive. Adding additional participants for no clear reason will only make the process more complex and may produce negative results.
Inviting the participants via e-mail has become increasingly common across business and industry. Software programs like Microsoft Outlook allow you to initiate a meeting request and receive an “accept” or “decline” response that makes the invitation process organized and straightforward. Reliance on a software program, however, may not be enough to encourage and ensure participation. A reminder on the individual’s computer may go off fifteen minutes prior to the meeting, but if they are away from their computer or if Outlook is not running, the reminder will go unseen and unheard. A reminder e-mail on the day of the meeting, often early in the morning, can serve as a personal effort to highlight the activities of the day.
If you are the person responsible for the room reservation, confirm the reservation a week before the meeting and again the day before the meeting. Redundancy in the confirmation process can help eliminate double-booking a room, where two meetings are scheduled at the same time. If technology is required at the meeting, such as a microphone, conference telephone, or laptop and projector, make sure you confirm their reservation at the same time as you confirm the meeting room reservation. Always personally inspect the room and test these systems prior to the meeting. There is nothing more embarrassing than introducing a high-profile speaker, such as the company president, and then finding that the PowerPoint projector is not working properly.
Conducting the Meeting
The world is a stage and a meeting is a performance, the same as an interview or speech presentation. Each member has a part to perform and they should each be aware of their roles and responsibilities prior to the meeting. Everyone is a member of the group, ranging from new members to full members. If you can reduce or eliminate the storming stage, all the better. A clearly defined agenda can be a productive tool for this effort.
People may know each other by role or title, but may not be familiar with each other. Brief introductions can serve to establish identity, credibility, and help the group transition to performance. The purpose of the meeting should be clearly stated, and if there are rules or guidelines that require a specific protocol, they should be introduced.
Mary Ellen Guffey provides a useful participant checklist that is adapted here for our use:
• Arrive on time and stay until the meeting adjourns (unless there are prior arrangements)
• Leave the meeting only for established breaks or emergencies
• Be prepared and have everything you need on hand
• Turn off cell phones and personal digital assistants
• Follow the established protocol for turn taking
• Respect time limits
• Demonstrate professionalism in your verbal and nonverbal interactions
• Communicate interest and stay engaged in the discussion
• Avoid tangents and side discussions
• Respect space and don’t place your notebook or papers all around you
• Clean up after yourself
• Engage in polite conversation after the conclusion
If you are cast in the role of meeting leader, you may need to facilitate the discussion and address conflict. The agenda serves as your guide and you may need to redirect the discussion to the topic, but always demonstrate respect for each and every member. You may also need to intervene if a point has reached a stalemate in terms of conflict (this text offers specific guidelines for managing interpersonal conflict that apply here).
There has been quite a discussion on the role of seating arrangements in meeting within the field of business communication. Generally, a table that is square, rectangular, or U-shaped has a fixed point at which the attention is directed, often referred to as the head of the table. This space is often associated with power, status, and hierarchy and may play an important role in the flow of interactions across the meeting. If information is to be distributed and presented from administration to managers, for example, a table with a clear focal point for the head or CEO may be indicated. Tables that are round, or tables arranged in a circular pattern, allow for a more egalitarian model of interaction, reducing the hierarchical aspects while reinforcing the clear line of sight among all participants. If a meeting requires intense interaction and collaboration, generally a round table or a circular pattern is indicated.
Some meetings do not call for a table, but rather rows of seats all facing toward the speaker; you probably recognize this arrangement from many class lectures you have attended. For relatively formal meetings in which information is being delivered to a large number of listeners and little interaction is desired, seating in rows is an efficient use of space.
Transitions are often the hardest part of any meeting. Facilitating the transition from one topic to the next may require you to create links between each point. You can specifically note the next point on the agenda and verbally introduce the next speaker or person responsible for the content area. Once the meeting has accomplished its goals in the established time frame, it is time to facilitate the transition to a conclusion. You may conclude by summarizing what has been discussed or decided, and what actions the group members are to take as a result of the meeting. If there is a clear purpose for holding a subsequent meeting, discuss the time and date, and specifically note assignments for next time.
Feedback is an important part of any communication interaction. Minutes are a written document that serves to record the interaction and can provide an opportunity for clarification. Minutes often appear as the agenda with notes in relation to actions taken during the meeting or specific indications of who is responsible for what before the next meeting. In many organizations, minutes of the meeting are tentative, like a rough draft, until they are approved by the members of the group or committee. Normally minutes are sent within a week of the meeting if it is a monthly event, and more quickly if the need to meet more frequently has been determined. If your organization does not call for minutes, you can still benefit by reviewing your notes after a meeting and comparing them with those of others to make sure you understood what was discussed and did not miss—or misinterpret—any key information.
Using Technology to Facilitate Meetings
Given the widespread availability and increasingly low cost of electronic communication, technologies that once served to bring people together across continents and time zones are now also serving people in the same geographic area. Rather than traveling (by plane, car, or even elevator within the same building) to a central point for a face-to-face interaction, busy and cost-conscious professionals often choose to see and hear each other via one of many different electronic interface technologies. It is important to be aware of the dimensions of nonverbal communication that are lost in a virtual meeting compared to an in-person meeting. Nevertheless, these technologies are a boon to today’s business organizations, and knowing how to use them is a key skill for all job seekers. We will discuss the technologies by category, beginning with audio-only, then audio-visual, and finally social media.
Audio-Only Interactions
The simplest form of audio-only interaction is, of course, a telephone call. Chances are that you have been using the phone all your life, yet did you know that some executives hire professional voice coaches to help them increase their effectiveness in phone communication? When you stop to think about it, we use a great many audio-only modes of communication, ranging from phone calls and voice-activated telephone menus to radio interviews, public address systems, dictation recording systems, and computer voice recognition technology. The importance of audio communication in the business world has increased with the availability of conference calls, Web conferences, and voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) communications.
Your voice has qualities that cannot be communicated in written form, and you can use these qualities to your advantage as you interact with colleagues. If you are sending a general informative message to all employees, an e-mail may serve you well, but if you are congratulating one employee on receiving an industry award, your voice as the channel carries your enthusiasm.
Take care to pay attention to your pronunciation of words, stating them correctly in normal ways, and avoiding words that you are not comfortable with as you may mispronounce them. Mispronunciation can have a negative impact on your reputation or perceived credibility. Instead of using complicated words that may cause you to stumble, choose a simple phrase if you can, or learn to pronounce the word correctly before you use it in a formal interactive setting.
Your voice quality, volume, and pitch also influence how your spoken words are interpreted. Quality often refers to emotional tone of your voice, from happy and enthusiastic to serious or even sad. In most business situations, it is appropriate to speak with some level of formality, yet avoid sounding stilted or arrogant. Your volume (the loudness of your voice) should be normal, but do make sure your listeners can hear you. In some situations, you may be using a directional microphone that only amplifies your voice signal if you speak directly into it.
If your audience includes English learners, remember that speaking louder (i.e., shouting) does not help them to understand you any better than speaking in a normal tone. Your word choices will make a much more significant impact when communicating across cultures; strive to use direct sentences and avoid figures of speech that do not translate literally.
Pitch refers to the frequency, high or low, of your voice. A pleasant, natural voice will have some variation in pitch. A speaker with a flat pitch, or a monotone (one-tone) voice, is often interpreted as being bored and often bores his or her listeners.
If you are leaving a voice mail, state all the relevant information in concise, clear terms, making sure to speak slowly; don’t forget to include your contact information, even if you think the person already knows your phone number. Imagine you were writing down your phone number as you recite it and you will be better able to record it at a “listener-friendly” speed. Don’t leave a long, rambling voice mail message. You may later wish you had said less, and the more content you provide the more you increase the possibility for misunderstandings without your being present for clarification.
Audio-Visual Interactions
Rather than call each other, we often call and interact in both audio and visual ways via the Internet. There are several ways to interface via audio and video, and new technologies in this area are being invented all the time. For example, VoIP software allows the participants to see and hear each other across time and distance with one-on-one calls and video conferencing. The audio portion of the call comes through a headset, and the callers see each other on their computer monitors, as if they were being broadcast on television. This form of audio-visual communication is quickly becoming a low- or no-cost business tool for interaction.
If you are going to interact via audio and visual signals, make sure you are prepared. Appropriate dress, setting, and attitude are all required. The integration of a visual signal to the traditional phone call means that nonverbal gestures can now be observed in real time and can both aid and detract from the message.
If you are unfamiliar with the technology, practice with it before your actual business interaction. Try out the features with a friend and know where to find and access the information. If the call doesn’t go as planned, or the signal isn’t what you expected or experienced in the past, keep a good attitude and try again.
Social Media
Online communities, forums, blogs, tweets, cloud computing, and avatar-activated environments are some of the continually developing means of social media being harnessed by the business world. The Internet is increasingly promoting tools and platforms for people to interact. From bulletin boards that resemble the FreeNet posts of years past, to interactive environments like Second Life, people are increasingly representing and interpreting themselves online.
Humans seek interaction, and this has led to new ways to market, advertise, and interact; however, caution is warranted when engaging in social media online. When you use these media, remember a few simple cautions:
1. Not everything is at it appears. The individuals on the forum may not all be who they represent themselves to be.
2. The words you write and the images you send, regardless of how much you trust the recipient, may become public and can remain online forever.
3. Always consider what you access and what you post, and how it represents you and your employer, even if you think others cannot know where you work or who you are.
4. Be aware that Internet service providers (ISPs) are required by law to archive information concerning the use and traffic of information that can become available under subpoena.
Forums are often theme-based Web sites that gather a community of individuals dedicated to a common interest. From owner-enthusiast Web sites that celebrate the new Mini Cooper, where owners discuss modifications and sell parts to each other, to forums that emphasize a viewpoint, such as the Life After the Oil Crash (LATOC) discussion board, affectionately called doomers, people come together to compare notes around areas of interest.
Professional networking sites such as LinkedIn allow people to link to, and interact with, others who work in their industry or related ones. More general social media sites include MySpace and Facebook, which also present threaded discussions and dynamic interfaces with groups that may or may not be limited to those that user intends. Interactive writing platforms such as blogs, wikis, and cloud computing involve having common documents stored on the Internet which can be accessed from multiple sites at once, further facilitating the interaction. Blogs are Web pages with periodic posts that may or may not feature feedback responses from readers. Wikis are collaborations on Web content that are created and edited by users. Cloud computing involves secure access of files from anywhere as information is stored remotely. Somewhere between a social networking site, where people gather virtually to interact, and a computer game lies the genre of avatar-activated virtual worlds such as Second Life. In these environments, users can meet others and make friends, participate in activities, and create and trade virtual property and services.
Business and industry organizations may also incorporate posts and threaded discussions, but often under a password-protected design on a company’s intranet or other limited-access platform. Employees may use their business-provided computer equipment to access sites that are not business related (if not specifically blocked), but all information associated with a each business’s computer is subject to inspection, archival, and supervision.
Every computer is assigned an Internet protocol or IP address. The IP address can be specifically traced back to the original user, or at least to the computer itself and to who is responsible for its use. From an e-mail via one of the free sites (e.g., Juno, Google’s Gmail, or Yahoo! Mail) to cloud computing and wikis, your movements across the Web leave clear “footprints.”
Whether you maintain a personal Web page, a blog, or engage with peers and colleagues via Twitter, take care when considering what personal information to make public. Privacy is an increasing issue online and your safety is a priority. Always represent yourself and your organization with professionalism, knowing that what you search for and how you use your business computer can and often is subject to inspection.
Organizational Communication
Businesses and companies are often described in terms we normally associate with family, from relationships between siblings, to dominant-subordinate roles between parents and children, and the role of praise and correction. Organizational communication, or the study of the communication context, environment, and interaction within an organization, was once the domain of speech communication departments. Modern business schools now view the study of organizational communication as an integral part of the curriculum, noting the interdependent relationships of productivity, climate, and interaction between individuals within the organization (internal) and related to the organization (external), such as suppliers or customers.
Organizations have communication needs and challenges just like a family, a group, or a community. We can examine the study of communication within an organization, noting common interactive practices like performance reviews, newsletters, supervisor and direction, and the flow of information throughout the organization. We can also study the practices of the organization as they relate to other organizations and the media, as is public relations, crisis communication plans, and interorganizational interaction. Research into these areas often emphasizes the outcome, in terms of increased productivity and more effective strategic communication systems (Tucker, M., Meyer, G., and Westman, J., 1986). Change management, knowledge management, organizational culture, leaderships, and strategic planning often include elements of organizational communication, and again examine communication from the perspective of efficiency and effectiveness.
As a skilled business writer or communicator, you can see that the study of organizational communication can serve to inform you on the lessons learned by other companies, which are often represented in research publications, to improve the processes in place within your organization. For example, crisis management once was a knee-jerk reaction to a situation, one that caused businesses and companies to experience chaos and information management in unanticipated ways, leading to mistakes and damaging reputations. Crisis communication plans are now a common feature in business, outlining roles and responsibilities, as well as central communication coordination and how to interact with media. Supervisors and employees then have a guide to serve everyone, much like a common playbook in organized sports like football, where everyone knows everyone else’s position on the field once an emergency occurs.
Key Takeaway
Meetings require planning, choice of appropriate technology, and understanding of organizational communication.
Exercises
1. Take notes in one of your classes as if they were the official minutes of a meeting. Does the class “meeting” have a purpose? What preparations were made and what technology was used? Is there a follow-up or a plan for the next class meeting? Compare your notes with another student to see if you understood all the information conveyed in the class.
2. Collaborate with one or more classmates and contribute to a computing cloud or a wiki. What was the activity like? Did you learn new information that you would not have learned by studying individually?
3. Make an audio recording of your voice and listen to it. Are there aspects of your voice quality, pronunciation, or delivery style that you would like to improve? Practice daily and make more recordings until you notice improvement. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Communication_for_Business_Success_(LibreTexts)/19%3A_Group_Communication_Teamwork_and_Leadership/19.04%3A_Business_and_Professional_Meetings.txt |
Learning Objectives
1. Define teamwork and explain how to overcome various challenges to group success.
2. Describe the process of leader development.
3. Describe several different leadership styles and their likely influence on followers.
Two important aspects of group communication—especially in the business environment—are teamwork and leadership. You will work in a team and at some point may be called on to lead. You may emerge to that role as the group recognizes your specific skill set in relation to the task, or you may be appointed to a position of responsibility for yourself and others. Your communication skills will be your foundation for success as a member and as a leader. Listen and seek to understand both the task and your group members as you become involved with the new effort. Have confidence in yourself and inspire the trust of others. Know that leading and following are both integral aspects of effective teamwork.
Teamwork
Teamwork is a compound word, combining team and work. Teams are a form of group normally dedicated to production or problem solving. That leaves us with the work. This is where our previous example on problem solving can serve us well. Each member of the team has skills, talents, experience, and education. Each is expected to contribute. Work is the activity, and while it may be fun or engaging, it also requires effort and commitment, as there is a schedule for production with individual and group responsibilities. Each member must fulfill his or her own obligations for the team to succeed, and the team, like a chain, is only as strong as its weakest member. In this context we don’t measure strength or weakness at the gym, but in terms of productivity.
Teams can often achieve higher levels of performance than individuals because of the combined energies and talents of the members. Collaboration can produce motivation and creativity that may not be present in single-contractor projects. Individuals also have a sense of belonging to the group, and the range of views and diversity can energize the process, helping address creative blocks and stalemates. By involving members of the team in decision-making, and calling up on each member’s area of contribution, teams can produce positive results.
Teamwork is not without its challenges. The work itself may prove a challenge as members juggle competing assignments and personal commitments. The work may also be compromised if team members are expected to conform and pressured to go along with a procedure, plan, or product that they themselves have not developed. Groupthink, or the tendency to accept the group’s ideas and actions in spite of individual concerns, can also compromise the process and reduce efficiency. Personalities and competition can play a role in a team’s failure to produce.
We can recognize that people want to belong to a successful team, and celebrating incremental gain can focus the attention on the project and its goals. Members will be more willing to express thoughts and opinions, and follow through with actions, when they perceive that they are an important part of the team. By failing to include all the team members, valuable insights may be lost in the rush to judgment or production. Making time for planning, and giving each member time to study, reflect, and contribute can allow them to gain valuable insights from each other, and may make them more likely to contribute information that challenges the status quo. Unconventional or “devil’s advocate” thinking may prove insightful and serve to challenge the process in a positive way, improving the production of the team. Respect for divergent views can encourage open discussion.
John Thill and Courtland Bovee provide a valuable list to consider when setting up a team, which we have adapted here for our discussion:
• Select team members wisely
• Select a responsible leader
• Promote cooperation
• Clarify goals
• Elicit commitment
• Clarify responsibilities
• Instill prompt action
• Apply technology
• Ensure technological compatibility
• Provide prompt feedback
Group dynamics involve the interactions and processes of a team and influence the degree to which members feel a part of the goal and mission. A team with a strong identity can prove to be a powerful force, but it requires time and commitment. A team that exerts too much control over individual members can run the risk or reducing creative interactions and encourage tunnel vision. A team that exerts too little control, with attention to process and areas of specific responsibility, may not be productive. The balance between motivation and encouragement, and control and influence, is challenging as team members represent diverse viewpoints and approaches to the problem. A skilled business communicator creates a positive team by first selecting members based on their areas of skill and expertise, but attention to their style of communication is also warranted. Individuals that typically work alone or tend to be introverted may need additional encouragement to participate. Extroverts may need to be encouraged to listen to others and not dominate the conversation. Teamwork involves teams and work, and group dynamics play an integral role in their function and production.
Leadership
Whether or not there is a “natural leader,” born with a combination of talents and traits that enable a person to lead others, has been a subject of debate across time. In a modern context, we have come to recognize that leadership comes in many form and representations. Once it was thought that someone with presence of mind, innate intelligence, and an engaging personality was destined for leadership, but modern research and experience shows us otherwise. Just as a successful heart surgeon has a series of skill sets, so does a dynamic leader. A television producer must both direct and provide space for talent to create, balancing control with confidence and trust. This awareness of various leadership styles serves our discussion as groups and teams often have leaders, and they may not always be the person who holds the title, status, or role.
Leaders take on the role because they are appointed, elected, or emerge into the role. The group members play an important role in this process. An appointed leader is designated by an authority to serve in that capacity, irrespective of the thoughts or wishes of the group. They may serve as the leader and accomplish all the designated tasks, but if the group does not accept their role as leader, it can prove to be a challenge. As Bruce Tuckman notes, “storming” occurs as group members come to know each other and communicate more freely, and an appointed leader who lacks the endorsement of the group may experience challenges to his or her authority.
A democratic leader is elected or chosen by the group, but may also face serious challenges. If individual group members or constituent groups feel neglected or ignored, they may assert that the democratic leader does not represent their interests. The democratic leader involves the group in the decision-making process, and insures group ownership of the resulting decisions and actions as a result. Open and free discussions are representative of this process, and the democratic leader acknowledges this diversity of opinion.
An emergent leader contrasts the first two paths to the role by growing into the role, often out of necessity. The appointed leader may know little about the topic or content, and group members will naturally look to the senior member with the most experience for leadership. If the democratic leader fails to bring the group together, or does not represent the whole group, subgroups may form, each with an informal leader serving as spokesperson.
Types of Leaders
We can see types of leaders in action and draw on common experience for examples. The heart surgeon does not involve everyone democratically, is typically appointed to the role through earned degrees and experience, and resembles a military sergeant more than a politician. The autocratic leader is self-directed and often establishes norms and conduct for the group. In some settings we can see that this is quite advantageous, such as open-heart surgery or during a military exercise, but it does not apply equally to all leadership opportunities.
Contrasting the autocrat is the laissez-faire, or “live and let live” leader. In a professional setting, such as a university, professors may bristle at the thought of an autocratic leader telling them what to do. They have earned their role through time, effort, and experience and know their job. A wise laissez-faire leader recognizes this aspect of working with professionals and may choose to focus efforts on providing the professors with the tools they need to make a positive impact. Imagine that you are in the role of a television director and you have a vision or idea of what the successful pilot program should look like. The script is set, the lighting correct, and the cameras are in the correct position. You may tell people what to do and where to stand, but you remember that your job is to facilitate the overall process. You work with talent, and creative people are interesting on camera. If you micromanage your actors, they may perform in ways that are not creative and that will not draw audiences. If you let them run wild through improvisation, the program may not go well at all. Balancing the need for control with the need for space is the challenge of the laissez-faire leader.
Not all leaders are autocrats or laissez-faire leaders. Thomas Harris and John Sherblom specifically note three leadership styles that characterize the modern business or organization, and reflect our modern economy. We are not born leaders but may become them if the context or environment requires our skill set. A leader-as-technician role often occurs when we have skills that others do not. If you can fix the copy machine at the office, your leadership and ability to get it running again are prized and sought-after skills. You may instruct others on how to load the paper or how to change the toner, and even though your pay grade may not reflect this leadership role, you are looked to by the group as a leader within that context. Technical skills, from Internet technology to facilities maintenance, may experience moments where their particular area of knowledge is required to solve a problem. Their leadership will be in demand.
The leader-as-conductor involves a central role of bringing people together for a common goal. In the common analogy, a conductor leads an orchestra and integrates the specialized skills and sounds of the various components the musical group comprises. In the same way, a leader who conducts may set a vision, create benchmarks, and collaborate with a group as they interpret a set script. Whether it is a beautiful movement in music or a group of teams that comes together to address a common challenge, the leader-as-conductor keeps the time and tempo of the group.
Coaches are often discussed in business-related books as models of leadership for good reason. A leader-as-coach combines many of the talents and skills we’ve discussed here, serving as a teacher, motivator, and keeper of the goals of the group. A coach may be autocratic at times, give pointed direction without input from the group, and stand on the sidelines while the players do what they’ve been trained to do and make the points. The coach may look out for the group and defend it against bad calls, and may motivate players with words of encouragement. We can recognize some of the behaviors of coaches, but what specific traits have a positive influence on the group? Thomas Peters and Nancy Austin identify five important traits that produce results:
1. Orientation and education
2. Nurturing and encouragement
3. Assessment and correction
4. Listening and counseling
5. Establishing group emphasis
Coaches are teachers, motivators, and keepers of the goals of the group. There are times when members of the team forget that there is no “I” in the word “team.” At such times, coaches serve to redirect the attention and energy of the individuals to the overall goals of the group. They conduct the group with a sense of timing and tempo, and at times, they relax and let the members demonstrate their talents. Through their listening skills and counseling, they come to know each member as an individual, but keep the team focus for all to see. They set an example. Coaches, however, are human and by definition are not perfect. They can and do prefer some players over others and can display less than professional sideline behavior when they don’t agree with the referee, but the style of leadership is worthy of your consideration in its multidisciplinary approach. Coaches use more than one style of leadership and adapt to the context and environment. A skilled business communicator will recognize that this approach has its merits
Key Takeaway
Teamwork allows individuals to share their talents and energy to accomplish goals. An effective leader facilitates this teamwork process.
Exercises
1. Do you prefer working in a group or team environment, or working individually? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each? Discuss your thoughts with classmates.
2. Imagine that you could choose anyone you wanted to be on a team with you. Who would you choose, and why? Write a two- to three-paragraph description and share it with a classmate.
3. Think of a leader you admire and respect. How did this individual become a leader—for example, by appointment, democratic selection, or emergence? How would you characterize this leader’s style—is the leader autocratic or laissez-faire, a technician, or a coach?
19.06: Additional Resources
Read about groups and teams on the business Web site 1000 Ventures. http://www.1000ventures.com/business_guide/crosscuttings/team_main.html
Learn more about Tuckman’s linear model. http://infed.org/mobi/bruce-w-tuckman-forming-storming-norming-and-performing-in-groups/
Learn more about Dewey’s sequence of group problem solving on this site from the State College of Florida. faculty.scf.edu/frithl/SPC1608update/handouts/Dewey.htm
Read a hands-on article about how to conduct productive meetings. www.articlesnatch.com/Article/How-To-Conduct-Productive-Meetings-/132050
Visit this wikiHow site to learn how to use VoIP. http://www.wikihow.com/Use-VoIP
Watch a YouTube video on cloud computing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PNuQHUiV3Q
Read about groups and teams, and contribute to a wiki about them, on Wikibooks. http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Managing_Groups_and_Teams
How did Twitter get started? Find out. http://twitter.com/about
Take a (nonscientific) quiz to identify your leadership style. http://psychology.about.com/library/quiz/bl-leadershipquiz.htm | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Communication_for_Business_Success_(LibreTexts)/19%3A_Group_Communication_Teamwork_and_Leadership/19.05%3A_Teamwork_and_Leadership.txt |
You may think that some people are simply born as better writers than others, but in fact writing is a reflection of experience and effort. If you think about your successes as a writer, you may come up with a couple of favourite books, authors, or teachers that inspired you to express yourself. You may also recall a sense of frustration with your earlier writing experiences. It is normal and natural to experience a sense of frustration at the perceived inability to express oneself. The emphasis here is on your perception of yourself as a writer as one aspect of how you communicate.
Looking back
Before you can learn to write in a new context, it’s helpful to explore how you got to this point. Every one of us arrives in the workplace (and the classroom) with our own beliefs and assumptions about communication. Sometimes, these beliefs are helpful. Sometimes, however, our beliefs can hold us back. So, before we dive in, let’s take a moment to reflect.
Read the following questions and think them over. It may be helpful for you to write some notes in a journal.
Questions for reflection
1. How did you learn to read and write? Who influenced you?
2. What do people in your culture and/or your family believe about reading, writing, and telling stories?
3. What are some of your most positive reading and writing memories?
4. Describe some moments when you struggled with reading or writing. How did you react?
5. Have you ever changed a belief around reading and writing?
6. Do you believe that you are a good writer? Why or why not?
7. What is the most frustrating part of reading or writing for you?
Now, reflect on your answers. Do you notice any patterns? Can you identify any beliefs that might hold you back? Let’s take a look at how other students answered.
Simran’s story
Simran’s earliest memories of reading involve being snuggled up with her grandma, siblings and cousins. She loved being read to. Before she was old enough to go to school, she often sat with her older siblings as they did their homework and pretended to write. Unfortunately, when Simran was in Grade 4, she had a teacher who criticized her writing. She began to believe that she was a bad writer. By the time she reached Grade 12, English was Simran’s worst subject.
Today, Simran likes to read for fun, but hates to read for school. When she gets a writing assignment, she often starts and stops and procrastinates. She writes a sentence then gets caught up in grammar details, deletes it, starts over, then checks social media. In the end, she pulls an all-nighter and hands in her assignment with just minutes to spare. Simran likes to write fan fiction based on her favourite T.V. show, and she doesn’t understand why the words come so easily when she’s writing for fun, but so painfully when she’s writing for school. She isn’t looking forward to taking a business communication course because she thinks completing the assignments will be stressful.
Jian Yi’s story
Jian Yi began his education in China. He was an excellent student and enjoyed writing. His teachers often praised his beautiful cursive. When Jian Yi was 12, his family moved to Canada. He was placed for a short time in an EAL class, but quickly was integrated into a Grade 7 classroom. He understood very little and felt embarrassed whenever he was asked to speak in class. Though Jian Yi’s English skills improved dramatically, he never again enjoyed school.
Jian Yi doesn’t enjoy reading or writing. He majored in Accounting because he believed there wouldn’t be much reading and writing, and he’s disappointed that he has to take a communications class. He is taking a full course load and he wants to get through this course as quickly as possible.
Both Simran and Jian Yi are good writers; Simran can write short stories and Jian Yi can write in multiple languages. Neither, however, expects to do well in this course. That’s the power of unhelpful beliefs. They can set us up for failure before we’ve even started. By talking about our reading and writing beliefs and figuring our where they came from, we can challenge unhelpful beliefs and be more successful.
Thinking about our reading and writing beliefs is also a great way to celebrate the communication strengths you already have. For example, if you’ve learned Traditional Stories from elders in your community, you already know a story can be used as a powerful teaching tool when tailored to the right audience at the right time. Your ability to play music or sing will help you write sentences that people will enjoy reading. If you can shift between multiple languages or dialects, you can adapt to a new workplace environment. Our goal is not to erase what’s unique about your writing voice to make it “appropriate” for the workplace, but to build on your existing skills so that you can be successful in whatever workplace you enter.
What do experts say about reading and writing beliefs?
The question of how to become a better writer has been studied extensively for decades. We actually know a lot about how people learn to read and write, and how to help students improve. Here are just a few writing beliefs that researchers, writing teachers and scholars believe to be true (Fink, 2015). How many of these points do you agree with?
1. Everyone can become a better writer.
2. People learn to write by writing.
3. Writing is a process.
4. Writing helps us think and figure out what we have to say.
5. There is no one way to write well. Different writers have different processes and may even change their process depending on what type of writing they’re doing.
6. Editing, revising and rethinking are important to help writers reach their potential.
7. Writing and reading are related. Reading will improve your writing. It doesn’t even matter what genre you read. Read what you enjoy.
8. Talking about your writing with your peers and your teacher can make you a better writer.
In short, you can become a better writer. In fact, some studies have found that students who believe that they can become good writers improve faster than those who don’t (Baaijen, Galbraith, and de Glopper, 2014).
I believe that you are a good writer. I believe that you can become a better writer. I believe that you use your writing skills every day. It’s hard to change a belief overnight, so perhaps you don’t yet agree with me. That’s okay. Over the course of the semester, we’ll build on what you already know and apply it to the workplace. We’ll figure out a writing process that works for you. And hopefully, by the end of the semester, you’ll have created writing that you’re proud of.
Looking forward
You are your own best ally when it comes to your writing. Keeping a positive frame of mind about your journey as a writer is not a cliché or simple, hollow advice. Your attitude toward writing can and does influence your written products.
Reading is one step many writers point to as an integral step in learning to write effectively. You may like Harry Potter books or be a Twilight fan, but if you want to write effectively in business, you need to read business-related documents. These can include letters, reports, business proposals, and business plans. You may find these where you work or in your school’s writing centre, business department, or library; there are also many websites that provide sample business documents of all kinds. Your reading should also include publications in the industry where you work or plan to work. You can also gain an advantage by reading publications in fields other than your chosen one; often reading outside your niche can enhance your versatility and help you learn how other people express similar concepts. Finally, don’t neglect popular or general media like newspapers and magazines. Reading is one of the most useful lifelong habits you can practice to boost your business communication skills.
In the “real world” when you are under a deadline and production is paramount, you’ll be rushed and may lack the time to do adequate background reading for a particular assignment. For now, take advantage of your business communications course by exploring common business documents you may be called on to write, contribute to, or play a role in drafting in your future career. Some documents have a degree of formula to them, and your familiarity with them will reduce your preparation and production time while increasing your effectiveness.
When given a writing assignment, it is important to make sure you understand what you are being asked to do. You may read the directions and try to put them in your own words to make sense of the assignment. Be careful, however, to differentiate between what the directions say and what you think they say. Just as an audience’s expectations should be part of your consideration of how, what, and why to write, the instructions given by your instructor, or in a work situation by your supervisor, establish expectations. Just as you might ask a mentor more about a business writing assignment at work, you need to use the resources available to you to maximize your learning opportunity. Ask the professor to clarify any points you find confusing, or perceive more than one way to interpret, in order to better meet the expectations.
Learning to write effectively involves reading, writing, critical thinking, and self-reflection. At times, it may seem like it’s an incredibly messy process. Other times, it may feel tedious. Ultimately, writing is a process that takes time, effort, and practice. In the long-term, your skillful ability to craft messages will make a significant difference in your career.
Attributions
This chapter contains material taken from Chapter 4.2 “How is writing learned”[1] in Business Communication for Success (used under a CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 International license) and Chapter 1 “Exploring your reading and writing beliefs” and Chapter 2 “The writing process” in Business Writing for Everyone (used under a CC-BY-NC 4.0 International license). | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Remix%3A_Introduction_to_Professional_Communications_(Ashman)/01%3A_Communication_foundations/1.01%3A_Learning_to_write.txt |
Communication can mean different things to different people. It is affected by and influenced by our experiences, perceptions, culture, and more. To start, let’s reflect on our beliefs about communication.
Questions for reflection
• Think about communication in your daily life. When you make a phone call, send a text message, or like a post on Facebook, what is the purpose of that activity?
• Have you ever felt confused by what someone is telling you or argued over a misunderstood email?
• What does “communication” mean to you?
• What does “successful” communication look like to you?
• What are some barriers you’ve experienced when communicating with others in-person, online, or through writing?
There are many current models and theories that explain, plan, and predict communication processes and their successes or failures. In the workplace, we might be more concerned about practical knowledge and skills than theory. However, good practice is built on a solid foundation of understanding and skill.
Defining communication
The word communication is derived from a Latin word meaning “to share.” Communication can be defined as “purposefully and actively exchanging information between two or more people to convey or receive the intended meanings through a shared system of signs and (symbols)” (“Communication,” 2015, para. 1).
Let us break this definition down by way of example. Imagine you are in a coffee shop with a friend, and they are telling you a story about the first goal they scored in hockey as a child. What images come to mind as you hear their story? Is your friend using words you understand to describe the situation? Are they speaking in long, complicated sentences or short, descriptive sentences? Are they leaning back in their chair and speaking calmly, or can you tell they are excited? Are they using words to describe the events leading up to their big goal, or did they draw a diagram of the rink and positions of the players on a napkin? Did your friend pause and wait for you to to comment throughout their story or just blast right through? Did you have trouble hearing your friend at any point in the story because other people were talking or because the milk steamer in the coffee shop was whistling?
All of these questions directly relate to the considerations for communication in this course, including analyzing the audience, choosing a communications channel, using plain language, and using visual aids.
Before we examine each of these considerations in more detail, we should consider the elements of the communication process.
The Communication Process
The communication process includes the steps we take in order to ensure we have succeeded in communicating. The communication process comprises essential and interconnected elements detailed in Fig. 1.2.1. We will continue to reflect on the story of your friend in the coffee shop to explore each element in detail.
Fig. 1.2.1 The communication process by Laura Underwood
Source: The source comes up with an idea and sends a message in order to share information with others. The source could be one other person or a group of people. In our example above, your friend is trying to share the events leading up to their first hockey goal and, likely, the feelings they had at the time as well.
Message: The message is the information or subject matter the source is intending to share. The information may be an opinion, feelings, instructions, requests, or suggestions. In our example above, your friend identified information worth sharing, maybe the size of one of the defence players on the other team, in order to help you visualize the situation.
Channels: The source may encode information in the form of words, images, sounds, body language, and more. There are many definitions and categories of communication channels to describe their role in the communication process, including verbal, non-verbal, written, and digital. In our example above, your friends might make sounds or use body language in addition to their words to emphasize specific bits of information. For example, when describing a large defense player on the other team, they may extend their arms to explain the height of the other team’s defense player.
Receiver: The receiver is the person for whom the message is intended. This person is charged with decoding the message in an attempt to understand the intentions of the source. In our example above, you as the receiver may understand the overall concept of your friend scoring a goal in hockey and can envision the techniques your friend used. However, there may also be some information you do not understand—such as a certain term—or perhaps your friend describes some events in a confusing order. One thing the receiver might try is to provide some kind of feedback to communicate back to the source that the communication did not achieve full understanding and that the source should try again.
Environment: The environment is the physical and psychological space in which the communication is happening (Mclean, 2005). It might also describe if the space is formal or informal. In our example above, it is the coffee shop you and your friend are visiting in.
Context: The context is the setting, scene, and psychological and psychosocial expectations of the source and the receiver(s) (McLean, 2005). This is strongly linked to expectations of those who are sending the message and those who are receiving the message. In our example above, you might expect natural pauses in your friend’s storytelling that will allow you to confirm your understanding or ask a question.
Interference: There are many kinds of interference (also called “noise”) that inhibit effective communication. Interference may include poor audio quality or too much sound, poor image quality, too much or too little light, attention, etc. In our working example, the coffee shop might be quite busy and thus very loud. You would have trouble hearing your friend clearly, which in turn might cause you to miss a critical word or phrase important to the story.
Those involved in the communication process move fluidly between each of these eight elements until the process ends.
Attribution
This chapter is an adaptation of Part 1 (Foundations) in the Professional Communications OER by the Olds College OER Development Team and is used under a CC-BY 4.0 International license. You can download this book for free at http://www.procomoer.org/. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Remix%3A_Introduction_to_Professional_Communications_(Ashman)/01%3A_Communication_foundations/1.02%3A_Elements_in_communication.txt |
Although understanding is the foundation of all reading experiences, it is not the goal of most post-secondary reading assignments. Your professors (and future employers) want you to read critically, which means moving beyond what the text says to asking questions about the how and why of the text’s meaning. In an era of proliferating “fake news” stories and campaigns to improve information literacy, being cautious in consuming information and media is paramount.
Let’s reflect on what it means to think and read critically.
Questions for reflection
• What do you think “fake news” is and isn’t?
• Do you feel comfortable identifying sources of information or news stories as biased or inaccurate?
• Can you think of an example of a “fake news” story? What makes it biased or inaccurate?
• What are the potential dangers of making decisions or acting upon biased or inaccurate information?
• What does it mean to think critically? How do you do it?
• What does it mean to read critically? How do you do it?
Reading critically
Reading critically means reading skeptically, not accepting everything a text says at face value, and wondering why a particular author made a particular argument in a particular way.
When you read critically, you read not only to understand the meaning of the text, but also to question and analyze the text. You want to know not just what the text says, but also how and why it says what it says. Asking questions is one key strategy to help you read more critically. As you read a text critically, you are also reading skeptically.
A critical reader aims to answer two basic questions:
1. What is the author doing?
2. How well is the author doing it?
What is the author doing?
To answer “what is the author doing?” begin by carefully examining the following:
• What are the author’s claims (a claim is what the author says is true)?
• What is the evidence (evidence is what the author offers to support what they say is true)?
• What are the assumptions (assumptions are what the author says is true or will happen without giving any support)?
It may be helpful to try to see the argument from different angles:
• How else could the author have written this piece?
• What other kinds of evidence could have been used?
• What difference would that other evidence make?
• How has the author constructed his or her argument?
How well is the author doing it?
To answer “how well is the author doing it?” consider the following questions:
• How effective is the introduction? Why might the author have started the piece with this paragraph?
• Are the main ideas supported by solid evidence?
• What evidence does the author use? Is it effective? Useful? Can you think of other evidence?
• Is the author biased or neutral? How do you know?
• Does the conclusion effectively tie the argument together? Could you draw a different conclusion from this evidence?
• What kind of language is used? How would you describe the author’s style?
• How is the piece organized?
Asking questions
Asking questions of a text helps readers:
• Predict what a text will be about
• Identify confusing parts of the reading
• Clarify what confused them
• Develop a response to the text
• Understand the author’s purpose for writing a text
The easiest way to develop questions about a text is to be aware of your thinking process before, during, and after reading.
• What did you wonder about before you started reading?
• What did you think the text might be about?
• What questions did the text raise in your mind as you read?
• What seemed important or surprising?
• What were you wondering when you finished reading?
• What did the author hope to accomplish in writing this text?
• Did the author achieve that purpose?
• What remains unresolved in your mind?
Thinking critically
As you approach your writing, it is important to practice the habit of thinking critically. Critical thinking can be defined as “self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective thinking” (Paul & Elder, 2007). It is the difference between watching television in a daze versus analyzing a movie with attention to its use of lighting, camera angles, and music to influence the audience. One activity requires very little mental effort, while the other requires attention to detail, the ability to compare and contrast, and sharp senses to receive all the stimuli.
As a habit of mind, critical thinking requires established standards and attention to their use, effective communication, problem solving, and a willingness to acknowledge and address our own tendency for confirmation bias. We’ll use the phrase “habit of mind” because clear, critical thinking is a habit that requires effort and persistence. People do not start an exercise program, a food and nutrition program, or a stop-smoking program with 100 percent success the first time. In the same way, it is easy to fall back into lazy mental short cuts, such as “If it costs a lot, it must be good,” when in fact the statement may very well be false. You won’t know until you gather information that supports (or contradicts) the assertion.
As we discuss getting into the right frame of mind for writing, keep in mind that the same recommendations apply to reading and research. If you only pay attention to information that reinforces your existing beliefs and ignore or discredit information that contradicts your beliefs, you are guilty of confirmation bias (Gilovich, 1993). As you read, research, and prepare for writing, make an effort to gather information from a range of reliable sources, whether or not this information leads to conclusions you didn’t expect. Remember that those who read your writing will be aware of, or have access to, this universe of data as well and will have their own confirmation bias. Reading and writing from an audience-centered view means acknowledging your confirmation bias and moving beyond it to consider multiple frames of references, points of view, and perspectives as you read, research, and write. False thinking strategies can lead to poor conclusions, so be sure to watch out for your tendency to read, write, and believe that which reflects only what you think you know without solid research and clear, critical thinking.
Attributions
This chapter contains material taken from “Critical thinking”; “Overview 3”; and “Reading critically” in Developmental Writing by Lumen Learning (used under a CC-BY 3.0 license) and Chapter 5.1 “Think, then write: Writing preparation” in Business Communication for Success (used under a CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 International license). | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Remix%3A_Introduction_to_Professional_Communications_(Ashman)/01%3A_Communication_foundations/1.03%3A_Critical_thinking.txt |
Questions for reflection
• Think about the last time that you did research. What kind of research did you do? Were you able to find all the sources you needed? If not, what kind of sources did you struggle to find?
• How do you use the internet when you research? What kind of sites do you visit? Why?
• What does academic integrity mean to you?
• How do you determine what sources to trust online?
• If you’ve also attended school in a different country, how does that school system teach source use?
Both professional researchers and successful student researchers develop research questions. That’s because research questions are more than handy tools; they are essential to the research process.
By defining exactly what the researcher is trying to find out, these questions influence most of the rest of the steps taken to conduct the research. That’s true even if the research is not for academic purposes but for other areas of our lives.
For instance, if you’re seeking information about a health problem in order to learn whether you have anything to worry about, research questions will make it possible for you to more effectively decide whether to seek medical help–and how quickly.
Or, if you’re researching a potential employer, having developed and used research questions will mean you’re able to more confidently decide whether to apply for an internship or job there.
The confidence you’ll have when making such decisions will come from knowing that the information they’re based on was gathered by conscious thought rather than serendipity and whim.
Narrowing a topic
For many students, having to start with a research question is the biggest difference between how they did research in high school and how they are required to carry out their university research projects. It’s a process of working from the outside in: you start with the world of all possible topics (or your assigned topic) and narrow down until you’ve focused your interest enough to be able to tell precisely what you want to find out, instead of only what you want to “write about.”
Process of narrowing a topic
Visualize narrowing a topic as starting with all possible topics and choosing narrower and narrower subsets until you have a specific enough topic to form a research question.
All possible topics – You’ll need to narrow your topic in order to do research effectively. Without specific areas of focus, it will be hard to even know where to begin.
Assigned topics – Ideas about a narrower topic can come from anywhere. Often, a narrower topic boils down to deciding what’s interesting to you. One way to get ideas is to read background information in a source like Wikipedia.
Topic narrowed by initial exploration – It’s wise to do some more reading about that narrower topic to a) learn more about it and b) learn specialized terms used by professionals and scholars who study it.
Topic narrowed to research question(s) – A research question defines exactly what you are trying to find out. It will influence most of the steps you take to conduct the research.
Background reading
It’s wise to do some more reading about that narrower topic once you have it. For one reason, you probably don’t know much about it yet. For another, such reading will help you learn the terms used by professionals and scholars who have studied your narrower topic. Those terms are certain to be helpful when you’re looking for sources later, so jot them down or otherwise remember them.
For instance, if you were going to do research about the treatment for humans with bird flu, this background reading would teach you that professionals and scholars usually use the term avian influenza instead of bird flu when they write about it. (Often, they also use H1N1 or H1N9 to identify the strain.) If you didn’t learn that, you would miss the kinds of sources you’ll eventually need for your assignment.
Most sources other than journal articles are good sources for this initial reading, including the Globe and Mail or other mainline Canadian news outlets, Wikipedia, encyclopedias for the discipline your topic is in, dictionaries for the discipline, and manuals, handbooks, blogs, and web pages that could be relevant.
This initial reading could cause you to narrow your topic further, which is fine because narrower topics lead to greater specificity for what you have to find out. After this upfront work, you’re ready to start developing the research question(s) you will try to answer for your assignment.
Developing your research question
Because of all their influence, you might worry that research questions are very difficult to develop. Sometimes it can seem that way. But we’ll help you get the hang of it and, luckily, none of us has to come up with perfect ones right off. It’s more like doing a rough draft and then improving it. That’s why we talk about developing research questions instead of just writing them.
Steps for developing a research question
The steps for developing a research question, listed below, can help you organize your thoughts.
Step 1: Pick a topic (or consider the one assigned to you).
Step 2: Write a narrower/smaller topic that is related to the first.
Step 3: List some potential questions that could logically be asked in relation to the narrow topic.
Step 4: Pick the question that you are most interested in.
Step 5: Revise question you’re interested in so that it is more focused and less vague.
After you think of each research question, evaluate it by asking whether it is:
• Logically related to the topic
• In question form
• Not answerable with a quick Google search
• Specific, not vague
Sometimes the first draft of a research question is still too broad, which can make your search for sources more challenging. Refining your question to remove vagueness or to target a specific aspect of the topic can help.
Most of us look for information to answer questions every day, but research questions are different from what we might call “regular questions.”
Regular question Research question
What time does the movie start? How can movie theatres use attendance and sales data to inform scheduling of upcoming films?
Who invented the first computer? Why is the lifespan of new technologies decreasing?
What is social media? Why is social media an important tool to use in post-secondary classrooms?
Which store in my neighbourhood has the lowest priced produce? How does the location of a store affect the types and prices of produce offered for sale?
Attributions
This chapter contains information taken from multiple sources: | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Remix%3A_Introduction_to_Professional_Communications_(Ashman)/02%3A_The_research_process/2.01%3A_Research_questions.txt |
Once you have your research question, you’ll need information sources to answer it and meet the other information needs of your research project.
This section about categorizing sources will increase your sophistication about them and save you time in the long run because you’ll understand the “big picture”. That big picture will be useful as you plan your own sources for a specific research project.
You’ll usually have a lot of sources available to meet the information needs of your projects. In today’s complex information landscape, just about anything that contains information can be considered a potential source.
Here are a few examples:
• Books and encyclopedias
• Websites, web pages, and blogs
• Magazine, journal, and newspaper articles
• Research reports and conference papers
• Field notes and diaries
• Social media posts
• Photographs, paintings, cartoons, and other art works
• TV and radio programs, podcasts, movies, and videos
• Illuminated manuscripts and artifacts
• Bones, minerals, and fossils
• Preserved tissues and organs
• Architectural plans and maps
• Pamphlets and government documents
• Music scores and recorded performances
• Dance notation and theater set models
• People with expertise or experience on a particular topic
With so many sources available, the question usually is not whether sources exist for your project but which ones will best meet your information needs.
Being able to categorize a source helps you understand the kind of information it contains, which is a big clue to (1) whether might meet one or more of your information needs and (2) where to look for it and similar sources.
A source can be categorized by:
• Whether it contains quantitative or qualitative information or both
• Whether the source is objective (factual) or persuasive (opinion) and may be biased
• Whether the source is a scholarly, professional or popular publication
• Whether the material is a primary, secondary or tertiary source
• What format the source is in
As you may already be able to tell, sources can be in more than one category at the same time because the categories are not mutually exclusive.
Quantitative or qualitative
One of the most obvious ways to categorize information is by whether it is quantitative or qualitative. Some sources contain either quantitative information or qualitative information, but sources often contain both.
Many people first think of information as something like what’s in a table or spreadsheet of numbers and words. But information can be conveyed in more ways than textually or numerically.
Quantitative information – Involves a measurable quantity—numbers are used. Some examples are length, mass, temperature, and time. Quantitative information is often called data, but can also be things other than numbers.
Qualitative information – Involves a descriptive judgment using concept words instead of numbers. Gender, country name, animal species, and emotional state are examples of qualitative information.
Fact or opinion
Thinking about the reason an author produced a source can be helpful to you because that reason was what dictated the kind of information they chose to include. Depending on that purpose, the author may have chosen to include factual, analytical, and objective information. Or, instead, it may have suited their purpose to include information that was subjective and therefore less factual and analytical. The author’s reason for producing the source also determined whether they included more than one perspective or just their own.
Authors typically want to do at least one of the following:
• Inform and educate
• Persuade
• Sell services or products or
• Entertain
• Combined purposes
Sometimes authors have a combination of purposes, as when a marketer decides he can sell more smart phones with an informative sales video that also entertains us. The same is true when a singer writes and performs a song that entertains us but that she intends to make available for sale. Other examples of authors having multiple purposes occur in most scholarly writing.
In those cases, authors certainly want to inform and educate their audiences. But they also want to persuade their audiences that what they are reporting and/or postulating is a true description of a situation, event, or phenomenon or a valid argument that their audience must take a particular action. In this blend of scholarly author’s purposes, the intent to educate and inform is considered to trump the intent to persuade.
Why intent matters
Authors’ intent usually matters in how useful their information can be to your research project, depending on which information need you are trying to meet. For instance, when you’re looking for sources that will help you actually decide your answer to your research question or evidence for your answer that you will share with your audience, you will want the author’s main purpose to have been to inform or educate their audience. That’s because, with that intent, they are likely to have used:
• Facts where possible.
• Multiple perspectives instead of just their own.
• Little subjective information.
• Seemingly unbiased, objective language that cites where they got the information.
The reason you want that kind of resource when trying to answer your research question or explaining that answer is that all of those characteristics will lend credibility to the argument you are making with your project. Both you and your audience will simply find it easier to believe—will have more confidence in the argument being made—when you include those types of sources.
Sources whose authors intend only to persuade others won’t meet your information need for an answer to your research question or evidence with which to convince your audience. That’s because they don’t always confine themselves to facts. Instead, they tell us their opinions without backing them up with evidence. If you used those sources, your readers will notice and not believe your argument.
Fact vs. opinion vs. objective vs. subjective
Need to brush up on the differences between fact, objective information, subjective information, and opinion?
Fact – Facts are useful to inform or make an argument.
Examples:
• The sky is blue.
• Some countries follow Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and others follow International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).
• Beethoven had a reputation as a virtuoso pianist.
Opinion – Opinions are useful to persuade, but careful readers and listeners will notice and demand evidence to back them up.
Examples:
• That was a good movie.
• Strawberries taste better blueberries.
• Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) are better than International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).
• Placing one space after a period is the most professional way to type messages.
• Beethoven’s reputation as a virtuoso pianist is overrated.
Objective – Objective information reflects a research finding or multiple perspectives that are not biased.
Examples:
• “Several studies show that some font types are more easily read by people with vision impairment than others.”
• “A 2017 study from Kwantlen Polytechnic University showed that adults have the same ability as toddlers in taking the perspective of another person.”
Subjective – Subjective information presents one person or organization’s perspective or interpretation. Subjective information can be meant to distort, or it can reflect educated and informed thinking. All opinions are subjective, but some are backed up with facts more than others.
Examples:
• “The simple truth is this: You should never use the Comic Sans font to write a business message.”
• “Resumes for graduating students should be as short as possible—ideally one to two pages.”
Primary, secondary & tertiary sources
Another information category is called publication mode and has to do with whether the information is:
• First-hand information (information in its original form, not translated or published in another form).
• Second-hand information (a restatement, analysis, or interpretation of original information).
• Third-hand information (a summary or repackaging of original information, often based on secondary information that has been published).
When you make distinctions between primary, secondary, and tertiary sources, you are relating the information itself to the context in which it was created. Understanding that relationship is an important skill that you’ll need in university, as well as in the workplace. Noting the relationship between creation and context helps us understand the “big picture” in which information operates and helps us figure out which information we can depend on.
Primary sources – Because it is in its original form, the information in primary sources has reached us from its creators without going through any filter. We get it first-hand. Here are some examples that are often used as primary sources:
• Diaries.
• Advertisements.
• Music and dance performances.
• Eyewitness accounts
• Artworks.
• Data.
• Artifacts such as tools, clothing, or other objects.
• Original documents such as tax returns, marriage licenses, and transcripts of trials.
• Journal articles that report original research for the first time (the parts about the new research, plus their data).
Secondary sources – These sources are translated, repackaged, restated, analyzed, or interpreted from a primary source. Thus, the information comes to us second-hand, or through at least one filter. Here are some examples that are often used as secondary sources:
• All nonfiction books and magazine articles other than autobiography.
• An article or website that critiques a novel, play, painting, or piece of music.
• An article or web site that synthesizes expert opinion and several eyewitness accounts for a new understanding of an event.
• The literature review portion of a journal article.
Tertiary sources – These sources further repackage the original information because they index, condense, or summarize the original. Tertiary sources are usually publications that you are not intended to read from cover to cover but to dip in and out of for the information you need. You can think of them as a good place for background information to start your research but a bad place to end up. Here are some examples that are often used as tertiary sources:
• Almanacs.
• Dictionaries.
• Guide books.
• Survey articles.
• Timelines.
• Bibliographies.
• Encyclopedias, including Wikipedia.
• Most textbooks.
Is it a primary source or a secondary source?
Deciding whether to consider a journal article a primary or a secondary source can be complicated for at least two reasons.
First, journal articles that report new research for the first time are usually based on data. Some disciplines consider the data to be the primary source, and the journal article that describes and analyzes them is considered a secondary source.
However, particularly in the sciences, the original researcher might find it difficult or impossible (they might not be allowed) to share the data. Sometimes you have nothing more first-hand than the journal article, which argues for calling it the relevant primary source because it’s the closest thing that exists to the data.
Second, even journal articles that announce new research for the first time usually contain more than data. They also typically contain secondary source elements, such as a literature review, bibliography, and sections on data analysis and interpretation. They can actually be a mix of primary and secondary elements. Even so, in some disciplines, a journal article that announces new research findings for the first time is considered to be, as a whole, a primary source for the researchers using it.
What are considered primary and secondary sources can vary from discipline to discipline. If you are required to use primary sources for your research project, before getting too deep into your project check with your professor to make sure they agree with your choices. A librarian, too, can verify your choices.
Popular, professional & scholarly sources
We can also categorize information by the expertise of its intended audience. Considering the intended audience—how expert one has to be to understand the information—can indicate whether the source has sufficient credibility and thoroughness to meet your need.
There are varying degrees of expertise:
Popular – Popular newspaper and magazine articles (such as The Walrus, the Globe & Mail, and Maclean’s) are meant for a large general audience, are generally affordable, and are easy to purchase or available for free. They are written by staff writers or reporters for the general public.
Additionally, they are:
• About news, opinions, background information, and entertainment.
• More attractive than scholarly journals, with catchy titles, attractive artwork, and many advertisements but no footnotes or references.
• Published by commercial publishers.
• Published after approval from an editor.
Professional – Professional magazine articles (such as CPA Magazine and Communication World) are meant for people in a particular profession and are often accessible through a professional organization. Staff writers or other professionals in the targeted field write these articles at a level and with the language to be understood by everyone in the profession.
Additionally, they are:
• About trends and news from the targeted field, book reviews, and case studies.
• Often less than 10 pages, some of which may contain footnotes and references.
• Usually published by professional associations and commercial publishers.
• Published after approval from an editor.
Scholarly – Scholarly journal articles (such as Journal of Management Information Systems and Business Marketing) are meant for scholars, students, and the general public who want a deep understanding of a problem or issue. Researchers and scholars write these articles to present new knowledge and further understanding of their field of study.
Additionally, they are:
• Where findings of research projects, data and analytics, and case studies usually appear first.
• Often long (usually over 10 pages) and always include footnotes and references.
• Usually published by universities, professional associations, and commercial publishers.
• Published after approval by peer review or from the journal’s editor.
Attributions
This chapter contains information taken from Categorizing Sources, Qualitative or Quantitative, Fact or Opinion, Primary, Secondary & Tertiary Sources, and Popular, Professional & Scholarly in Choosing & Using Sources: A Guide to Academic Research, which issued under a CC-BY 4.0 International license. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Remix%3A_Introduction_to_Professional_Communications_(Ashman)/02%3A_The_research_process/2.02%3A_Categorizing_sources.txt |
Questions for reflection
• Do you evaluate information you find online or elsewhere before using it in your writing?
• What parts of evaluating sources do you find challenging? What parts are easy?
• What things do you look for to decide whether to use a source?
This section talks about how to identify relevant and credible sources that you have found online and through searches of library databases and catalogs, Google Scholar, and other specialized databases. Relevant, credible sources will meet the information needs of your research project.
Evaluating your sources is critical to the process of research. The CRAAP test allows you analyze your sources and determine if they are appropriate for your research or just plain crap! The CRAAP test uses a series of questions that address specific evaluation criteria like the authority and purpose of the source. This test should be used for all your sources and it is not intended to make you exclude your sources, but to help you to analyze how you intend to use them to support your own arguments.
C = Currency: The timeliness of the information.
• When was the information published or posted?
• Has the information been revised or updated?
• Does your topic require current information, or will older sources work as well?
R = Relevance: The importance of the information for your needs
• Does the information relate to your topic or answer your question?
• Who is the intended audience?
• Is the information at an appropriate level (i.e. not too elementary or advanced for your needs)?
• Have you looked at a variety of sources before determining this is one you will use?
• Would you be comfortable citing this source in your research paper?
A = Authority: The source of the information.
• What are the author’s credentials or organizational affiliations?
• Is the author qualified to write on the topic? Do you trust the author?
• Is there contact information, such as a publisher or email address?
• Does the URL reveal anything about the author or source? examples: .ca .com .edu .gov .org .net
A= Accuracy: The reliability, truthfulness and correctness of the content.
• Where does the information come from?
• Is the information supported by evidence?
• Has the information been reviewed or refereed?
• Can you verify any of the information in another source or from personal knowledge?
• Does the language or tone seem unbiased and free of emotion?
• Are there spelling, grammar or typographical errors?
P = Purpose: The reason the information exists.
• What is the purpose of the information? Is it to inform, teach, sell, entertain or persuade?
• Do the authors/sponsors make their intentions or purpose clear?
• Is the information fact, opinion or propaganda?
• Does the point of view appear objective and impartial?
• Are there political, ideological, cultural, religious, institutional or personal biases?
Attributions
This chapter contains information taken from Thinking Critically About Sources in Choosing & Using Sources: A Guide To Academic Research (used under a CC-BY 4.0 International license) and Evaluate What You Find With The “CRAAP Test” in Write Here, Right Now: An Interactive Introduction To Academic Writing And Research (used under a CC-BY 4.0 International license). | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Remix%3A_Introduction_to_Professional_Communications_(Ashman)/02%3A_The_research_process/2.03%3A_Evaluating_sources.txt |
Questions for reflection
• What kind of sources have you used in the workplace? How has this differed from the kind of sources you’ve used in school?
• Why do you think the rules that we have around source use exist? Why do we cite sources?
• How does your culture handle using other people’s ideas and words? Who “owns” an idea? How do you respectfully use someone’s words?
• What questions do you have about citation?
• What’s your definition of “academic integrity?”
• Do you think that the rules of “academic integrity” apply to the workplace?
• When you use researched sources, do you typically paraphrase, summarize, or quote other ideas/words?
• What do you think about when deciding whether to quote or paraphrase?
• Are you comfortable writing someone else’s idea in your own words?
Karan’s story
When Karan studied in India, he wasn’t expected to cite. When he started studying in Canada, he was surprised by the length of the writing assignments. He didn’t know how to use sources, so he copied and pasted a few paragraphs into his assignment and hoped he’d done it right.
He was worried when his teacher asked to meet with him. She said that he’d plagiarized, and that he could get into a lot of trouble. Luckily, Karan’s teacher decided to help him and not report him. She explained that in North American schools, you must distinguish between what words are yours and what come from the source, and what ideas are yours and what come from the source. Karan learned to use quotation marks to show what words came from the source, and to paraphrase by never looking directly at the source.
In this section, we’ll tackle how to use sources ethically, analyze them, and combine them into an effective argument.
But first: a note about the difference between workplace citation and academic citation.
In the workplace, you may often find yourself using your colleague’s words without crediting them. For example, your boss might ask you to write a grant application using text from previous grant applications. Many people might work on the same document or you might update a document written by someone else.
In the workplace, your employer usually owns the writing you produce, so workplace writing often doesn’t cite individual authors (though contributors are usually named in an acknowledgements section if it’s a large project/report). That doesn’t mean that you should take credit for someone else’s work, but in general a lot of sharing and remixing goes on within an organization.
For example, say that you work in HR and have been asked to launch a search for a new IT manager. You might use a template to design the job posting or update copy of the ad you posted the last time you hired someone for this role. No one would expect you to come up with an entirely new job posting just because it was originally written by someone who’s left the company.
That said, writers in the workplace often use a wide range of sources to build their credibility. Citation is not only an ethical practice, but it is also a great persuasive strategy. The citation practices you learn in school will therefore serve you well in the workplace.
In school in North America, the context is different. Unless your instructor specifically tells you otherwise, they will assume that you wrote everything in your assignment, unless you use quotation marks.
What is academic integrity?
Different universities have different definitions. Here is the definition we use at Kwantlen Polytechnic University:
The University ascribes to the highest standards of academic integrity. Adhering to these standards of academic integrity means observing the values on which good academic work must be founded: honesty, trust, fairness, respect, and responsibility. Students are expected to conduct themselves in a manner consistent with these values. These standards of academic integrity require Students to not engage in or tolerate Integrity Violations, including falsification, misrepresentation or deception, as such acts violate the fundamental ethical principles of the University community and compromise the worth of work completed by others.
You can read the full policy here.
In other words, you must take full responsibility for your work, acknowledge your own efforts, and acknowledge the contributions of others’ efforts. Working/ writing with integrity requires accurately representing what you contributed as well as acknowledging how others have influenced your work. When you are a student, an accurate representation of your knowledge is important because it will allow both you and your professors to know the extent to which you have developed as a scholar.
It’s worth noting that other cultures have different – equally valid – definitions of academic integrity. By making you aware of what we mean by academic integrity in this context, you can be aware of the expectations that are being placed on you.
What is plagiarism?
Let’s take a look at a common definition of plagiarism. This one comes from Ohio State University’s First Year Experience Office:
At any stage of the writing process, all academic work submitted to the teacher must be a result of a student’s own thought, research or self-expression. When a student submits work purporting to be [their] own, but which in any way borrows organization, ideas, wording or anything else from a source without appropriate acknowledgment of the fact, [they are] engaging in plagiarism.
Plagiarism can be intentional (knowingly using someone else’s work and presenting it as your own) or unintentional (inaccurately or inadequately citing ideas and words from a source). It may be impossible for your professor to determine whether plagiarized work was intentional or unintentional.
While academic integrity calls for work resulting from your own effort, scholarship requires that you learn from others. In the world of “academic scholarship” you are actually expected to learn new things from others AND come to new insights on your own. There is an implicit understanding that as a student you will be both using other’s knowledge as well as your own insights to create new scholarship. To do this in a way that meets academic integrity standards you must acknowledge the part of your work that develops from others’ efforts. You do this by citing the work of others. You plagiarize when you fail to acknowledge the work of others and do not follow appropriate citation guidelines.
What is citing?
Citing is basically giving credit. If your source is well-cited, you’ve told the audience whose ideas/words belong to whom and you’ve told the audience exactly where to go to find those words.
Why cite sources?
There are many good reasons to cite sources.
To avoid plagiarism & maintain academic integrity
Misrepresenting your academic achievements by not giving credit to others indicates a lack of academic integrity. This is not only looked down upon by the scholarly community, but it is also punished. When you are a student this could mean a failing grade or even expulsion from the university.
To acknowledge the work of others
One major purpose of citations is to simply provide credit where it is due. When you provide accurate citations, you are acknowledging both the hard work that has gone into producing research and the person(s) who performed that research.
To provide credibility to your work & to place your work in context
Providing accurate citations puts your work and ideas into an academic context. They tell your reader that you’ve done your research and know what others have said about your topic. Not only do citations provide context for your work but they also lend credibility and authority to your claims.
For example, if you’re researching and writing about sustainability and construction, you should cite experts in sustainability, construction, and sustainable construction in order to demonstrate that you are well-versed in the most common ideas in the fields. Although you can make a claim about sustainable construction after doing research only in that particular field, your claim will carry more weight if you can demonstrate that your claim can be supported by the research of experts in closely related fields as well.
Citing sources about sustainability and construction as well as sustainable construction demonstrates the diversity of views and approaches to the topic. Further, proper citation also demonstrates the ways in which research is social: no one researches in a vacuum—we all rely on the work of others to help us during the research process.
To help your future researching self & other researchers easily locate sources
Having accurate citations will help you as a researcher and writer keep track of the sources and information you find so that you can easily find the source again. Accurate citations may take some effort to produce, but they will save you time in the long run. Think of proper citation as a gift to your future researching self!
Other challenges in citing sources
Besides the clarifications and difficulties around citing that we have already considered, there are additional challenges that might make knowing when and how to cite difficult for you.
You learned how to write in a different school system
Citation practices are not universal. Different countries and cultures approach using sources in different ways. If you’re new to the Canadian school system, you might have learned a different way of citing. For example, some countries have a more communal approach to sources. Others see school as “not real life,” so you don’t need to cite sources in the same way that you would on the job.
Not really understanding the material you’re using
If you are working in a new field or subject area, you might have difficulty understanding the information from other scholars, thus making it difficult to know how to paraphrase or summarize that work properly. It can be tempting to change just one or two words in a sentence, but this is still plagiarism.
Running out of time
When you are a student taking many classes, working and/or taking care of family members, it may be hard to devote the time needed to doing good scholarship and accurately representing the sources you have used. Research takes time. The sooner you can start and the more time you can devote to it, the better your work will be.
Shifting cultural expectations of citation
Because of new technologies that make finding, using, and sharing information easier, many of our cultural expectations around how to do that are changing as well. For example, blog posts often “reference” other articles or works by simply linking to them. It makes it easy for the reader to see where the author’s ideas have come from and to view the source very quickly. In these more informal writings, blog authors do not have a list of citations (bibliographic entries). The links do the work for them. This is a great strategy for online digital mediums, but this method fails over time when links break and there are no hints (like an author, title and date) to know how else to find the reference, which might have moved.
This example of a cultural change of expectations in the non-academic world might make it seem that there has been a change in academic scholarship as well, or might make people new to academic scholarship even less familiar with citation. But in fact, the expectations around citing sources in academic research remain formal.
How to cite sources
Now that we know why we cite, so let’s learn how to cite. Citation and source use are all about balance. If you don’t use enough sources, you might struggle to make a thorough argument. If you cite too much, you won’t leave room for your own voice in your piece.
To illustrate this point, think of a lawyer arguing a case in a trial. If the lawyer just talks to the jury and doesn’t call any witnesses, they probably won’t win the case. After all, a lawyer isn’t an expert in forensics or accident reconstruction or Internet fraud. The lawyer also wasn’t there when the incident occurred. That’s where witnesses come in. The witnesses have knowledge that the lawyer doesn’t.
But if the lawyer just lets the witnesses talk and sits there quietly, they’ll likely also lose the case. That’s because the lawyer is the one who’s making the overall argument. The lawyer asks the witnesses questions and shows how the testimony of different witnesses piece together to prove the case.
To cite sources, you should make two things clear:
• The difference between your words and the source’s words.
• The difference between your ideas and the source’s ideas.
This diagram illustrates the difference:
Attributing a source’s words
When you quote someone in your document, you’re basically passing the microphone to them. Inviting another voice into your piece means that the way that person said something is important. Maybe that person is an expert and their words are a persuasive piece of evidence. Maybe you’re using the words as an example. Either way, you’ll likely do some sort of analysis on the quote.
When you use the source’s words, put quotation marks around them. This creates a visual separation between what you say and what your source says. You also don’t just want to drop the quote into the document with no explanation. Instead, you should build a “frame” around the quote by explaining who said it and why it’s important. In short, you surround the other person’s voice with your own voice.
Tip: The longer the source, the more analysis you’re likely going to do.
Here’s an example of a way to integrate a quote within a paragraph.
According to Haudenosaunee writer Alicia Elliot (2019, p. 18), “We know our cultures have meaning and worth, and that culture lives and breathes inside our languages.” Here, Elliot shows that when Indigenous people have the opportunity to learn Indigenous languages, which for generations were intentionally suppressed by the Canadian government, they can connect with their culture in a new way.
As you can see, Elliot’s words are important. If you tried to paraphrase them, you’d lose the meaning. Elliot is also a well-known writer, so adding her voice into the document adds credibility. If you’re writing about Indigenous people, it’s also important to include the voices of Indigenous people in your work.
You can see that in this example, the author doesn’t just pass the microphone to Alicia Elliot. Instead, they surround the quote with their own words, explaining who said the quote and why it’s important.
Attributing the source’s ideas
When the source’s ideas are important, you’ll want to paraphrase. For example, Elliot goes on to say that when over half of Indigenous people in a community speak an Indigenous language, the suicide rate goes down (2019). Here, it’s the idea that’s important, not the words, so you should paraphrase it.
What is paraphrasing? Paraphrasing is when you restate an idea in your own words. It’s this last bit — the “own words” part – that is confusing. What counts as your own words?
When you’re paraphrasing, you should ask yourself, “Have I restated this in a way that shows that I understand it?” If you simply swap out a few words for synonyms, you haven’t shown that you understand the idea. For example, let’s go back to that Alicia Elliot quote: “We know our cultures have meaning and worth, and that culture lives and breathes inside our languages.” What if I swapped out a few words so it said “We know our cultures have value and importance, and that culture lives and exhales inside our languages.”?
Does this show that I understand the quote? No. Elliot composed that line with a lot of precision and thoughtfulness. Switching a few words around actually shows disrespect for the care she took with her language.
Instead, paraphrase by not looking at the source material. Put down the book or turn off your computer monitor, then describe the idea back as if you were speaking to a friend.
What information do I cite?
Citing sources is often depicted as a straightforward, rule-based practice. In fact, there are many grey areas around citation, and learning how to apply citation guidelines takes practice and education. If you are confused by it, you are not alone – in fact you might be doing some good thinking. Here are some guidelines to help you navigate citation practices.
Cite when you are directly quoting. This is the easiest rule to understand. If you are stating word for word what someone else has already written, you must put quotes around those words and you must give credit to the original author. Not doing so would mean that you are letting your reader believe these words are your own and represent your own effort.
Cite when you are summarizing and paraphrasing. This is a trickier area to understand. First of all, summarizing and paraphrasing are two related practices but they are not the same. Summarizing is when you read a text, consider the main points, and provide a shorter version of what you learned. Paraphrasing is when you restate what the original author said in your own words and in your own tone. Both summarizing and paraphrasing require good writing skills and an accurate understanding of the material you are trying to convey. Summarizing and paraphrasing are not easy to do when you are a beginning academic researcher, but these skills become easier to perform over time with practice.
Cite when you are citing something that is highly debatable. For example, if you want to claim that an oil pipeline is necessary for economic development, you will have to contend with those who say that it produces few jobs and has a high risk of causing an oil spill that would be devastating to wildlife and tourism. To do so, you’ll need experts on your side.
When don’t you cite?
Don’t cite when what you are saying is your own insight. Research involves forming opinions and insights around what you learn. You may be citing several sources that have helped you learn, but at some point you are integrating your own opinion, conclusion, or insight into the work. The fact that you are NOT citing it helps the reader understand that this portion of the work is your unique contribution developed through your own research efforts.
Don’t cite when you are stating common knowledge. What is common knowledge is sometimes difficult to discern. Generally quick facts like historical dates or events are not cited because they are common knowledge.
Examples of information that would not need to be cited include:
• Partition in India happened on August 15, 1947.
• Vancouver is the 8th biggest city in Canada.
Some quick facts, such as statistics, are trickier. A guideline that can help with determining whether or not to cite facts is to determine whether the same data is repeated in multiple sources. If it is not, it is best to cite.
The other thing that makes this determination difficult might be that what seems new and insightful to you might be common knowledge to an expert in the field. You have to use your best judgment, and probably err on the side of over-citing, as you are learning to do academic research. You can seek the advice of your instructor, a writing tutor, or a librarian. Knowing what is and is not common knowledge is a practiced skill that gets easier with time and with your own increased knowledge.
Creating in-text citations and references
Now that we know what to cite and how to quote and paraphrase, we need to decide what format to create our in-text citations and references. Your instructor will tell you whether they prefer MLA, APA, Chicago or another style format. Luckily, the Kwantlen Library librarians have come up with handy citation guides, which you can access on the Citation Styles section of the KPU website.
When to quote, paraphrase, or summarize
To build everything but the research question, you will need to summarize, paraphrase, and/or directly quote your sources. But how should you choose what technique to use when?
Choose a direct quote when it is more likely to be accurate than would summarizing or paraphrasing; when what you’re quoting is the text you’re analyzing; when a direct quote is more concise that a summary or paraphrase would be and conciseness matters; when the author is a particular authority whose exact words would lend credence to your argument; and when the author has used particularly effective language that is just too good to pass up.
Choose to paraphrase or summarize rather than to quote directly when the meaning is more important than the particular language the author used and you don’t need to use the author’s preeminent authority to bolster your argument at the moment.
Choose to paraphrase instead of summarizing when you need details and specificity. Paraphrasing lets you emphasize the ideas in resource materials that are most related to your term paper or essay instead of the exact language the author used. It also lets you simplify complex material, sometimes rewording to use language that is more understandable to your reader.
Choose to summarize instead of paraphrasing when you need to provide a brief overview of a larger text. Summaries let you condense the resource material to draw out particular points, omit unrelated or unimportant points, and simplify how the author conveyed his or her message.
Attributions
This chapter contains material taken from Chapter 10a – Citing Sources and Chapter 10b – Making An Argument Using Sources in Business Writing for Everyone (used under a CC-BY-NC 4.0 International license). | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Remix%3A_Introduction_to_Professional_Communications_(Ashman)/02%3A_The_research_process/2.04%3A_Citing_sources.txt |
Questions for reflection
• Have you ever argued with someone online? If so, how did you present your argument? Was your argument successful?
• How do people create arguments in your area of study or career path? Are there certain ethical rules that people in your industry must follow?
• How do people argue in your culture? Do you argue with everyone the same way (an elder vs. someone your age)?
• Do you think it’s possible to change someone’s mind using logic?
• Do you find it easier to create an argument in writing or in person? Why?
Making an argument
Making an argument means trying to convince others that you are correct as you describe a thing, situation, or phenomenon and/or persuade them to take a particular action. Important not just in university, that skill will be necessary for nearly every professional job you hold.
Realizing that your research report, essay, blog post, or oral presentation is to make an argument gives you a big head start because right off you know the sources you’re going to need are those that will let you write the components of an argument for your reader.
It’s no accident that people are said to make arguments. They are constructed from components that act like building blocks. The components are selected because of what they contribute to the argument. The components generally, though not always, appear in a certain order because they build on or respond to one another.
Components of an argument
Making an argument in a report, term paper, or other college writing task is like laying out a case in court. Just as there are conventions that lawyers must adhere to as they make their arguments in court, there are conventions in arguments made in university assignments. Among those conventions is to use the components of an argument.
One common arrangement for an argument is to begin with an introduction that explains why the situation is important—why the reader should care about it. Your research question will probably not appear here, but your answer to it (your thesis or claim) usually appears as the last sentence or two of the introduction.
The body of your essay or paper follows and consists of:
• Your reasons the thesis or claim is correct or at least reasonable.
• The evidence that supports each reason, often occurring right after the reason the evidence supports.
• An acknowledgement that some people have/could have objections, reservations, counterarguments, or alternative solutions to your argument and a statement of each. (Posters often don’t have room for this component.)
• A response to each acknowledgement that explains why that criticism is incorrect or not very important. Sometimes you might have to concede a point you think is unimportant, if you can’t really refute it.
• After the body, the paper or essay ends with a conclusion, which states your thesis in a slightly different way than occurred in the introduction. The conclusion also may mention why research on this situation is important. Sometimes recommendations also follow based on the argument made and conclusions stated.
For example, the thesis or claim is derived from the initial question. The reasons are bolstered by evidence to support the claim. Objections are raised, acknowledged and subsequently responded to.
Attributions
This chapter contains material taken from Order Of The Components in Choosing & Using Sources: A Guide To Academic Research (used under a CC-BY 4.0 International license) and Making An Argument Using Sources in Business Writing for Everyone (used under a CC-BY-NC 4.0 International license). | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Remix%3A_Introduction_to_Professional_Communications_(Ashman)/02%3A_The_research_process/2.05%3A_Making_an_argument.txt |
An annotated bibliography is a descriptive and evaluative list of citations for books, articles, or other documents. Each citation is followed by a brief paragraph – the annotation – alerting the reader to the accuracy, quality, and relevance of that source.
Composing an annotated bibliography helps you to gather your thoughts on how to use the information contained in the cited sources, and it helps the reader to decide whether to pursue the full context of the information you provide.
Depending on the purpose of your bibliography, different elements will be more important and some may not be important at all. Your instructor may also have guidelines or be able to talk about priorities.
While an annotation can be as short as one sentence, the average entry in an annotated bibliography consists of a work’s citation information followed by a short paragraph. The annotated bibliography may potentially include:
• Author information
Who is the author? What is her/his background? Is the author qualified to write this document?
• Author’s purpose
What is the author’s purpose in writing this article or doing this research? Is the purpose stated or implied? Does the author have a particular message?
• Audience information
To what audience is the author writing (scholars, teachers, the general public, etc.)? Is this reflected in the author’s style of writing or presentation?
• Author bias
Does the author show any biases or make assumptions upon which the rationale of the article rests? If so, what are they?
• Information source
What methods did the author use to obtain the data? Is the article based on personal opinion, experience, interviews, library research, questionnaires, laboratory experiments, empirical observation, or standardized personality tests?
• Author conclusion
What conclusions does the author draw? Are these conclusions specifically stated or implied?
• Conclusion justification
Are the conclusions justified from the research or experience? Are the conclusions in sync with the original purpose of the research and supported by the data? Are the conclusions skewed by bias?
• Relationship to other works
How does this work compare with others cited? Does it conflict with conventional wisdom, established scholarship, government policy, etc.? Are there specific studies or writings cited with which this one agrees or disagrees? Are there any opinions not cited of which readers should be aware? Is the evidence balanced or weighted in favor of a particular perspective?
• Time frame
Is the work current? Is this important? How does the time in which it was written reflect on the information contained in this work?
• Significant attachments
Are there significant attachments such as appendices, bibliographies, illustrations, etc.? Are they valuable or not? If there are none, should there be?
Your instructor may have specific requirements for what your annotated bibliography should address.
Sample annotated bibliography entry using APA style (Trent University, 2019)
Morey, D. F. (2006). Burying key evidence: The social bond between dogs and people. Journal of Archaeological Science, 33, 158-175. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2005.07.009
In this article, Morey documents the widespread human practice of burying domesticated dogs and questions what this practice can reveal about relationships between the two [This sentence demonstrates the topic of the article]. He argues that dog burials have been more frequent and more consistent than burials of other types of animals, suggesting that humans have invested dogs with spiritual and personal identities. Morey also demonstrates that the study of dog burials can help scholars to more accurately date the domestication of dogs; thus, he challenges scholars who rely solely on genetic data in their dating of domestication to consider more fully the importance of archaeological finds [The previous 2 sentences explain the article’s argument]. To support his arguments, Morey provides detailed data on the frequency, geographic and historical distribution, as well as modes of dog burials and compares the conclusions he draws from this data to those found by scholarship based on genetic data [This sentence gives an overview of the method used in the article]. This article is useful to a literature review on the domestication of dogs because it persuasively shows the importance of using burial data in dating dog domestication and explains how use of this data could change assessments of when domestication occurred [This sentence explains the relevance of the article to the assigned topic].
Reference
Trent University. (2019). How to create an annotated bibliography. Retrieved from https://www.trentu.ca/academicskills...d-bibliography.
Attributions
This chapter contains material taken from Annotated Bibliographies by the Laurence McKinley Gould Library (used under a CC-BY-NC 4.0 International License) and Annotated Bibliographies by the Western Nevada College Library (used under a CC-BY 3.0 International license). | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Remix%3A_Introduction_to_Professional_Communications_(Ashman)/02%3A_The_research_process/2.06%3A_Annotated_bibliography.txt |
What role do emotions play in writing?
Because this is a business writing class, it might seem weird to talk about feelings. But how you feel about a writing task often determines how effectively you can complete it. For example, have you ever struggled to write an apology to someone you upset? Have you ever found yourself procrastinating to write an assignment you don’t really understand? Have you ever found that it’s easier for you to seem to write better in some classes more than others?
Emotions are the reason that sometimes you can write without thinking and sometimes you find yourself procrastinating, then staring at a blank screen, typing and deleting the same words over and over, feeling your writing becoming more awkward rather than less. That’s why simply acknowledging how you feel can help you avoid procrastination.
The first step is acknowledging how you feel, and the second step is figuring out why you feel that way. For example, some students have negative feelings about a writing assignment because they don’t like the teacher (or a teacher they had years ago), or they’ve had past struggles in a subject, or they don’t understand the point of the assignment, or they’re overwhelmed with other classes. Being able to identify why you’re feeling an emotion takes the power out of it. Sometimes you can even find a solution to make the writing task easier.
Here are some stories about how student writers changed their writing processes.
Raveena’s Story
Whenever Raveena writes, she feels a little editor on her shoulder who’s always chiming in correcting her grammar and telling her that her sentences are awkward and sloppy. She spends so much time editing while she writes that she loses her train of thought and has trouble just letting her thoughts flow. Writing a single page takes her hours.
Raveena’s instructor asked if she had always written this way. Raveena said she used to write easily, but during her first semester of university she had a couple of instructors who were tough graders. Whenever she would write, she would imagine her instructors criticizing her. Raveena’s instructor suggested two solutions:
1) She should pretend to write to someone she likes. It’s easier to write to a friendly reader than a hostile one. Raveena imagined writing to her favourite cousin and writing got a little easier.
2) She asked Raveena to put a piece of paper over her laptop screen or turn the screen’s brightness to the lowest setting, then type out her thoughts. At first, Raveena found this very uncomfortable. When she turned her screen back on, she saw a jumble of text. But Raveena soon discovered that she had quickly written 500 words, which would have taken her hours under her old method. Raveena then used her excellent editing skills to shape what she had written.
Kai’s Story
Kai prided themself on being able to write their essays the night before. They would drink some energy drinks and buy their favourite snacks and write for hours. They rarely revised their work. This technique worked well in high school, but when they got to university their grades started slipping. Their instructors noted that they had great ideas, but many were not well-organized or were incomplete.
Kai’s instructor asked the class to bring a draft for a peer workshop. Kai told their instructor that they wouldn’t be able to write a draft, since they could only write well the night before the assignment was due. Kai’s instructor asked them what they liked about writing at night. Kai said that they liked how quiet it was in the house at 3 a.m. and how the pressure made them focus. Kai’s instructor asked them to try to replicate the same environment (dark room, snacks, drinks etc.), set a timer for 2 hours and see how much they could write. Kai was able to write a rough draft of their assignment, though they didn’t feel the “writing magic” in the same way.
During the workshop, Kai’s classmates offered several useful suggestions for improvement, but they were worried about overthinking things and ruining them by doing too much revision. Kai’s instructor told them to save the rough draft as a different file. If they didn’t like the revisions, they could go back to the previous draft. Kai tried a number of revision techniques and ended up with a much stronger assignment. Slowly, they used more and more revision techniques in their other assignments. The result: higher grades and more sleep.
If your writing process is working for you, then there’s no need to change it. But if the way you write frustrates you, consider making some changes. You might also consider changing your writing process for certain writing tasks, such as important assignments. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Remix%3A_Introduction_to_Professional_Communications_(Ashman)/03%3A_Planning_messages/3.01%3A_Pre-writing.txt |
Communication is a complex process, and it is difficult to determine where or with whom a communication encounter starts and ends. It can sometimes be helpful to consider different communication models. Below are some questions to help guide you through this chapter.
Questions for reflection
• Why do models (of anything) matter in the real world?
• What value do communication models have?
• What communication models do you know about already?
• How can learning about communication models be helpful to you?
Models of communication simplify the process by providing a visual representation of the various aspects of a communication encounter. Some models explain communication in more detail than others, but even the most complex model still doesn’t recreate what we experience in even a moment of a communication encounter. Models still serve a valuable purpose for students of communication because they allow us to see specific concepts and steps within the process of communication, define communication, and apply communication concepts. When you become aware of how communication functions, you can think more deliberately through your communication encounters, which can help you better prepare for future communication and learn from your previous communication. The three models of communication we will discuss are the transmission, interaction, and transaction models.
Although these models of communication differ, they contain some common elements. The first two models we will discuss, the transmission model and the interaction model, include the following parts: participants, messages, encoding, decoding, and channels. In communication models, the participants are the senders and/or receivers of messages in a communication encounter. The message is the verbal or nonverbal content being conveyed from sender to receiver. For example, when you say “Hello!” to your friend, you are sending a message of greeting that will be received by your friend.
The internal cognitive process that allows participants to send, receive, and understand messages is the encoding and decoding process. Encoding is the process of turning thoughts into communication. As we will learn later, the level of conscious thought that goes into encoding messages varies. Decoding is the process of turning communication into thoughts. For example, you may realize you’re hungry and encode the following message to send to your roommate: “I’m hungry. Do you want to get pizza tonight?” As your roommate receives the message, they decode your communication and turn it back into thoughts in order to make meaning out of it. Of course, we don’t just communicate verbally—we have various options, or channels for communication. Encoded messages are sent through a channel, or a sensory route on which a message travels, to the receiver for decoding. While communication can be sent and received using any sensory route (sight, smell, touch, taste, or sound), most communication occurs through visual (sight) and/or auditory (sound) channels. If your roommate has headphones on and is engrossed in a video game, you may need to get their attention by waving your hands before you can ask them about dinner.
Linear model of communication
The linear or transmission model of communication, as shown in Figure \(1\), describes communication as a linear, one-way process in which a sender intentionally transmits a message to a receiver (Ellis & McClintock, 1990). This model focuses on the sender and message within a communication encounter. Although the receiver is included in the model, this role is viewed as more of a target or end point rather than part of an ongoing process. We are left to presume that the receiver either successfully receives and understands the message or does not. The scholars who designed this model extended on a linear model proposed by Aristotle centuries before that included a speaker, message, and hearer. They were also influenced by the advent and spread of new communication technologies of the time such as telegraphy and radio, and you can probably see these technical influences within the model (Shannon & Weaver, 1949). Think of how a radio message is sent from a person in the radio studio to you listening in your car. The sender is the radio announcer who encodes a verbal message that is transmitted by a radio tower through electromagnetic waves (the channel) and eventually reaches your (the receiver’s) ears via an antenna and speakers in order to be decoded. The radio announcer doesn’t really know if you receive their message or not, but if the equipment is working and the channel is free of static, then there is a good chance that the message was successfully received.
Figure \(1\) The linear model of communication
Although the transmission model may seem simple or even underdeveloped to us today, the creation of this model allowed scholars to examine the communication process in new ways, which eventually led to more complex models and theories of communication.
Interactive model of communication
The interactive or interaction model of communication, as shown in Figure \(2\), describes communication as a process in which participants alternate positions as sender and receiver and generate meaning by sending messages and receiving feedback within physical and psychological contexts (Schramm, 1997). Rather than illustrating communication as a linear, one-way process, the interactive model incorporates feedback, which makes communication a more interactive, two-way process. Feedback includes messages sent in response to other messages. For example, your instructor may respond to a point you raise during class discussion or you may point to the sofa when your roommate asks you where the remote control is. The inclusion of a feedback loop also leads to a more complex understanding of the roles of participants in a communication encounter. Rather than having one sender, one message, and one receiver, this model has two sender-receivers who exchange messages. Each participant alternates roles as sender and receiver in order to keep a communication encounter going. Although this seems like a perceptible and deliberate process, we alternate between the roles of sender and receiver very quickly and often without conscious thought.
The interactive model is also less message focused and more interaction focused. While the linear model focused on how a message was transmitted and whether or not it was received, the interactive model is more concerned with the communication process itself. In fact, this model acknowledges that there are so many messages being sent at one time that many of them may not even be received. Some messages are also unintentionally sent. Therefore, communication isn’t judged effective or ineffective in this model based on whether or not a single message was successfully transmitted and received.
Figure \(2\) The interactive model of communication
The interactive model takes physical and psychological context into account. Physical context includes the environmental factors in a communication encounter. The size, layout, temperature, and lighting of a space influence our communication. Imagine the different physical contexts in which job interviews take place and how that may affect your communication. I have had job interviews over the phone, crowded around a table with eight interviewers, and sitting with few people around an extra large conference table. I’ve also been walked around an office to unexpectedly interview one-on-one, in succession, with multiple members of a search committee over a period of three hours. Whether it’s the size of the room or other environmental factors, it’s important to consider the role that physical context plays in our communication. Psychological context includes the mental and emotional factors in a communication encounter. Stress, anxiety, and emotions are just some examples of psychological influences that can affect our communication. Seemingly positive psychological states, like experiencing the emotion of love, can also affect communication. Feedback and context help make the interaction model a more useful illustration of the communication process, but the transaction model views communication as a powerful tool that shapes our realities beyond individual communication encounters.
Transaction model of communication
As the study of communication progressed, models expanded to account for more of the communication process. Many scholars view communication as more than a process that is used to carry on conversations and convey meaning. We don’t send messages like computers, and we don’t neatly alternate between the roles of sender and receiver as an interaction unfolds. We also can’t consciously decide to stop communicating because communication is more than sending and receiving messages. The transaction model differs from the transmission and interaction models in significant ways, including the conceptualization of communication, the role of sender and receiver, and the role of context (Barnlund, 1970).
The transaction model of communication describes communication as a process in which communicators generate social realities within social, relational, and cultural contexts. In this model, which is shown in Figure \(3\), we don’t just communicate to exchange messages; we communicate to create relationships, form intercultural alliances, shape our self-concepts, and engage with others in dialogue to create communities.
The roles of sender and receiver in the transaction model of communication differ significantly from the other models. Instead of labeling participants as senders and receivers, the people in a communication encounter are referred to as communicators. Unlike the interactive model, which suggests that participants alternate positions as sender and receiver, the transaction model suggests that we are simultaneously senders and receivers. This is an important addition to the model because it allows us to understand how we are able to adapt our communication—for example, a verbal message—in the middle of sending it based on the communication we are simultaneously receiving from our communication partner.
Figure \(3\) The transaction model of communication
The transaction model also includes a more complex understanding of context. The interaction model portrays context as physical and psychological influences that enhance or impede communication. While these contexts are important, they focus on message transmission and reception. Since the transaction model of communication views communication as a force that shapes our realities before and after specific interactions occur, it must account for contextual influences outside of a single interaction. To do this, the transaction model considers how social, relational, and cultural contexts frame and influence our communication encounters.
Social context refers to the stated rules or unstated norms that guide communication. Norms are social conventions that we pick up on through observation, practice, and trial and error. We may not even know we are breaking a social norm until we notice people looking at us strangely or someone corrects or teases us. Relational context includes the previous interpersonal history and type of relationship we have with a person. We communicate differently with someone we just met versus someone we’ve known for a long time. Initial interactions with people tend to be more highly scripted and governed by established norms and rules, but when we have an established relational context, we may be able to bend or break social norms and rules more easily. Cultural context includes various aspects of identities such as race, gender, nationality, ethnicity, sexual orientation, class, and ability. We all have multiple cultural identities that influence our communication. Some people, especially those with identities that have been historically marginalized, are regularly aware of how their cultural identities influence their communication and influence how others communicate with them. Conversely, people with identities that are dominant or in the majority may rarely, if ever, think about the role their cultural identities play in their communication. Cultural context is influenced by numerous aspects of our identities and is not limited to race or ethnicity.
Attribution
This chapter contains material taken from Chapter 1.2 “The communication process” in Communication in the real world: An introduction to communication studies and is used under a CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 International license. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Remix%3A_Introduction_to_Professional_Communications_(Ashman)/03%3A_Planning_messages/3.02%3A_Communication_models.txt |
John Thill and Courtland Bovee (Thill & Bovee, 2004), two leading authors in the field of business communication, have created a checklist for planning business messages. The following twelve-item checklist, adapted here, serves as a useful reminder of the importance of preparation in the writing process:
1. Determine your general purpose: are you trying to inform, persuade, entertain, facilitate interaction, or motivate a reader?
2. Determine your specific purpose (the desired outcome).
3. Make sure your purpose is realistic.
4. Make sure your timing is appropriate.
5. Make sure your sources are credible.
6. Make sure the message reflects positively on your business.
7. Determine audience size.
8. Determine audience composition.
9. Determine audience knowledge and awareness of topic.
10. Anticipate probable responses.
11. Select the correct channel.
12. Make sure the information provided is accurate, ethical, and pertinent.
Throughout the next few chapters, we will examine these various steps in greater detail.
The audience any piece of writing is the intended or potential reader or readers. This should be the most important consideration in planning, writing, and reviewing a document. You “adapt” your writing to meet the needs, interests, and background of the readers who will be reading your writing.
The principle seems absurdly simple and obvious. It’s much the same as telling someone, “Talk so the person in front of you can understand what you’re saying.” It’s like saying, “Don’t talk rocket science to your six-year-old.” Do we need a course in that? Doesn’t seem like it. But, in fact, lack of audience analysis and adaptation is one of the root causes of most of the problems you find in business documents.
Audiences, regardless of category, must also be analyzed in terms of characteristics such as the following:
• Background—knowledge, experience, training: One of your most important concerns is just how much knowledge, experience, or training you can expect in your readers. If you expect some of your readers to lack certain background, do you automatically supply it in your document? Consider an example: imagine you’re writing a guide to using a software product that runs under Microsoft Windows. How much can you expect your readers to know about Windows? If some are likely to know little about Windows, should you provide that information? If you say no, then you run the risk of customers’ getting frustrated with your product. If you say yes to adding background information on Windows, you increase your work effort and add to the page count of the document (and thus to the cost). Obviously, there’s no easy answer to this question—part of the answer may involve just how small a segment of the audience needs that background information.
• Needs and interests: To plan your document, you need to know what your audience is going to expect from that document. Imagine how readers will want to use your document and what will they demand from it. For example, imagine you are writing a manual on how to use a new smart phone—what are your readers going to expect to find in it? Imagine you’re under contract to write a background report on climate change for a national real estate association—what do they want to read about and, equally important, what do they not want to read about?
• Different cultures: If you write for an international audience, be aware that formats for indicating time and dates, monetary amounts, and numerical amounts vary across the globe. Also be aware that humour and figurative language (as in “hit a home run”) are not likely to be understood outside of your own culture.
• Other demographic characteristics: There are many other characteristics about your readers that might have an influence on how you should design and write your document—for example, age groups, type of residence, area of residence, gender, political preferences, and so on.
Audience analysis can get complicated by other factors, such as mixed audience types for one document and wide variability within the audience.
• More than one audience. You may often find that your business message is for more than one audience. For example, it may be seen by technical people (experts and technicians) and administrative people (executives). What to do? You can either write all the sections so that all the audiences of your document can understand them (good luck!), or you can write each section strictly for the audience that would be interested in it, then use headings and section introductions to alert your audience about where to go and what to avoid in your report.
• Wide variability in an audience. You may realize that, although you have an audience that fits into only one category, there is a wide variability in its background. This is a tough one—if you write to the lowest common denominator of reader, you’re likely to end up with a cumbersome, tedious book-like thing that will turn off the majority of readers. But if you don’t write to that lowest level, you lose that segment of your readers. What to do? Most writers go for the majority of readers and sacrifice that minority that needs more help. Others put the supplemental information in appendices or insert cross-references to beginners’ books.
Reference
Thill, J. V., & Bovee, C. L. (2004). Business communication today (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Attributions
This chapter contains material taken from Chapter 5.2 “A planning checklist for business messages” in Business Communication for Success (used under a CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 International license) and “Audience analysis” in the Online Technical Writing Textbook by D. McMurray (used under a CC-BY 4.0 International license). | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Remix%3A_Introduction_to_Professional_Communications_(Ashman)/03%3A_Planning_messages/3.03%3A_Audience_analysis.txt |
Preparation for the writing process involves purpose, research and investigation, reading and analyzing, and adaptation. In this chapter, we consider how to determine the purpose of a document and how that awareness guides the writer to effective product.
While you may be free to create documents that represent yourself or your organization, your employer will often have direct input into their purpose. All acts of communication have general and specific purposes, and the degree to which you can identify these purposes will influence how effective your writing is. General purposes involve the overall goal of the communication interaction, which have been mentioned previously: to inform, persuade, entertain, facilitate interaction, or motivate a reader. The general purpose influences the presentation and expectation for feedback. In an informative message—the most common type of writing in business—you will need to cover several predictable elements:
• Who
• What
• When
• Where
• How
• Why (optional)
Some elements may receive more attention than others, and they do not necessarily have to be addressed in the order you see here. Depending on the nature of your project, as a writer you will have a degree of input over how you organize them.
Note that the last item, Why, is designated as optional. This is because business writing sometimes needs to report facts and data objectively, without making any interpretation or pointing to any cause-effect relationship. In other business situations, of course, identifying why something happened or why a certain decision is advantageous will be the essence of the communication.
In addition to its general purpose (e.g., to inform, persuade, entertain, or motivate), every piece of writing also has at least one specific purpose, which is the intended outcome–the result that will happen once your written communication has been read.
For example, imagine that you are an employee in a small city’s housing authority and have been asked to draft a letter to city residents about radon. Radon is a naturally occurring radioactive gas that has been classified by Health Canada as a health hazard. In the course of a routine test, radon was detected in minimal levels in an apartment building operated by the housing authority. It presents a relatively low level of risk, but because the incident was reported in the local newspaper, the mayor has asked the housing authority director to be proactive in informing all the city residents of the situation.
The general purpose of your letter is to inform, and the specific purpose is to have a written record of informing all city residents about how much radon was found, when, and where; where they can get more information on radon; and the date, time, and place of the meeting. Residents may read the information and attend or they may not even read the letter. But once the letter has been written, signed, and distributed, your general and specific purposes have been accomplished.
Now imagine that you begin to plan your letter by applying the above list of elements. Recall that the letter informs residents on three counts: (1) the radon finding, (2) where to get information about radon, and (3) the upcoming meeting. For each of these pieces of information, the elements may look like the following:
1. Radon Finding
• Who: The manager of the apartment building (give name)
• What: Discovered a radon concentration of 250 becquerels per cubic metre (Bq/m³) and reported it to the housing authority director, who informed the city health inspector and mayor
• When: During the week of December 15
• Where: In the basement of the apartment building located at (give address)
• How: In the course of performing a routine annual test with a commercially available do-it-yourself radon test kit
2. Information about radon
• Who: According to the city health inspector and Health Canada
• What: Radon is a naturally occurring radioactive gas that results from the breakdown of uranium in soil; a radon test level above 200 Bq/m³ may be cause for concern
• When: Radon levels fluctuate from time to time, so further testing will be done; in past years, test results were below 200 Bq/m³
• Where: More information is available from Health Canada
• How: By phone, mail, or on the internet (provide full contact information for both sources)
• Why: To become better informed and avoid misunderstandings about radon, its health risks, and the meaning of radon test results
3. City meeting about radon
• Who: All city residents are welcome
• What: Attend an informational meeting where the mayor, director of the housing authority, city health inspector, and representative from Health Canada will speak and answer questions
• When: Monday, January 7, at 7 p.m.
• Where: City hall community room
• Why: To become better informed and avoid misunderstandings about radon, its health risks, and the meaning of radon test results
Once you have laid out these elements of your informative letter, you have an outline from which it will be easy to write the actual letter.
Your effort serves as a written record of correspondence informing them that radon was detected, which may be one of the specific or primary purposes. A secondary purpose may be to increase attendance at the town hall meeting, but you will need feedback from that event to determine the effectiveness of your effort.
Now imagine that instead of being a housing authority employee, you are a city resident who receives that informative letter, and you happen to operate a business as a certified radon mitigation contractor. You may decide to build on this information and develop a persuasive message. You may draft a letter to the homeowners and landlords in the neighborhood near the building in question. To make your message persuasive, you may focus on the perception that radiation is inherently dangerous and that no amount of radon has been declared safe. You may cite external authorities that indicate radon is a contributing factor to several health ailments, and even appeal to emotions with phrases like “protect your children” and “peace of mind.” Your letter will probably encourage readers to check with Health Canada to verify that you are a certified contractor, describe the services you provide, and indicate that friendly payment terms can be arranged.
Credibility, timing, and audience
At this point in the discussion, we need to visit the concept of credibility. Credibility, or the perception of integrity of the message based on an association with the source, is central to any communication act. If the audience perceives the letter as having presented the information in an impartial and objective way, perceives the health inspector’s expertise in the field as relevant to the topic, and generally regards the housing authority in a positive light, they will be likely to accept your information as accurate. If, however, the audience does not associate trust and reliability with your message in particular and the city government in general, you may anticipate a lively discussion at the city hall meeting.
In the same way, if the reading audience perceives the radon mitigation contractor’s letter as a poor sales pitch without their best interest or safety in mind, they may not respond positively to its message and be unlikely to contact him about any possible radon problems in their homes. If, however, the sales letter squarely addresses the needs of the audience and effectively persuades them, the contractor may look forward to a busy season.
Returning to the original housing authority scenario, did you consider how your letter might be received or the fear it may have generated in the audience? In real life you don’t get a second chance, but in our academic setting, we can go back and take more time on our assignment, using the twelve-item checklist presented in chapter 2.3. Imagine that you are the mayor or the housing authority director. Before you assign an employee to send a letter to inform residents about the radon finding, take a moment to consider how realistic your purpose is. As a city official, you may want the letter to serve as a record that residents were informed of the radon finding, but will that be the only outcome? Will people be even more concerned in response to the letter than they were when the item was published in the newspaper? Would a persuasive letter serve the city’s purposes better than an informative one?
Another consideration is the timing. On the one hand, it may be important to get the letter sent as quickly as possible, as the newspaper report may have already aroused concerns that the letter will help calm. On the other hand, given that the radon was discovered in mid-December, many people may be caught up in holiday celebrations and will not pay attention to the letter. In early January, everyone will be paying more attention to their mail as they anticipate the arrival of tax-related documents or even the dreaded credit card statement. If the mayor has scheduled the city hall meeting for January 7, people may be unhappy if they only learn about the meeting at the last minute. Also consider your staff; if many of them will be taking vacation during this period, there may not be enough staff in place to respond to phone calls that will likely come in response to the letter, even though the letter advises residents to contact Health Canada.
Next, how credible are the sources cited in the letter? If you as a housing authority employee have been asked to draft it, to whom should it go once you have it written? The city health inspector is mentioned as a source; will they read and approve the letter before it is sent? Is there someone at the region, provincial, or federal level who can, or should, check the information before it is sent?
The next item on the checklist is to make sure the message reflects positively on your business. In our hypothetical case, the “business” is city government. The letter should acknowledge that city officials and employees are servants of the taxpayers. “We are here to serve you” should be expressed, if not in so many words, in the tone of the letter.
The next three items on the checklist are associated with the audience profile: audience size, composition, knowledge, and awareness of the topic. Since your letter is being sent to all city residents, you likely have a database from which you can easily tell how many readers constitute your audience. What about audience composition? What else do you know about the city’s residents? What percentage of households includes children? What is the education level of most of the residents? Are there many residents whose first language is not English; if so, should your letter be translated into any other languages? What is the range of income levels in the city? How well informed are city residents about radon? Has radon been an issue in any other buildings in the city in recent years? The answers to these questions will help determine how detailed the information in your letter should be.
Finally, anticipate probable responses. Although the letter is intended to inform, could it be misinterpreted as an attempt to “cover up” an unacceptable condition in city housing? If the local newspaper were to reprint the letter, would the mayor be upset? Is there someone in public relations who will be doing media interviews at the same time the letter goes out? Will the release of information be coordinated, and if so by whom?
One additional point that deserves mention is the notion of decision makers. Even if your overall goal is to inform or persuade, the basic mission is to simply communicate. Establishing a connection is a fundamental aspect of the communication audience, and if you can correctly target key decision makers you increase your odds for making the connection with those you intend to inform or persuade. Who will open the mail or email? Who will act upon it? The better you can answer those questions, the more precise you can be in your writing efforts.
Reference
Government of Canada. (2017). Radon: What you need to know. Retrieved from www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/environmental-workplace-health/radiation/radon.html.
Attribution
This chapter contains material taken from Chapter 5.2 “Think, then write: Writing preparation” in Business Communication for Success and is used under a CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 International license. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Remix%3A_Introduction_to_Professional_Communications_(Ashman)/03%3A_Planning_messages/3.04%3A_Purpose.txt |
Purpose is closely associated with channel. We need to consider the purpose when choosing a channel. From source to receiver, message to channel, feedback to context, environment, and interference, all eight components play a role in the dynamic process. While writing often focuses on an understanding of the receiver (as we’ve discussed) and defining the purpose of the message, the channel—or the “how” in the communication process—deserves special mention.
So far, we have discussed a simple and traditional channel of written communication: the hard-copy letter mailed in a standard business envelope and sent by postal mail. But in today’s business environment, this channel is becoming increasingly rare as electronic channels become more widely available and accepted.
When is it appropriate to send an instant message or text message versus a conventional e-mail or fax? What is the difference between a letter and a memo? Between a report and a proposal? Writing itself is the communication medium, but each of these specific channels has its own strengths, weaknesses, and understood expectations that are summarized in Table \(1\).
Table \(1\) Written communication channels
Channel Strengths Weaknesses Expectations When to choose
Instant message or text message Very fastGood for rapid exchanges of small amounts of information
Inexpensive
InformalNot suitable for large amounts of information
Abbreviations lead to misunderstandings
Quick response Informal use among peers at similar levels within an organizationYou need a fast, inexpensive connection with a colleague over a small issue and limited amount of information
Channel Strengths Weaknesses Expectations When to choose
Email FastGood for relatively fast exchanges of information
“Subject” line allows compilation of many messages on one subject or project
Easy to distribute to multiple recipients
Inexpensive
May hit “send” prematurelyMay be overlooked or deleted without being read
“Reply to all” error
“Forward” error
Large attachments may cause the e-mail to be caught in recipient’s spam filter
Normally a response is expected within 24 hours, although norms vary by situation and organizational culture You need to communicate but time is not the most important considerationYou need to send attachments (provided their file size is not too big)
Channel Strengths Weaknesses Expectations When to choose
Fax FastProvides documentation Receiving issues (e.g., the receiving machine may be out of paper or toner)Long distance telephone charges apply
Transitional telephone-based technology losing popularity to online information exchange
Normally, a long (multiple page) fax is not expected You want to send a document whose format must remain intact as presented, such as a medical prescription or a signed work orderAllows use of letterhead to represent your company
Channel Strengths Weaknesses Expectations When to choose
Memo Official but less formal than a letterClearly shows who sent it, when, and to whom Memos sent through e-mails can get deleted without reviewAttachments can get removed by spam filters Normally used internally in an organization to communicate directives from management on policy and procedure, or documentation You need to communicate a general message within your organization
Channel Strengths Weaknesses Expectations When to choose
Letter FormalLetterhead represents your company and adds credibility May get filed or thrown away unreadCost and time involved in printing, stuffing, sealing, affixing postage, and travel through the postal system Specific formats associated with specific purposes You need to inform, persuade, deliver bad news or negative message, and document the communication
Channel Strengths Weaknesses Expectations When to choose
Report Can require significant time for preparation and production Requires extensive research and documentation Specific formats for specific purposes You need to document the relationship(s) between large amounts of data to inform an internal or external audience
Channel Strengths Weaknesses Expectations When to choose
Proposal Can require significant time for preparation and production Requires extensive research and documentation Specific formats for specific purposes You need to persuade an audience with complex arguments and data
By choosing the correct channel for a message, you can save yourself many headaches and increase the likelihood that your writing will be read, understood, and acted upon in the manner you intended.
In terms of writing preparation, you should review any electronic communication before you send it. Spelling and grammatical errors will negatively impact your credibility. With written documents, we often take time and care to get it right the first time, but the speed of instant messaging, text messaging, or emailing often deletes this important review cycle of written works. Just because the document you prepare in a text message is only one sentence long doesn’t mean it can’t be misunderstood or expose you to liability. Take time when preparing your written messages, regardless of their intended presentation, and review your work before you click “send.”
Attribution
This chapter is an adaptation of Chapter 5.2 “Think, then write: Writing preparation” in Business Communication for Success and is used under a CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 International license. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Remix%3A_Introduction_to_Professional_Communications_(Ashman)/03%3A_Planning_messages/3.05%3A_Channels.txt |
Identifying your primary, secondary, and hidden audiences
Your audience is the person or people you want to communicate with. By knowing more about them (their wants, needs, values, etc.), you are able to better craft your message so that they will receive it the way you intended.
Your success as a communicator partly depends on how well you can tailor your message to your audience.
Your primary audience is your intended audience; it is the person or people you have in mind when you decide to communicate something. However, when analyzing your audience you must also beware of your secondary audience. These are other people you could reasonably expect to come in contact with your message. For example, you might send an email to a customer, who, in this case, is your primary audience, and copy (cc:) your boss, who would be your secondary audience. Beyond these two audiences, you also have to consider your hidden audience, which are people who you may not have intended to come in contact with your audience (or message) at all, such as a colleague who gets a forwarded copy of your email.
Attribution
This chapter is an adaptation of Part 1: Foundations in the Professional Communications OER by the Olds College OER Development Team and is used under a CC-BY 4.0 International license. You can download this book for free at http://www.procomoer.org/.
3.07: Audience demographics
There are social and economic characteristics that can influence how someone behaves as an individual. Standard demographic variables include a person’s age, gender, family status, education, occupation, income, and ethnicity. Each of these variables or characteristics can provide clues about how a person might respond to a message.
For example, people of different ages consume (use) media and social media differently. According to the Pew Research Center (2018), 81% of people aged 18-29 use Facebook, 64% use Instagram, and 40% use Twitter. In contrast, 65% of people aged 50-64 use Facebook, 21% use Instagram, and 19% use Twitter (Pew Research Center, 2018). If I were trying to market my product to those aged 50-64, I would likely reach a larger audience (and potentially make more sales) if I used targeted ads on Facebook rather than recruiting brand ambassadors on Instagram. Knowing the age (or ages) of your audience(s) can help inform what channels you use to send your message. It can also help you determine the best way to structure and tailor your message to meet specific audience characteristics.
Reference
Pew Research Center. (2018). Social media fact sheet. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheet/social-media/.
Attribution
This chapter contains material taken from Chapter 4.5 “Audience segments: Demographics” in Information Strategies for Communicators by K. Hansen and N. Paul and is used under CC-BY 4.0 International license.
3.08: Audience geographics
We all understand geographically defined political jurisdictions such as cities, provinces, and territories. You can also geographically segment audiences into rural, urban, suburban, and edge communities (the office parks that have sprung up on the outskirts of many urban communities). These geographic categories help define rifts between regions on issues such as transportation, education, taxes, housing, land use, and more. These are important geographic audience categories for politicians, marketers, and businesses. For example, local retail advertisers want to reach audiences who are in the reading or listening range of the local newspaper or radio station and within traveling distance of their stores. Therefore, it’s important to consider the geographic characteristics of your audience when crafting business messages.
Attribution
This chapter is an adaptation of Chapter 4.6 “Audience segments: Geographics” in Information Strategies for Communicators by K. Hansen and N. Paul and is used under CC-BY 4.0 International license.
3.09: Audience psychographics
Psychographics refer to all the psychological variables that combine to form a person’s inner self. Even if two people share the same demographic or geographic characteristics, they may still hold entirely different ideas and values that define them personally and socially. Some of these differences are explained by looking at the psychographic characteristics that define them. Psychographic variables include:
Motives – an internal force that stimulates someone to behave in a particular manner. A person has media consumption motives and buying motives. A motive for watching television may be to escape; a motive for choosing to watch a situation comedy rather than a police drama may be the audience member’s need to laugh rather than feel suspense and anxiety.
Attitudes – a learned predisposition, a feeling held toward an object, person, or idea that leads to a particular behaviour. Attitudes are enduring; they are positive or negative, affecting likes and dislikes. A strong positive attitude can make someone very loyal to a brand (one person is committed to the Mazda brand so they will only consider Mazda models when it is time to buy a new car). A strong negative attitude can turn an audience member away from a message or product (someone disagrees with the political slant of Fox News and decides to watch MSNBC instead).
Personalities – a collection of traits that make a person distinctive. Personalities influence how people look at the world, how they perceive and interpret what is happening around them, how they respond intellectually and emotionally, and how they form opinions and attitudes.
Lifestyles – these factors form the mainstay of psychographic research. Lifestyle research studies the way people allocate time, energy and money.
Attributions
This chapter is an adaptation of Chapter 4.7 “Audience segments: Psychographics” in Information Strategies for Communicators by K. Hansen and N. Paul and is used under CC-BY 4.0 International license. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Remix%3A_Introduction_to_Professional_Communications_(Ashman)/03%3A_Planning_messages/3.06%3A_Audience_types.txt |
Let’s say you’ve analyzed your audience until you know them better than you know yourself. What good is it? How do you use this information? How do you keep from writing something that will still be incomprehensible or useless to your readers?
The business of writing to your audience may have a lot to do with in-born talent, intuition, and even mystery. But there are some controls you can use to have a better chance to connect with your readers. The following “controls” mostly have to do with making information more understandable for your specific audience:
• Add information readers need to understand your document. Check to see whether certain key information is missing—for example, a critical series of steps from a set of instructions, important background that helps beginners understand the main discussion, or definitions of key terms.
• Omit information your readers do not need. Unnecessary information can also confuse and frustrate readers—after all, it’s there so they feel obligated to read it. For example, you can probably chop theoretical discussion from basic instructions.
• Change the level of the information you currently have. You may have the right information but it may be “pitched” at too high or too low a technical level. It may be pitched at the wrong kind of audience—for example, at an expert audience rather than a technician audience. This happens most often when product-design notes are passed off as instructions.
• Add examples to help readers understand. Examples are one of the most powerful ways to connect with audiences, particularly in instructions. Even in non-instructional text, for example, when you are trying to explain a technical concept, examples are a major help—analogies in particular.
• Change the level of your examples. You may be using examples, but the technical content or level may not be appropriate to your readers.
• Change the organization of your information. Sometimes, you can have all the right information but arrange it in the wrong way. For example, there can be too much background information up front (or too little) such that certain readers get lost. Sometimes, background information needs to be consolidated into the main information—for example, in instructions it’s sometimes better to feed in chunks of background at the points where they are immediately needed.
• Strengthen transitions. It may be difficult for readers, particularly non-specialists, to see the connections between the main sections of your report, between individual paragraphs, and sometimes even between individual sentences. You can make these connections much clearer by adding transition words and by echoing key words more accurately. Words like “therefore,” “for example,” “however” are transition words—they indicate the logic connecting the previous thought to the upcoming thought.
• Write stronger introductions—both for the whole document and for major sections. People seem to read with more confidence and understanding when they have the “big picture”—a view of what’s coming, and how it relates to what they’ve just read. Therefore, make sure you have a strong introduction to the entire document—one that makes clear the topic, purpose, audience, and contents of that document. And for each major section within your document, use mini-introductions that indicate at least the topic of the section and give an overview of the subtopics to be covered in that section.
• Create topic sentences for paragraphs and paragraph groups. It can help readers immensely to give them an idea of the topic and purpose of a section (a group of paragraphs) and in particular to give them an overview of the subtopics about to be covered.
• Change sentence style and length. How you write—down at the individual sentence level—can make a big difference too. In instructions, for example, using imperative voice and “you” phrasing is vastly more understandable than the passive voice or third-personal phrasing. Passive, person-less writing is harder to read—put people and action in your writing. Similarly, go for active verbs as opposed to be verb phrasing. All of this makes your writing more direct and immediate—readers don’t have to dig for it. Sentence length matters as well. An average of somewhere between 15 and 25 words per sentence is about right; sentences over 30 words are often mistrusted.
• Work on sentence clarity and economy. This is closely related to the previous “control” but deserves its own spot. Often, writing style can be so wordy that it is hard or frustrating to read. When you revise your rough drafts, put them on a diet—go through a draft line by line trying to reduce the overall word, page or line count by 20 percent. Try it as an experiment and see how you do. You’ll find a lot of fussy, unnecessary detail and inflated phrasing you can chop out.
• Use more or different graphics. For non-specialist audiences, you may want to use more graphics—and simpler ones at that. Graphics for specialists are more detailed and more technical.
• Break text up or consolidate text into meaningful, usable chunks. For non-specialist readers, you may need to have shorter paragraphs.
• Add cross-references to important information. In technical information, you can help non-specialist readers by pointing them to background sources. If you can’t fully explain a topic on the spot, point to a section or chapter where it is.
• Use headings and lists. Readers can be intimidated by big dense paragraphs of writing, uncut by anything other than a blank line now and then. Search your rough drafts for ways to incorporate headings—look for changes in topic or subtopic. Search your writing for listings of things—these can be made into vertical lists. Look for paired listings such as terms and their definitions—these can be made into two-column lists. Of course, be careful not to force this special formatting—don’t overdo it.
• Use special typography, and work with margins, line length, line spacing, type size, and type style. You can do things like making the lines shorter (bringing in the margins), using larger type sizes, and other such tactics. Certain type styles are believed to be friendlier and more readable than others.
These are the kinds of “controls” that you can use to fine-tune your messages and make them as readily understandable as possible. In contrast, it’s the accumulation of lots of problems in these areas—even seemingly trivial ones—that add up to a document being difficult to read and understand.
Attribution
This chapter is an adaptation of “Audience analysis” in the Online Technical Writing Textbook by D. McMurray and is used under a CC-BY 4.0 International license. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Remix%3A_Introduction_to_Professional_Communications_(Ashman)/03%3A_Planning_messages/3.10%3A_Adapting_messages.txt |
Style and tone are often considered interchangeable and there are some blurry distinctions between the two. But for our purposes, style refers to elements such as active versus passive writing, varied sentence lengths, flow, variety of word use, and punctuation choices. Style gives your writing a type of personality when coupled together with tone. As with the audience and format, it’s important that the style you choose matches with the intended purpose of your message.
Similar in some ways to style, tone refers to the feeling your audience will get when they decode your document. Here you would ask yourself if your tone is formal, informal, positive, negative, polite, direct, or indirect. The purpose of asking yourself this question is to determine whether the tone suits or otherwise enhances the purpose of your intended message.
Let’s begin by considering and thinking about the following scenarios.
Scenarios for reflection
Consider the following lines from business emails. How would you describe the tone of each entry? What words, phrases, or other elements suggest that tone?
• “Maybe if the project leader had set a reasonable schedule from the beginning, we wouldn’t be in this mess now.”
• “Whatever they’re paying you, it isn’t enough. Thanks for working so hard on this.”
• “I’m not sure what else is on your plate right now, but I need these numbers by this afternoon—actually in the next two hours.”
• “I cant remember when u said this was due.”
• “While I appreciate that your team is being pulled in a number of different directions right now, this project is my department’s main priority for the semester. What can we do from our end to set your group up to complete this by June?
Whether in a workplace or in our personal lives, most of us have received emails that we’ve found off-putting, inappropriate, or, at a minimum, curt. Striking the right tone and being diplomatic, particularly in business communication, can mean the difference between offending your reader and building important professional relationships. And more immediately, it can mean the difference between getting what you want and being ignored.
As with any piece of writing, considering audience, purpose, and type of information is key to constructing business communication. Truly finessing your writing so that it works for you, rather than against you, is key to forming strong professional relationships and being effective in your own position.
Attribution: The above material is taken from Diplomacy, Tone, and Emphasis in Business Writing in the Writing Commons and is used under a CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 Unported license.
Developing an appropriate business writing style will reflect well on you and increase your success in any career. Misspellings of individual words or grammatical errors involving misplacement or incorrect word choices in a sentence can create confusion, lose meaning, and have a negative impact on the reception of your message. Which style you use will depend on your audience, context, channel, and the purpose of the message (among other reasons).
Informal
Informal style is a casual style of writing. It differs from standard business English in that it often makes use of colourful expressions, slang, and regional phrases. As a result, it can be difficult to understand for an English learner or a person from a different region of the country. Sometimes colloquialism takes the form of a word difference; for example, the difference between a “Coke,” a “tonic,” a “pop,” and a “soda pop” primarily depends on where you live.
This type of writing uses colloquial language, such as the style of writing that is often used in texting:
ok fwiw i did my part n put it in where you asked but my ? is if the group does not participate do i still get credit for my part of what i did n also how much do we all have to do i mean i put in my opinion of the items in order do i also have to reply to the other team members or what? Thxs
While we may be able to grasp the meaning of the message and understand some of the abbreviations, this informal style is generally not appropriate in business communications. That said, colloquial writing may be permissible, and even preferable, in some limited business contexts. For example, a marketing letter describing a folksy product such as a wood stove or an old-fashioned popcorn popper might use a colloquial style to create a feeling of relaxing at home with loved ones. Still, it is important to consider how colloquial language will appear to the audience. Will the meaning of your chosen words be clear to a reader who is from a different part of the country? Will a folksy tone sound like you are “talking down” to your audience, assuming that they are not intelligent or educated enough to appreciate standard English? A final point to remember is that colloquial style is not an excuse for using expressions that are sexist, racist, profane, or otherwise offensive.
Formal
In business writing, often the appropriate style will have a degree of formality. Writers using a formal style tend to use a more sophisticated vocabulary—a greater variety of words, and more words with multiple syllables—not for the purpose of throwing big words around, but to enhance the formal mood of the document. They also tend to use more complex syntax, resulting in sentences that are longer and contain more subordinate clauses. That said, it’s still critically important to ensure the words you use are precise, relevant, and convey the appropriate and accurate meaning! This writing style may use the third person and may also avoid using contractions. However, this isn’t always the case.
Positive language
Unless there is a specific reason not to, use positive language wherever you can. Positive language benefits your writing in two ways. First, it creates a positive tone, and your writing is more likely to be well-received. Second, it clarifies your meaning, as positive statements are more concise. Take a look at the following negatively worded sentences and then their positive counterparts, below.
Examples:
Negative: Your car will not be ready for collection until Friday.
Positive: Your car will be ready for collection on Friday.
Negative: You did not complete the exam.
Positive: You will need to complete the exam.
Negative: Your holiday time is not approved until your manager clears it.
Positive: Your holiday time will be approved when your manager clears it.
Avoid using multiple negatives in one sentence, as this will make your sentence difficult to understand. When readers encounter more than one negative construct in a sentence, their brains have to do more cognitive work to decipher the meaning; multiple negatives can create convoluted sentences that bog the reader down.
Examples:
Negative: A decision will not be made unless all board members agree.
Positive: A decision will be made when all board members agree.
Negative: The event cannot be scheduled without a venue.
Positive: The event can be scheduled when a venue has been booked.
So what is professional writing anyways?
If you answered “it depends,” you are correct.
Audiences have expectations and needs and your job is to meet them. Some business audiences prefer a fairly formal tone. If you include contractions or use a style that is too casual, you may lose their interest and attention; you may also give them a negative impression of your level of expertise. However, if you are writing for an audience that expects informal language, you may lose their interest and attention by writing too formally; your writing may also come across as arrogant or pompous. It is not that one style is better than the other, but simply that styles of writing vary across a range of options. The skilled business writer will know their audience and will adapt the message to best facilitate communication. Choosing the right style can make a significant impact on how your writing is received.
If you use expressions that imply a relationship or a special awareness of information such as “you know,” or “as we discussed,” without explaining the necessary background, your writing may be seen as overly familiar, intimate, or even secretive. Trust is the foundation for all communication interactions and a careless word or phrase can impair trust.
If you want to use humour, think carefully about how your audience will interpret it. Humour is a fragile form of communication that requires an awareness of irony, of juxtaposition, or a shared sense of attitudes, beliefs, and values. Different people find humour in different situations, and what is funny to one person may be dull, or even hurtful, to someone else.
In the next chapter, we’ll discuss plain language, including how and why to do so.
Attributions
This chapter contains material taken from Chapter 4.4 “Style in written communication” and Chapter 6.2 “Writing style” in Business Communication for Success (used under a CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 International license) and Part 2 “Writing” in the Professional Communications OER by the Olds College OER Development Team (used under a CC-BY 4.0 International license). You can download Professional Communications OER for free at http://www.procomoer.org/.
The scenarios for reflection contains material taken from Diplomacy, Tone, and Emphasis in Business Writing in the Writing Commons and is used under a CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 Unported license. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Remix%3A_Introduction_to_Professional_Communications_(Ashman)/04%3A_Writing/4.01%3A_Style_and_tone.txt |
While there was a time when many business documents were written in the third person to give them the impression of objectivity, this formal style was often passive and wordy. Today, it has given way to active, clear, concise writing, sometimes known as “plain English” (Bailey, 2008). Plain language style involves everyday words and expressions in a familiar group context and may include contractions. Why use a \$100 word when a 25 cent one will do?
Let’s consider some statements. What do you think makes one sentence easier to understand than the other?
Statements for reflection
Which statement is easier to understand? What elements make it easier to understand?
A. When communicating to an audience in-person, it is important to project your voice into the back corners of the room.
B. Speak loudly when presenting so the people in the back row can hear you.
Which statement is easier to understand?
A. No one is permitted to use the park during the hours of 10 p.m. – 6 a.m.
B. The park is closed from 10 p.m. – 6 a.m.
Which statement is easier to understand?
A. The photocopier is out of service until further notice.
B. The photocopier is broken.
As business and industry increasingly trade across borders and languages, writing techniques that obscure meaning or impede understanding can cause serious problems. Efficient writing styles have become the norm.
No matter who your audience is, they will appreciate your ability to write using plain language. Here are some principles for writing in plain language:
Principle 1: Use active voice
To communicate professionally, you need to know when and how to use either active or passive voice. Although most contexts prefer the active voice, the passive voice may be the best choice in certain situations. Generally, though, passive voice tends to be awkward, vague, wordy, and a grammatical construct you should avoid in most cases.
Recognizing the active and passive voice
To use active voice, make the noun that performs the action the subject of the sentence and pair it directly with an action verb.
Read these two sentences:
Matt Damon left Harvard in the late 1980s to start his acting career.
Matt Damon’s acting career was started in the late 1980s when he left Harvard.
In the first sentence, left is an action verb that is paired with the subject, Matt Damon. If you ask yourself, “Who or what left?” the answer is Matt Damon. Neither of the other two nouns in the sentence—Harvard and career—“left” anything.
Now look at the second sentence. The action verb is started. If you ask yourself, “Who or what started something?” the answer, again, is Matt Damon. But in this sentence, the writer placed career—not Matt Damon—in the subject position. When the doer of the action is not the subject, the sentence is in passive voice. In passive voice constructions, the doer of the action usually follows the word by as the indirect object of a prepositional phrase, and the action verb is typically partnered with a version of the verb to be.
Writing in the active voice
Writing in active voice is easy once you understand the difference between active and passive voice. Make sure you always define who or what did what.
Using the passive voice
While using the active voice is preferred, sometimes passive voice is the best option. Consider the following acceptable uses of passive voice.
• When you do not know who or what is responsible for the action:
Example: Our front-door lock was picked.
Rationale: If you do not know who picked the lock on your front door, you cannot say who did it. You could say a thief broke in, but that would be an assumption; you could, theoretically, find out that the lock was picked by a family member who had forgotten to take a key.
• When you want to hide the person or thing responsible for the action, such as in a story:
Example: The basement was filled with a mysterious scraping sound.
Rationale: If you are writing a dramatic story, you might introduce a phenomenon without revealing the person or thing that caused it.
• When the person or thing that performed the action is not important:
Example: The park was flooded all week.
Rationale: Although you would obviously know that the rainwater flooded the park, saying so would not be important.
• When you do not want to place credit, responsibility, or blame:
Example: A mistake was made in the investigation that resulted in the wrong person being on trial.
Rationale: Even if you think you know who is responsible for a problem, you might not want to expose the person.
• When you want to maintain the impression of objectivity:
Example: It was noted that only first-graders chose to eat the fruit.
Rationale: Research reports in certain academic disciplines attempt to remove the researcher from the results, to avoid saying, for example, “I noted that only first graders….”
• When you want to avoid using a gendered construction, and pluralizing is not an option:
Example: If the password is forgotten by the user, a security question will be asked.
Rationale: This construction avoids the need for the cumbersome “his or her” (as in “the user forgets his or her password”).
Principle 2: Use common words instead of complex words
Inappropriate word choices will get in the way of your message. For this reason, use language that is accurate and appropriate for the writing situation. Omit jargon (technical words and phrases common to a specific profession or discipline) and slang (invented words and phrases specific to a certain group of people), unless your audience and purpose call for such language. Avoid using outdated words and phrases, such as “Dial the number.” Be straightforward in your writing rather than using euphemisms (gentler, but sometimes inaccurate, ways of saying something). Be clear about the level of formality each piece of writing needs, and adhere to that level.
Writing without jargon or slang
Jargon and slang both have their places. Using jargon is fine as long as you can safely assume your readers also know the jargon. For example, if you are a lawyer writing to others in the legal profession, using legal jargon is perfectly fine. On the other hand, if you are writing for people outside the legal profession, using legal jargon would most likely be confusing, and you should avoid it. Of course, lawyers must use legal jargon in papers they prepare for customers. However, those papers are designed to navigate within the legal system and may not be clear to readers outside of this demographic.
Principle 3: Write for your reader
When you write for your readers and speak to an audience, you have to consider who they are and what they need to know. When readers know that you are concerned with their needs, they are more likely to be receptive to your message, and will be more likely to take the action you are asking them to and focus on important details.
Your message will mean more to your reader if they get the impression that it was written directly to them.
Organize your document to meet your readers’ needs
When you write, ask yourself, “Why would someone read this message?” Often, it is because the reader needs a question answered. What do they need to know to prepare for the upcoming meeting, for example, or what new company policies do they need to abide by? Think about the questions your readers will ask and then organize your document to answer them.
Attribution
This chapter contains material taken from Part 1 “Foundations” in the Professional Communications OER by the Olds College OER Development Team (used under a CC-BY 4.0 International license). You can download Professional Communications OER for free at http://www.procomoer.org/. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Remix%3A_Introduction_to_Professional_Communications_(Ashman)/04%3A_Writing/4.02%3A_Plain_language.txt |
Good communicators include everyone and don’t make assumptions about their readers. You can make your language more inclusive by:
• Using the singular “they” instead of “he or she.” For example, instead of saying, “A communicator should understand his or her audience,” you could say, “A communicator should understand their audience” or “Communicators should understand their audience.”
• Being specific when discussing a person’s identity and use the terminology they prefer. For example, instead of saying “Marilyn Gabriel is a First Nations person,” you could say “Marilyn Gabriel is a member of the Kwantlen Nation.” Usually, a person’s disability isn’t relevant, but if it is, use neutral and specific language. For example, instead of saying “Brent is confined to a wheelchair” (which is both inaccurate, negative, and vague), you could say “Brent uses a wheelchair” or “Brent has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair.” When in doubt, ask the person what terminology they prefer.
• Question the assumptions that you make about your audience. Consider that many of your readers might not share the same cultural values or experiences. For example, a sentence like “Every child waits all year for Christmas morning,” consider that many of your readers might not have shared this experience.
You should be especially careful when writing about groups of people in a way that might reinforce stereotypes. For example, in his book Elements of Indigenous Style, Gregory Younging discusses how subtle bias can have a big impact when non-Indigenous people write about First Nations, Metis, and Inuit people. For example, instead of portraying Indigenous people as victims, focus on their “resilience, agency, and future” (2018, pg. 77). Instead of portraying an Indigenous culture as something static that existed in the past, focus on how that culture is thriving and changing.
Reference
Younging, G. (2018). Elements of Indigenous style: A guide for writing by and about Indigenous Peoples. Edmonton, AB: Brush Education.
Attribution
This chapter contains material taken from Chapter 4 “Style and tone” in Business Writing for Everyone (used under a CC-BY-NC 4.0 International license).
4.04: Concision
Keeping words and sentences short (conciseness) can help your audience understand your message in the way you intended. What does it mean to be concise?
Questions for reflection
• How do you feel when you read a short message? Does it feel rude? Is it easy to understand?
• Do you typically write long messages or short messages?
• Do you think your writing is wordy?
• Do you feel confident in recognizing what elements of writing may make it wordy?
• What strategies do you use to make your writing more concise?
It is easy to let your sentences become cluttered with words that do not add value to your message. Improve cluttered sentences by eliminating repetitive ideas, removing repeated words, and editing to eliminate unnecessary words.
Eliminating repetitive ideas
Unless you are providing definitions on purpose, stating one idea twice in a single sentence is redundant.
Removing repeated words
As a general rule, you should try not to repeat a word within a sentence. Sometimes you simply need to choose a different word, but often you can actually remove repeated words.
Example:
Original: The student who won the cooking contest is a very talented and ambitious student.
Revision: The student who won the cooking contest is very talented and ambitious.
Rewording to eliminate unnecessary words
If a sentence has words that are not necessary to carry the meaning, those words are unneeded and can be removed.
Examples:
Original: Andy has the ability to make the most fabulous twice-baked potatoes.
Revision: Andy makes the most fabulous twice-baked potatoes.
Original: For his part in the cooking class group project, Malik was responsible for making the mustard reduction sauce.
Revision: Malik made the mustard reduction sauce for his cooking class group project.
Avoid expletive pronouns (most of the time)
Many people create needlessly wordy sentences using expletive pronouns, which often take the form of “There is …” or “There are ….”
Pronouns (e.g., I, you, he, she, they, this, that, who, etc.) are words that we use to replace nouns (i.e., people, places, things), and there are many types of pronouns (e.g., personal, relative, demonstrative, etc.). However, expletive pronouns are different from other pronouns because unlike most pronouns, they do not stand for a person, thing, or place; they are called expletives because they have no “value.” Sometimes you will see expletive pronouns at the beginning of a sentence, sometimes at the end.
Examples:
There are a lot of reading assignments in this class.
I can’t believe how many reading assignments there are!
Note: These two examples are not necessarily bad examples of using expletive pronouns. They are included to help you first understand what expletive pronouns are so you can recognize them.
The main reason you should generally avoid writing with expletive pronouns is that they often cause us to use more words in the rest of the sentence than we have to. Also, the empty words at the beginning tend to shift the more important subject matter toward the end of the sentence. The above sentences are not that bad, but at least they are simple enough to help you understand what expletive pronouns are. Here are some more examples of expletive pronouns, along with better alternatives.
Examples
Original: There are some people who love to cause trouble.
Revision: Some people love to cause trouble.
Original: There are some things that are just not worth waiting for.
Revision: Some things are just not worth waiting for.
Original: There is a person I know who can help you fix your computer.
Revision: I know a person who can help you fix your computer.
While not all instances of expletive pronouns are bad, writing sentences with expletives seems to be habit forming. It can lead to trouble when you are explaining more complex ideas, because you end up having to use additional strings of phrases to explain what you want your reader to understand. Wordy sentences, such as those with expletive pronouns, can tax the reader’s mind.
Example
Original: There is a button you need to press that is red and says STOP.
Revision: You need to press the red STOP button. Or: Press the red STOP button.
When you find yourself using expletives, always ask yourself if omitting and rewriting would give your reader a clearer, more direct, less wordy sentence. Can I communicate the same message using fewer words without taking away from the meaning I want to convey or the tone I want to create?
Choose specific wording
You will give clearer information if you write with specific rather than general words. Evoke senses of taste, smell, hearing, sight, and touch with your word choices. For example, you could say, “My shoe feels odd.” But this statement does not give a sense of why your shoe feels odd, since “odd” is an abstract word that does not suggest any physical characteristics. Or you could say, “My shoe feels wet.” This statement gives you a sense of how your shoe feels to the touch. It also gives a sense of how your shoe might look as well as how it might smell, painting a picture for your readers. See the table below to compare general and specific words.
Reference
Bailey, E. P. (2008). Plain English at work: A guide to business writing and speaking. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Attribution
This chapter contains material taken from Part 1 “Foundations” in the Professional Communications OER by the Olds College OER Development Team (used under a CC-BY 4.0 International license). You can download Professional Communications OER for free at http://www.procomoer.org/. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Remix%3A_Introduction_to_Professional_Communications_(Ashman)/04%3A_Writing/4.03%3A_Inclusive_language.txt |
Considering the rhetorical aspects of any writing situation, such as purpose, stance, and audience, is an essential part of adapting the style of a message for any audience. Adopting a you-centered business style can help you achieve your purpose, choose a stance, and analyze your audience. A you-centered business style employs the you view and an audience-centered tone to choose particular words and adopt a targeted tone in a message.
The “you view” analyzes and emphasizes the reader’s interests and perspectives. Because the reader’s interest or benefit is stressed, the writer is more likely to help the reader understand information or act on a request. Adopting a you view often, but not always, involves using the words you or your rather than we, our, I, and mine. Consider the following sentence that focuses on the needs of the writer and the organization (we) rather than on those of the reader.
• We have not received your signed invoice, so we cannot process your payment.
Even though the sentence uses the word “your” twice, the first clause suggests that the point of view focuses on the writer’s need to receive the invoice to process the payment. The word “we” itself is not problematic, but the we view is. Consider the following revisions, written with the you view.
• We understand the importance of processing your payment and will process it as soon as we receive your signed invoice.
• So you can receive your payment promptly, please send your signed invoice.
The needs and benefits of the reader are stressed in both of these examples. The first example focuses on the needs of the audience by associating the payment with “importance.” The second revision emphasizes the benefits to the reader by including the second-person pronouns “you” early in the sentence.
Both revisions also use an audience-centered tone, so the writer is more likely to motivate the reader to act. An audience-centered tone foregrounds the reader’s needs, preferences, and benefits. Incorporating an audience-centered tone into your writing means that you consider the words you choose and the ways in which you assemble those words in a sentence.
Workplace Case Studies
Case Study 1: Delivering Negative News
Let’s consider a few examples based on specific workplace situations. Imagine that you are a Human Resources Manager who must inform employees that paychecks will be delivered a day late. Employees with direct deposit agreements will not be affected. A writer who does not analyze the rhetorical situation before carefully considering style might hastily write, “Due to an error made by our payroll company, all employees who never signed up for direct deposit will receive their paychecks late.”
The writer’s purpose in this writing situation is to tactfully deliver negative news. The writer’s stance should be professional and empathetic, especially since the writer’s audience will probably be disappointed, irritated, or frustrated by the message. Consider the following revision, written with the you view and an audience-centered tone.
• We apologize for the inconvenience caused by the fact that an issue at PLT processing will delay the next paycheck date by one day. By signing up for direct deposit, you can ensure that your pay will never be delayed.
The writer achieves their purpose by including a buffer with an audience-centered tone (We apologize for the inconvenience) before the bad news (an issue at PLT processing will delay the next paycheck date by one day). The writer also includes the reason for the negative news (an issue at the payroll company, PLT processing). The writer uses the second-person possessive pronoun “your” in the second sentence to promote the you view. The writer also maintains a problem-solving and empathetic, audience-centered tone by waiting until the second sentence to remind the audience that they can sign up for direct deposit.
Case Study 2: Promoting Safety in User Manuals
Another writing context might require a writer to compose a user manual for a ceiling fan. User manuals provide instructions for the setup, operation, and maintenance of a product. Most user manuals also include safety precautions and troubleshooting guides and charts. A writer who does not analyze the rhetorical situation before writing a section about mounting a ceiling fan might write a sentence like, “Be sure to read the following important information about where Super Air Flow fans might best be installed before mounting the fan.”
However, the writer’s purpose is to inform the reader about how to choose locations that will not cause safety issues or damage either furniture or the structure of a room. The writer’s stance should be informative and helpful, especially since the audience will probably appreciate learning about how and where to safely mount their fan. Consider the following revision, written from the you view and with an audience-centered tone.
• Before mounting your new Super Air Flow fan, read the following helpful recommendations.
This revision incorporates the you view by referring to the user as the owner of the fan (many user manuals are called owner manuals). The revision also adopts a you-centered tone by subordinating the dependent clause that refers to the fan to the independent clause that offers the reader “helpful recommendations.” These revisions will help the writer achieve their purpose—promoting safety.
Principles and Guidelines for Practice
1. Consider your purpose from the you view.
2. Analyze the audience and their potential reactions.
3. Adapt your message to the receiver’s needs by putting yourself in that person’s shoes (adopt the you view) and emphasizing the reader’s benefits (adopt a you-centered tone).
Note: Although emphasizing second-person pronouns (you/your) instead of first-person pronouns (I/we, us, our) can help you cultivate a you-centered business style, a you-centered style should include both a you view and an audience-centered tone that emphasize the reader’s needs and interests.
I/we View You View and Audience-Centered Tone
Please share your valuable thoughts about parking on the attached survey; your opinions matter.
Because your ideas count, give us your thoughts on the attached survey about parking.
I need to know what type of model you have before I can do anything. Would it be possible for you to tell me what type of model you have so that I can help you solve this problem?
I can help you solve this problem. Would it be possible for you to tell me what type of model you own?
All employees must immediately fill out the enclosed questionnaire so that we can allocate our continuing education funds to employees. You can be one of the first employees to sign up for our continuing education funds by immediately filling out the enclosed questionnaire.
By immediately filling out the enclosed questionnaire, you can be one of the first employees to receive continuing education funds.
Attribution
This chapter is taken from You-Centred Business Style in the Writing Commons and is used under a CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 Unported license. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Remix%3A_Introduction_to_Professional_Communications_(Ashman)/04%3A_Writing/4.05%3A_You_attitude_%28you_view%29.txt |
• 5.1: Memos
• 5.2: Letters
• 5.3: Emails
• 5.4: Proposals
• 5.5: Reports
• 5.6: Persuasive appeals
• 5.7: Persuasive messages
• 5.8: Starting your job search
The job search is more than finding a job posting for which you fulfill the requirements. This planning phase allows you to gather the information and language that you need to make yourself a strong applicant.
• 5.9: Resumes
A resume is a document that summarizes your education, skills, talents, employment history, and experiences in a clear and concise format for potential employers.
• 5.10: Cover letters
The application letter or cover letter is a formal letter that accompanies your resume when you apply for a position. Its purpose is to support your resume, providing more specific details, and to explain in writing why you are a strong candidate for the specific position to which you are applying. It should not simply reiterate your resume; it’s an opportunity for you to make a case for your candidacy in complete sentences and phrases, which gives the reader a better sense of your “voice.”
• 5.11: Bad news messages
05: Message types
A memo (or memorandum, meaning “reminder”) is normally used for communicating policies, procedures, or related official business within an organization. It is often written from a one-to-all perspective (like mass communication), broadcasting a message to an audience, rather than a one-on-one, interpersonal communication. It may also be used to update a team on activities for a given project or to inform a specific group within a company of an event, action, or observance.
Memo purpose
A memo’s purpose is often to inform and represent the business or organization’s interests, but it occasionally includes an element of persuasion or a call to action. All organizations have informal and formal communication networks. The unofficial, informal communication network within an organization is often called the grapevine, and it is often characterized by rumour, gossip, and innuendo. On the grapevine, one person may hear that someone else is going to be laid off and start passing the news around. Rumours change and transform as they are passed from person to person, and before you know it, the word is that they are shutting down your entire department.
One effective way to address informal, unofficial speculation is to spell out clearly for all employees what is going on with a particular issue. If budget cuts are a concern, then it may be wise to send a memo explaining the changes that are imminent. If a company wants employees to take action, they may also issue a memorandum.
Memo format
A memo has a header with guide words that clearly indicate who sent the memo, who the intended recipients are, the date of the memo, and a descriptive subject line. The content of each guide word field aligns. The message then follows the header, and it typically includes a declaration (introduction), a discussion, and a summary.
Figure \(1\) shows a sample memo.
Figure \(1\). A sample memo (Melissa Ashman, 2018, CC-BY-NC 4.0 international license)
Five tips for effective business memos
1. Audience orientation
Always consider the audience and their needs when preparing a memo (or any message for that matter). An acronym or abbreviation that is known to management may not be known by all the employees of the organization, and if the memo is to be posted and distributed within the organization, the goal is to be clear and concise communication at all levels with no ambiguity.
2. Professional tone
Memos are often announcements, and the person sending the memo speaks for a part or all of the organization. Use a professional tone at all times.
3. Subject emphasis
The topic of the memo is normally declared in the subject line, and it should be clear, concise, and descriptive. If the memo is announcing the observance of a holiday, for example, the specific holiday should be named in the subject line—for example, use “Thanksgiving weekend schedule” rather than “holiday observance.”
4. Direct format
Some written business communication allows for a choice between direct and indirect formats, but memorandums are almost always direct. The purpose is clearly announced immediately and up-front, and the explanation or supporting information then follows.
5. Maintain objectivity
Memos should have an objective tone without personal bias, preference, or interest on display. Avoid subjectivity.
Attribution
This chapter contains material taken from Chapter 9.2 “Memorandums and letters” in Business Communication for Success and is used under a CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 International license. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Remix%3A_Introduction_to_Professional_Communications_(Ashman)/05%3A_Message_types/5.01%3A_Memos.txt |
Letters are brief messages sent to recipients that are often outside the organization (Bovee & Thill, 2010). They are often printed on letterhead paper and represent the business or organization in one or two pages. Shorter messages may include e-mails or memos, either hard copy or electronic, while reports tend to be three or more pages in length.
While e-mail and text messages may be used more frequently today, the business letter remains a common form of written communication. It can serve to introduce you to a potential employer, announce a product or service, or even serve to communicate feelings and emotions. We’ll examine the basic outline of a letter and then focus on specific products or writing assignments.
All business messages have expectations in terms of language and format. The audience or reader also may have their own idea of what constitutes a specific type of letter, and your organization may have its own format and requirements. There are many types of letters, and many adaptations in terms of form and content. In this chapter, we discuss the fifteen elements of a traditional block-style letter.
Letters may serve to introduce your skills and qualifications to prospective employers, deliver important or specific information, or serve as documentation of an event or decision. Regardless of the type of letter you need to write, it can contain up to fifteen elements in five areas. While you may not use all the elements in every case or context, they are listed in Table \(1\).
Table \(1\) Elements of a business letter
Content Guidelines
1. Return address This is your address where someone could send a reply. If your letter includes a letterhead with this information, either in the header (across the top of the page) or the footer (along the bottom of the page), you do not need to include it before the date.
2. Date The date should be placed at the top, right or left justified, five lines from the top of the page or letterhead logo.
3. Reference (Re:) *optional Like a subject line in an e-mail, this is where you indicate what the letter is in reference to, the subject or purpose of the document.
4. Delivery
*optional
Sometimes you want to indicate on the letter itself how it was delivered. This can make it clear to a third party that the letter was delivered via a specific method, such as certified mail (a legal requirement for some types of documents).
5. Recipient note *optional This is where you can indicate if the letter is personal or confidential.
6. Salutation A common salutation may be “Dear Mr. (full name).” If you are unsure about which title to use (such as Mrs., Ms., Mr., Mx., Dr.), you may simply write the recipient’s name (e.g., “Dear Cameron Rai”) followed by a colon. A comma after the salutation is correct for personal letters, but a colon should be used in business.
The salutation “To whom it may concern” is appropriate for letters of recommendation or other letters that are intended to be read by any and all individuals. If this is not the case with your letter, but you are unsure of how to address your recipient, make every effort to find out to whom the letter should be specifically addressed. For many, there is no sweeter sound than that of their name, and to spell it incorrectly runs the risk of alienating the reader before your letter has even been read. Avoid the use of impersonal salutations like “Dear Prospective Customer,” as the lack of personalization can alienate a future client.
7. Introduction This is your opening paragraph, and may include an attention statement, a reference to the purpose of the document, or an introduction of the person or topic depending on the type of letter. An emphatic opening involves using the most significant or important element of the letter in the introduction. Readers tend to pay attention to openings, and it makes sense to outline the expectations for the reader up front. Just as you would preview your topic in a speech, the clear opening in your introductions establishes context and facilitates comprehension.
8. Body If you have a list of points, a series of facts, or a number of questions, they belong in the body of your letter. You may choose organizational devices to draw attention, such as a bullet list, or simply number them. Readers may skip over information in the body of your letter, so make sure you emphasize the key points clearly. This is your core content, where you can outline and support several key points. Brevity is important, but so is clear support for main point(s). Specific, meaningful information needs to be clear, concise, and accurate.
9. Conclusion An emphatic closing mirrors your introduction with the added element of tying the main points together, clearly demonstrating their relationship. The conclusion can serve to remind the reader, but should not introduce new information. A clear summary sentence will strengthen your writing and enhance your effectiveness. If your letter requests or implies action, the conclusion needs to make clear what you expect to happen. This paragraph reiterates the main points and their relationship to each other, reinforcing the main point or purpose.
10. Close “Sincerely” or “Cordially” are standard business closing statements. Closing statements are normally placed one or two lines under the conclusion and include a hanging comma, as in Sincerely,
11. Signature Five lines after the close, you should type your name (required) and, on the line below it, your title (optional).
12. Preparation line If the letter was prepared or typed by someone other than the signatory (you), then inclusion of initials is common, as in MJD or abc.
13. Enclosures (attachments) Just like an e-mail with an attachment, the letter sometimes has additional documents that are delivered with it. This line indicates what the reader can look for in terms of documents included with the letter, such as brochures, reports, or related business documents. Only include this line if you are in fact including additional documentation.
14. Courtesy copies or “CC” The abbreviation “CC” once stood for carbon copies but now refers to courtesy copies. Just like a “CC” option in an e-mail, it indicates the relevant parties that will also receive a copy of the document.
15. Logo and contact information A formal business letter normally includes a logo or contact information for the organization in the header (top of page) or footer (bottom of page).
A sample letter, illustrating the parts of the letter, is shown in Figure \(1\).
Figure \(1\). A sample letter.
Reference
Bovee, C., & Thill, J. (2010). Business communication essentials: A skills-based approach to vital business English (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Attribution
This chapter contains material taken from Chapter 9.2 “Memorandums and letters” in Business Communication for Success and is used under a CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 International license. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Remix%3A_Introduction_to_Professional_Communications_(Ashman)/05%3A_Message_types/5.02%3A_Letters.txt |
Email is typically quite familiar to most students and workers. While it may be used like text messaging, or synchronous chatting, and it can be delivered to a cell phone, email remains an asynchronous communication tool. In business, email has largely replaced print hard copy letters for external (outside the company) correspondence, as well as taking the place of memos for internal (within the company) communication (Guffey, 2008). Email can be very useful for messages that have slightly more content than a text message, but it is still best used for fairly brief messages.
Many businesses use automated e-mails to acknowledge communications from the public or to remind associates that periodic reports or payments are due. You may also be assigned to “populate” a form email in which standard paragraphs are used, but you choose from a menu of sentences to make the wording suitable for a particular transaction.
Emails may be informal in personal contexts, but business communication requires attention to detail, awareness that your email reflects you and your company, and a professional tone so that it may be forwarded to any third party if needed. Email often serves to exchange information within organizations. Although email may have an informal feel, remember that when used for business, it needs to convey professionalism and respect. Never write or send anything that you wouldn’t want read in public or in front of your company president or CEO.
Tips for effective business emails
• Proper salutations should demonstrate respect and avoid mix-ups in case a message is accidentally sent to the wrong recipient. For example, use a salutation like “Dear Ms. X” (external) or “Hi Barry” (internal).
• Subject lines should be clear, brief, and specific. This helps the recipient understand the essence of the message. For example, “Proposal attached” or “Your question of 10/25.”
• Close with a signature. Identify yourself by creating a signature block that automatically contains your name and business contact information.
• Avoid abbreviations. An email is not a text message, and the audience may not find your wit cause to them to ROTFLOL (roll on the floor laughing out loud).
• Be brief. Omit unnecessary words.
• Use a good format. Include line breaks between sentences or divide your message into brief paragraphs for ease of reading. A good email should get to the point and conclude in three small paragraphs or less.
• Reread, revise, and review. Catch and correct spelling and grammar mistakes before you press “send.” It will take more time and effort to undo the problems caused by a hasty, poorly written email than to get it right the first time.
• Reply promptly. Watch out for an emotional response—never reply in anger—but make a habit of replying to all emails within 24 hours, even if only to say that you will provide the requested information in 48 or 72 hours.
• Use “Reply All” sparingly. Do not send your reply to everyone who received the initial email unless your message absolutely needs to be read by the entire group.
• Avoid using all caps. Capital letters are used on the internet to communicate emphatic emotion or yelling and are considered rude.
• Test links. If you include a link, test it to make sure it is complete.
• Announce email attachments in your message.
• Give feedback or follow up. If you don’t get a response in 24 hours, e-mail or call. Spam filters may have intercepted your message, so your recipient may never have received it.
Figure \(1\) provides an example of a business email.
Figure \(1\) Sample business email.
Netiquette
We create personal pages, post messages, and interact via mediated technologies as a normal part of our lives, but how we conduct ourselves can leave a lasting image, literally. The photograph you posted on your Instagram page may have been seen by your potential employer or that nasty remark in a Facebook post may come back to haunt you later. Several years ago, when the internet was a new phenomenon, Virginia Shea laid out a series of ground rules for communication online that continue to serve us today.
Virginia Shea’s rules of netiquette
• Remember the human on the other side of the electronic communication.
• Adhere to the same standards of behaviour online that you follow in real life.
• Know where you are in cyberspace.
• Respect other people’s time and bandwidth.
• Share expert knowledge.
• Keep flame wars under control.
• Respect other people’s privacy.
• Don’t abuse your power.
• Be forgiving of other people’s mistakes (Shea, 1994).
Her rules speak for themselves and remind us that the golden rule (treat others as you would like to be treated) is relevant wherever there is human interaction. It is also important to remember to keep your public persona online as professional as possible and to familiarize yourself with the privacy settings of the social media platforms you use.
Attribution
This chapter contains material taken from Chapter 9.1 “Text, email, and netiquette” in Business Communication for Success and is used under a CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 International license. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Remix%3A_Introduction_to_Professional_Communications_(Ashman)/05%3A_Message_types/5.03%3A_Emails.txt |
An effective business proposal informs and persuades efficiently. It features many of the common elements of a report, but its emphasis on persuasion guides the overall presentation.
Let’s say you work in a health care setting. What types of products or services might be put out to bid? If your organization is going to expand and needs to construct a new wing, it will probably be put out to bid. Everything from office furniture to bedpans could potentially be put out to bid, specifying a quantity, quality, and time of delivery required. Janitorial services may also be bid on each year, as well as food services, and even maintenance. Using the power of bidding to lower contract costs for goods and services is common practice.
In order to be successful in business and industry, you should be familiar with the business proposal. Much like a report, with several common elements and persuasive speech, a business proposal makes the case for your product or service. Business proposals are documents designed to make a persuasive appeal to the audience to achieve a defined outcome, often proposing a solution to a problem.
Common proposal elements
Idea
Effective business proposals are built around a great idea or solution. While you may be able to present your normal product, service, or solution in an interesting way, you want your document and its solution to stand out against the background of competing proposals. What makes your idea different or unique? How can you better meet the needs of the company that other vendors? What makes you so special? If the purchase decision is made solely on price, it may leave you little room to underscore the value of service, but the sale follow-through has value. For example, don’t consider just the cost of the unit but also its maintenance. How can maintenance be a part of your solution, distinct from the rest? In addition, your proposal may focus on a common product where you can anticipate several vendors at similar prices. How can you differentiate yourself from the rest by underscoring long-term relationships, demonstrated ability to deliver, or the ability to anticipate the company’s needs? Business proposals need to have an attractive idea or solution in order to be effective.
Traditional categories
You can be creative in many aspects of the business proposal, but it can be advantageous to follow the traditional sections (using descriptive or functional headings appropriate to your proposal). Businesses expect to see information in a specific order, much like a resume or even a letter. Each aspect of your proposal has its place, so be sure to use sections effectively to highlight your product or service. Every section is an opportunity to sell, and should reinforce your credibility, your passion, and the reason why your solution is simply the best. These sections are described in Table \(1\).
Table \(1\) Typical sections in a proposal
Section Description
Cover page Title page with name, title, date, and specific reference to request for proposal if applicable.
Executive summary Like an abstract in a report, this is a comprehensive summary of the product or service and how it meets the requirements and exceeds expectations.
Background Discuss the history of your product, service, and/or company and consider focusing on the relationship between you and the reader and/or similar companies. What is the business need or problem that you and/or your company can solve? What makes you and/or your company the best choice to solve this problem or provide the product or service?
Proposal The idea. Who, what, where, when, why, and how. Make it clear and concise. Don’t waste words, and don’t exaggerate. Use clear, well-supported reasoning to demonstrate your product or service.
Benefits How will the reader benefit from the product or service? Be clear, concise, specific, and provide a comprehensive list of immediate, short, and long-term benefits to the company. What currently exists in the marketplace, including competing products or services, and how does your solution compare?
Timeline A clear presentation, often with visual aids, of the process, from start to finish, with specific, dated benchmarks noted.
Finance What are the initial costs, when can revenue be anticipated, when will there be a return on investment (if applicable)? What are the monetary costs, staffing costs, and other costs? The proposal may involve a one-time fixed cost, but the product or service could be delivered more than once so an extended financial plan noting costs across time is required. What are potential revenues (if applicable)?
Conclusion Restate your main points clearly. Tie them together with a common theme and make your proposal memorable and professional.
Professional tone and format
A professional document is a base requirement. If it is less than professional, you can count on its prompt dismissal. There should be no errors in spelling or grammar, and all information should be concise, accurate, and clearly referenced when appropriate. Information that pertains to credibility should be easy to find and clearly relevant, including contact information. If the document exists in a hard copy form, it should be printed on a letterhead. If the document is submitted in an electronic form, it should be in a file format that presents your document as you intended. Word processing files may have their formatting changed or adjusted based on factors you cannot control—like screen size—and information can shift out of place, making it difficult to understand. In this case, a portable document format (PDF)—a format for electronic documents—may be used to preserve content location and avoid any inadvertent format changes when it is displayed.
Effective, persuasive proposals are often brief. Clear and concise proposals serve the audience well and limit the range of information to prevent confusion.
Two types of business proposals
Solicited
If you have been asked to submit a proposal, it is considered solicited. The solicitation may come in the form of a direct verbal or written request, but normally solicitations are indirect, open-bid to the public, and formally published for everyone to see. A request for proposal (RFP), request for quotation (RFQ), and invitation for bid (IFB) are common ways to solicit business proposals for business, industry, and the government.
RFPs typically specify the product or service, guidelines for submission, and evaluation criteria. RFQs emphasize cost, though service and maintenance may be part of the solicitation. IFBs are often job-specific in that they encompass a project that requires a timeline, labour, and materials. For example, if a local school district announces the construction of a new elementary school, they normally have the architect and engineering plans on file, but need a licensed contractor to build it.
Unsolicited
Unsolicited proposals are the “cold calls” of business writing. They require a thorough understanding of the market, product, and/or service, and their presentation is typically general rather than customer-specific. They can, however, be tailored to specific businesses with time and effort, and the demonstrated knowledge of specific needs or requirement can transform an otherwise generic, brochure-like proposal into an effective sales message. Getting your tailored message to your target audience, however, is often a significant challenge if it has not been directly or indirectly solicited. Unsolicited proposals are often regarded as marketing materials, intended more to stimulate interest for a follow-up contact than make direct sales. A targeted proposal is typically your most effective approach.
Attribution
This chapter contains material taken from Chapter 9.2 “Business proposal” in Business Communication for Success and is used under a CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 International license. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Remix%3A_Introduction_to_Professional_Communications_(Ashman)/05%3A_Message_types/5.04%3A_Proposals.txt |
Reports are designed to record and convey information to the reader and can be used both internally and externally. Reports serve to document new information for specific audiences, goals, or functions. The type of report is often identified by its primary purpose, as in an accident report, a laboratory report, or a sales report. Reports are often analytical or involve the rational analysis of information. Sometimes they report the facts with no analysis at all. Other reports summarize past events, present current data, and forecast future trends. This section will introduce you to the basics of report writing.
Types of reports
Reports come in all sizes but are typically longer than a page and are somewhat shorter than a book. In this chapter, we’re focusing on short reports. The type of report depends on its function, and different industries have reports specific to them. For example, science researchers write lab reports, while incident reports are common in health-and-safety environments.
Reports vary by function, style, and tradition. Within your organization, you may need to address specific expectations. This section discusses reports in general terms, focusing on common elements and points of distinction. Reference to similar documents at your workplace may serve you well as you prepare your own report. As shown in Table \(1\), there are many types of reports.
Table \(1\) Types of reports
Report type
Description
Progress report
Monitor and control production, sales, shipping, service, or related business process.
Recommendation report
Make recommendations to management and provide tools to solve problems or make decisions.
Summary report
Present summaries of the information available on a given subject.
Progress report
A progress report is used to give management an update on the status of a project. It is generated at timed intervals (for example, once a month) or on completion of key stages. It records accomplishments to date and identifies any challenges or concerns. It is usually written by the project lead and is one to two pages long.
When you write a progress report, begin by stating why you are writing the report:
• Identify what you’ve accomplished
• List any problems you have encountered
• Outline what work still remains
• Conclude by providing an overview of the project’s status and what should be done next.
Recommendation report
A recommendation report is used to help management make decisions. The goal of this report is to identify a solution to a problem or suggest a course of action. In it, the writer might suggest that a procedure be adopted or rejected, assess an unsatisfactory situation, or persuade decision makers to make a change that will benefit the organization. For example, the report might suggest ways to enhance the quality of a product, increase profit, reduce cost, or improve workplace conditions. The intention of a recommendation report is not to assign blame or be overly critical, but to suggest improvements in a positive manner.
Summary report
A summary report is used to give management information. For example, if you work in the marketing department, your boss might ask you to find out about your competitors’ online activities so that your company can effectively compete with them. To do this, you would research your competitors’ websites, social media profiles, digital advertising campaigns, and so on. You would then distill what you find down to the key points so that your boss can get the essential information in a short time, and then decide how to act on it. Unlike the recommendation report, the summary report focuses on the facts, leaving it to management to decide on a course of action.
Report organization
Reports vary by size, format, and function. You need to be flexible and adjust your report to the needs of the audience. Reports are typically organized around six key elements:
• Who the report is about and/or prepared for
• What was done, what problems were addressed, and the results, including conclusions and/or recommendations
• Where the subject studied occurred
• When the subject studied occurred
• Why the report was written (function), including under what authority, for what reason, or by whose request
• How the subject operated, functioned, or was used
Pay attention to these essential elements when you consider your stakeholders. That may include the person(s) the report is about, whom it is for, and the larger audience of the organization. Ask yourself who the key decision makers are, who the experts will be, and how your words and images may be interpreted. While there is no universal format for a report, there is a common order to the information. Each element supports the main purpose or function, playing an important role in the transmission of information. Some common elements in a report are shown in Table \(2\).
Table \(2\) Parts of a report
Page
Description
Title page
Report title; date of submission; name, title, and organization of the person who prepared the report; name, title, and organization of the person receiving the report.
No page number.
Table of contents
A list of the sections in the report and their respective page numbers.
All headings/sub-headings in the report should be listed on this page.
This page is not labelled with a page number.
Executive summary
Summarize the topic, methods, data/evidence, results, and conclusions/recommendations.
On its own page.
Labelled as page iii.
Introduction
Introduces the topic of the report, states the purpose of the report, and previews the structure of the report.
Begins on a new page.
Labelled as page 1.
Body
Key elements of the report body may include the background, methods, results, and analysis or discussion.
Uses descriptive or functional headings and sub-headings (is not labelled “Body”).
Pagination continues from the introduction.
Conclusion and/or recommendations
Concise presentation of findings and/or recommendations. Indicate the main results and their relation to the recommended action(s) or outcome(s).
Pagination continues from the body of the report.
References
A list of all references used in the report.
All in-text citations included in the report should have an accompanying entry in the reference list.
Begins on a new page.
Pagination continues from the conclusions and/or recommendations.
Appendix or appendices
Related supporting materials.
All materials in the appendix (or appendices) must be referred to in the body of the report.
Only one item per appendix.
Each appendix begins on a new page, is labelled as Appendix A, B, C, etc, and is given a title.
Pagination continues from the reference list.
Executive summaries
An executive summary is a brief overview of a document’s purpose, results, and conclusions condensed for the quick reading of an executive or manager. It is placed at the beginning of a longer report or proposal and summarizes specific aspects of its content. The reader of the summary is usually not interested in the technical details of a project but is instead interested in costs, marketing, productivity, or efficiency.
Executive summaries vs. abstracts
Executive summaries and abstracts are similar, but an executive summary is typically longer. It usually runs about one or two double-spaced pages (or about five percent of the length of the full report), while an abstract is usually only six to eight sentences. An executive summary is geared to executives, managers, or investors, while an abstract is intended for an academic audience. An executive summary stresses results or conclusions, but an abstract may give equal time to problem definition, methods, results, and conclusions.
Style
As an accompaniment to a report, an executive summary shares the report’s formal tone and emphasis on direct, clear, concise, specific language. The summary should be original: don’t copy and paste sentences from the full report. To keep the word count down, omit lengthy transitions and examples. Avoid highly technical language, and briefly define any technical terms you must use.
Introduce the problem
Omit an elaborate introduction; however, you may choose to open with an introductory sentence designed to capture the reader’s attention. An eye-catching introduction that establishes a problem can be especially effective when your purpose is to persuade—perhaps you want investors to buy into a business plan, or you want executives to make a change in policy. Begin with a clear idea of what your summary can accomplish, then craft your introductory sentence.
Once you have introduced the problem, hopefully with a bit of flair, detail it and explain how addressing it introduces an improvement or benefit. Use specifics whenever possible.
E.g. Waiting weeks for an appointment or standing in a long line to get help is discouraging, but if the University Writing Center can’t recruit more consultants soon, that’s where our Aggie writers will be—frustrated and looking elsewhere for advice.
Sell the solution
Once you have established a problem, present the solution. If the original report explains how the problem was addressed (methods) and if methods were a significant factor in coming up with a solution or of particular importance to executive readers, then briefly describe them. If, for example, you are suggesting a change in recruiting methods, you might want to explain the steps you took to discover the most effective methods.
You need to sell your solution, so include as many specifics as you can rather than generalizations. (E.g. “The improved distribution plan should result in a 25% increase in sales for the coming year” rather than “We’re optimistic about the future.”) Don’t gloss over any potential problems or limitations; instead, briefly explain how these issues are being addressed or can be minimized. Also, don’t include anything the report doesn’t specifically cover.
Close the deal
End with explicit recommendations based on the document’s results. This section will probably make up the bulk of the summary because ultimately what concerns the executive reader is results and effects on the organization. It’s important to continue including specific figures in the recommendations section.
E.g. On the basis of our analysis, we recommend that the University Writing Center take the following steps:
• produce and distribute a promotional video that outlines the benefits of working as a writing consultant
• increase the visibility of the employment opportunities on our website
• advertise positions through targeted bulk email to qualified students
The modest outlay of \$350 to cover consultant labor and promotional materials is estimated to bring in approximately 50-60 new applications per year.
Make sure your executive summary includes all the pertinent information. Think about what an executive would need to know in order to make a decision about changing a policy, undertaking an action, or spending money and then provide that information as specifically and concisely as you can.
The material in this section is taken from Executive Summaries from The Writing Center at Texas A&M University and is used under a CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 unported license.
Here is a checklist for ensuring that a report fulfills its goals:
• Report considers the audience’s needs
• Form follows function of report
• Format reflects institutional norms and expectations
• Information is accurate, complete, and documented
• Information is easy to read
• Terms are clearly defined
• Figures, tables, and art support written content
• Figures, tables, and art are clear and correctly labelled
• Figures, tables, and art are easily understood without text support
• Words are easy to read (font, arrangement, organization)
• Results are clear and concise
• Recommendations are reasonable and well-supported
• Report represents your best effort
• Report speaks for itself without your clarification or explanation
Formatting a report
Make it easier for your reader to understand the information in your report by formatting your document cleanly. Here are a few guidelines:
• Use size 10-12 pt type in a standard business font, such as Times New Roman, Arial, or Calibri
• Use a minimum of 1-inch margins on all sides
• Use headings and sub-headings to divide the content into clear sections
• Separate paragraphs using white space
• Use visuals (such as charts, graphs, or diagrams) where they will help in explaining numbers or other information that would be difficult to understand in text form
Attribution
This chapter contains material taken from Part 2 “Writing” in Professional Communications OER by the Olds College OER Development Team and is used under a CC-BY 4.0 International license. You can download this book for free at www.procomoer.org/.
This chapter also contains material taken from Executive Summaries from The Writing Center at Texas A&M University and is used under a CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 unported license. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Remix%3A_Introduction_to_Professional_Communications_(Ashman)/05%3A_Message_types/5.05%3A_Reports.txt |
Once you know who your intended audience is and what your purpose is for writing, you can make specific decisions about how to shape your message. No matter what, you want your audience to stick around long enough to read your whole piece. How do you manage this magic trick? Easy. You appeal to them. You get to know what sparks their interest, what makes them curious, and what makes them feel understood. The one and only Aristotle provided us with three ways to appeal to an audience, and they’re called logos, pathos, and ethos. You’ll learn more about each appeal in the discussion below, but the relationship between these three appeals is also often called the rhetorical triangle as shown in Figure \(1\).
Figure \(1\). The rhetorical triangle
Pathos
Latin for emotion, pathos is the fastest way to get your audience’s attention. People tend to have emotional responses before their brains kick in and tell them to knock it off. Be careful though. Too much pathos can make your audience feel emotionally manipulated or angry because they’re also looking for the facts to support whatever emotional claims you might be making so they know they can trust you.
Logos
Latin for logic, logos is where those facts come in. Your audience will question the validity of your claims; the opinions you share in your writing need to be supported using science, statistics, expert perspective, and other types of logic. However, if you only rely on logos, your writing might become dry and boring, so even this should be balanced with other appeals.
Ethos
Latin for ethics, ethos is what you do to prove to your audience that you can be trusted, that you are a credible source of information. (See logos.) It’s also what you do to assure them that they are good people who want to do the right thing. This is especially important when writing an argument to an audience who disagrees with you. It’s much easier to encourage a disagreeable audience to listen to your point of view if you have convinced them that you respect their opinion and that you have established credibility through the use of logos and pathos, which show that you know the topic on an intellectual and personal level.
Fallacies
Regardless of what appeals you use in your writing, it is important to be aware of fallacies (errors in reasoning) because they can reduce the impact of your message on your reader. For more information on common fallacies, refer to these resources available from the Writing Commons:
• Logical fallacies: writingcommons.org/fallacious-logos
• Emotional fallacies: writingcommons.org/fallacious-pathos
• Ethical/credible fallacies: writingcommons.org/fallacious-ethos
Attribution
This chapter contains material taken from “Appealing to your audience” in The Word on College Reading and Writing by M. Babin, C. Burnell, S. Pesznecker, N. Rosevear, and J. Wood and is used under a CC-BY-NC 4.0 International license.
5.07: Persuasive messages
A persuasive message is the central message that intrigues, informs, convinces, or calls to action. Persuasive messages are often discussed in terms of reason versus emotion. Every message has elements of ethos, or credibility; pathos, or passion and enthusiasm; and logos, or logic and reason. If your persuasive message focuses exclusively on reason with cold, hard facts and nothing but the facts, you may or may not appeal to your audience. People make decisions on emotion as well as reason, and even if they have researched all the relevant facts, the decision may still come down to impulse, emotion, and desire. On the other hand, if your persuasive message focuses exclusively on emotion, with little or no substance, it may not be taken seriously. Finally, if your persuasive message does not appear to have credibility, the message may be dismissed entirely.
In general, appeals to emotion pique curiosity and get our attention, but some attention to reason and facts should also be included. That doesn’t mean we need to spell out the technical manual on the product on the opening sale message, but basic information about design or features, in specific, concrete ways can help an audience make sense of your message and the product or service. Avoid using too many abstract terms or references, as not everyone will understand these. You want your persuasive message to do the work, not the audience.
Typical format of a persuasive message
The four parts of a persuasive message are shown in Table \(1\).
Table \(1\). Four parts of a persuasive message
Part Description
Attention statement (or hook) Use humour, novelty, surprise, an unusual fact, or a question to get the attention of your audience.
Introduction Build interest by appealing to your audience’s needs and wants and include a purpose statement to set up expectations.
Explanation Establish credibility and build your relationship with your audience, discuss attractive features, and compare with competitors addressing concerns or potential questions before they are even considered.
Call to action Sum it up and offer solution steps or calls to action, motivating your audience to take the next step. The smaller the step, the more likely your audience will comply. Set up your audience for an effective closing. It should be clear what your audience should do, by when, and how.
Your persuasive message will compete with hundreds of other messages your audience receives and you want it to stand out (Price, 2005). One effective way to do that is to make sure your attention statement (or hook) and introduction clearly state how your audience will benefit. For example:
• Will the product or service save time or money?
• Will it make them look good?
• Will it entertain them?
• Will it satisfy them?
Regardless of the product or service, the audience is going to consider first what is in it for them. A benefit is what the audience gains by doing what you’re asking them to do and this is central to your persuasive message. They may gain social status, popularity, or even reduce or eliminate something they don’t want. Your persuasive message should clearly communicate the benefits of your product or service (Winston & Granat, 1997).
Strategies for persuasive messages
Your product or service may sell itself, but you may want to consider using some strategies to help ensure your success:
1. Start with your greatest benefit. Use it in the headline, subject line, caption, or attention statement. Audiences tend to remember the information from the beginning and end of a message, but have less recall about the middle points. Make your first step count by highlighting the best feature first.
2. Take baby steps. Promote, inform, and persuade on one product or service at a time. You want to hear “yes,” and if you confuse the audience with too much information, too many options, steps to consider, or related products or service, you are more likely to hear “no” as a defensive response as the audience tries not to make a mistake. Avoid confusion and keep it simple.
3. Know your audience. The more background research you can do on your audience, the better you can anticipate their specific wants and needs and tailor your persuasive message to meet them.
4. Lead with emotion, and follow with reason. Gain the audience’s attention with drama, humour, or novelty and follow with specific facts that establish your credibility, provide more information about the product or service, and lead to your call to action.
These four steps can help improve your persuasive messages. Invest your time in planning and preparation, and consider the audience’s needs as you prepare your messages. Figure \(1\) provides an example of a persuasive email message.
In this message, the writer has combined emotion and reason and reinforced their credibility in order to create interest in their service, hopefully leading to a sale. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Remix%3A_Introduction_to_Professional_Communications_(Ashman)/05%3A_Message_types/5.06%3A_Persuasive_appeals.txt |
The job search is more than finding a job posting for which you fulfill the requirements. This planning phase allows you to gather the information and language that you need to make yourself a strong applicant.
Know yourself
As you begin the process of finding and applying for employment in your chosen field, it is important to take stock of your education, technical skills, and the experiences and characteristics that make you an ideal employee and co-worker. This self-assessment is the foundation for building strong job materials.
Beyond evaluating your skill set, this is also an opportunity to take stock of the types of environments you will thrive in:
• Do you work better independently or in groups?
• Have you always imagined working for a large company, with the structure and perks that offers? Or do you see yourself working on a smaller team, perhaps taking risks for a project you believe in personally?
• Do you like developing new ideas and planning? Do you like seeing through a complex project to the finish?
Use this information as you search for potential jobs and evaluate employers. Seeking out a work environment and job that suits your strengths and preferences will give you an advantage in the job search and in your career.
Know your field
Use the resources available to you (such as career services, job websites, networking events) to find positions. Go to career fairs and make connections. Even before you are truly “on the market,” career fairs and networking events are great ways to build your confidence and become comfortable in professional environments.
Keep yourself informed and up-to-date on the projects and initiatives happening within your chosen field and especially of those employers that most interest you. This is not something you only do the night before a career fair or an interview – expose yourself to these ideas and discussions over a long period of time. These types of resources are a great place to get started:
• Organizations and conferences. Connecting with and simply being aware of the national organizations will expose you to current ideas and developments in the field. Most host conferences on a regular basis and even just reading the call for presentations or the titles and abstracts from a recent conference will introduce you to new terms and concepts, laying groundwork for future learning or research.
• Company blogs or white papers. Most companies “talk to” the public or the industry in some way to manage public perception, promote accomplishments, and (often) recruit employees. These might be highly technical or more casual or promotional in tone, depending on the company culture, industry, and their goals – any of these provide valuable insights.
• Social media. Following both companies and individual professionals will introduce you to their work, concerns, and developments in the industry. It also might make it easy for you to get exposed to these ideas as part of your regular online habits.
• Local networking or meetup groups. Professionals often hold events at a local level to meet each other and learn about what other companies in the area are doing. These might be purely social or they might include learning opportunities in the form of talks and presentations. On campus, you will also find a variety of discipline-specific groups and students organizations that can also expose you to new ideas and resources, not to mention great professional connections.
Learn your industry language
Build a vocabulary! Part of what you are doing as you prepare yourself for your career is learning a language – you are developing vocabulary and learning the language of your profession in addition to developing the required technical technical skills.
Soft skills
In the process of completing your self-assessment, you probably discovered that you have lots of skills and strengths seemingly unrelated to your field. It’s important to remember that even unrelated experiences have taught you “transferable skills” – skills that may not be technically related, but are considered important to any field.
These “soft” skills are consistently ranked high on employer lists of desired attributes and include organizational skills, leadership abilities, teamwork experience, communication skills, problem solving, meeting deadlines, and so on. In the job search process, it is important to be able to describe your previous experiences in language that employers recognize as valuable. Table \(1\) lists some common skill attributes and ways to describe them.
Table \(1\): Phrasing for common skill attributes
Organization management & leadership Research & planning Communication Interpersonal Other
Initiating new ideas
Coordinating tasks
Being detail‐oriented
Managing or directing teams or groups
Coaching
Selling ideas or products
Decision‐making
Managing conflicts or problems
Managing budgets
Forecasting
Coming up with ideas
Identifying problems
Developing solutions
Solving problems
Imagining alternatives
Gathering information
Analyzing and evaluating information
Setting goals
Defining needs and requirements
Speaking effectively
Writing concisely
Listening attentively
Facilitating group discussion
Providing appropriate feedback
Being tactful
Negotiating
Persuading
Interviewing
Editing
Being sensitive to feelings and moods of others
Listening
Developing rapport
Providing support
Motivating
Negotiating
Sharing credit
Teaching/training
Delegating
Cooperating; working with a team
Managing time effectively
Setting and meeting goals
Being a self‐starter; self‐motivated
Working independently
Enlisting help when needed
Meeting deadlines
Being diligent; tenacity to get the job done; follow‐through
Being responsible and reliable
Know the job
Oftentimes, a job description describes the a “perfect” candidate. The advertisements are a long list of every possible skill, attribute, and set of experiences a company wants in a potential employee. However, realistically, very few people may have all the qualifications listed. Employers will likely have in the backs of their minds the skills they consider transferable or learnable, and it is in your best interest to figure out where the employer may be willing to make skill and/or experiential trade-offs.
When you’ve found a job advertisement, you should read it several times and highlight key words and skills. Note what specific qualifications are required for the position and the language used to describe these qualifications (such as “must have,” “needs,” “should be,” and “ideally”). Compare this to the qualifications you have that are the same or transferable and note how you can effectively and specifically describe your qualifications to address the needs and wants outlined in the job description. In your cover letter and resume, it then becomes your mission to persuade the employer you should be interviewed (and then hired) based on your qualifications and transferable skills.
Attribution
This chapter contains material taken from “Preparing job application materials” in A Guide to Technical Communications: Strategies & Applications by L. Hall and L. Wahlin and is used under a CC-BY-NC 4.0 International license. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Remix%3A_Introduction_to_Professional_Communications_(Ashman)/05%3A_Message_types/5.08%3A_Starting_your_job_search.txt |
A resume is a document that summarizes your education, skills, talents, employment history, and experiences in a clear and concise format for potential employers. The resume serves three distinct purposes that define its format, design, and presentation:
1. To represent your relevant professional information in writing
2. To demonstrate the relationship between your professional information and the problem or challenge the potential employer hopes to solve or address, often represented in the form of a job description or duties
3. To get you an interview by clearly demonstrating you meet the minimum qualifications and have the professional background help the organization meet its goals
Regardless of the format, employers have expectations for your resume. They expect it to be clear, accurate, and up to date (Bennett, 2005). This document represents you in your absence, and you want it to do the best job possible. You don’t want to be represented by spelling or grammatical errors, as they may raise questions about your education and attention to detail. Someone reading your resume with errors will only wonder what kind of work you might produce that will poorly reflect on their company. There is going to be enough competition that you don’t want to provide an easy excuse to toss your resume at the start of the process. Do your best work the first time. Table \(1\) highlights some common types of resumes.
Table \(1\) Common types of resumes
Type Function Advantage Disadvantage
Chronological Chronological resumes (which list items in reverse time order) focus on work history. Demonstrates a consistent work history It may be difficult to highlight skills and experience.
Functional Functional resumes (also called competency-based resumes) focus on skills. Demonstrates skills that can clearly link to job functions or duties It is often associated with people who have gaps in their employment history.
Combination A combination resume lists your skills and experience first, then employment history and education. Highlights the skills you have that are relevant to the job and provides a reverse chronological work history Some employers prefer a reverse chronological order.
Scannable A scannable resume is specifically formatted to be read by a scanner and converted to digital information. Increasingly used to facilitate search and retrieval, and to reduce physical storage costs Scanners may not read the resume correctly.
Main parts of a resume
Resumes have several basic elements that employers look for, including your contact information, objective or goal, education and work experience, and so on. Each resume format may organize the information in distinct ways based on the overall design strategy, but all information should be clear, concise, and accurate (Simons & Curtis, 2004). The content in your resume should be carefully selected to present the best, most applicable qualifications for a particular employer (the company and position for which you are applying) or purpose (attending a career fair).
Contact information
This section is often located at the top of the document. The first element of the contact information is your name. You should use your full, legal name even if you go by your middle name or use a nickname. There will plenty of time later to clarify what you prefer to be called, but all your application documents, including those that relate to payroll, your social insurance number, background checks, transcripts, certificates, or degrees, should feature your legal name. Other necessary information includes your phone number and email address. For business purposes, do not use an unprofessional email address like ilovedogssooooomuch@….com or teddybears@….com. Create a new e-mail account if needed with an address suitable for professional use. If you have more than one phone number at which you can be reached, list the one you’re most likely or most easily able to answer. (Don’t make it confusing for an employer to guess which number at which to call you.)
Objective
This is one part of your resume that is relatively simple to customize for an individual application. Your objective should reflect the audience’s need to quickly understand how you will help the organization achieve its goals. An example of an objective is shown in Figure \(1\).
Figure \(1\) Sample objective statement on a resume
Education
You should list your education in reverse chronological order, with your most recent education first. List the school, credential type (e.g., diploma, certificate, degree), and the full credential name. Don’t use abbreviations for your university/college or program. For example, if you’re completing a BBA-Accounting, spell it out in full (Bachelor of Business Administration in Accounting). If you went to a college or university that may not be known in the area where the organization is that you’re applying for a job, include the city and country alongside the name of the school. If you have some post-secondary education, you can include by this indicating you are in progress. In most circumstances, it is preferable to omit your high school education.
Work experience
List in reverse chronological order your employment history, including the positions, companies, locations, dates, duties, and skills demonstrated or acquired. You may choose to use active, descriptive sentences or bullet lists, but be consistent. Emphasize responsibilities that are relevant to the specific job for which you’re applying, but don’t let emphasis become exaggeration. This document represents you in your absence, and if information is false, at a minimum you could lose your job. Be specific, be precise, and quantify details whenever possible. For example, instead of saying “managed employees during the night shift,” you could quantify that statement by saying “supervised 8 employees during 9-hour overnight shifts.” Use the present tense to describe positions you currently hold and the past tense to describe positions you no longer hold.
Other relevant qualifications
If you have received awards or honours; given presentations; published papers or other materials; or have other qualifications of note and relevance to the position for which you’re applying, you can list these in an appropriately named section on your resume. Don’t include a list of your personal interests or hobbies. If you are wondering whether or not to include a piece of information, focus on the audience’s needs. Will they find this information valuable in making a decision about you as a candidate? Does it reveal something important about your skills, interests, and qualifications? Does it reveal something new about you that is not already revealed in your resume?
Additional resume strategies
Length
You may also be tempted to extend your resume to more than one page, but don’t exceed that limit unless the additional page(s) will feature specific, relevant information that represents several years of work that directly relates to the position. The person reading your resume may be sifting through many applicants and will not spend time reading several extra pages if the content is not directly relevant.
Use key words
Just as there are common search terms and common words in relation to each position, job description, or description of duties, your resume should mirror these common terms when and where appropriate.
Follow directions
If a job description uses specific terms, refers to computer programs, skills, or previous experience, make sure you incorporate that language in your resume (assuming you have those skills or experience!). You know that when given a class assignment, you are expected to follow directions; similarly, the employer is looking for specific skills and experience. By mirroring the employer’s language and submitting your application documents in accord with their instructions, you convey a spirit of cooperation and an understanding of how to follow instructions.
Make it easy to read
You need to make sure your resume is easy to read. Use white space between sections. Use emphasis (such as bolding, italicizing, underlining, or all caps) consistently to draw attention to headings or things of note, but avoid using multiple types of emphasis at one. For example, don’t bold, underline, and italicize the heading for your work experience section. Choose an easy-to-read font that is typically used in business documents, such as Times New Roman, Arial, or Calibri. Avoid using less common font types, which may be difficult to read. A font size of 11 or 12 is easier to read for most people. Be consistent and purposeful in the visual design of your resume. Align bullet points consistently. Use the same types of bullet points in your resume. Align your resume content consistently. Remember that whomever will be reviewing resumes will likely be looking at many documents in a row and may be working quickly!
Sample resumes
A sample of a chronological resume is shown in Figure \(2\).
Figure \(2\) A sample of a chronological resume
Whereas the chronological resume focuses on employment history, a functional resume, as shown in Figure \(3\), highlights skills.
Figure \(3\) A sample of a functional resume
Attributions
This chapter contains material taken from Chapter 9.5 “Resume” in Business Communication for Success (used under a CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 International license) and “Preparing job application materials” in A Guide to Technical Communications: Strategies & Applications by L. Hall and L. Wahlin (used under a CC-BY-NC 4.0 International license). | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Remix%3A_Introduction_to_Professional_Communications_(Ashman)/05%3A_Message_types/5.09%3A_Resumes.txt |
Traditionally, the application letter or cover letter is a formal letter that accompanies your resume when you apply for a position. Its purpose is to support your resume, providing more specific details, and to explain in writing why you are a strong candidate for the specific position to which you are applying. It should not simply reiterate your resume; it’s an opportunity for you to make a case for your candidacy in complete sentences and phrases, which gives the reader a better sense of your “voice.”
It can be helpful to start by first thinking about the audience and purpose for the application letter. What information does your reader need to glean from your letter? At what point in the hiring process will they be reading it?
As you draft the letter, consider what you would want to say if you were sitting across the desk from your reader. It should be written in a formal, professional tone, but you still want it to flow like natural speech—this will make it easier for your reader to absorb the information quickly.
What to include
It can be helpful to think about writing your application letter in sections or “blocks.” This provides a basic structure for the letter; once you have an understanding of this foundation, you can customize, update, and personalize the letter for different applications and employers.
Introductory paragraph
Open your letter with a concise, functional, and personable introduction to you as a job candidate. This is your chance to establish the essential basics of your qualifications and to set the themes and tone for the rest of the letter.
• Name the position you’re interested in (by exact name and number, if available)
• Clearly state that you are applying for the position—remember that you are requesting (not demanding) that they consider you as a candidate for the position
• Summarize your best qualification and how it’s relevant to the position
• Indicate you’ve enclosed your resume for additional information
Optionally, you might also take the opportunity at the beginning of the letter to express your interest in working for this particular company and/or your passion for and interest in the field—I am particularly interested in this position because… This sets a nice tone and shows that you are engaged and enthusiastic. It is also an opportunity to demonstrate your knowledge about the employer and what they do (developed through your research).
Education & academics paragraph(s)
The purpose of this paragraph is to paint a detailed picture of your training and credentials and how this is relevant to the position. Your opportunity in this paragraph is to explain the activities and knowledge you have gained and/or are developing that most matter for this position and employer. Carefully consider what the employer will value most about your educational experiences. If you have a lot of project experience or several key experiences that you want to highlight, this information may be written in multiple paragraphs.
This content should NOT be a laundry list of course titles. Instead, describe how your academics/training have shaped your understanding of the field you are entering and significant skills you are developing, but always tie it back to what the employer is looking for—stay focused on the information your audience needs and what they will care about.
Employment paragraph (if applicable)
It is important for employers to feel that they are hiring responsible, reliable people who know how to hold down a job. If you do have work experience in this field such as a previous internship, this is a perfect time to discuss that. If you have previous work experience, even if it’s not related to your field, this is your opportunity to describe the value of that experience—the value for you, but, more importantly, to your reader. Describe your previous work experience that shows your a good employee and explain how this is relevant to the position. Be specific about the company, the time frame, your responsibilities, and the outcomes/results. Focus on your relevant and transferable skills.
Other qualifications (if applicable)
Awards you’ve received; publications you’ve achieved; and your activities and involvement in things outside of your coursework and work experiences, such as student organizations, clubs, and volunteer work, are great pieces of information to include that show you are a well-rounded, motivated person with good time management skills. Personal, human connections are an important part of the job application process, and describing some of these activities and interests can help your reader start to feel a more personal connection. Describe your specific actions and involvement honestly, while still trying to connect to transferable skills and the keywords in the job posting.
Concluding Paragraph
As you conclude the letter, tie everything together, politely express interest in an interview, and end on a positive note. Don’t ask for the job here; you’re requesting–and not demanding–an interview.
Letter formatting
Your application letter should use formal letter formatting.
In today’s job market, where many applications are online, the letter might be delivered in a variety of different formats. For example, it might be a PDF file uploaded to an online application system or if might be simply sent in the body of an email. Make sure you submit your cover letter in the file format and way the job advertisement specifies.
Attribution
This chapter is an adaptation of “Preparing job application materials” in A Guide to Technical Communications: Strategies & Applications L. Hall and L. Wahlin and is used under a CC-BY-NC 4.0 International license. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Remix%3A_Introduction_to_Professional_Communications_(Ashman)/05%3A_Message_types/5.10%3A_Cover_letters.txt |
A bad news message (or negative news message) delivers news that the audience does not want to hear, read, or receive. Delivering negative news is never easy. Whether you are informing someone they are being laid off or providing constructive criticism on their job performance, how you choose to deliver the message can influence its response (Bovee & Thill, 2010). Some people prefer their bad news to be direct and concise. Others may prefer a less direct approach. Regardless whether you determine a direct or indirect approach is warranted, your job is to deliver news that you anticipate will be unwelcome, unwanted, and possibly dismissed.
In this section we will examine several scenarios that can be communicated internally (within the organization) and externally (outside the organization), but recognize that the lines can be blurred as communication flows outside and through an organization or business. Internal and external communication environments often have a degree of overlap. The rumour of anticipated layoffs may surface in the local media, and you may be called upon to address the concern within the organization. In a similar way, a product that has failed internal quality control tests will require several more tests and improvements before it is ready for market, but if that information leaves the organization, it can hurt the business reputation, prospects for future contracts, and the company’s ability to secure financing.
Goals of bad news messages
Your ability to manage, clarify, and guide understanding is key to addressing challenges while maintaining trust and integrity with your employees, stakeholders, and the public.
There are seven goals to keep in mind when delivering negative news, in person or in written form:
1. Be clear and concise to minimize the chances of confusion or back-and-forth communication.
2. Help the receiver understand and accept the news.
3. Maintain trust and respect for the business or organization and for the receiver.
4. Avoid legal liability or erroneous admission of guilt or culpability.
5. Maintain the relationship, even if a formal association is being terminated.
6. Reduce the anxiety associated with the negative news to increase comprehension.
7. Achieve the designated business outcome.
Scenarios
Let’s go through some scenarios. Let’s say you’re a supervisor and have been given the task of discussing repeated lateness with an employee called Brian. Brian has frequently been late for work, and the problem has grown worse over the last two weeks. The lateness is impairing not only Brian’s performance, but also that of the entire work team. Your manager has instructed you to put an end to it. The desired result is for Brian to stop being late and to improve his performance.
You can
1. stop by Brian’s cubicle and simply say, “Get to work on time or you are out”
2. invite Brian out to a nice lunch and let him have it
3. write Brian a stern e-mail
4. ask Brian to come to your office and discuss the behaviour with him in private
While there are many other ways you could choose to address the situation, let’s examine each of these four alternatives in light of the goals to keep in mind when presenting negative news.
Scenario 1
First, you could approach Brian in his work space and speak to him directly. Advantages to this approach include the ability to get right to the point right away. However, this approach could strain your supervisor-employee relationship as a result of the public display of criticism, Brian may not understand you, there is a lack of a formal discussion you can document, and there is a risk that your actions may not bring about the desired results.
The goals of delivering a negative message include the desire to be clear and concise in order to avoid having a back-and-forth conversation where you’re continually providing clarification. The approach described above does not provide the opportunity for discussion, feedback, or confirmation that Brian has clearly understood your concern. It fails to address the performance concern and it limits the correction to the lateness. Overall, it fails to demonstrate respect for all parties. The lack of tact apparent in the approach may reflect negatively on you as the supervisor and your supervisors or managers.
When you need to speak to an employee about a personnel concern, it is always best to do it in private. Give thought and concern to the conversation before it occurs, and make a list of points to cover with specific information, including grievances. Like any other speech, you may need to rehearse, particularly if this type of meeting is new to you. When it comes time to have the discussion, issue the warning, back it up in writing with documentation, and don’t give the impression that you might change your decision. Whether the issue at hand is a simple caution about tardiness or a more serious conversation, you need to be fair and respectful, even if the other person has been less than professional. Let’s examine the next alternative.
Scenario 2
Let’s say you invite Brian to lunch at a nice restaurant. There is linen on the table, silverware is present for more than the main course, and the water glasses have stems. The environment says “good job” in its uniqueness, presentation, and luxury. Your words will contradict this nonverbal message. The juxtaposition between the environment and the verbal message will cause tension and confusion, which will probably be an obstacle to the receiver’s ability to listen. If Brian doesn’t understand the message, and the message requires clarification, your approach has failed. The contrast between the restaurant setting and the negative message does not promote understanding and acceptance of the bad news or correction. Furthermore, it does not build trust in the relationship, as the restaurant invitation might be interpreted as a “trap” or a betrayal. Let’s examine yet another approach.
Scenario 3
You’ve written Brian a stern e-mail. You’ve included a list of all the recent dates when he was late and made several statements about the quality of his work. You’ve indicated he needs to improve, and stop being late, or else. But was your email harassment? Could it be considered beyond the scope of supervision and interpreted as mean or cruel? And do you even know if Brian has received it? If there was no reply, do you know whether it achieved its desired business outcome? A written message may certainly be part of the desired approach, but how it is presented and delivered is as important as what it says. Let’s examine our fourth approach to this scenario.
Scenario 4
You ask Brian to join you in a private conversation. You start the conversation with an expression of concern and an open-ended question: “Brian, I’ve been concerned about your work lately. Is everything all right?” As Brian answers, you may demonstrate that you are listening by nodding your head and possibly taking notes. You may learn that Brian has been having problems sleeping or that his living situation has changed. Or Brian may decline to share any issues, deny that anything is wrong, and ask why you are concerned. You may then state that you’ve observed the chronic lateness, name one or more specific mistakes you have found in his work, and end with a reiteration that you are concerned. This statement of concern may elicit more responses and open the conversation up into a dialogue where you come to understand the situation, Brian sees your concern, and the relationship is preserved. Alternatively, in case the conversation does not go well, you will still keep a positive attitude even as you document the meeting and give Brian a verbal warning.
Regardless of how well or poorly the conversation goes, if Brian tells other employees about it, they may take note of how you handled the situation, and it will contribute to their perception of you. It guides their expectations of how you operate and how to communicate with you, as this interaction is not only about you and Brian. You represent the company and its reputation, and your professional display of concern as you try to learn more sends a positive message. While the private, respectful meeting may not be the perfect solution, it is preferable to the other approaches we have considered.
One additional point to consider as you document this interaction is the need to present the warning in writing. You may elect to prepare a memo that outlines the information concerning Brian’s performance and lateness and have it ready should you want to present it. If the session goes well, and you have the discretion to make a judgment call, you may elect to give him another week to resolve the issue. Even if it goes well, you may want to present the memo, as it documents the interaction and serves as evidence of due process should Brian’s behaviour fail to change, eventually resulting in the need for termination.
This combined approach of a verbal and written message is increasingly the norm in business communication.
Delivering a bad news message
There are two approaches you can use to deliver a negative news message–the direct approach and the indirect approach. We’ll go through each of these in turn.
Direct approach
The direct approach is often used when the audience values brevity, the message needs to be concise, the message is very complex and might not be understood easily, the message is related to a known issue or problem (and bad news won’t be a surprise), or you’re terminating a business relationship.
As shown in Figure \(1\), the bad news is announced in the opening or introduction of the message.
Your request for vacation time from August 1-30 was not approved because it is over your vacation days entitlement of 10 days.
Please re-submit your request for vacation days (up to a maximum of 10) to HR as soon as possible.
Figure \(1\) An example of a bad news message delivered using the direct approach
Indirect approach
When the bad news may have a significant impact on the recipient or you don’t know them very well, you may prefer to use the indirect approach. Figure \(2\) shows an example of a bad news message delivered using this approach.
Thank you for submitting your request for 10 days of vacation (your maximum entitlement) in August.
Summer is traditionally a time when many employees are out of the office and demands on the servers are reduced. In order to minimize the disruption to staff throughout the company, the IT department will be rolling out a server replacement project during July and August. Because this project will need to be completed in a more compressed timeframe, no vacation requests in July and August are possible for staff in the IT department. As a result, your request for vacation during August has not been approved. However, you are welcome to take vacation before and/or after the project rolls out. In compensation, HR is providing IT staff with three extra days of paid vacation.
We look forward to receiving your revised vacation request soon.
Figure \(2\) An example of a bad news message delivered using the indirect approach
The indirect approach for delivering bad news has five main parts:
1. Open with a buffer statement
2. Explain the situation
3. Break the bad news
4. Redirect or provide alternatives
5. End politely and forward-looking
We’ll go through each of these parts in detail.
Buffer statement
The first part of a negative news message, verbal or written, is a buffer statement. It provides neutral or positive information. It sets the tone and often serves as a cushion for the information to come. It is important that the buffer not be overly positive because this can be misleading or set up the reader to expect a positive news message instead.
Explanation
Next, an explanation discusses why there is an issue. This may be relatively simple, quite complex, or uncomfortable. While an explanation is important, never admit or imply responsibility without written authorization from your company cleared by legal counsel. Try to avoid labeling the bad news, such as calling it inconvenient or disappointing, because this can assume the feelings of your reader and create a negative impression. The person receiving the message may not have felt badly about receiving the news until you pointed out that it was indeed inconvenient or disappointing.
Break the bad news
The third part of the negative news message involves the bad news itself, and the emphasis here is on clarity and accuracy. While you want to break the bad news clearly, try not to spotlight it.
Redirect or provide alternatives
The fourth part of a bad news message is the redirect, where you refocus attention on a solution strategy, possible alternatives, or the subsequent actions that will take place.
End politely and forward-looking
Last, you want to end your message politely and looking to the future. Don’t mention the bad news again!
Reference
Bovee, C., & Thill, J. (2010). Business communication essentials: A skills-based approach to vital business English (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Attribution
This chapter contains material taken from Chapter 17.1 “Delivering a negative news message” in Business Communication for Success and is used under a CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 International license. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Remix%3A_Introduction_to_Professional_Communications_(Ashman)/05%3A_Message_types/5.11%3A_Bad_news_messages.txt |
A picture is worth a thousand words, as the old saying goes. Sometimes, despite writing clearly and concisely, it can be helpful to your audience if you use supporting graphics–whether that be tables, illustrations, maps, photos, charts, or some other type of other visual aid.
Before getting into details on creating, formatting, and incorporating graphics, consider the types and their functions. You can use graphics to represent the following elements in your writing:
• Objects — If you’re describing a fuel-injection system, you’ll probably need a drawing or diagram of the thing. If you are explaining how to graft a fruit tree, you’ll need some illustrations of how that task is done. Photographs, drawings, diagrams, and schematics are the types of graphics that show objects.
• Numbers — If you’re discussing the rising cost of housing in Vancouver, you could use a table with the columns being for five-year periods since 1970; the rows could be for different types of housing. You could show the same data in the form of bar charts, pie charts, or line graphs. Tables, bar charts, pie charts, and line graphs are some of the principal ways to show numerical data.
• Concepts — If you want to show how your company is organized, such as the relationships of the different departments and officials, you could set up an organization chart, which is boxes and circles connected with lines showing how everything is hierarchically arranged and related. This would be an example of a graphic for a concept; this type depicts nonphysical, conceptual things and their relationships.
• Words — Graphics can be used to depict words. You’ve probably noticed how some textbooks may put key definitions in a box, maybe with different color in the background. The same can be done with key points or extended examples.
Documenting graphics
Just as you would cite and reference a paraphrase or a direct quote, so too must you cite and reference any graphics that you use that were created by someone else or that were based on someone else’s data. Indicate the source of any graphic or data you have borrowed. Whenever you borrow a graphic or data from some other source, document that fact in the figure title using an in-text citation. You should also include the reference information in the reference list.
Guidelines for using graphics
Use graphics whenever they would normally be necessary—don’t be scared because it seems like too much trouble!
Make sure your graphics are appropriate to your audience, subject matter, and purpose — don’t zap beginners with advanced, highly technical graphics they can’t understand.
Intersperse graphics and text on the same page. Place graphics as near to the point in the text where they are relevant as is reasonable, and don’t put them on pages by themselves or attach them to the end of documents. However, if a graphic does not fit properly on one page, put it at the top of the next, and continue with regular text on the preceding page. Don’t leave half a page blank just to keep a graphic near the text with which it is associated.
Always discuss graphics in nearby text preceding the graphic. Don’t just throw a graphic out there unexplained. Orient readers to the graphic and explain its basic meaning. Graphics are not there for decoration! They need to have a purpose and be introduced before the reader encounters them on the page. The first mention of a graphic is called a lead-in statement, and your graphics must always be introduced by a lead-in. Similarly, it is typically recommended to also use a lead-out statement after the graphic. This is a statement that connects the figure to the material that follows.
Use titles and labels for graphics.
Include identifying detail such as illustration labels, axis labels, keys, and so on.
Make sure graphics fit within normal margins—if they don’t, enlarge or reduce the copies. Leave at least 2 blank lines above and below graphics.
Attribution
This chapter is an adaptation of “Graphics” from the Online Technical Writing Textbook by D. McMurray and is used under a CC-BY 4.0 International license. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Remix%3A_Introduction_to_Professional_Communications_(Ashman)/06%3A_Visual_communication/6.01%3A_Graphics.txt |
To depict objects, place, people, and relationships between them, you can use photos, drawings, diagrams, and schematics.
In the realm of illustrations and photographs, the types run from minimal detail to maximal. A simple line drawing of how to graft a fruit tree reduces the detail to simple lines representing the hands, the tools, the graft stock, and graft. Diagrams are a more abstract, schematic view of things, such as a wiring diagram of a clock radio (which hardly resembles the actual physical thing at all). And of course photographs provide the most detail of all. These graphics, supplying gradations of detail as they do, have their varying uses.
Formatting requirements
When you use an illustration in a report, there are several requirements to keep in mind.
Just about any illustration should contain labels words and phrases with pointers to the parts of the things being depicted.
If the illustration has certain shadings, colors, line styles, or other such details that have a special meaning in the illustration, these should be indicated in a key or legend in an unused corner of the illustration.
Ideally, you should place illustrations, diagrams, and photos just after the point where they are needed. However, sometimes because of the pagination (the way the text falls on the pages) and the size of the illustrations, diagrams, or photos, this close placement is not possible. In these instances, you can put the graphic at the top of the next page.
Again, ideally, you want illustrations, diagrams, and photos to be between one-half to one-quarter of the vertical size of the page. You should fit them on the page with other text. What you do not want is to append the graphic to the back of the report!
Make sure that your illustrations, diagrams, and photos fit neatly and comfortably within standard margins. You don’t want them spilling over into the right or left margins. You want to allow the equivalent of at least two blank lines above and below the graphic.
Illustrations, diagrams, and photos should have titles, and these titles should be numbered (Figure 1, Figure 2, and so on). The titles and figure labels should be placed below the graphic.
Illustrations, diagrams, and photos should be referred to from the relevant point in the discussion, and you should do more than just tossing in a “See Figure 2.” Discuss the illustration to focus the reader’s attention on the key details of the graphic.
Just as you would cite and reference a paraphrase or a direct quote, so too must you cite and reference any illustrations, diagrams, and photos that you use that were created by someone else or that were based on someone else’s data. Indicate the source of any graphic or data you have borrowed. Whenever you borrow a graphic or data from some other source, document that fact in the figure title using an in-text citation. You should also include the reference information in the reference list.
Attribution
This chapter is an adaptation of “Graphics” in the Online Technical Writing Textbook by D. McMurray and is used under a CC-BY 4.0 International license. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Remix%3A_Introduction_to_Professional_Communications_(Ashman)/06%3A_Visual_communication/6.02%3A_Drawings_diagrams_and_photos.txt |
Tables
Uses for tables
Tables are rows and columns of numbers and words (though mostly numbers). They permit rapid access to and relatively easy comparison of information. If the data is arranged chronologically (for example, sales figures over a ten-year period), the table can show trends—patterns of rising or falling activity. However, tables are not necessarily the most vivid or dramatic means of showing such trends or relationships between data—for that, you’d want to use a line graph, which is discussed in the next section.
The biggest use of tables is for numerical data. Imagine that you are comparing different models of laser printers in terms of physical characteristics such as height, depth, length, weight, and so on. This type of data is perfect for a table.
A special type of table is called a matrix. This is where instead of comparing numerical values in the rows and columns, you are comparing qualitative data (words). For example, imagine that you were comparing several models of a laser printer and you want to represent various information, such as cost, print speed, supply costs, and warranty terms, for each printer being considered. This is ideal information for a matrix, and it would be mostly words rather than numbers.
Formatting requirements
In its simplest form, a table is a group of rows and columns of data. At the top of each column is a column heading, which defines or identifies the contents of that column (and often it indicates the unit of measurement). On the left edge of the table are row headings, which define or identify the contents of that row. Things can get tricky when rows or columns must be grouped or subdivided. In such cases, you have to create row or column subheadings, as shown in Figure \(1\).
Figure \(1\) Format for tables with grouped or subdivided rows and columns.
As you can see, the title and number for the table goes above the table. This is in contrast to other types of graphics where the title and number go below the graphic.
Guidelines for using tables
As with other types of graphics, you should refer to the table in the text just preceding the table. You should also explain the general significance of the data in the table; don’t expect readers to figure it out entirely for themselves.
Don’t overwhelm readers with monster 11-column, 30-row tables! Simplify the table data down to just that amount of data that illustrates your point—without of course distorting that data.
Don’t put the word or abbreviation for the unit of measurement in every cell of a column. For example, in a column of measurements all in millimeters, don’t put “mm” after every number. Put the abbreviation in parentheses in the column or row heading.
Right- or decimal-align numbers in the columns. If the 123 and 4 were in a column, the 4 would be right below the 3, not the 1.
Normally, words in columns are left-justified (although you will occasionally see columns of words all centered).
Column headings are centered over the columns of numerical data (forming a T-shape). When the table contains text rather than numbers, the column headings are left-aligned.
Just as you would cite and reference a paraphrase or a direct quote, so too must you cite and reference any tables that you use that were created by someone else or that were based on someone else’s data. Indicate the source of any graphic or data you have borrowed. Whenever you borrow a graphic or data from some other source, document that fact in the figure title using an in-text citation. You should also include the reference information in the reference list.
Charts and graphs
Uses of charts and graphs
Charts and graphs are just another way of presenting the same data that is presented in tables. At the same time, however, you get less detail or less precision in a chart or graph than you do in the table. Imagine the difference between a table of sales figures for a ten-year period and a line graph for that same data. You get a better sense of the overall trend in the graph but not the precise dollar amount. Other types of charts and graphs are horizontal bar charts, vertical bar charts, and pie charts.
Formatting requirements
In bar charts and line graphs, don’t forget to indicate what the x and y axes represent. One axis might indicate millions of dollars; the other, five-year segments from 1960 to the present.
Bar charts, line graphs, and pie charts often use special colour, shading, or line style (solid or dashed). Be sure to indicate what these mean; translate them in a key (a legend) in some unused place in the chart or graph.
Include a title and numbered label for your charts and graphs. Include the title and label below the graphic, as shown in Figure \(2\).
Figure \(2\) Example of a chart
As you can see, there is text above and below the chart that calls attention to the graphic and briefly indicates its significance.
Just as you would cite and reference a paraphrase or a direct quote, so too must you cite and reference any charts or graphs that you use that were created by someone else or that were based on someone else’s data. Indicate the source of any graphic or data you have borrowed. Whenever you borrow a graphic or data from some other source, document that fact in the figure title using an in-text citation. You should also include the reference information in the reference list.
Attribution
This chapter is an adaptation of “Tables, Charts, Graphs” in the Online Technical Writing Textbook by D. McMurray and is used under a CC-BY 4.0 International license. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Remix%3A_Introduction_to_Professional_Communications_(Ashman)/06%3A_Visual_communication/6.03%3A_Tables_charts_and_graphs.txt |
Headings are the titles and subtitles you see within the actual text of much professional scientific, technical, and business writing. Headings are like the parts of an outline that have been pasted into the actual pages of the document.
Headings are an important feature of professional technical writing. They alert readers to upcoming topics and subtopics, help readers find their way around in long reports and skip what they are not interested in, and break up long stretches of straight text.
Headings are also useful for writers. They keep you organized and focused on the topic. When you begin using headings, your impulse may be to slap in the headings after you’ve written the rough draft. Instead, visualize the headings before you start the rough draft, and plug them in as you write.
General guidelines
Use headings to mark off the boundaries of the major sections and subsections of a report.
Make the phrasing of headings parallel.
Avoid “stacked” headings—any two consecutive headings without intervening text.
When possible, omit articles from the beginning of headings. For example, “The Pressurized Water Reactor” can easily be changed to “Pressurized Water Reactor” or, better yet, “Pressurized Water Reactors.”
Don’t use headings as lead-ins to lists or as figure titles.
Avoid “widowed” headings; that’s where a heading occurs at the bottom of a page and the text it introduces starts at the top of the next page. Keep at least two lines of body text with the heading, or force it to start the new page.
Format and style
The style and format for headings shown in this chapter is not the “right” or the “only” one; it is just one among many.
As illustrated in Figure \(1\), headings function like outline elements inserted into the text at those points where they apply
Figure \(1\) Comparing document headings to an outline
When formatting your headings and subheadings, pay close attention to details such as vertical and horizontal spacing; capitalization; use of bold, italics, or underlining; and punctuation.
Headings occur within the body of a document. Don’t confuse headings with document titles. Although titles may look like first-level headings in smaller documents, think of them as separate things.
First-level headings are the highest level of headings in your document. Apply the same format or style to all first-level headings. This style should be different from that which is applied to second-level heading. All second-level headings should have the same style. Similarly, this style should be different from that which is applied to third-level headings (and all third-level headings should have the same style), and so on. There are different ways and styles you can use to differentiate various levels of headings. Use whatever styles are appropriate for the document and audience.
Attribution
This chapter is an adaptation of “Headings” in the Online Technical Writing Textbook by D. McMurray and is used under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
6.05: Lists
Lists are useful because they emphasize selected information in regular text.
Lists can be horizontal, with the listed items included directly in the sentence/paragraph. Lists can be vertical, such as when you see a list of three or four items strung out vertically on the page rather than in normal paragraph format. Lists–particularly vertical lists–are noticeable and readers are likely to pay more attention to them. Certain types of lists also make for easier reading. For example, in instructions, it is a big help for each step to be numbered and separate from the preceding and following steps. Lists also create more white space and spread out the text so that pages don’t seem like solid walls of words.
Like headings, the various types of lists are an important feature of professional writing. They help readers understand, remember, and review key points. They help readers follow a sequence of actions or events. They also break up long stretches of straight text.
General guidelines
Use lists to highlight or emphasize text or to enumerate sequential items.
Use a lead-in to introduce the list items and to indicate the meaning or purpose of the list.
Make sure that each item in the list reads grammatically with the lead-in.
Make list items parallel in phrasing.
Avoid overusing lists because using too many lists destroys their effectiveness.
Bullet points are democratic, meaning each item in a bulleted list is of equal importance. This is in contrast to numbered lists where items may have different levels of importance, priority, or sequence. Use bulleted lists for items that are in no required order. Use numbered lists for items that are in a required order (such as step-by-step instructions) or for items that must be referred to by item number.
Horizontal lists
Use a colon to introduce the list items only if a complete sentence precedes the list. Omit the colon if the lead-in is not a complete sentence.
Incorrect: For this project, you need: tape, scissors, and white-out.
Correct: For this project, you need tape, scissors, and white-out.
Use both opening and closing parentheses on the list item numbers or letters: (a) item, (b) item, etc. (Don’t just use one parenthesis.) Use either regular numbers or lowercase letters within the parentheses, but use them consistently. (Do not punctuate either with periods.)
Use lowercase for the text of in-sentence lists items, except when regular capitalization rules require caps.
Punctuate the horizontal list items with commas if they are not complete sentences. Use semicolons if they are complete sentences.
Incorrect: Follow these instructions to get to the store from your home: (1) drive south for three blocks, (2) turn right, (3) drive west for 6 blocks, (4) turn left, (5) drive for half a block, (6) turn right into the parking lot.
Correct: Follow these instructions to get to the store from your home: (1) drive south for three blocks; (2) turn right; (3) drive west for 6 blocks; (4) turn left; (5) drive for half a block; (6) turn right into the parking lot.
Use the same spacing for horizontal lists as in regular non-list text.
Make the horizontal list occur at the end of the sentence. Never place a horizontal list introduced by a colon anywhere but at the end of the sentence!
Incorrect: The following items: tape, scissors, and white-out are needed for this project.
Correct: The following items are needed for this project: tape, scissors, and white-out.
Vertical lists
Introduce the list with a lead-in phrase or clause. Use a colon to introduce the list items only if the lead-in is a complete sentence. Omit the colon if the lead-in is an incomplete sentence.
Avoid using headings as lead-ins for lists.
Use consistent spacing, indentation, and punctuation.
When a separate notice or explanatory paragraph follows a item, indent that separate material to the text of the parent list item, as illustrated in Figure \(1\).
Figure \(1\) Indented material that elaborates on the parent list item
Use the “hanging indent” format for list items two or more lines long.
Use sentence-style capitalization on list items.
Punctuate list items only if they are complete sentences that complete the sentence begun by the lead-in.
When possible, omit articles (a, an, the) from the beginning of non-sentence list items.
A word of caution
If your list contains more than 6-8 items, you might consider consolidating list items or re-formatting your list. Lists with too many items can be overwhelming and challenging to read.
Attribution
This chapter contains material taken from “Bulleted and numbered lists” in Online Technical Writing Textbook by D. McMurray and is used under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
6.06: Emphasis
Emphasis, as the term is used here, is the use of typographical effects to call attention to text. These effects can include italics, bold, all-caps, quotation marks, color, and so on. Emphasis attracts the attention of the reader—or “cues” them—to actions they must take or to information they must consider carefully.
Practically any special textual effect that is different from regular body text can function as an emphasis technique. Things like italics, bold, underscores, caps, different size type, alternate fonts, colour, and more can act as emphasis techniques.
However, if emphasis techniques are used in excess, readers can become reluctant to read a text and may avoid it altogether because it is too busy or distracting. NOTICE HOW UNREADABLE THIS SENTENCE IS BECAUSE TOO MUCH EMPHASIS IS USED. When it comes to emphasis, there can be too much of a good thing! Emphasis techniques must be used strategically and consistently.
Attribution
This chapter contains material taken from “Highlighting and emphasis” in the Online Technical Writing Textbook by D. McMurray and is used under a CC-BY 4.0 International license. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Remix%3A_Introduction_to_Professional_Communications_(Ashman)/06%3A_Visual_communication/6.04%3A_Headings.txt |
After you have written a draft of your message, you will need to make changes. While you may feel that you write best “under pressure” the night before your assignment is due or in the minutes before sending an email at work, writing a single draft at the last minute rarely results in anyone’s best work. You may feel that you’ve put a lot of effort into your first draft, so it can be challenging to think about changing your work or even eliminating words that you toiled over. However, it’s well worth the pain of revising, editing, and proofreading so you produce a polished piece of writing that others can easily understand.
To revise a piece of writing, it may help you to consider three approaches: look at the big picture, check your organization, and proofread your final draft.
Higher order concerns
Revising for higher order concerns means working on the organization of your ideas. You might insert sentences, words, or paragraphs; you might move them elsewhere in your document; or you might remove them entirely (Meyer, 2017).
When you revise at the “big picture” stage, you are looking at the most important aspects of the writing tasks, and the ones that require the most thought. Here’s a set of questions to help you revise for these higher order concerns:
• Have I met the purpose and requirements?
• Does my draft say what I mean?
• Have I changed my thinking through writing or researching?
• Are there parts that do not belong here?
• Are there pieces missing?
• Are there places where the writing does not make sense?
• Is the tone right for my reader?
• Are my sources the right kind for my purpose and reader?
• Are all the pieces in the right place?
• Are sources documented?
Another way to edit for higher order concerns is to prepare a reverse outline using your draft. This technique is discussed in the next chapter.
Lower order concerns
Lower order concerns focus on editing and proofreading. When you edit, you work from your revised draft to systematically correct issues or errors in punctuation, grammar, spelling, and other things related to writing mechanics (Meyer, 2017). Proofreading is the last stage where you work from your almost-finished document to fix any issues or errors in formatting or typos you missed (Meyer, 2017). Here’s another way of distinguishing these two tasks. Editing is the act of making changes or indicating what to change; proofreading means checking to make sure those changes were made.
Perhaps you are the person who proofreads and edits as you write a draft, so when you are done drafting and revising for content and structure, you may not have that much editing or proofreading to do. Or maybe you are the person who pays no attention to grammar and spelling as you draft, saving all of the editing until you are finished writing. Either way, plan to carefully edit and proofread your work. For most people, proofreading on a printed copy is more effective than working entirely on screen.
Here are some additional strategies for editing and proofreading your work:
• Take a break between writing and editing. Even a 15 minute break can help you look at your document anew.
• Read your work aloud.
• Work through your document slowly, moving word by word.
• Start at the end of your document and work towards the beginning.
• Focus on one issue at a time. Trying to look for spelling errors, punctuation issues, awkward phrasing, and more all at once can make it easier to miss items needing correction.
• Don’t rely exclusively on spelling- or grammar-checking software. (This poem was run through such a program and no problems were detected!)
• Review through your document several times.
Attribution
This chapter contains material taken from “Higher order versus lower order concerns” in The Word on College Reading and Writing by M. Babin, C. Burnell, S. Pesznecker, N. Rosevear, and J. Wood and is used under a CC-BY-NC 4.0 International license. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Remix%3A_Introduction_to_Professional_Communications_(Ashman)/07%3A_Polishing_your_message/7.01%3A_Revising_editing_and_proofreading.txt |
Often, outlining is recommended as an early component of the writing process as a way to organize and connect thoughts so the shape of what you are going to write is clear before you start drafting it. This is a tool many writers use that is probably already familiar to you.
Reverse outlining, though, is different in a few ways. First, it happens later in the process, after a draft is completed rather than before. Second, it gives you an opportunity to review and assess the ideas and connections that are actually present in the completed draft. This is almost an opposite approach from traditional outlining, which considers an initial set of ideas that might shift as the draft is written and new ideas are added or existing ones are moved, changed, or removed entirely. A reverse outline can help you improve the structure and organization of your already-written draft, letting you see where support is missing for a specific point or where ideas don’t quite connect on the page as clearly as you wanted them to.
How to create a reverse outline
1. At the top of a fresh sheet of paper, write your primary purpose for the text you want to outline. This should be the purpose exactly as it appears in your draft, not the purpose you know you intended. If you can’t find the actual words, write down that you can’t find them in this draft of the message—it’s an important note to make!
2. Draw a line down the middle of the page, creating two columns below your message purpose.
3. Read, preferably out loud, the first body paragraph of your draft.
4. In the left column, write the single main idea of that paragraph (again, this should be using only the words that are actually on the page, not the ones you want to be on the page). If you find more than one main idea in a paragraph, write down all of them. If you can’t find a main idea, write that down, too.
5. In the right column, state how the main idea of that paragraph supports the purpose.
6. Repeat steps 3-5 for each body paragraph of the draft.
Once you have completed these steps, you have a reverse outline! It might look a little something like the reverse outline shown in Figure \(1\).
Figure \(1\) An example of a reverse outline
Working with the results of your reverse outline
Now what? You’ve probably already made some observations while completing this. Do you notice places where you are repeating yourself in your message? Do you notice places where some of your paragraphs have too many points or don’t clearly support the purpose of the message?
There are a number of observations that can be made with the aid of a reverse outline, and a number of ways it can help you strengthen your messages.
If multiple paragraphs share the same idea
You might try combining them, paring back the information for that specific idea so it doesn’t feel imbalanced in how much space it takes up, and/or organizing these paragraphs about the same point so they are next to each other in the paper.
If any paragraphs have multiple main ideas
Each paragraph should have only one primary focus. If you notice a paragraph does have more than one main idea, you could look for where some of those ideas might be discussed in other paragraphs and move them into a paragraph already focusing on that point. You could also select just the one main idea you think is most important to this paragraph and cut the other points out. Another option would be to split that paragraph into multiple paragraphs and expand on each main idea.
If any paragraph lacks a clear main idea
If it was hard for you to find the main idea of a paragraph, it will also be hard for your reader to find. For paragraphs that don’t yet have a main idea, consider whether the information in that paragraph points to a main idea that just isn’t written on the page yet. If the information does all support one main idea, adding that idea to the paragraph might be all that is needed. Alternatively, you may find that some of the ideas fit into other paragraphs to support their ideas, or you may not need some of them in the next draft at all.
If any ideas don’t connect well to the purpose of the message
It should be clear how the main idea of each paragraph supports the purpose of the message. If that connection is not clear, ask yourself how the main idea of that paragraph does further your purpose and then write that response.
If there are gaps in reasoning
If a message starts out introducing something that is a problem in a community, then presents a solution to the problem, and then talks about why the problem is a problem, this organization is likely to confuse readers. Reorganizing to introduce the problem, discuss why it is a problem, and then move on to proposing a solution would do good work to help strengthen the next draft of this paper. If there are gaps in reasoning, you may need to move, revise, or add transition statements after moving paragraphs around.
Attribution
This chapter contains material taken from “Reverse outlining” in The Word on College Reading and Writing by M. Babin, C. Burnell, S. Pesznecker, N. Rosevear, and J. Wood and is used under a CC-BY-NC 4.0 International license. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Remix%3A_Introduction_to_Professional_Communications_(Ashman)/07%3A_Polishing_your_message/7.02%3A_Reverse_outlining.txt |
We may be tempted to think of intercultural communication as interaction between two people from different countries. While two distinct national passports communicate a key part of our identity non-verbally, what happens when two people from two different parts of the same country communicate? Indeed, intercultural communication happens between subgroups of the same country. Whether it be the distinctions between dialects in the same language, the differences in perspective between an Eastern Canadian and a Western Canadian, or the rural- versus-urban dynamic, our geographic, linguistic, educational, sociological, and psychological traits influence our communication.
Culture is part of the very fabric of our thought, and we cannot separate ourselves from it, even as we leave home and begin to define ourselves in new ways through work and achievements. Every business or organization has a culture, and within what may be considered a global culture, there are many subcultures or co-cultures. For example, consider the difference between the sales and accounting departments in a corporation. We can quickly see two distinct groups with their own symbols, vocabulary, and values. Within each group there may also be smaller groups, and each member of each department comes from a distinct background that in itself influences behaviour and interaction.
Suppose we have a group of students who are all similar in age and educational level. Do gender and the societal expectations of roles influence interaction? Of course! There will be differences on multiple levels.
More than just the clothes we wear, the movies we watch, or the video games we play, all representations of our environment are part of our culture. Culture also involves the psychological aspects and behaviours that are expected of members of our group. From the choice of words (message), to how we communicate (in person or by e-mail), to how we acknowledge understanding with a nod or a glance (non-verbal feedback), to the internal and external interference, all aspects of communication are influenced by culture.
Defining culture
Culture consists of the shared beliefs, values, and assumptions of a group of people who learn from one another and teach to others that their behaviours, attitudes, and perspectives are the correct ways to think, act, and feel.
It is helpful to think about culture in the following five ways:
• Culture is learned.
• Culture is shared.
• Culture is dynamic.
• Culture is systemic.
• Culture is symbolic.
The iceberg (shown in Figure \(1\)), is a commonly used metaphor to describe culture and is great for illustrating the tangible and the intangible. When talking about culture, most people focus on the “tip of the iceberg,” which is visible but makes up just 10 percent of the object. The rest of the iceberg, 90 percent of it, is below the waterline.
Figure 7.51 The cultural iceberg (by Laura Underwood), adapted from Lindner (2013)
Many business leaders, when addressing intercultural situations, pick up on the things they can see—things on the “tip of the iceberg.” Things like food, clothing, and language difference are easily and immediately obvious, but focusing only on these can mean missing or overlooking deeper cultural aspects such as thought patterns, values, and beliefs that are under the surface. Solutions to any interpersonal miscommunication that results become temporary bandages covering deeply rooted conflicts.
Multicultural, cross-cultural, and intercultural communication
Although they are often used interchangeably, it is important to note the distinctions between the terms multicultural, cross-cultural, and intercultural communication.
Multiculturalism is a rather surface approach to the coexistence and tolerance of different cultures. It takes the perspective of “us and the others” and typically focuses on those tip-of-the-iceberg features of culture, thus highlighting and accepting some differences but maintaining a “safe” distance. If you have a multicultural day at work, for example, it usually will feature some food, dance, dress, or maybe learning about how to say a few words or greetings in a sampling of cultures.
Cross-cultural approaches typically go a bit deeper, the goal being to be more diplomatic or sensitive. They account for some interaction and recognition of difference through trade and cooperation, which builds some limited understanding—such as, for instance, bowing instead of shaking hands, or giving small but meaningful gifts. A common drawback of cross-cultural comparisons is that we can wade into stereotyping and ethnocentric attitudes—judging other cultures by our own cultural standards—if we aren’t mindful.
Lastly, when we look at intercultural approaches, we are well beneath the surface of the iceberg, intentionally making efforts to better understand other cultures as well as ourselves. An intercultural approach is not easy and is often messy, but when you get it right, it is usually far more rewarding than the other two approaches. The intercultural approach is difficult and effective for the same reasons; it acknowledges complexity and aims to work through it to a positive, inclusive, and equitable outcome.
Whenever we encounter someone, we notice similarities and differences. While both are important, it is often the differences that contribute to communication troubles. We don’t see similarities and differences only on an individual level. In fact, we also place people into in-groups and out-groups based on the similarities and differences we perceive. We tend to react to someone we perceive as a member of an out-group based on the characteristics we attach to the group rather than the individual (Allen, 2010). In these situations, it is more likely that stereotypes and prejudice will influence our communication. This division of people into opposing groups has been the source of great conflict around the world, and learning about difference and why it matters will help us be more competent communicators and help to prevent conflict.
Theories of cross-cultural communication
Hofstede
Social psychologist Geert Hofstede (Hofstede, 1982, 2001, 2005) is one of the most well-known researchers in cross-cultural communication and management. Hofstede’s theory places cultural dimensions on a continuum that range from high to low and really only make sense when the elements are compared to another culture. Hofstede’s dimensions include the following:
• Power distance: High power distance means a culture accepts and expects a great deal of hierarchy; low power distance means the president and janitor could be on the same level.
• Individualism: High individualism means that a culture tends to put individual needs ahead of group or collective needs.
• Uncertainty avoidance: High uncertainty avoidance means a culture tends to go to some lengths to be able to predict and control the future. Low uncertainty avoidance means the culture is more relaxed about the future, which sometimes shows in being willing to take risks.
• Masculinity: High masculinity relates to a society valuing traits that were traditionally considered masculine, such as competition, aggressiveness, and achievement. A low masculinity score demonstrates traits that were traditionally considered feminine, such as cooperation, caring, and quality of life.
• Long-term orientation: High long-term orientation means a culture tends to take a long- term, sometimes multi-generational view when making decisions about the present and the future. Low long-term orientation is often demonstrated in cultures that want quick results and that tend to spend instead of save.
• Indulgence: High indulgence means cultures that are okay with people indulging their desires and impulses. Low indulgence or restraint-based cultures value people who control or suppress desires and impulses.
These tools can provide wonderful general insight into making sense of understanding differences and similarities across key below-the-surface cross-cultural elements, but remember that people are still individuals and may or may not conform to what’s listed in the tools.
Trompenaars
Fons Trompenaars is another researcher who came up with a different set of cross-cultural measures. These are his seven dimensions of culture (The seven dimensions of culture, n.d.):
• Universalism vs. particularism: the extent that a culture is more prone to apply rules and laws as a way of ensuring fairness, in contrast to a culture that looks at the specifics of context and looks at who is involved, to ensure fairness. The former puts the task first; the latter puts the relationship first.
• Individualism vs. communitarianism: the extent that people prioritize individual interests versus the community’s interest.
• Specific vs. diffuse: the extent that a culture prioritizes a head-down, task-focused approach to doing work, versus an inclusive, overlapping relationship between life and work.
• Neutral vs. emotional: the extent that a culture works to avoid showing emotion versus a culture that values a display or expression of emotions.
• Achievement vs. ascription: the degree to which a culture values earned achievement in what you do versus ascribed qualities related to who you are based on elements like title, lineage, or position.
• Sequential time vs. synchronous time: the degree to which a culture prefers doing things one at time in an orderly fashion versus preferring a more flexible approach to time with the ability to do many things at once.
• Internal direction vs. outer direction: the degree to which members of a culture believe they have control over themselves and their environment versus being more conscious of how they need to conform to the external environment.
Like Hofstede’s work, Trompenaars’ dimensions help us understand some of those beneath-the-surface-of-the-iceberg elements of culture. It’s equally important to understand our own cultures as it is to look at others, always being mindful that our cultures, as well as others, are made up of individuals.
High context and low context cultures
High context cultures are replete with implied meanings beyond the words on the surface and even body language that may not be obvious to people unfamiliar with the context. Low context cultures are typically more direct and tend to use words to attempt to convey precise meaning.
For example, an agreement in a high context culture might be verbal because the parties know each other’s families, histories, and social position. This knowledge is sufficient for the agreement to be enforced. No one actually has to say, “I know where you live. If you don’t hold up your end of the bargain, …” because the shared understanding is implied and highly contextual. A low context culture usually requires highly detailed, written agreements that are signed by both parties, sometimes mediated through specialists like lawyers, as a way to enforce the agreement. This is low context because the written agreement spells out all the details so that not much is left to the imagination or “context.”
Working with others
How can you prepare to work with people from cultures different than your own? Start by doing your homework. Let’s assume that you have a group of Japanese colleagues visiting your office next week. How could you prepare for their visit? If you’re not already familiar with the history and culture of Japan, this is a good time to do some reading or a little bit of research online. If you can find a few English-language publications from Japan (such as newspapers and magazines), you may wish to read through them to become familiar with current events and gain some insight into the written communication style used.
Preparing this way will help you to avoid mentioning sensitive topics and to show correct etiquette to your guests. For example, Japanese culture values modesty, politeness, and punctuality, so with this information, you can make sure you are early for appointments and do not monopolize conversations by talking about yourself and your achievements. You should also find out what faux pas to avoid. For example, in company of Japanese people, it is customary to pour others’ drinks (another person at the table will pour yours). Also, make sure you do not put your chopsticks vertically in a bowl of rice, as this is considered rude. If you have not used chopsticks before and you expect to eat Japanese food with your colleagues, it would be a nice gesture to make an effort to learn. Similarly, learning a few words of the language (e.g., hello, nice to meet you, thank you, and goodbye) will show your guests that you are interested in their culture and are willing to make the effort to communicate.
If you have a colleague who has traveled to Japan or has spent time in the company of Japanese colleagues before, ask them about their experience so that you can prepare. What mistakes should you avoid? How should you address and greet your colleagues? Knowing the answers to these questions will make you feel more confident when the time comes. But most of all, remember that a little goes a long way. Your guests will appreciate your efforts to make them feel welcome and comfortable. People are, for the most part, kind and understanding, so if you make some mistakes along the way, be kind to yourself. Reflect on what happened, learn from it, and move on. Most people are keen to share their culture with others, so your guests will be happy to explain various practices to you.
Improving your intercultural competence
One helpful way to develop your intercultural communication competence is to develop sensitivity to intercultural communication issues and best practices. From everything we have learned so far, it may feel complex and overwhelming. The Intercultural Development Continuum is a theory created by Mitchell Hammer (2012) that helps demystify the process of moving from monocultural approaches to intercultural approaches. There are five steps in this transition:
1. Denial: Denial is the problem-denying stage. For example, a well-meaning person might say that they pay no attention to race issues because they themselves are “colour blind” and treat everyone the same, irrespective of race. While on the surface this attitude seems fair-minded, it can mean willfully blinding oneself to very real cultural differences. Essentially, not much sensitivity or empathy can be present if one denies that cultural differences actually exist. This is a monocultural mindset. When there’s denial in organizations, diversity feels ignored.
2. Polarization: Polarization is the stage where one accepts and acknowledges that there is such a thing as cultural difference, but the difference is framed as a negative “us versus them” proposition. This usually means “we” are the good guys, and “they” are the bad guys. Sometimes a person will reverse this approach and say their own culture is bad or otherwise deficient and see a different culture as superior or very good. Either way, polarization reinforces already-existing biases and stereotypes and misses out on nuanced understanding and empathy. It is thus considered more of a monocultural mindset. When polarization exists in organizations, diversity usually feels uncomfortable.
3. Minimization: Minimization is a hybrid category that is really neither monocultural nor intercultural. Minimization recognizes that there are cultural differences, even significant ones, but tends to focus on universal commonalities that can mask or paper over other important cultural distinctions. This is typically characterized by limited cultural self-awareness in the case of a person belonging to a dominant culture, or as a strategy by members of non-dominant groups to “go along to get along” in an organization. When dominant culture minimization exists in organizations, diversity feels not heard.
4. Acceptance: Acceptance demonstrates a recognition and deeper appreciation of both their own and others’ cultural differences and commonalities and is the first dimension that exhibits a more intercultural mindset. At this level, people are better able to detect cultural patterns and able to see how those patterns make sense in their own and other cultural contexts. There is the capacity to accept others as being different and at the same time being fully human. When there is acceptance in organizations, diversity feels understood.
5. Adaptation: Adaptation is characterized by an ability not only to recognize different cultural patterns in oneself and other cultures but also to effectively adapt one’s mindset or behaviour to suit the cultural context in an authentic way. When there is adaptation in organizations, diversity feels valued and involved.
The first two steps out of five reflect monocultural mindsets. According to Hammer (2009), people who belong to dominant cultural groups in a given society or people who have had very little exposure to other cultures may be more likely to have a worldview that’s more monocultural. But how does this cause problems in interpersonal communication? For one, being blind to the cultural differences of the person you want to communicate with (denial) increases the likelihood that you will encode a message that they won’t decode the way you anticipate, or vice versa.
For example, let’s say culture A considers the head a special and sacred part of the body that others should never touch, certainly not strangers or mere acquaintances. But let’s say in your culture, people sometimes pat each other on the head as a sign of respect and caring. So you pat your culture A colleague on the head, and this act sets off a huge conflict.
It would take a great deal of careful communication to sort out such a misunderstanding, but if each party keeps judging the other by their own cultural standards, it’s likely that additional misunderstanding, conflict, and poor communication will transpire.
Using this example, polarization can come into play because now there’s a basis of experience for selective perception of the other culture. Culture A might say that your culture is disrespectful, lacks proper morals, and values, and it might support these claims with anecdotal evidence of people from your culture patting one another on the sacred head!
Meanwhile, your culture will say that culture A is bad-tempered, unintelligent, and angry by nature and that there would be no point in even trying to respect or explain things them.
It’s a simple example, but over time and history, situations like this have mounted and thus led to violence, war, and genocide.
According to Hammer (2009), the majority of people who have taken the IDI inventory, a 50- question questionnaire to determine where they are on the monocultural–intercultural continuum, fall in the category of minimization, which is neither monocultural nor intercultural. It’s the middle-of-the-road category that on one hand recognizes cultural difference but on the other hand simultaneously downplays it. While not as extreme as the first two situations, interpersonal communication with someone of a different culture can also be difficult here because of the same encoding/decoding issues that can lead to inaccurate perceptions. On the positive side, the recognition of cultural differences provides a foundation on which to build and a point from which to move toward acceptance, which is an intercultural mindset.
There are fewer people in the acceptance category than there are in the minimization category, and only a small percentage of people fall into the adaptation category. This means most of us have our work cut out for us if we recognize the value—considering our increasingly global societies and economies—of developing an intercultural mindset as a way to improve our interpersonal communication skill.
Attribution
This chapter is an adaptation of Part 4: Interpersonal communication in the professional environment in Professional Communications OER by the Olds College OER Development Team and is used under a CC-BY 4.0 International license. You can download this book for free at http://www.procomoer.org/. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Remix%3A_Introduction_to_Professional_Communications_(Ashman)/08%3A_Interpersonal_communications/8.01%3A_Intercultural_communication.txt |
It is highly likely you will have to work in a team at some point in your career. Being able to work with others effectively is an essential skill to have in today’s workplace.
Small groups have to start somewhere. Even established groups go through changes as members come and go, as tasks are started and completed, and as relationships change. In this section, we will learn about the stages of group development, which are forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning (Tuckman & Jensen, 1977). As with most models of communication phenomena, although we order the stages and discuss them separately, they are not always experienced in a linear fashion. Additionally, some groups don’t experience all five stages, may experience stages multiple times, or may experience more than one stage at a time.
Forming
During the forming stage, group members begin to reduce uncertainty associated with new relationships and/or new tasks through initial interactions that lay the foundation for later group dynamics. Groups return to the forming stage as group members come and go over the life span of a group. Although there may not be as much uncertainty when one or two new people join a group as there is when a group first forms, groups spend some time in the forming stage every time group membership changes.
Given that interpersonal bonds are likely not yet formed and people are unfamiliar with the purpose of the group or task at hand, there are high levels of uncertainty in the group. Early stages of role negotiation begin and members begin to determine goals for the group and establish rules and norms. Group cohesion also begins to form during this stage. Group cohesion refers to the commitment of members to the purpose of the group and the degree of attraction among individuals within the group (Hargie, 2011). The cohesion that begins in this stage sets the group on a trajectory influenced by group members’ feelings about one another and their purpose or task. Groups with voluntary membership may exhibit high levels of optimism about what the group can accomplish. Although the optimism can be motivating, unrealistic expectations can lead to disappointment, making it important for group members to balance optimism with realism. Groups with assigned or mandatory membership may include members that carry some degree of resentment toward the group itself or the goals of the group. These members can start the group off on a negative trajectory that will lessen or make difficult group cohesiveness. Groups can still be successful if these members are balanced out by others who are more committed to and positive in regards to the purpose of the group.
Many factors influence how the forming stage of group development plays out. The personalities of the individuals in the group, the skills that members bring, the resources available to the group, the group’s size, and the group’s charge all contribute to the creation of the early tone of and climate within a group (Ellis & Fisher, 1994). For example, more dominant personalities may take early leadership roles in the group that can affect subsequent decisions. Group members’ diverse skill sets and access to resources can also influence the early stages of role differentiation. In terms of size, the bonding that begins in the forming stage becomes difficult when the number of people within the group prevents every person from having a one-on-one connection with every other member of the group. Also, in larger groups, more dominant members tend to assert themselves as leaders and build smaller coalitions within the group, which can start the group on a trajectory toward more conflict during the upcoming storming stage (Ellis & Fisher, 1994).
When a group receives an external charge, meaning that the goal or purpose of the group is decided by people outside the group, there may be less uncertainty related to the task dimensions of the group. Additionally, decisions about what roles people will play, including group leaders and other decisions about the workings of the group, may come from the outside, which reduces some of the uncertainty inherent in the forming stage. Relational uncertainty can also be diminished when group members have preexisting relationships or familiarity with each other. Although the decreased uncertainty may be beneficial at this stage, too much imposed structure from the outside can create resentment or a feeling of powerlessness among group members. Therefore, a manageable amount of uncertainty is actually a good thing for group cohesion and productivity.
Storming
During the storming stage of group development, conflict emerges as people begin to perform their various roles, have their ideas heard, and negotiate where they fit in the group’s structure. The uncertainty present in the forming stage begins to give way as people begin to occupy specific roles and the purpose, rules, and norms of a group become clearer. Conflict develops when some group members aren’t satisfied with the role that they or others are playing or the decisions regarding the purpose or procedures of the group. For example, if a leader begins to emerge or is assigned during the forming stage, some members may feel that the leader is imposing his or her will on other members of the group. Leaders should expect some degree of resentment from others who wanted to be the leader, have interpersonal conflicts with the leader, or just have general issues with being led.
Although the word storming and the concept of conflict have negative connotations, conflict can be positive and productive. Just like storms can replenish water supplies and make crops grow, storming can lead to group growth. While conflict is inevitable and should be experienced by every group, a group that gets stuck at the storming stage will likely not have much success in completing its task or achieving its purpose. Influences from outside the group can also affect the conflict in the storming stage. Interpersonal conflicts that predate the formation of the group may distract the group from the more productive idea- or task-oriented conflict that can be healthy for the group and increase the quality of ideas, decision making, and output.
Norming
During the norming stage of group development, the practices and expectations of the group are solidified, which leads to more stability, productivity, and cohesion within the group. Group norms are behaviours that become routine but are not explicitly taught or stated. In short, group norms help set the tone for what group members ought to do and how they ought to behave (Ellis & Fisher, 1994). Many implicit norms are derived from social norms that people follow in their everyday life. Norms within the group about politeness, lateness, and communication patterns are typically similar to those in other contexts. Sometimes a norm needs to be challenged because it is not working for the group, which could lead a group back to the storming stage. Other times, group members challenge norms for no good reason, which can lead to punishment for the group member or create conflict within the group.
At this stage, there is a growing consensus among group members as to the roles that each person will play, the way group interactions will typically play out, and the direction of the group. Leaders that began to emerge have typically gained the support of other group members, and group identity begins to solidify. The group may now be recognizable by those on the outside, as slogans, branding, or patterns of interaction become associated with the group. This stage of group development is key for the smooth operation of the group. Norms bring a sense of predictability and stability that can allow a group to move on to the performing stage of group development. Norms can also bring with them conformity pressures that can be positive or negative. In general, people go along with a certain amount of pressure to conform out of a drive to avoid being abnormal that is a natural part of our social interaction (Ellis & Fisher, 1994). Too much pressure, however, can lead people to feel isolated and can create a negative group climate.
Explicit rules may also guide group interaction. Rules are explicitly stated guidelines for members and may refer to things like expected performance levels or output, attitudes, or dress codes. Rules may be communicated through verbal instructions, employee handbooks, membership policies, or codes of conduct (Hargie, 2011). Groups can even use established procedures to manage the flow of conversations and decision-making procedures. Group members can contest or subvert group rules just as they can norms. Violations of group rules, however, typically result in more explicit punishments than do violations of norms.
Performing
During the performing stage of group development, group members work relatively smoothly toward the completion of a task or achievement of a purpose. Although interactions in the performing stage are task focused, the relational aspects of group interaction provide an underlying support for the group members. Socialization outside of official group time can serve as a needed relief from the group’s task. During task-related interactions, group members ideally begin to develop a synergy that results from the pooling of skills, ideas, experiences, and resources. Synergy is positive in that it can lead group members to exceed their expectations and perform better than they could individually. Glitches in the group’s performance can lead the group back to previous stages of group development. Changes in membership, member roles, or norms can necessitate a revisiting of aspects of the forming, storming, or norming stages. One way to continue to build group cohesion during the performing stage is to set short-term attainable group goals. Accomplishing something, even if it’s small, can boost group morale, which in turn boosts cohesion and productivity.
Adjourning
The adjourning stage of group development occurs when a group dissolves because it has completed its purpose or goal, membership is declining and support for the group no longer exists, or it is dissolved because of some other internal or external cause. Some groups may live on indefinitely and not experience the adjourning stage. Other groups may experience so much conflict in the storming stage that they skip norming and performing and dissolve before they can complete their task. For groups with high social cohesion, adjourning may be a difficult emotional experience. However, group members may continue interpersonal relationships that formed even after the group dissolves. In reality, many bonds, even those that were very close, end up fading after the group disbands. This doesn’t mean the relationship wasn’t genuine; interpersonal relationships often form because of proximity and shared task interaction. Once that force is gone, it becomes difficult to maintain friendships, and many fade away. For groups that had negative experiences, the adjourning stage may be welcomed.
To make the most out of the adjourning stage, it is important that there be some guided and purposeful reflection. Many groups celebrate their accomplishments with a party or ceremony. Even groups that had negative experiences or failed to achieve their purpose can still learn something through reflection in the adjourning stage that may be beneficial for future group interactions. Often, group members leave a group experience with new or more developed skills that can be usefully applied in future group or individual contexts. Even groups that are relational rather than task focused can increase members’ interpersonal, listening, or empathetic skills or increase cultural knowledge and introduce new perspectives.
Attribution
This chapter is an adaptation of Chapter 13.2 “Small group development” in The Word on College Reading and Writing by M. Babin, C. Burnell, S. Pesznecker, N. Rosevear, and J. Wood and is used under a CC-BY-NC 4.0 International license. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Remix%3A_Introduction_to_Professional_Communications_(Ashman)/08%3A_Interpersonal_communications/8.02%3A_Team_work.txt |
The listening process
Listening is the learned process of receiving, interpreting, recalling, evaluating, and responding to verbal and nonverbal messages. Because it is a process, it doesn’t have a defined start and finish. Like the communication process, listening has cognitive, behavioural, and relational elements and doesn’t unfold in a linear, step-by-step fashion. Models of processes are informative in that they help us visualize specific components, but keep in mind that they do not capture the speed, overlapping nature, or overall complexity of the actual process in action. The stages of the listening process are receiving, interpreting, recalling, evaluating, and responding.
Receiving
Before we can engage other steps in the listening process, we must take in stimuli through our senses. We primarily take in information needed for listening through auditory and visual channels. Although we don’t often think about visual cues as a part of listening, they influence how we interpret messages. For example, seeing a person’s face when we hear their voice allows us to take in nonverbal cues from facial expressions and eye contact. The fact that these visual cues are missing in email, text, and phone interactions presents some difficulties for reading contextual clues into meaning received through only auditory channels.
Interpreting
During the interpreting stage of listening, we combine the visual and auditory information we receive and try to make meaning out of that information. It is through the interpreting stage that we may begin to understand the stimuli we have received. When we understand something, we are able to attach meaning by connecting information to previous experiences.
Recalling
Our ability to recall information is dependent on some of the physiological limits of how memory works. As stimuli are organized and interpreted, they make their way to short-term memory where they either expire and are forgotten or are transferred to long-term memory. Recall is an important part of the listening process because it is most often used to assess listening abilities and effectiveness.
Evaluating
When we evaluate something, we make judgments about its credibility, completeness, and worth. In terms of credibility, we try to determine the degree to which we believe a speaker’s statements are correct and/or true. In terms of completeness, we try to “read between the lines” and evaluate the message in relation to what we know about the topic or situation being discussed. We evaluate the worth of a message by making a value judgment about whether we think the message or idea is good/bad, right/wrong, or desirable/undesirable.
Responding
Responding entails sending verbal and nonverbal messages that indicate attentiveness and understanding or a lack thereof. We send verbal and nonverbal feedback while another person is talking and after they are done. Back-channel cues are the verbal and nonverbal signals we send while someone is talking and can consist of verbal cues like “uh-huh,” “oh,” and “right,” and/or nonverbal cues like direct eye contact, head nods, and leaning forward. Back-channel cues are generally a form of positive feedback that indicates others are actively listening. People also send cues intentionally and unintentionally that indicate they aren’t listening. If another person is looking away, fidgeting, texting, or turned away, we will likely interpret those responses negatively.
Paraphrasing is a responding behavior that can also show that you understand what was communicated. When you paraphrase information, you rephrase the message into your own words. For example, you might say the following to start off a paraphrased response: “What I heard you say was…” or “It seems like you’re saying…” You can also ask clarifying questions to get more information. It is often a good idea to pair a paraphrase with a question to keep a conversation flowing. For example, you might pose the following paraphrase and question pair: “It seems like you believe you were treated unfairly. Is that right?” Or you might ask a standalone question like “What did your colleague do that made you think they were ‘playing favourites?’” Make sure to paraphrase and/or ask questions once a person’s turn is over because interrupting can also be interpreted as a sign of not listening.
Active listening
Active listening refers to the process of pairing outwardly visible positive listening behaviours with positive cognitive listening practices. Active listening can help address many the environmental, physical, cognitive, and personal barriers to effective listening you may encounter.
Being an active listener starts before you actually start receiving a message. Active listeners make strategic choices and take action in order to set up ideal listening conditions. Physical and environmental noises can often be managed by moving locations or by manipulating the lighting, temperature, or furniture. When possible, avoid important listening activities during times of distracting psychological or physiological noise. Effective listeners must also work to maintain focus as much as possible and refocus when attention shifts or fades (Wolvin & Coakley, 1993).
Eye contact is typically thought of as a key sign of active listening, and speakers usually interpret a listener’s eye contact as a signal of attentiveness. While a lack of eye contact can sometimes indicate inattentiveness, before assuming this is the case, it’s important to consider whether it stems from cultural differences, is a sign of thinking about or processing new information, or happens for other reasons.
A more direct way to indicate active listening is to reference previous statements made by the speaker. Norms of politeness usually call on us to reference a past statement or connect to the speaker’s current thought before starting a conversational turn. Being able to summarize what someone said to ensure that the topic has been satisfactorily covered and understood or being able to segue in such a way that validates what the previous speaker said helps regulate conversational flow. Asking probing questions is another way to directly indicate listening and to keep a conversation going, since they encourage and invite a person to speak more. You can also ask questions that seek clarification and not just elaboration. Speakers should present complex information at a slower speaking rate than familiar information, but many will not. Remember that your nonverbal feedback can be useful for a speaker, as it signals that you are listening but also whether or not you understand. If a speaker fails to read your nonverbal feedback, you may need to follow up with verbal communication in the form of paraphrased messages and clarifying questions.
As active listeners, we want to be excited and engaged, but don’t let excitement manifest itself in interruptions. Being an active listener means knowing when to maintain our role as listener and resist the urge to take a conversational turn.
Note-taking can also indicate active listening. Translating information through writing into our own cognitive structures allows us to better interpret and assimilate information.
Listening with empathy
To be a better empathetic listener, we need to suspend or at least attempt to suppress our judgment of the other person or their message so we can fully attend to both. Paraphrasing is an important part of empathetic listening because it helps us put the other person’s words into our frame of experience without making it about us. In addition, speaking the words of someone else in our own way can help evoke within us the feelings that the other person felt while saying them (Bodie, 2011). Active-empathetic listening is more than echoing back verbal messages. We can also engage in mirroring, which refers to a listener’s replication of the nonverbal signals of a speaker (Bruneau, 1993). Therapists, for example, are often taught to adopt a posture and tone similar to their patients in order to build rapport and project empathy.
Paraphrasing and questioning are useful techniques for empathetic listening because they allow us to respond to a speaker without taking “the floor,” or the attention, away for long. Specifically, questions that ask for elaboration act as “verbal door openers,” and inviting someone to speak more and then validating their speech through active listening cues can help a person feel “listened to” (Hargie, 2011). It’s important to resist the temptation to give unsolicited advice. It is also important to acknowledge any feelings or emotions the speaker has expressed directly through words or indirectly through paralinguistic cues.
Listening in professional contexts
Empathetic listening and active listening can play key roles in organizational communication. Managers are wise to enhance their empathetic listening skills, as being able to empathize with employees contributes to a positive communication climate. Active listening among organizational members also promotes involvement and increases motivation, which leads to more cohesion and enhances the communication climate.
References
Bodie, G. D. (2011). The Active-Empathetic Listening Scale (AELS): Conceptualization and evidence of validity within the interpersonal domain, Communication Quarterly (59)3:277-295.
Bruneau, T. (1993). Empathy and Listening. In A. Wolvin & C. Coakley (Eds.), Perspectives on listening. Norwood, NJ: Alex Publishing Corporation.
Hargie, O. (2011). Skilled interpersonal interaction: Research, theory, and practice. London: Routledge.
Wolvin, A. D. & Coakley, C. (1993). A listening taxonomy. In A. Wolvin & C. Coakley (Eds.), Perspectives on listening. Norwood, NJ: Alex Publishing Corporation. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Remix%3A_Introduction_to_Professional_Communications_(Ashman)/08%3A_Interpersonal_communications/8.03%3A_Listening_skills.txt |
In many writing classes, students are expected to learn how to give feedback to their peers (commonly called peer review). At first, this may seem intimidating. You may think, “I’m not a teacher–how can I give useful feedback to another student?” What you CAN do is give your classmates an honest reaction as a reader and give advice based on your own experience. It is ultimately up to the person receiving the feedback to decide if they want to use the feedback they receive. If you feel unsure of your ability to give feedback, remember that you are learning from the process too. If you are unsure about the feedback you receive, you can choose to ignore it or check with your instructor. Being able to give feedback professionally is a powerful skill you will use throughout your career.
Giving peer feedback
When your role in peer review is to give feedback, your job is to help the writer by giving your reaction. Think about the kind of feedback you would like to get and also how you would like that feedback to be given. What follows here are some basic rules to follow for responding to someone else’s writing.
First, listen to the writer. What kind of feedback are they asking for? Do they want to know if their message purpose is clear? Do they have questions about citing sources? Make a note about what kind of feedback the writer has requested and keep that in mind as you respond.
Be kind. When you are receiving criticism, isn’t it easier to hear if the person giving the criticism is kind and respectful to you? Do the same for your peer. This doesn’t mean you avoid should avoid pointing out what could be improved; rather, it means you should take care to think about your tone, word choice, and delivery in providing feedback on things that could be improved.
Comment on the higher order concerns first. That means asking questions about anything that confuses you, checking to see if the writing did what the assignment called for, and considering if the order of the message makes sense.
Use “I” statements to help stay focused on your reaction to the writing. For example, instead of saying, “You aren’t clear in this paragraph,” try saying, “I’m confused in this paragraph. Did you mean X or Y?”
Be specific. When your feedback includes statements like “I liked it” or “It was good,” follow up with an explanation of exactly what you liked or thought was good. The same goes for criticism; say exactly what confused you or what was missing.
Ask questions. Use questions to clarify what the writer means, what the resources given are saying, and what the writer is trying to do.
Offer advice based on your own experience. Be specific and provide options, if possible. For example, you could say “If this were my message, based on my experience, you could do A, B, or C.”
Don’t try to make the writer sound like you. If a word is the wrong word, then note that. However, if you just think of a word you like better, that’s just a matter of style and voice.
Don’t edit your peer’s writing for them. If you find the writer has a lot of issues or errors with writing mechanics, such as spelling, grammar, punctuation, sentence construction, paragraphing, please do make note these issues exist. However, the responsibility for correcting these errors and rewriting the material to correct these problems lies with the writer, not with you. Providing feedback is helpful, but rewriting someone’s work is plagiarism and can carry serious academic consequences.
Mention what works well AND what could be improved. Imagine you were throwing a ball at a target on the wall with your eyes closed. It seems reasonable to assume you might be missing the target more than you were hitting it. Now imagine if you only heard from those around you what could be improved. Based on that feedback of what you could improve, you may or may not be able to adjust your throws and get the ball on the target. Conversely, if you only heard from those around you what you were doing well, you again may or may not be able to adjust your throws and get the ball on target. However, by combining these two aspects of feedback–what works well AND what could be improved–you’re providing the person with a more wholesome view of their efforts and work, and providing them better guidance around how to improve. It does not serve them well to only provide one-sided feedback, so make sure you mention what works well AND what could be improved.
Make the most of peer feedback
Let’s now consider your role in receiving feedback. Are you eager to get feedback? Scared to share your work? If you are receiving feedback from your peers, remember that ultimately YOU get to decide what feedback to accept and what to ignore. If you don’t think the feedback is correct, ask your instructor what they think.
One way to improve the feedback you get is to ask for the kind of feedback you want. Don’t be afraid to give your peer reviewer some direction.
Listen to or read the feedback with an open mind. Consider that the peer reviewer is your reader. It’s good to know what a real reader got out of your writing.
If you aren’t sure about the feedback or feel upset about it, reconsider the suggestions after a break. It’s okay to say, “I’ll think about that.” If you feel that the reviewer is trying to change your style so that the paper doesn’t sound like you anymore, consider whether the feedback helps you make the paper better. If not, feel free to set that feedback aside.
Attribution
This chapter contains material from “Giving and receiving feedback” in The Word on College Reading and Writing by M. Babin, C. Burnell, S. Pesznecker, N. Rosevear, and J. Wood and is used under a CC-BY-NC 4.0 International license. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Remix%3A_Introduction_to_Professional_Communications_(Ashman)/08%3A_Interpersonal_communications/8.04%3A_Giving_and_receiving_feedback.txt |
Questions for reflection
• Have you ever disagreed with someone at work or at school? What happened? Were you able to resolve the disagreement? How?
• How do you feel about conflict? How do you react or cope?
• What strategies do you use when you find yourself in conflict?
Conflict may typically be thought of as being negative, and it understandably can produce feelings of anxiety for many people. However, conflict is not always negative. In fact, conflict can be positive and productive, leading to creative approaches, reinforced working relationships, and more efficient outcomes.
Positive conflict is conflict where there are positive outcomes—that is, the focus remains on the issues and all parties respectfully and professionally search for outcomes that are agreeable to everyone involved. For example, say you and a colleague have to work together to develop a marketing plan for a new product your company has developed and you disagree about what tools to use. If you and your colleague are focussed on discussing the issues—what tools to use, why, and how they might help the promotion of the product—and you listen to each other actively and respectfully, then you will likely reach a solution that works for both of you.
On the other hand, negative conflict happens when the focus shifts away from finding a solution that works for everyone and towards causing harm. For example, say that instead of listening to your colleague as they explained their reasons for the tools they selected, you stormed out of the meeting and refused to answer follow-up emails from your colleague. Or, say that you and your colleague each explained your choices and listen respectfully, but then your colleague refused to use any of the tools you selected. How could these behaviours impact the ability to find a solution and move forward productively?
Harper (2004) suggests looking at conflict as being the result of unmet needs. For example, two people who hold differing view points could have difficulty understanding each other’s perspective in order to move forward productively. In this case, the unmet need could be a lack of empathy or understanding. Another example might be someone who is torn between options. The unmet need in this case might be needing more information or more support.
When incompatible goals, scarce resources, or interference are present, conflict is a typical result, but it doesn’t mean the relationship is poor or failing. All relationships progress through times of conflict and collaboration. How we navigate and negotiate these challenges influences, reinforces, or destroys the relationship. Conflict is universal, but how and when it occurs is open to influence and interpretation. Rather than viewing conflict from a negative frame of reference, view it as an opportunity for clarification, growth, and even reinforcement of the relationship.
Conflict management strategies
As professionals, we can acknowledge and anticipate that conflict will be present in every context or environment where communication occurs. To that end, we can predict, anticipate, and formulate strategies to address conflict successfully. How you choose to approach conflict influences its resolution. Joseph DeVito (2003) offers several conflict management strategies that you might adapt and expand for your use.
Avoidance
You may choose to change the subject, leave the room, or not even enter the room in the first place, but the conflict will remain and resurface when you least expect it. Your reluctance to address the conflict directly is a normal response, and one which many cultures prize. In cultures where independence is highly valued, direct confrontation is more common. In cultures where the community is emphasized over the individual, indirect strategies may be more common. Avoidance allows for more time to resolve the problem, but can also increase costs associated with problem in the first place. Your organization or business will have policies and protocols to follow regarding conflict and redress, but it is always wise to consider the position of your conversational partner or opponent and to give them, as well as yourself, time to explore alternatives.
Defensiveness versus supportiveness
Defensive communication is characterized by control, evaluation, and judgments, while supportive communication focuses on the points and not personalities. When we feel judged or criticized, our ability to listen can be diminished, and we may only hear the negative message. By choosing to focus on the message instead of the messenger, we keep the discussion supportive and professional.
Face-detracting and face-saving
Communication is not competition. Communication is the sharing of understanding and meaning, but does everyone always share equally? People struggle for control, limit access to resources and information as part of territorial displays, and otherwise use the process of communication to engage in competition. People also use communication for collaboration. Both competition and collaboration can be observed in communication interactions, but there are two concepts central to both: face-detracting and face-saving strategies.
Face-detracting strategies involve messages or statements that take away from the respect, integrity, or credibility of a person. Face-saving strategies protect credibility and separate message from messenger. For example, you might say that “sales were down this quarter,” without specifically noting who was responsible. Sales were simply down. If, however, you ask, “How does the sales manager explain the decline in sales?” you have specifically connected an individual with the negative news. While we may want to specifically connect tasks and job responsibilities to individuals and departments, in terms of language each strategy has distinct results.
Face-detracting strategies often produce a defensive communication climate, inhibit listening, and allow for little room for collaboration. To save-face is to raise the issue while preserving a supportive climate, allowing room in the conversation for constructive discussions and problem solving.
Empathy
Communication involves not only the words we write or speak, but how and when we write or say them. The way we communicate also carries meaning, and empathy for the individual involves attending to this aspect of interaction. Empathetic listening involves listening to both the literal and implied meanings within a message. By paying attention to feelings and emotions associated with content and information, we can build relationships and address conflict more constructively.
Managing your emotions
There will be times in the work environment when emotions run high. Your awareness of them can help you clear your mind and choose to wait until the moment has passed to tackle the challenge.
Emotions can be contagious in the workplace, and fear of the unknown can influence people to act in irrational ways. You can try to recognize when emotions are on edge in yourself or others, and choose to wait to communicate, problem-solve, or negotiate until after the moment has passed.
Learn from experience
Every communication interaction provides an opportunity for learning if you choose to see it. Sometimes the lessons are situational and may not apply in future contexts. Other times the lessons learned may well serve you across your professional career. Taking notes for yourself to clarify your thoughts, much like a journal, serve to document and help you see the situation more clearly.
Recognize that some aspects of communication are intentional, and may communicate meaning, even if it is hard to understand. Also, know that some aspects of communication are unintentional, and may not imply meaning or design. People make mistakes. They say things they should not have said. Emotions are revealed that are not always rational, and not always associated with the current context. A challenging morning at home can spill over into the work day and someone’s bad mood may have nothing to do with you.
Attribution
This chapter contains material taken from Conflict in the Work Environment in Communication for Business Professionals, which is used under a CC-BY-SA 4.0 International license. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Remix%3A_Introduction_to_Professional_Communications_(Ashman)/08%3A_Interpersonal_communications/8.05%3A_Workplace_conflict_management.txt |
Questions for reflection
• Who is someone whose presentation style you admire? Describe it. What do they do when they present that you like? Why do you like it?
• How do you feel when you have to present? Do you feel nervous? Excited? Stressed out? What do you do to manage these emotions?
• What do you do to prepare for a presentation?
• What strategies or techniques do you use when you present? How might this differ from one context, culture, or environment to another?
Many people have very limiting beliefs about presentations and their own abilities to give one. Examining your skills, fears, and preferences can be helpful in becoming more comfortable in presenting.
You don’t have to be perfect
Letting go of perfection can be the hardest guideline to apply to ourselves. It’s also in our nature to compare ourselves to others. You might forgive a classmate for the occasional “umm” during a speech, but then turn right around and spend a lot of mental effort chastising yourself for making the same error in your presentation. We all have distinct strengths and weaknesses. Knowing yourself and where you need to improve is an important first step. Recognizing that Rome wasn’t built in a day, and that you won’t become a world-class speaker overnight, may be easier said than done.
It may help to recognize that your listeners don’t want to see you fail; on the contrary, they want you to do well because when you do, they will be able to relax, enjoy, and understand your presentation. You might be surprised to know that not everyone counts each time you say “umm.” However, if you do tend to say “umm,” “ahhh,” or other filler phrases repeatedly, they can distract your audience from your message.
Organization is important
Have you ever thought of a great comeback to something someone said a while after they said it? Wouldn’t it have been nice to be quick and articulate and able to deliver your comeback right then and there? Speaking in public gives you a distinct advantage over “off the cuff” improvisation and stumbling for the right comeback. You get to prepare and be organized. You know you’ll be speaking to an audience in order to persuade them to do, think, or consider an idea or action.
What issues might they think of while you are speaking? What comebacks or arguments might they say if it were a debate? You get to anticipate what the audience will want to know, say, or hear. You get to prepare your statements and visual aids to support your speech and create the timing, organization, and presentation of each point. Many times in life we are asked to take a position and feel unprepared to respond. Speaking in public gives you the distinct opportunity to prepare and organize your ideas or points in order to make an impact and respond effectively.
Speaking in public is like participating in a conversation
This may sound odd at first, but consider the idea of an “enlarged conversation” described by Julia Wood (2001). She expresses a clear connection between everyday speech and public dialogue. Sometimes we take a speech turn, while at other times we remain silent while others take their turn. We do this all day long and think nothing of it. We are often the focus of attention from friends and colleagues, and it hardly ever makes us nervous. When we get on a stage, however, some people perceive that the whole game has changed. It hasn’t. We still take turns, and the speaker will take a longer turn as part of an enlarged conversation. People in the audience will still communicate feedback and the speaker will still negotiate their turn just the way they would in an everyday conversation. The difference is all about how we, as the speaker, perceive the context.
Some people feel that the level of expectations, the need for perfection, or the idealistic qualities we perceive in eloquent speakers are required, and then focus on deficiencies, fears, and the possibility of failing to measure up. By letting go of this ideal, we can approach the challenge with a more pragmatic frame of mind. The rules we play comfortably by in conversation every day are the same as we shift to a larger conversation within the context of public speaking. This viewpoint can offer an alternative as you address your apprehensions and can help you let go of unrealistic expectations.
What makes a presentation successful
A successful presentation occurs when the presenter and the audience connect. Authenticity and passion can resonate so much with an audience that it can outweigh elements otherwise considered pitfalls. What you bring to the audience affects what they get from your presentation.
Verbal cues
Pitch
Do you have a deep, low voice, or a high-pitched one? We all have a normal speaking pitch where we are most comfortable, but we can move our pitch up or down. Use pitch inflections to make your delivery more interesting and emphatic. If you don’t change pitch at all, your delivery will be monotone, which gets boring for the audience very quickly.
Volume
Do you speak softly or loudly? Adjust the volume of your voice to your environment and audience. If you’re in a large auditorium, speak up, or better yet, use a microphone! It’s not a badge of honour to avoid using a microphone; use one to help make your presentation accessible to those who may have hearing disabilities. You may need to use more volume to compensate for ambient noise like traffic or an air conditioner, or for presenting in room with a lot of hard surfaces (where the sound can bounce off and echo). You can also use volume strategically to emphasize the most important points in your speech.
Emphasis
Stress certain words in your speech to add emphasis to them, that is, to indicate that they are particularly important. You may also use a visual aid to emphasize key points by using photographs or charts.
Enunciation
Practice enunciating your words, which means practicing saying each word distinctly. If you speak too quickly, the end of one word can start to blend into the start of another. One way to compensate for this is to practice slowing down your rate of speech by taking a micro-break between each word. If you’ve ever been told you sound like you’re mumbling (early in my career, I was told this all the time!), it helps to focus practice moving your lips, jaw, and tongue as you say each word and to speak with more volume. These techniques can seem difficult to remember in the moment of giving a presentation, but it can get easier with practice (which I know from experience!).
Rate
Are you a fast or slow speaker? The pace that you speak at will influence how well the audience can understand you. Pause for breath naturally during your speech. Your speaking rate should be appropriate for your topic. A rapid, lively rate communicates enthusiasm, urgency, or humour. A slower, moderated rate conveys respect and seriousness. By varying your rate within a speech, you can emphasize your main points and keep your audience engaged.
If you tend to speak too quickly or too softly, try practicing some vocal exercises, such as some of those described by Julian Treasure in his 2013 Ted Talk. Vocal exercises can help reduce your nervousness and improve your voice control, making it easier for your audience to understand your message.
Filler words
Try to minimize the use of filler words, such as like, er, um, and uh, because they can be distracting if they are overused. One way to find out whether you use filler phrases is to record yourself presenting and then watch it. You might be surprised to find out you’re unconsciously saying something over and over–or that you only said twice what you thought you’d repeated a hundred times! Once you are aware of your tendency to use filler phrases, eliminating them can become a goal for improvement. A technique I find helpful is to try substituting a short pause in place of where I catch myself about to say a filler word.
Non-verbal cues
Gestures and body language
A gesture is “a movement of part of the body, especially a hand or the head, to express an idea or meaning” (OxfordDictionaries.com, 2015). You can use these to channel nervous energy into an enhancement of your speech, reinforcing important points, but they can be distracting if overused. If the audience is busy watching your hands fly around, they will not be able to concentrate on your words.
Watching a recording of yourself presenting can also be informative for other reasons. It can help you pick up on your body language cues that might be distracting for your audience. For example, you might see if you sway or rock; wring or rub your hands repeatedly; or fiddle with papers, pens, or other objects in your hands. Many of these habits are often carried out unconsciously because of nervousness. Once you’re aware of doing these things, you can work to eliminate them. But how do you stop, for example, swaying or twirling your cue cards if you don’t even realize you’re doing it? Preparation and practice are key.
Here are some techniques to try:
• If you are swaying or rocking out of nervousness, trying to stand perfectly still might be incredibly difficult. Instead, consider turning that swaying or rocking into a gentle pacing.
• If you wring or rub your hands, you can instead try gesturing as you speak.
• If you fiddle with any objects that are in your hands, then make sure you present with empty hands! For example, if you don’t have papers in your hand, you won’t be able to twirl them, and if you don’t have a pen in your hands, you won’t be able to click it open and closed.
Eye contact
By recording yourself presenting and practicing in front of friends or family, you can also gauge what level of eye contact you are making. If you find you’re presenting to just one or two people in the audience, you can try practicing looking in a “Z” gaze at the audience. Look first at the back left corner, then the back right, move to the front left, and then the right front. You can then move in reverse or start back at the beginning.
If you find you’re having difficulty maintaining eye contact with the audience, try looking between people in the audience, cycling between 3 or 4 different areas. While you still may not be making eye contact with anybody, you will at least be looking out at the entire audience rather than at your feet, your notes, or at the wall at the back of the room.
Silence
Silence is a powerful technique if used well, but it is often overlooked. They can add emphasis and dramatic effect when you are speaking. They can also allow your audience some time to process the information you are sharing.
Presentation techniques
There are many different presentation techniques that you can use, but there is no single technique that may be “correct” or “the best.” The key is to use the ones you think will help you connect with your audience and help maintain their interest in your presentation.
The following list describes some strategies you can consider using in your presentation. It’s important to note that this is not an exhaustive list or and it’s not an exhaustive or comprehensive discussion of these techniques.
Audience references – Highlight something common to the audience that will make them interested in the topic.
Current events – Refer to a current event in the news that demonstrates the relevance of your topic to the audience.
Question – Ask either a question that asks for a response from your audience, or a rhetorical question, which does not need a response but is designed to get them thinking about the topic.
Personal reference – Refer to a story about yourself that is relevant to the topic.
Storytelling – Include an anecdote, a narrative, or a story.
Storytelling can be a very powerful technique to help you connect with your audience. For better or worse, audiences are likely to remember anecdotes and narratives long after the statistics are forgotten. Human beings love stories and often will walk away from a speech moved by or remembering a powerful story or example more than anything else. A story can be a brief component in your presentation, or you can structure your entire presentation as a story.
From a Euro-Western dominant culture point of view, stories will often have linear structures, which is a “classic formula [where] a protagonist with goals meets an unexpected obstacle and a crisis results. The protagonist attempts to overcome the obstacle, leading to a climax, and finally a denouement. (There can also be interruptions and plot twists)” (Anderson, 2016, p. 65). However, this is but one perspective on storytelling. Storytelling structure, Protocols, and formats can differ from culture to culture.
For example, Dr. Jo-Ann Archibald, a member of the Sto:lo Nation and an Indigenous studies scholar at the University of British Columbia, describes how some Indigenous stories may not have a clear beginning, middle, or end (2012b). She also explains how Indigenous stories may have more than one meaning and they need to be told within context, including who the storyteller is, where that person is from, what culture is represented in the story, and the purpose of the story (Archibald, 2012b). Furthermore, Dr. Archibald describes how there may be Protocols around the telling of Indigenous stories, such as who can tell the story, to whom, when, where, and how (Archibald, 2012a).
Watch Dr. Jo-Ann Archibald (Q’um Q’um Xiiem, Sto:lo Nation) talk about Indigenous stories and their framework >>
A Vimeo element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/professionalcomms/?p=110
Watch Dr. Jo-Ann Archibald (Q’um Q’um Xiiem, Sto:lo Nation) talk about including Indigenous stories >>
A Vimeo element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/professionalcomms/?p=110
Furthermore, stories can be shared through spoken or written word, dance (such as the Lion Dance during Chinese New Year), music (such as hip hop), or visual means (such as art displays or interactive websites). ‘Welila’ogwa Irene Isaac, a member of the ‘Namgis First Nation and a contributing author to Knowing Home: Braiding Indigenous Science with Western Science, Book 1, describes how other cultural practices can be forms of storytelling as well, saying that “central to the cultural and spiritual practices of the Kwakwaka‘wakw people is the Potlatch or Winter Ceremonies when stories are retold, dramatized, and shared” (2016, Chapter 14, para. 2).
What is important to take away from this brief discussion is that members of your audience may have different understandings of and experiences with what form a story takes, how it is structured, who can tell it, when it can be told, and how they (the audience) are to reflect on and interact with it. Before incorporating a story in your presentation, it’s critical to consider context; Protocols; your audience; and your own relationship to the story, the story creator (or owner), and the culture from which it originates.
Preparing to Present
Here are some strategies for preparing to present.
As you rehearse and practice your presentation, try to identify the weaknesses in your delivery to improve on them. Try practising in front of a mirror or even recording yourself and playing it back. It’s also helpful to get feedback from a supportive audience at this stage. Perhaps a few family members or friends could watch you give your presentation and provide some feedback. These sessions should help you get comfortable and help you remember what you want to say without having to constantly refer to notes.
If at all possible, access the room where you will be presenting. This way you can get a feel for its setup and decide how you will stand or move during your presentation.
If you are using technology to support your presentation (i.e., PowerPoint slides or a projector), test everything before you begin. Do a microphone check and test its volume, view your slides on the computer you will be using, check any weblinks, play videos to test their sound, or make a call to test the phone connection prior to your teleconference. Your audience will get restless quickly if they arrive and are expected to wait while you fix a technical problem. This can also make you seem disorganized and hurt your credibility as an authoritative speaker.
Contingency planning
Well before the day of your presentation, ask yourself, “What could go wrong?” This might sound like a good way to stress yourself out, but it can actually be very helpful. If you anticipate the worst-case scenario and are prepared for it, problems on the day of your presentation are less likely to bother you.
Acknowledgement
My sincere gratitude is extended to Andrea Niosi, an instructor of marketing at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, for her generosity and constructive feedback in critically reviewing the storytelling topic included in this chapter.
Attributions
This chapter contains material taken from several sources: | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_English_and_Communication/Remix%3A_Introduction_to_Professional_Communications_(Ashman)/08%3A_Interpersonal_communications/8.06%3A_Oral_presentations.txt |
Ethics consists of the standards of behavior to which we hold ourselves in our personal and professional lives. It establishes the levels of honesty, empathy, and trustworthiness and other virtues by which we hope to identify our personal behavior and our public reputation. In our personal lives, our ethics sets norms for the ways in which we interact with family and friends. In our professional lives, ethics guides our interactions with customers, clients, colleagues, employees, and shareholders affected by our business practices (Figure 1.1).
Should we care about ethics in our lives? In our practices in business and the professions? That is the central question we will examine in this chapter and throughout the book. Our goal is to understand why the answer is yes.
Whatever hopes you have for your future, you almost certainly want to be successful in whatever career you choose. But what does success mean to you, and how will you know you have achieved it? Will you measure it in terms of wealth, status, power, or recognition? Before blindly embarking on a quest to achieve these goals, which society considers important, stop and think about what a successful career means to you personally. Does it include a blameless reputation, colleagues whose good opinion you value, and the ability to think well of yourself? How might ethics guide your decision-making and contribute to your achievement of these goals?
1.02: Being a Professional of Integrity
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Describe the role of ethics in a business environment
• Explain what it means to be a professional of integrity
• Distinguish between ethical and legal responsibilities
• Describe three approaches for examining the ethical nature of a decision
Whenever you think about the behavior you expect of yourself in your personal life and as a professional, you are engaging in a philosophical dialogue with yourself to establish the standards of behavior you choose to uphold, that is, your ethics. You may decide you should always tell the truth to family, friends, customers, clients, and shareholders, and if that is not possible, you should have very good reasons why you cannot. You may also choose never to defraud or mislead your business partners. You may decide, as well, that while you are pursuing profit in your business, you will not require that all the money on the table come your way. Instead, there might be some to go around to those who are important because they are affected one way or another by your business. These are your stakeholders.
Acting with Integrity
Clients, customers, suppliers, investors, retailers, employees, the media, the government, members of the surrounding community, competitors, and even the environment are stakeholders in a business; that is, they are individuals and entities affected by the business’s decisions (Figure 1.2). Stakeholders typically value a leadership team that chooses the ethical way to accomplish the company’s legitimate for-profit goals. For example, Patagonia expresses its commitment to environmentalism via its “1% for the Planet” program, which donates 1 percent of all sales to help save the planet. In part because of this program, Patagonia has become a market leader in outdoor gear.
Being successful at work may therefore consist of much more than simply earning money and promotions. It may also mean treating our employees, customers, and clients with honesty and respect. It may come from the sense of pride we feel about engaging in honest transactions, not just because the law demands it but because we demand it of ourselves. It may lie in knowing the profit we make does not come from shortchanging others. Thus, business ethics guides the conduct by which companies and their agents abide by the law and respect the rights of their stakeholders, particularly their customers, clients, employees, and the surrounding community and environment. Ethical business conduct permits us to sleep well at night.
Link to learning
Are business ethics an oxymoron? Read “Why Ethics Matter” to understand just a few of the reasons to have values-driven management.
Nearly all systems of religious belief stress the building blocks of engaging others with respect, empathy, and honesty. These foundational beliefs, in turn, prepare us for the codes of ethical behavior that serve as ideal guides for business and the professions. Still, we need not subscribe to any religious faith to hold that ethical behavior in business is still necessary. Just by virtue of being human, we all share obligations to one another, and principal among these is the requirement that we treat others with fairness and dignity, including in our commercial transactions.
For this reason, we use the words ethics and morals interchangeably in this book, though some philosophers distinguish between them. We hold that “an ethical person” conveys the same sense as “a moral person,” and we do not regard religious belief as a requirement for acting ethically in business and the professions. Because we are all humans and in the same world, we should extend the same behavior to all. It is the right way to behave, but it also burnishes our own professional reputation as business leaders of integrity.
Integrity—that is, unity between what we say and what we do—is a highly valued trait. But it is more than just consistency of character. Acting with integrity means we adhere strongly to a code of ethics, so it implies trustworthiness and incorruptibility. Being a professional of integrity means consistently striving to be the best person you can be in all your interactions with others. It means you practice what you preach, walk the talk, and do what you believe is right based upon reason. Integrity in business brings many advantages, not the least of which is that it is a critical factor in allowing business and society to function properly.
Successful corporate leaders and the companies they represent will take pride in their enterprise if they engage in business with honesty and fair play. To treat customers, clients, employees, and all those affected by a firm with dignity and respect is ethical. In addition, laudable business practices serve the long-term interests of corporations. Why? Because customers, clients, employees, and society at large will much more willingly patronize a business and work hard on its behalf if that business is perceived as caring about the community it serves. And what type of firm has long-term customers and employees? One whose track record gives evidence of honest business practice.
LInk to learning
In this interview, Mark Faris, a white-collar criminal convicted of fraud, claims that greed, arrogance, and ambition were motivating factors in his actions. He also discusses the human ability to rationalize our behavior to justify it to ourselves. Note his proposed solutions: practicing ethical leadership and developing awareness at an individual level via corporate training.
Many people confuse legal and ethical compliance. They are, however, totally different and call for different standards of behavior. The concepts are not interchangeable in any sense of the word. The law is needed to establish and maintain a functioning society. Without it, our society would be in chaos. Compliance with these legal standards is strictly mandatory: If we violate these standards, we are subject to punishment as established by the law. Therefore, compliance in terms of business ethics generally refers to the extent to which a company conducts its business operations in accordance with applicable regulations, statutes, and laws. Yet this represents only a baseline minimum. Ethical observance builds on this baseline and reveals the principles of an individual business leader or a specific organization. Ethical acts are generally considered voluntary and personal—often based on our perception of or stand on right and wrong.
Some professions, such as medicine and the law, have traditional codes of ethics. The Hippocratic Oath, for example, is embraced by most professionals in health care today as an appropriate standard always owed to patients by physicians, nurses, and others in the field. This obligation traces its lineage to ancient Greece and the physician Hippocrates. Business is different in not having a mutually shared standard of ethics. This is changing, however, as evidenced by the array of codes of conduct and mission statements many companies have adopted over the past century. These have many points in common, and their shared content may eventually produce a code universally claimed by business practitioners. What central point might constitute such a code? Essentially, a commitment to treat with honesty and integrity customers, clients, employees, and others affiliated with a business.
The law is typically indebted to tradition and precedence, and compelling reasons are needed to support any change. Ethical reasoning often is more topical and reflects the changes in consciousness that individuals and society undergo. Often, ethical thought precedes and sets the stage for changes in the law.
Behaving ethically requires that we meet the mandatory standards of the law, but that is not enough. For example, an action may be legal that we personally consider unacceptable. Companies today need to be focused not only on complying with the letter of the law but also on going above and beyond that basic mandatory requirement to consider their stakeholders and do what is right.
Link to learning
To see an example of a corporate ethical code or mission statement, visit Johnson & Johnson and read “Our Credo” written by former chair Robert Wood Johnson.
Forbes provides an annual list of companies recently deemed the most ethical according to their standards and research.
Ends, Means, and Character in Business
How, then, should we behave? Philosophy and science help us answer this question. From philosophy, three different perspectives help us assess whether our decisions are ethical on the basis of reason. These perspectives are called normative ethical theories and focus on how people ought to behave; we discuss them in this chapter and in later chapters. In contrast, descriptive ethical theories are based on scientific evidence, primarily in the field of psychology, and describe how people tend to behave within a particular context; however, they are not the subject of this book.
The first normative approach is to examine the ends, or consequences, a decision produces in order to evaluate whether those ends are ethical. Variations on this approach include utilitarianism, teleology, and consequentialism. For example, utilitarianism suggests that an ethical action is one whose consequence achieves the greatest good for the greatest number of people. So if we want to make an ethical decision, we should ask ourselves who is helped and who is harmed by it. Focusing on consequences in this way generally does not require us to take into account the means of achieving that particular end, however. That fact leads us to the second normative theory about what constitutes ethical conduct.
The second approach does examine the means, or actions, we use to carry out a business decision. An example of this approach is deontology, which essentially suggests that it is the means that lend nobility to the ends. Deontology contends that each of us owes certain duties to others (deon is a Greek word for duty or obligation) and that certain universal rules apply to every situation and bind us to these duties. In this view, whether our actions are ethical depends only on whether we adhere to these rules. Thus, the means we use is the primary determinant of ethical conduct. The thinker most closely associated with deontology is the eighteenth-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant (Figure 1.3).
The third normative approach, typically called virtue theory, focuses on the character of the decision-maker—a character that reflects the training we receive growing up. In this view, our ethical analysis of a decision is intimately connected with the person we choose to be. It is through the development of habits, the routine actions in which we choose to engage, that we are able to create a character of integrity and make ethical decisions. Put differently, if a two-year-old is taught to take care of and return borrowed toys even though this runs contrary to every instinct they have, they may continue to perfect their ethical behavior so that at age forty, they can be counted on to safeguard the tens of millions of dollars investors have entrusted to their care in brokerages.
Virtue theory has its roots in the Greek philosophical tradition, whose followers sought to learn how to live a flourishing life through study, teaching, and practice. The cardinal virtues to be practiced were courage, self-control, justice, and wisdom. Socrates was often cited as a sage and a role model, whose conduct in life was held in high regard.
ETHICS ACROSS TIME AND CULTURES
Aristotle and the Concept of Phronesis, or Practical Wisdom
Phrónēsis (fro-NEE-sis) is a type of practical wisdom that enables us to act virtuously. In “The Big Idea: The Wise Leader,” a Harvard Business Review article on leadership and ethical decision-making, Ikujiro Nonaka, a Japanese organizational theorist, and Hirotaka Takeuchi, a professor of Management Practice at Harvard Business School, discuss the gap between the theory and practice of ethics and which characteristics make a wise leader.1 The authors conclude that “the use of explicit and tacit knowledge isn’t enough; chief executive officers (CEOs) must also draw on a third, often forgotten kind of knowledge, called practical wisdom. Practical wisdom is tacit knowledge acquired from experience that enables people to make prudent judgments and take actions based on the actual situation, guided by values and morals.”
The concept of practical wisdom dates back to Aristotle, who considered phronesis, which can also be defined as prudence, to be a key intellectual virtue. Phronesis enables people to make ethically sound judgments. According to the authors, phronetic leaders:
• practice moral discernment in every situation, making judgments for the common good that are guided by their individual values and ethics;
• quickly assess situations and envision the consequences of possible actions or responses;
• create a shared sense of purpose among executives and employees and inspire people to work together in pursuit of a common goal;
• engage as many people as possible in conversation and communicate using metaphors, stories, and other figurative language in a way that everyone can understand; and
• encourage practical wisdom in others and support the training of employees at all levels in its use.
In essence, the first question any company should ask itself is: “Do we have a moral purpose?” Having a moral purpose requires focusing on the common good, which precedes the accumulation of profit and results in economic and social benefits. If companies seek the common good, profits generally will follow.
cRITICAL tHINKING
In the article cited, the authors stress the importance of being well versed in the liberal arts, such as philosophy, history, literature, and in the fine arts to cultivate judgment. How do you think a strong background in the liberal arts would impart practical wisdom or help you make ethical decisions? | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_Ethics/Book%3A_Business_Ethics_(OpenStax)/01%3A_Why_Ethics_Matter/1.01%3A_Introduction.txt |
lEARNING oBJECTIVES
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Differentiate between short-term and long-term perspectives
• Differentiate between stockholder and stakeholder
• Discuss the relationship among ethical behavior, goodwill, and profit
• Explain the concept of corporate social responsibility
Few directives in business can override the core mission of maximizing shareholder wealth, and today that particularly means increasing quarterly profits. Such an intense focus on one variable over a short time (i.e., a short-term perspective) leads to a short-sighted view of what constitutes business success.
Measuring true profitability, however, requires taking a long-term perspective. We cannot accurately measure success within a quarter of a year; a longer time is often required for a product or service to find its market and gain traction against competitors, or for the effects of a new business policy to be felt. Satisfying consumers’ demands, going green, being socially responsible, and acting above and beyond the basic requirements all take time and money. However, the extra cost and effort will result in profits in the long run. If we measure success from this longer perspective, we are more likely to understand the positive effect ethical behavior has on all who are associated with a business.
Profitability and Success: Thinking Long Term
Decades ago, some management theorists argued that a conscientious manager in a for-profit setting acts ethically by emphasizing solely the maximization of earnings. Today, most commentators contend that ethical business leadership is grounded in doing right by all stakeholders directly affected by a firm’s operations, including, but not limited to, stockholders, or those who own shares of the company’s stock. That is, business leaders do right when they give thought to what is best for all who have a stake in their companies. Not only that, firms actually reap greater material success when they take such an approach, especially over the long run.
Nobel Prize–winning economist Milton Friedman stated in a now-famous New York Times Magazine article in 1970 that the only “social responsibility of a business is to increase its profits.”2 This concept took hold in business and even in business school education. However, although it is certainly permissible and even desirable for a company to pursue profitability as a goal, managers must also have an understanding of the context within which their business operates and of how the wealth they create can add positive value to the world. The context within which they act is society, which permits and facilitates a firm’s existence.
Thus, a company enters a social contract with society as whole, an implicit agreement among all members to cooperate for social benefits. Even as a company pursues the maximizing of stockholder profit, it must also acknowledge that all of society will be affected to some extent by its operations. In return for society’s permission to incorporate and engage in business, a company owes a reciprocal obligation to do what is best for as many of society’s members as possible, regardless of whether they are stockholders. Therefore, when applied specifically to a business, the social contract implies that a company gives back to the society that permits it to exist, benefiting the community at the same time it enriches itself.
Link to learning
What happens when a bank decides to break the social contract? This press conference held by the National Whistleblowers Center describes the events surrounding the \$104 million whistleblower reward given to former UBS employee Bradley Birkenfeld by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. While employed at UBS, Switzerland’s largest bank, Birkenfeld assisted in the company’s illegal offshore tax business, and he later served forty months in prison for conspiracy. But he was also the original source of incriminating information that led to a Federal Bureau of Investigation examination of the bank and to the U.S. government’s decision to impose a \$780 million fine on UBS in 2009. In addition, Birkenfeld turned over to investigators the account information of more than 4,500 U.S. private clients of UBS.3
In addition to taking this more nuanced view of profits, managers must also use a different time frame for obtaining them. Wall Street’s focus on periodic (i.e., quarterly and annual) earnings has led many managers to adopt a short-term perspective, which fails to take into account effects that require a longer time to develop. For example, charitable donations in the form of corporate assets or employees’ volunteered time may not show a return on investment until a sustained effort has been maintained for years. A long-term perspectiveis a more balanced view of profit maximization that recognizes that the impacts of a business decision may not manifest for a longer time.
As an example, consider the business practices of Toyota when it first introduced its vehicles for sale in the United States in 1957. For many years, Toyota was content to sell its cars at a slight loss because it was accomplishing two business purposes: It was establishing a long-term relationship of trust with those who eventually would become its loyal U.S. customers, and it was attempting to disabuse U.S. consumers of their belief that items made in Japan were cheap and unreliable. The company accomplished both goals by patiently playing its long game, a key aspect of its operational philosophy, “The Toyota Way,” which includes a specific emphasis on long-term business goals, even at the expense of short-term profit.4
What contributes to a corporation’s positive image over the long term? Many factors contribute, including a reputation for treating customers and employees fairly and for engaging in business honestly. Companies that act in this way may emerge from any industry or country. Examples include Fluor, the large U.S. engineering and design firm; illycaffè, the Italian food and beverage purveyor; Marriott, the giant U.S. hotelier; and Nokia, the Finnish telecommunications retailer. The upshot is that when consumers are looking for an industry leader to patronize and would-be employees are seeking a firm to join, companies committed to ethical business practices are often the first to come to mind.
Why should stakeholders care about a company acting above and beyond the ethical and legal standards set by society? Simply put, being ethical is simply good business. A business is profitable for many reasons, including expert management teams, focused and happy employees, and worthwhile products and services that meet consumer demand. One more and very important reason is that they maintain a company philosophy and mission to do good for others.
Year after year, the nation’s most admired companies are also among those that had the highest profit margins. Going green, funding charities, and taking a personal interest in employee happiness levels adds to the bottom line! Consumers want to use companies that care for others and our environment. During the years 2008 and 2009, many unethical companies went bankrupt. However, those companies that avoided the “quick buck,” risky and unethical investments, and other unethical business practices often flourished. If nothing else, consumer feedback on social media sites such as Yelp and Facebook can damage an unethical company’s prospects.
CASES FROM THE REAL WORLD
Competition and the Markers of Business Success
Perhaps you are still thinking about how you would define success in your career. For our purposes here, let us say that success consists simply of achieving our goals. We each have the ability to choose the goals we hope to accomplish in business, of course, and, if we have chosen them with integrity, our goals and the actions we take to achieve them will be in keeping with our character.
Warren Buffet (Figure 1.4), whom many consider the most successful investor of all time, is an exemplar of business excellence as well as a good potential role model for professionals of integrity and the art of thinking long term. He had the following to say: “Ultimately, there’s one investment that supersedes all others: Invest in yourself. Nobody can take away what you’ve got in yourself, and everybody has potential they haven’t used yet. . . . You’ll have a much more rewarding life not only in terms of how much money you make, but how much fun you have out of life; you’ll make more friends the more interesting person you are, so go to it, invest in yourself.”5
The primary principle under which Buffett instructs managers to operate is: “Do nothing you would not be happy to have an unfriendly but intelligent reporter write about on the front page of a newspaper.”6 This is a very simple and practical guide to encouraging ethical business behavior on a personal level. Buffett offers another, equally wise, principle: “Lose money for the firm, even a lot of money, and I will be understanding; lose reputation for the firm, even a shred of reputation, and I will be ruthless.”7 As we saw in the example of Toyota, the importance of establishing and maintaining trust in the long term cannot be underestimated.
Link to learning
For more on Warren Buffett’s thoughts about being both an economic and ethical leader, watch this interview that appeared on the PBS NewsHour on June 6, 2017.
Stockholders, Stakeholders, and Goodwill
Earlier in this chapter, we explained that stakeholders are all the individuals and groups affected by a business’s decisions. Among these stakeholders are stockholders (or shareholders), individuals and institutions that own stock (or shares) in a corporation. Understanding the impact of a business decision on the stockholder and various other stakeholders is critical to the ethical conduct of business. Indeed, prioritizing the claims of various stakeholders in the company is one of the most challenging tasks business professionals face. Considering only stockholders can often result in unethical decisions; the impact on all stakeholders must be considered and rationally assessed.
Managers do sometimes focus predominantly on stockholders, especially those holding the largest number of shares, because these powerful individuals and groups can influence whether managers keep their jobs or are dismissed (e.g., when they are held accountable for the company’s missing projected profit goals). And many believe the sole purpose of a business is, in fact, to maximize stockholders’ short-term profits. However, considering only stockholders and short-term impacts on them is one of the most common errors business managers make. It is often in the long-term interests of a business not to accommodate stockowners alone but rather to take into account a broad array of stakeholders and the long-term and short-term consequences for a course of action.
Here is a simple strategy for considering all your stakeholders in practice. Divide your screen or page into three columns; in the first column, list all stakeholders in order of perceived priority (Figure 1.5). Some individuals and groups play more than one role. For instance, some employees may be stockholders, some members of the community may be suppliers, and the government may be a customer of the firm. In the second column, list what you think each stakeholder group’s interests and goals are. For those that play more than one role, choose the interests most directly affected by your actions. In the third column, put the likely impact of your business decision on each stakeholder. This basic spreadsheet should help you identify all your stakeholders and evaluate your decision’s impact on their interests. If you would like to add a human dimension to your analysis, try assigning some of your colleagues to the role of stakeholders and reexamine your analysis.
The positive feeling stakeholders have for any particular company is called goodwill, which is an important component of almost any business entity, even though it is not directly attributable to the company’s assets and liabilities. Among other intangible assets, goodwill might include the worth of a business’s reputation, the value of its brand name, the intellectual capital and attitude of its workforce, and the loyalty of its established customer base. Even being socially responsible generates goodwill. The ethical behavior of managers will have a positive influence on the value of each of those components. Goodwill cannot be earned or created in a short time, but it can be the key to success and profitability.
A company’s name, its corporate logo, and its trademark will necessarily increase in value as stakeholders view that company in a more favorable light. A good reputation is essential for success in the modern business world, and with information about the company and its actions readily available via mass media and the Internet (e.g., on public rating sites such as Yelp), management’s values are always subject to scrutiny and open debate. These values affect the environment outside and inside the company. The corporate culture, for instance, consists of shared beliefs, values, and behaviors that create the internal or organizational context within which managers and employees interact. Practicing ethical behavior at all levels—from CEO to upper and middle management to general employees—helps cultivate an ethical corporate culture and ethical employee relations.
Learning Objectives
• Which Corporate Culture Do You Value?
Imagine that upon graduation you have the good fortune to be offered two job opportunities. The first is with a corporation known to cultivate a hard-nosed, no-nonsense business culture in which keeping long hours and working intensely are highly valued. At the end of each year, the company donates to numerous social and environmental causes. The second job opportunity is with a nonprofit recognized for a very different culture based on its compassionate approach to employee work-life balance. It also offers the chance to pursue your own professional interests or volunteerism during a portion of every work day. The first job offer pays 20 percent more per year.
Critical Thinking
• Which of these opportunities would you pursue and why?
• How important an attribute is salary, and at what point would a higher salary override for you the nonmonetary benefits of the lower-paid position?
Positive goodwill generated by ethical business practices, in turn, generates long-term business success. As recent studies have shown, the most ethical and enlightened companies in the United States consistently outperform their competitors.8 Thus, viewed from the proper long-term perspective, conducting business ethically is a wise business decision that generates goodwill for the company among stakeholders, contributes to a positive corporate culture, and ultimately supports profitability.
You can test the validity of this claim yourself. When you choose a company with which to do business, what factors influence your choice? Let us say you are looking for a financial advisor for your investments and retirement planning, and you have found several candidates whose credentials, experience, and fees are approximately the same. Yet one of these firms stands above the others because it has a reputation, which you discover is well earned, for telling clients the truth and recommending investments that seemed centered on the clients’ benefit and not on potential profit for the firm. Wouldn’t this be the one you would trust with your investments?
Or suppose one group of financial advisors has a long track record of giving back to the community of which it is part. It donates to charitable organizations in local neighborhoods, and its members volunteer service hours toward worthy projects in town. Would this group not strike you as the one worthy of your investments? That it appears to be committed to building up the local community might be enough to persuade you to give it your business. This is exactly how a long-term investment in community goodwill can produce a long pipeline of potential clients and customers.
CASES FROM THE REAL WORLD
The Equifax Data Breach
In 2017, from mid-May to July, hackers gained unauthorized access to servers used by Equifax, a major credit reporting agency, and accessed the personal information of nearly one-half the U.S. population.9 Equifax executives sold off nearly \$2 million of company stock they owned after finding out about the hack in late July, weeks before it was publicly announced on September 7, 2017, in potential violation of insider trading rules. The company’s shares fell nearly 14 percent after the announcement, but few expect Equifax managers to be held liable for their mistakes, face any regulatory discipline, or pay any penalties for profiting from their actions. To make amends to customers and clients in the aftermath of the hack, the company offered free credit monitoring and identity-theft protection. On September 15, 2017, the company’s chief information officer and chief of security retired. On September 26, 2017, the CEO resigned, days before he was to testify before Congress about the breach. To date, numerous government investigations and hundreds of private lawsuits have been filed as a result of the hack.
Critical Thinking
• Which elements of this case might involve issues of legal compliance? Which elements illustrate acting legally but not ethically? What would acting ethically and with personal integrity in this situation look like?
• How do you think this breach will affect Equifax’s position relative to those of its competitors? How might it affect the future success of the company?
• Was it sufficient for Equifax to offer online privacy protection to those whose personal information was hacked? What else might it have done?
A Brief Introduction to Corporate Social Responsibility
If you truly appreciate the positions of your various stakeholders, you will be well on your way to understanding the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR). CSR is the practice by which a business views itself within a broader context, as a member of society with certain implicit social obligations and environmental responsibilities. As previously stated, there is a distinct difference between legal compliance and ethical responsibility, and the law does not fully address all ethical dilemmas that businesses face. CSR ensures that a company is engaging in sound ethical practices and policies in accordance with the company’s culture and mission, above and beyond any mandatory legal standards. A business that practices CSR cannot have maximizing shareholder wealth as its sole purpose, because this goal would necessarily infringe on the rights of other stakeholders in the broader society. For instance, a mining company that disregards its corporate social responsibility may infringe on the right of its local community to clean air and water if it pursues only profit. In contrast, CSR places all stakeholders within a proper contextual framework.
An additional perspective to take concerning CSR is that ethical business leaders opt to do good at the same time that they do well.This is a simplistic summation, but it speaks to how CSR plays out within any corporate setting. The idea is that a corporation is entitled to make money, but it should not only make money. It should also be a good civic neighbor and commit itself to the general prospering of society as a whole. It ought to make the communities of which it is part better at the same time it pursues legitimate profit goals. These ends are not mutually exclusive, and it is possible—indeed, praiseworthy—to strive for both. When a company approaches business in this fashion, it is engaging in a commitment to corporate social responsibility.
Link to Learning
U.S. entrepreneur Blake Mycoskie has created a unique business model combining both for-profit and nonprofit philosophies in an innovative demonstration of corporate social responsibility. The company he founded, TOMS Shoes, donates one pair of shoes to a child in need for every pair sold. As of May 2018, the company has provided more than 75 million pairs of shoes to children in seventy countries.10 | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_Ethics/Book%3A_Business_Ethics_(OpenStax)/01%3A_Why_Ethics_Matter/1.03%3A_Ethics_and_Profitability.txt |
Learning objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Analyze ethical norms and values as they relate to business standards
• Explain the doctrine of ethical relativism and why it is problematic
• Evaluate the claim that having a single ethical standard makes behaving consistently easier
Business people sometimes apply different ethical standards in different contexts, especially if they are working in a culture different from the one in which they were raised or with coworkers from other traditions. If we look outside ourselves for ethical guidance, relying on the context in which we find ourselves, we can grow confused about what is ethical business behavior. Stakeholders then observe that the messages we send via our conduct lack a consistent ethical core, which can harm our reputation and that of the business. To avoid falling back on ethical relativism, a philosophy according to which there is no right or wrong and what is ethical depends solely on the context, we must choose a coherent standard we can apply to all our interactions with others.
Some people who adopt multiple ethical standards may choose to exhibit the highest standards with their families, because these are the people they most revere. In a business setting, however, this same person may choose to be an unethical actor whose sole goal is the ruthless accumulation of wealth by any means. Because work and family are not the only two settings in which we live our lives, such a person may behave according to yet another standard to competitors in a sporting event, to strangers on the street, or to those in his or her religious community.
Although the ethical standard we adopt is always a choice, certain life experiences can have more profound effects on our choice than others. Among the most formative experiences are family upbringing and cultural traditions, broadly defined here to include religious and ethnic norms, the standard patterns of behavior within the context in which we live. Culture and family also influence each other because the family exists in and responds to its cultural context, as well as providing us with the bedrock for our deepest values. Regardless of this initial coding, however, we can choose the ethical standards we apply in the business context.
Why should we choose a single ethical code for all the contexts in which we live? The Greek philosophers and later proponents of the normative ethical theories we discussed earlier would say that if you apply your reason to determine how to behave, it makes rational sense to abide by a single ethical code for all interactions with all persons in all contexts. By doing so, you maximize your ethical behavior no matter who the other party is. Furthermore, you have an internally consistent behavior for all family, friends, customers, clients, and anyone else with whom you interact. Thus, we need not choose different values in different contexts, and when people see us in different situations, they are more likely to trust us because they see we uphold the same values regardless of the context.
Indeed, proponents of all the normative ethical theories would insist that the only rational choice is to have a single ethical standard. A deontologist would argue that you should adhere to particular duties in performing your actions, regardless of the parties with whom you interact. A utilitarian would say that any act you take should result in the greatest good for the greatest number. A virtue ethicist would state that you cannot be virtuous if you lack integrity in your behavior toward all.
Adopting a consistent ethical standard is both selfless and in the manager’s self-interest. That is, would-be customers and clients are more likely to seek out a business that treats all with whom it interacts with honesty and fairness, believing that they themselves will be treated likewise by that firm. Similarly, business leaders who treat everyone in a trustworthy manner need never worry that they might not have impressed a potential customer, because they always engage in honorable commercial practices. A single standard of business behavior that emphasizes respect and good service appeals to all.
Normative ethics is about discovering right and delineating it from wrong; it is a way to develop the rules and norms we use to guide meaningful decision-making. The ethics in our single code are not relative to the time, person, or place. In this world, we all wear different hats as we go about our daily lives as employees, parents, leaders, students. Being a truly ethical person requires that no matter what hat we wear, we exhibit a single ethical code and that it includes, among others, such universal principles of behavior as honesty, integrity, loyalty, fairness, respect for law, and respect for others.
Yet another reason to adopt a universal ethical standard is the transparent character it nurtures in us. If a company’s leadership insists that it stands for honest business transactions at every turn, it cannot prosecute those who defraud the company and look the other way when its own officers do the same. Stakeholders recognize such hypocrisy and rightly hold it against the business’s leaders.
Business leaders are not limited to only one of the normative ethical theories we have described, however. Virtue theory, utilitarianism, and deontology all have advantages to recommend them. Still, what should not change is a corporate commitment to not make exceptions in its practices when those favor the company at the expense of customers, clients, or other stakeholders.
Moving from theory to daily life, we can also look at the way our reputation is established by the implicit and explicit messages we send to others. If we adopt ethical relativism, friends, family, and coworkers will notice that we use different standards for different contexts. This lack of consistency and integrity can alter their perception of us and likely damage our reputation.
WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
TAKING ADVANTAGE OF AN EMPLOYEE DISCOUNT
Suppose you work in retail sales for an international clothing company. A perk of the job is an employee discount of 25 percent on all merchandise you purchase for personal use. Your cousin, who is always looking for a bargain, approaches you in the store one day and implores you to give him your employee discount on a \$100 purchase of clothes for himself.
Critical Thinking
• How would you handle this situation and why?
• Would it matter if the relative were someone closer to you, perhaps a brother or sister?
• If so, why? | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_Ethics/Book%3A_Business_Ethics_(OpenStax)/01%3A_Why_Ethics_Matter/1.04%3A_Multiple_versus_Single_Ethical_Standards.txt |
Section Summaries:
1.1 Being a Professional of Integrity
Ethics sets the standards that govern our personal and professional behavior. To conduct business ethically, we must choose to be a professional of integrity. The first steps are to ask ourselves how we define success and to understand that integrity calls on us to act in a way that is consistent with our words. There is a distinct difference between legal compliance and ethical responsibility, and the law does not fully address all ethical dilemmas that businesses face. Sound ethical practice meets the company’s culture, mission, or policies above and beyond legal responsibilities. The three normative theories of ethical behavior allow us to apply reason to business decisions as we examine the result (utilitarianism), the means of achieving it (deontology), and whether our choice will help us develop a virtuous character (virtue ethics).
1.2 Ethics and Profitability
A long-term view of business success is critical for accurately measuring profitability. All the company’s stakeholders benefit from managers’ ethical conduct, which also increases a business’s goodwill and, in turn, supports profitability. Customers and clients tend to trust a business that gives evidence of its commitment to a positive long-term impact. By exercising corporate social responsibility, or CSR, a business views itself within a broader context, as a member of society with certain implicit social obligations and responsibility for its own effects on environmental and social well-being.
1.3 Multiple versus Single Ethical Standards
The adoption of a single ethical code is the mark of a professional of integrity and is supported by the reasoned approach of each of the normative theories of business ethics. When we consistently maintain the same values regardless of the context, we are more likely to engender trust among those with whom we interact.
Key Terms
business ethics
the conduct by which companies and their agents abide by the law and respect the rights of their stakeholders, particularly their customers, clients, employees, and the surrounding community and environment
compliance
the extent to which a company conducts its business operations in accordance with applicable regulation and statutes
corporate culture
the shared beliefs, values, and behaviors that create the organizational context within which employees and managers interact
corporate social responsibility (CSR)
the practice in which a business views itself within a broader context, as a member of society with certain implicit social obligations and responsibility for its own effects on environmental and social well-being
deontology
a normative ethical theory suggesting that an ethical decision requires us to observe only the rights and duties we owe to others, and, in the context of business, act on the basis of a primary motive to do what is right by all stakeholders
ethical relativism
a view that ethics depends entirely upon context
ethics
the standards of behavior to which we hold ourselves in our personal and professional lives
goodwill
the value of a business beyond its tangible assets, usually including its reputation, the value of its brand, the attitude of its workforce, and customer relations
integrity
the adherence to a code of moral values implying trustworthiness and incorruptibility because there is unity between what we say and what we do
long-term perspective
a broad view of profit maximization that recognizes the fact that the impact of a business decision may not manifest for a long time
normative ethical theories
a group of philosophical theories that describe how people ought to behave on the basis of reason
shareholder
an individual or institution that owns stock or shares in a corporation, by definition a type of stakeholder; also called stockholder
short-term perspective
a focus on the goal of maximizing periodic (i.e., quarterly and annual) profits
social contract
an implicit agreement among societal members to cooperate for social benefit; when applied specifically to a business, it suggests a company that responsibly gives back to the society that permits it to incorporate, benefiting the community at the same time that it enriches itself
stakeholders
individuals and entities affected by a business’s decisions, including customers, suppliers, investors, employees, the community, and the environment, among others
stockholder
an individual or institution that owns stock or shares in a corporation, by definition a type of stakeholder; also called shareholder
utilitarianism
a normative theory of ethics suggesting that an ethical act is the one whose consequences create the greatest good for the greatest number of people
virtue theory
a normative theory that focuses on proper conduct guided by the training we received growing up
compliance
the extent to which a company conducts its business operations in accordance with applicable regulation and statutes
corporate culture
the shared beliefs, values, and behaviors that create the organizational context within which employees and managers interact
corporate social responsibility (CSR)
the practice in which a business views itself within a broader context, as a member of society with certain implicit social obligations and responsibility for its own effects on environmental and social well-being
deontology
a normative ethical theory suggesting that an ethical decision requires us to observe only the rights and duties we owe to others, and, in the context of business, act on the basis of a primary motive to do what is right by all stakeholders
ethical relativism
a view that ethics depends entirely upon context
ethics
the standards of behavior to which we hold ourselves in our personal and professional lives
goodwill
the value of a business beyond its tangible assets, usually including its reputation, the value of its brand, the attitude of its workforce, and customer relations
integrity
the adherence to a code of moral values implying trustworthiness and incorruptibility because there is unity between what we say and what we do
long-term perspective
a broad view of profit maximization that recognizes the fact that the impact of a business decision may not manifest for a long time
normative ethical theories
a group of philosophical theories that describe how people ought to behave on the basis of reason
shareholder
an individual or institution that owns stock or shares in a corporation, by definition a type of stakeholder; also called stockholder
short-term perspective
a focus on the goal of maximizing periodic (i.e., quarterly and annual) profits
social contract
an implicit agreement among societal members to cooperate for social benefit; when applied specifically to a business, it suggests a company that responsibly gives back to the society that permits it to incorporate, benefiting the community at the same time that it enriches itself
stakeholders
individuals and entities affected by a business’s decisions, including customers, suppliers, investors, employees, the community, and the environment, among others
stockholder
an individual or institution that owns stock or shares in a corporation, by definition a type of stakeholder; also called shareholder
utilitarianism
a normative theory of ethics suggesting that an ethical act is the one whose consequences create the greatest good for the greatest number of people
virtue theory
a normative theory that focuses on proper conduct guided by the training we received growing up | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_Ethics/Book%3A_Business_Ethics_(OpenStax)/01%3A_Why_Ethics_Matter/1.05%3A_Summary.txt |
From the time of barter to the age of bitcoin, most people engaged in business transactions have sought trust. Without trust, which is a fundamental outcome of ethical behavior, not just business relationships but all relationships would collapse. To develop insight into our own concepts of ethics, this chapter looks at how ethical systems have developed over time, beginning with the distinction between ethics and the law.
Ethics are the standards of behavior to which we hold ourselves accountable in our personal and professional lives. Laws and regulations set the minimal standards by which society lives out those ethical norms. Because laws are minimal standards, it is not uncommon for an act to be legal but generally deemed unethical. The fact is that law and ethics are not always the same. Always, however, they are in dialogue, and each informs the other. The greatest challenge in business decision-making is moving beyond the letter of the law to create a culture of ethics (Figure 2.1).
Can you identify a moment in your life when it was hard to follow your conscience, or your personal morality conflicted with societal norms? What was the nature of the conflict, and how did you approach it?
2.02: The Concept of Ethical Business in Ancient Athens
Learning objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Identify the role of ethics in ancient Athens
• Explain how Aristotelian virtue ethics affected business practices
It would be hard to overstate the influence of ancient Athens on Western civilization. Athenian achievements in the arts, literature, and government have molded Western consciousness. Perennial themes, such as the search for individual identity and each person’s place in the world, appear in countless novels and Hollywood screenplays. The role of Athenian ethical theories in philosophy has been profound, and Athenian principles continue to be influential in contemporary philosophy. Ethics, as a form of applied philosophy, was a major focus among the leaders of ancient Athens, particularly teachers like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. They taught that ethics was not merely what someone did but who someone was. Ethics was a function of being and, as the guiding principle for dealings with others, it naturally applied as well to the sensitive areas of money and commerce.
Ancient Athens
Like a modern metropolis, the city-state (polis) of Athens in the fifth century BCE drew people from far afield who wanted a better life. For some, that life meant engaging in trade and commerce, thanks to the openness of the new democracy established under the lawgiver Cleisthenes in 508 BCE. Others were drawn to Athens’ incredibly rich architecture, poetry, drama, religious practices, politics, and schools of philosophy. Youth traveled there hoping to study with such brilliant teachers as the mathematicians Archimedes and Pythagoras; dramatists like Sophocles and Euripides; historians Herodotus and Thucydides; Hippocrates, the father of medicine; and, of course, the renowned but enigmatic philosopher Socrates. More than being the equivalent of rock stars of their day, these thinkers, scholars, and artists challenged youth to pursue truth, no matter the cost to themselves or their personal ambitions. These leaders were interested not in fame or even in personal development but in the creation of an ideal society. This was the Golden Age of ancient Greece, whose achievements were so profound and enduring that they have formed the pillars of Western civilization for nearly two and a half millennia.
Philosophy, in particular, flourished during the Golden Age, with various schools of thought attempting to make sense of the natural and human worlds. The human world was thought to be grounded in the natural world but to transcend it in striking ways, the most obvious being humans use of reason and deliberation. Philosophers like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle tackled fundamental questions of human existence with such insight that their ideas have remained relevant and universal even at the dawn of artificial intelligence. As British mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) observed, “the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”1
Why are the insights of these Greek philosophers still relevant today? One reason is their development of the ancient concept of virtue. The person most closely associated with virtue in the West, and the development of what is now known as virtue ethics—that is, an ethical system based upon the exercise of certain virtues (loyalty, honor, courage) emphasizing the formation of character—is Plato’s famous pupil Aristotle (384–322 BCE) (Figure 2.2).
Aristotelian Virtue Ethics
For Aristotle, everything that exists has a purpose, or end, and has been designed to meet that end. For instance, the proper end of birds is to fly, that of fish to swim. Birds and fish have been designed with the appropriate means (feathers, fins) to achieve those ends. Teleology, from the Greek telos meaning goal or aim, is the study of ends and the means directed toward those ends. What is the telosof human beings? Aristotle believed it to be eudaimonia, or happiness. By this, he did not mean happiness in a superficial sense, such as having fun or being content. Rather, he equated happiness with human flourishing, which he believed could be attained through the exercise of the function that distinguishes humans from the natural world: reason.2 For Aristotle, reason was supreme and best used to increase not wealth but character. “But what is happiness?” he asked. “If we consider what the function of man is, we find that happiness is a virtuous activity of the soul.”3
However, because humans are endowed not only with reason but also with the capacity to act in an honorable and ethical manner, they may reject their end, either intentionally or by default. The great task of life, then, is to recognize and pursue happiness, no matter the constraints placed on the individual, the most dramatic of which are suffering and death. Birds and fish have little difficulty achieving their ends, and we can assume that much of this is due to their genetic coding. Because happiness might not be genetically encoded in human beings, they must learn how to be happy. How do they do that? According to Aristotle, eudaimonia is achieved by leading a virtuous life, which is attained over time. “Happiness is a kind of activity; and an activity clearly is developed and is not a piece of property already in one’s possession.”4
Aristotle identified two types of virtues, which the philosophical community of his day agreed were objective and not subjective. The two types were intellectual and moral. Intellectual virtues—including knowledge (epistḗmē), wisdom (sophíā), and, most importantly for Aristotle, prudence (phrónēsis), or practical wisdom—served as guides to behavior; that is, a person acted prudently based on the wisdom gained over time through the ongoing acquisition and testing of knowledge. To give an oversimplified but practical application of Aristotelian thinking, a hiring manager acts prudently when assessing a pool of candidates based on knowledge of their backgrounds and on insight gained after years of working in that role. The manager may even use intuitive reason regarding a candidate, which Aristotle believed was another way of arriving at truth. Understood in this way, the manager’s intuition is an impression regarding character and someone’s potential fit in an organization. Among the intellectual virtues, prudence played the major role because it helped individuals avoid excess and deficiency and arrive at the golden mean between the two. Prudence has been translated as “common sense” and “practical wisdom” and helps individuals make the right decision in the right way at the right time for the right reason. In Aristotle’s view, only the truly prudent person could possess all the moral virtues.
The distinction Aristotle made is that the intellectual virtues are acquired purely through learning, whereas the moral virtues are acquired through practice and the development of habits. In contrast to the intellectual virtues, which focused on external acts, the moral virtues had to do with character. They included courage, self-control, liberality, magnificence, honor, patience, and amiability. Some of these virtues had different meanings in ancient Greece than they do today. “Liberal,” for instance, referred not to a political or economic stance but rather to an aspect of personality. Someone would be considered liberal who was open and sharing of him- or herself and his or her talents without fear of rejection or expectation of reciprocity. The paragon of these virtues was the magnanimous individual, someone for whom fame and wealth held little attraction.5 This person had self-knowledge; was not rash, quick to anger, or submissive to others; and acted with self-respect, control, and prudence. The magnanimous individual achieved happiness by leading a life characterized by reason and will. He or she remained in control of self and did not hand over his or her authority—or moral agency—to others, whether in judgment or in decision-making. “So, magnanimity seems to be a sort of crown of the virtues, because it enhances them and is never found apart from them. This makes it hard to be truly magnanimous, because it is impossible without all-round excellence,” according to Aristotle.6
The relationship between the intellectual and the moral virtues was not as clear cut as it may appear, however, because Aristotle believed that action preceded character. In other words, the primary way to change character was through consistent, intentional behavior in the direction of virtue. Aristotle gave the example of courage. A person was not courageous first and then went about performing acts of courage. Rather, courage resulted from incremental change, small steps taken over time that molded the person’s character. It relied on a recognition of justice, so that courage was directed toward the right end. The important task was developing the habit of leading the virtuous life. Anyone could do this; however, it was a discipline that had to be learned and practiced with dedication. We can see that this habit of virtue is especially relevant for business today, when the temptation to conform to an established organizational culture is overwhelming even when that culture may permit and even encourage questionable practices. Add the seductive power of money, and anyone’s courage might be tested.
The most notable feature of virtue ethics is that it viewed the basic ethical unit—the fundamental agent of morality—as the individual, who lived out his or her worldview publicly. A life of virtue, therefore, took place in the economic and political spheres so that others might participate in and benefit from it. In Athenian society, it was important for business to be conducted competently and ethically. Even though Aristotle was suspicious of business, he acknowledged its importance in preserving and nurturing Athenian democracy. He also praised the creation of money to further the goal of justice, so that a shoemaker and a housebuilder, for instance, could trade their wares on an equal basis. Virtue in the marketplace was demonstrated through ethical behavior, according to Aristotle: “People do in fact seek their own good, and think that they are right to act in this way. It is from this belief that the notion has arisen that such people are prudent. Presumably, however, it is impossible to secure one’s own good independently of domestic and political science.”7This belief in the public nature of virtue was crucial for the flourishing of the city-state and also has implications for contemporary business, which must consider the individual, organization, industry, and society in its development and planning.
ETHICS ACROSS TIME AND CULTURES
Athenian Democracy
Just as time and place influence people’s perception of ethics, so is their understanding of democracy also subjective.
You might be surprised to learn the Athenian version of democracy was significantly different from our own. For instance, although the word “democracy” comes from the Greek for people (dêmos) and power (krátos), only adult men who owned property could vote, and voting was direct; Athens was not a republic with elected representatives, like the United States. Resident aliens, or metics—those who change their home—were not eligible for citizenship and could not vote. They had limited rights and their status was second class, although this did not stop many of them from attaining wealth and fame. They were often among the best artisans, craftspeople, and merchants in the city-state. Metics were able to conduct business in the marketplace (agora) provided they paid special taxes yearly. One of the most famous was Aristotle, who was born outside Athens in northern Greece.
Women, even those who were citizens, were not allowed to vote and had limited rights when it came to property and inheritance. Their primary function in Athenian society was the care and management of the home. “The Athenian woman must be the perfect Penelope—a partner to the husband, a guard of the house, and one who practices the virtues defined by her husband. Physical beauty was not to be a goal, nor was it even a primary valued attribute. Total dedication to the welfare of husband, children, and household was the ultimate virtue”8 (Figure 2.3).
Finally, not all transactions were as straightforward as selling Egyptian linen, dried fruit, or spices. Slave traders, too, brought their “wares” to market. Slavery was a customary part of many cultures throughout the ancient world, from Persia to Arabia and Africa and China. In Athens and its surrounding area, it is estimated that during the Golden Age (fifth century BCE) there were 21,000 citizens, 10,000 metics (non-native Athenians who still shared some of the benefits of citizenship), and 400,000 slaves.9 Despite the Athenian emphasis on virtue and honor, there was little or no objection to owning slaves, because they formed an indispensable part of the economy, providing the labor for agriculture and food production.
Slavery persists even today. For instance, it is believed that nearly thirty million people worldwide are living and working as slaves, including three million in China and fourteen million in India.10 Servitude also exists for migrant workers forced to live and work in inhuman conditions without recourse to legal help or even the basic necessities of life. Such conditions occur in industries as diverse as commercial fishing in Southeast Asia and construction in Qatar.11
Critical Thinking
• Consider how democracy has expanded since the Golden Age of Greece, eventually including universal suffrage and fundamental rights for everyone. Although we try not to judge cultures today as having right or wrong practices, we often judge earlier cultures and civilizations. How might you assess a practice like slavery in antiquity without imposing modern values on a civilization that existed more than two and a half millennia ago?
• Are there absolute truths and values that transcend time and space? If yes, where might these come from? If not, why not?
Honorable Behavior in Business
The common belief in ancient Greece that business and money were somehow tainted reflected Plato’s concept that the physical world was an imperfect expression, or shadow, of the ideal. Everything in the physical world was somehow less than the ideal, and this included the products of human thought and labor. For example, a cow exists in the physical world as an imperfect and temporary expression of the ideal essence of a cow, what we might call “cowness.” (This imperfection accounted for the many variations found in the earthly creature.) Business, as a human invention based on self-interest, also had no appreciable ideal or end. After all, what was the purpose of making money if not having more money? Any end beyond that was not evident. In other words, money existed simply to replicate itself and was fueled by avarice (the love of money) or greed (the love of material goods). “As for the life of the businessman, it does not give him much freedom of action. Besides, wealth is obviously not the good that we are seeking, because it serves only as a means; i.e., for getting something else,” said Aristotle.12
Yet, business had an interesting effect that helped invigorate Athenian life and encouraged those engaged in it to be virtuous (or else risk their reputation). This effect was association. Business was based on the free and fair exchange of goods, which brought not only items of merchandise into association with each other but also buyers, sellers, and public officials. The way to ensure ethically sound association was through the exercise of prudence, especially in its demand that people act not rashly but deliberately. This deliberative aspect of prudence provided a way for buyers, sellers, and everyone engaged in a transaction to act honorably, which was of the utmost importance. Honor was not only a foundational virtue but the cultural environment in which the ancient world existed. One of the worst offenses anyone could commit, whether man, woman, free, or slave, was to act in a dishonorable way. Of course, although acting deliberately does not guarantee that one is acting honorably, for Athenians, acting in a calculated way was not an indication of dishonor. Dishonorable acts included any that disturbed the basic order (dikē) of life in which everyone had a role, including the gods.
Interestingly, the Aristotelian approach to business did not condemn money making or the accumulation of riches. What concerned Aristotle, particularly because of its harmful effects on the individual and the city-state, was greed. Aristotle considered greed an excess that tipped the scales of justice and led to scandal. Money might constitute the bait, but greed causes the person to reach out and grab as much as possible, falling into the trap of scandal. The Greeks considered the exercise of greed an irrational, and therefore ignoble, act. Only attention to honor and deliberative prudence could save someone from acting so foolishly.
Honor in ancient Greece was not just an individual characteristic but also a function of the group to which an individual belonged, and the person derived self-esteem from membership in that group. Civic virtue consisted of honorable living in community. Business scandals today often arise not from conflicts of interest but from conflicts of honor in which employees feel torn by their allegiance to a coworker, a supervisor, or the organization.13 Although few people would use the term honor to describe contemporary workplace culture or corporate mission, nearly everyone understands the importance of reputation and its impact, positive or negative, on a business. Reputation is no accident. It is the product of a culture formed by individual and group effort. That effort is directed, intentional, and ongoing.
According to Aristotle, and later thinkers who expanded upon his work, such as thirteenth-century philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas, to act dishonorably casts disrepute on all concerned. Ends and means had to be aligned, particularly in business, which provided people’s livelihoods and secured the economic health of the city-state. Acting honorably meant trying to be magnanimous in all transactions and rising above obsession with baser instincts. The honorable person was magnanimous, prudent, fair, and interested in self-advancement as long as it did not injure personal integrity or the body politic. The importance of prudence is evident because, said Aristotle, it is “concerned with human goods, i.e., things about which deliberation is possible; for we hold that it is the function of the prudent man to deliberate well; and nobody deliberates about things that cannot be otherwise, or that are not means toward an end, and that end is a practical good. And the man who is good at deliberation generally is the one who can aim, by the help of his calculation, at the best of the goods attainable.”14
Aquinas further divided Aristotelian prudence into memory, reason, understanding, docility, shrewdness, foresight, circumspection, and caution.15 To use these qualities in a constructive way, a business person had to direct them toward an appropriate end, which applies to business today just as it did in fourth-century Athens. A merchant could not make money in a random way but had to keep the needs of customers in mind and conduct business with fair prices and fees. This exercise of prudence was part of the cosmic order that ensured the right management of the home, the marketplace, and civilization itself. Similarly, committing fraud or deception to achieve an end, even if that end were good or just, was not considered an honorable act. Only when ends and means were aligned and worked in harmony were those engaged in the transaction considered virtuous. This virtue, in turn, would lead to the happiness Aristotle envisioned and toward which his entire system of virtue ethics aimed.
ETHICS ACROSS TIME AND CULTURES
Three Forms of Justice
Along with honor, justice—as depicted in the image at the beginning of this chapter—formed part of the cultural environment of Athenian society. Citizens often relied on litigation to settle disputes, particularly conflicts over business transactions, contracts, inheritance, and property. Justice existed in three forms, as it does today: legal, commutative, and distributive. In legal justice, the city-state was responsible for establishing fair laws for the welfare of its citizens. Commutative justicecharacterized relationships among individuals. Courts attempted to correct harms inflicted and return what had been unlawfully taken away from plaintiffs. Distributive justice governed the duty of the city-state to distribute benefits and burdens equitably among the people.
We can see these forms of justice at work today in very practical ways. For instance, within the framework of commutative justice, businesses are often held responsible ethically and financially for any harm caused by their products. And distributive justice is debated in such hotly contested issues as corporate and individual tax rates, universal health coverage, state and federal income assistance, subsidized housing, social security eligibility, college tuition aid (e.g., Pell grants), and similar programs designed to create a “safety net” for those least fortunate. Some safety net programs have been criticized for their excessive cost, inefficiency, and unfairness to those who pay into them while receiving no benefit or say in their administration.
Critical Thinking
• How is the ancient concept of distributive justice understood in today’s political debate?
• What are the underlying values that inform each side of the debate (e.g., values like wealth maximization and corporate social responsibility)?
• Can these sides be reconciled and, if so, what must happen to bring them together? Does virtue have a role to play here; if so, how?
Link to learning
For a further discussion of justice, read this article on justice and fairness from the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics.
How, exactly, did honor and deliberative prudence prevent someone from acting foolishly in life and unethically in business? And what does it look like to follow these virtues today? | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_Ethics/Book%3A_Business_Ethics_(OpenStax)/02%3A_Ethics_from_Antiquity_to_the_Present/2.01%3A_Introduction.txt |
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Identify the key features of Confucian virtue ethics
• Explain how Confucian virtue ethics can be applied to contemporary business
The teachings and writings of Confucius (551–479 BCE; also called Kung Fu Tzu or Master Kung) not only have endured more than two and a half millennia but have influenced Chinese culture to such a degree that they remain part of the national character. In classical Confucianism, the practice of virtue constitutes the essence of governance. Differing from Aristotelian virtue (arête), Confucian virtue emphasizes relationships. Aristotle shows how a self-determining person might live well in society. Confucius showed how a relationship-determining person can live well with others. The reasons for this distinction will become clearer throughout the section.
As an iconic figure, Confucius had an impact on politics, literature, civil administration, diplomacy, and religion in China. Yet, by most accounts, he considered himself a failure, never having achieved the position and security he sought during his lifetime. However, his story is a testament to the reward of a life lived with integrity and simplicity.
Social Upheaval in Ancient China
More than a century and a half before Aristotle and on the other side of the globe, Confucius, a wandering preacher from the principality of Lu in China, also struggled to answer life’s questions, although in a practical rather than a philosophical way. Confucius committed himself to healing the social divisions that were tearing China apart under the declining Zhou Dynasty. Those divisions led to what historians call the “Period of the Warring States,” which persisted for two hundred years after Confucius’s death. It was a time of constant warfare and violence.16 To counter the social disintegration he found everywhere, Confucius looked to the past, or “the wisdom of the ancients.” He called for a “return to li,” which was the proper order of the universe in which everyone had a role to play and there was harmony in the world.17
We might see this harmony in a contemporary business setting as a team of people bringing different talents to bear on a specific project for the good (and profit) of the company. In this sense, li refers to doing those tasks in collaboration with others to achieve the mission of the organization. For Confucius, li was expressed through ritual acts. When the correct rituals were followed in the right way with the right intention for the right end, all was well. Of course, corporate rituals also exist, and like all ritual acts, they reinforce cohesion and identity within the group. Identifying them helps improve employee awareness, productivity, and, perhaps, happiness. One example of this would be new-employee orientation, which is intended to acclimate newcomers to the corporate culture, the company ethos, and the traditions associated with the way the firm does business. Finally, anticipating Aristotle’s golden mean, liemphasized the middle ground between deficiency and excess. “Nothing in excess” was its guiding principle.18
Huston Smith, noted historian of world religions, has observed that the widespread adoption of Confucius’s teachings within a generation of his death was not due to the originality of his ideas.19 What made the humble scholar the greatest cultural force in China’s history was chance. Confucius appeared on the scene at the right time, offering a fractured country an alternative to two extremes, neither of which was working. These were a realism that was tyrannical and relied on brute force to restrain the rivaling factions, and an idealistic approach called Mohism that was based on universal love and mutual aid. Confucius rejected the first as crude and the second as utopian.20 Instead, he offered a practical but empathetic approach, a sort of tough love for the times.
Link to learning
Read this article that gives a helpful historical background on Confucianism to learn more.
Confucian Virtue Ethics
Scholars believe that, like Aristotle, Confucius stressed the virtuous life in his ethical system, with the goal of creating a junzi, or a person who was gracious, magnanimous, and cultured: in other words, a flourishing human being. A junzi exhibited refinement, self-control, and balance in all things, acting neither rashly nor timidly. Such a person was the opposite of a “small” individual, who spent his or her time embroiled in petty rivalries and for whom power was the ultimate measure of success.
The concept of junzi and the Aristotelian magnanimous individual have much in common, except that for Confucius, there was added urgency. To be a junzi was a matter not just of honor but of survival. It is no exaggeration to say that China’s very existence depended upon the ability of individuals—nobles and peasants alike—to rise above the barbarity around them and embrace a way of life directed both outward toward social, political, and administrative reform and inward toward spiritual development. Confucius (Figure 2.4) believed that living the virtues he taught would achieve both these ends.
The keystone of Confucius’s deliberate tradition was the dao of humanity, or the Way, which established humanity as the answer to rampant lawlessness.21 Confucius believed people were inherently good and that the way to stop inhuman behavior was to make them even better, or more human. He identified three means to do this, which we explore next: “whole-hearted sincerity and truthfulness,” the “constant mean,” and “expediency” (quan).22 Specific virtues like moral character, righteousness, wisdom, courage, respect, filial piety, and simplicity formed part of these means. Someone who lived virtuously became more human, which resulted in a flourishing individual and an ordered world.
“Whole-hearted sincerity and truthfulness” meant more than sincerity, because even liars can be convincing. The sincerity Confucius had in mind was closer to loyalty, and the thing to which humans had to be loyal was truth. Confucius intended to counter the blind loyalty that had contributed to the eruption of anarchy throughout China. For instance, if a subject were called upon to offer advice, the subject had to be truthful, even though the ruler might not like the advice, which actually happened to Confucius, causing him to resign his post as minister of justice in Lu.23 What a subject owed the ruler was not cloying deference but the truth, which would benefit everyone in the long run. The implications for ethical behavior in modern corporations may be obvious. Reporting unethical behavior as a whistleblower or even standing up for truth in a meeting is sometimes easier said than done, which is why living virtuously requires disciplined practice and the support of like-minded individuals.
The “constant mean” refers to balance between excess and deficiency in an existential and in a practical sense. We are to follow the middle path, avoiding extremes of thought and action through ritual acts. We cannot claim to lead a balanced life; we must show it by performing acts that maintain personal and collective order. The Book of Li catalogues many of these acts, which form a guide for proper living, indicating the correct way to maintain the five great relationships that support Chinese society: parent/child, husband/wife, elder/junior sibling, master/apprentice, and ruler/subject. Confucius and his peers believed that properly observing these key five relationships was essential for social good and would invoke divine favor on the people.
Note that three of these are relationships within the family. The family was the basic unit of society and Confucius’s hope for reform, because it was the primary and most influential school of character, virtue, and conscience. Thus, the return to li takes on greater significance than a simple longing for an idyllic past. As Huston Smith noted, “that three of the Five Relationships pertain within the family is indicative of how important Confucius considered this institution to be. In this he was not inventing but continuing the Chinese assumption that the family is the basic unit of society. This assumption is graphically embedded in Chinese legend, which credits the hero who ‘invented’ the family with elevating the Chinese from the animal to human level.”24
WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
Yijing
The five great relationships upon which Chinese civilization is built prescribed definite roles for the social classes and sexes. As in ancient Greece, women in ancient China were in charge of domestic duties and care of the family. They were neither expected nor believed able to assume duties outside the home and certainly not in the competitive world of business. Yet consider the fictional case of Yijing.
Yijing was the daughter of the merchant Bei Li, who sold farming tools and agricultural products in Cao, which bordered Lu. Bei Li’s business was very successful and he took great pride in it. He had three sons who worked with him, but none had the head for business that his daughter Yijing had. Moreover, none of them wanted to take over the business after his death. When Yijing begged for a chance to run the business for her father, he agreed, but he insisted she disguise herself as a man when traveling and doing business in the family name. If people knew she was a woman, they would ridicule the family and take advantage of her. Although surprised by her father’s request, Yijing agreed and eventually took over the business, making it extremely prosperous.
Critical Thinking
If you were Yijing, what would you have done?
For Confucius, the third approach to the Way of humanity was the doctrine of expediency. Where Buddhism and Taoism advocated compassion and Mohism advocated universal love, Confucianism defined righteousness as the virtue that would temper compassion and love so that people could live together not just peacefully but justly.25 Righteousness included a practical approach to problem solving that helped politics, diplomacy, and civil administration to flourish. This expediency, or quan, is a noteworthy feature of Confucianism. Originally referring to a piece of metal used in balancing scales, quan is applied when weighing options in a moral dilemma and acts as a counterbalance to achieve fairness, enabling parties in a transaction to arrive at an equitable agreement. Ultimately, quan allows people and institutions to prioritize responsive action over ritual and serves as the way to align what people do with who they are, thus allowing them to become more human. For the businessperson, it might mean not fleeing the “tawdry” world of the marketplace but recognizing the humanity within it.
One example of the use of quan is the Broad Group, a Chinese manufacturer of central air conditioning products. The company produces clean energy systems and has developed an alternative to Freon. The new coolant has changed the way energy is delivered to such an extent that Zhang Yue, the company’s chief executive officer, was awarded the Champions of the Earth prize by the United Nations in 2011 for his work in green energy.26 Certainly, there is more opportunity for sustainable manufacturing and ethical business practices throughout China, and the state is attempting to promote such efforts.
A Confucian Business Model
The spirituality that emerges from quan as righteousness is not solely about the individual; it is about the act itself, that is, the transaction, whether that takes place in a market, shop, or loading dock. When righteousness is directed outward in this way, it becomes justice, compelling all parties in a transaction to act in good faith or risk upsetting the proper order of things. Justice in this sense allows for wealth creation, investment, and strategic planning as long as all fulfill their roles and act in the manner of a junzi. An overarching spirituality of business may even develop, arising from the people who collectively make up the company. This is a traditionally Confucian way of looking at corporate culture, as the reflection of a larger network of relationships.
The other two Confucian ways of humanity also relate to business, because wholeheartedness and sincerity can serve as models of risk assessment, requiring clearheaded thinking and action balanced with respect for markets, competitors, and stakeholders. The daoof humanity rejects the premise that greed reigns supreme by itself. Instead, its ethical counterpart is truth. Both qualities exist within business practices. In this ethical framework, loyalty to truth is not just a stock phrase but a commitment to value in all aspects of an enterprise, such as sales, finance, marketing, and the employment and hiring chain. An investment advisor might recommend the constant mean to clients so their money is in a diversified portfolio with a long-term strategy. The dao of humanity, wholeheartedness, sincerity, and the other virtues are treated in The Analects (Figure 2.5).
Some have criticized Confucianism for impeding progress in China in areas like education, the natural sciences, and business, because it has failed to adapt to the modern context. High-frequency trading, blockchain technology, artificial intelligence, and robotics do not work with cultural values thousands of years old, these critics say, so what we need is a new consciousness for a new era in human history. However, these criticisms miss the point. Confucius was interested in the same thing that concerned Aristotle—namely, the character of the person or persons making decisions rather than the decisions themselves. The importance of character has been proven repeatedly through business scandals like Enron, LIBOR, and the 2008 financial crisis, as well as the recent problems of Uber and Volkswagen, in which personal irresponsibility resulted in disaster. Indeed, business schools now offer seminars for executives integrating virtue ethics—both Aristotelian- and Confucian-inspired models—in leadership development.
Link to learning
For a concise breakdown of the rise and collapse of Enron, see The Crime Network’s episode on Enron in its Corrupt Crimesseries.
The recent campaign of China’s central government against unethical business practices has made a point of prosecuting executives for corruption in the form of bribery, kickbacks, and embezzlement, demonstrating that some Confucian thought has survived from ancient times. Jack Ma, cofounder of the giant Chinese ecommerce site Alibaba, has called this “clean communism,” which might be another way of characterizing the form of state-sponsored capitalism that exists in China.27 Of course, the former Communist regime did not embrace Confucian virtue. Mao Zedong was deeply suspicious of Confucius, holding him to be a relic of the Imperial Era and having little value for the new China he intended to create with the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.
link to learning
To what extent are children in China responsible for their parents’ businesses? In this article, Kelly Zong, daughter of billionaire Zong Qinghua, explains how she believes modern-day China has “lost its soul” through selfish individualism and an obsession with wealth. If Kelly Zong is correct, would it be safe to say that China needs another return to ancient wisdom? Why or why not? Do you agree with her assessment of the current generation and individualism? | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_Ethics/Book%3A_Business_Ethics_(OpenStax)/02%3A_Ethics_from_Antiquity_to_the_Present/2.03%3A_Ethical_Advice_for_Nobles_and_Civil_Servants_in_Ancient_China.txt |
Learning objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Compare the origins and goals of virtue ethics in the East and the West
• Describe how these systems each aimed to establish a social order for family and business
• Identify potential elements of a universally applied business ethic
Aristotle and Confucius each constructed an ethical system based on virtue, with Aristotle’s ultimate aim being happiness and Confucius’s being harmony. Each addressed a particular problem. For Aristotle, happiness consisted of the search for truth, which, in turn, required a centered, stable individual who could surmount misfortune or weak character. Confucius looked to settle the soul of the Chinese people by creating a system that reflected the heavenly order on Earth. Both systems rely on reasoned means to achieve reasoned ends.
East Meets West
Given the vastly different cultural and historical settings of ancient Greece and China, you may be surprised to find similarities between the Aristotelian and Confucian systems of virtue ethics. Yet not only are there similarities but the two systems share the theme of control. For Aristotle, control manifested itself through the deliberative process of phrónēsis, resulting in virtuous living, harmony, and happiness. This application of practical wisdom was related to self-restraint, or temperance. In Confucian virtue ethics, control was a function of self-regulation; primitive instincts were held at bay and the person gained the capacity and courage to act more humanely (Figure 2.6). This achievement of control benefited not only the individual but also the family and, by extension, the nation. Self-regulation was Confucius’s way of establishing order.
In a business context, control bears directly on managerial ethics, which is a way of relating to self, employees, and the organization that balances individual and collective responsibility, and in which management also includes planning, organizing, and leading to achieve organizational goals.28 A self-controlled, disciplined manager is able to work through layers of bureaucracy and the complexities of human interaction to attain goals in a way that is responsible and profitable and that enhances the organization’s mission and culture. These goals are achieved not at the expense of stakeholders but in a way that is fair for all. We might even say that righteousness leads to justice, which includes profit. We saw earlier that neither Aristotle nor Confucius disapproved of profit as long as it benefitted humanity in some way. Both men would have a very definite opinion about the optimization of shareholder wealth.
Despite these similarities between the two traditions, there are differences—the most notable being the locus of ethics. Aristotle placed this locus on individuals, who were called to fulfill their purpose honorably, accepting fate with dignity and aplomb. The basis of this acceptance was reason. For Confucius, reflecting the historical plight of China, the locus was the family, which he envisioned as putting an end to anarchy and setting the nation on its proper course by providing the basic pattern of relationships for personal and professional life. To be sure, family counted for Aristotle just as the individual counted for Confucius, but the emphasis in each system was different. Aristotle acknowledged that “a solitary man has a hard life, because it is not easy to keep up a continuous activity by oneself; but in company with others and in relation to others it is easier.”29
Regardless of the source of ethical behavior, those engaged in business were required to act with accountability and responsibility. They were accountable to customers and suppliers when delivering commodities like figs, pottery, or olive oil. And they had to conduct themselves responsibly to maintain their personal and professional reputation. Thus, business was the perfect expression of ethics in both East and West, because it provided a forum within which virtues were tested in very real ways. Confucius urged each follower to be a great or humane person, or ru, not a small one.30 This was so important that the school established after his death was known as the Ru School, and the principles it taught are called Ruism.31
Personal and Professional Roles
Another important characteristic of Eastern and Western systems of virtue ethics is the integration of personal and professional life. A person could not act one way at home and a completely different way in public, especially civic leaders, merchants, teachers, and rulers. The modern tendency to compartmentalize various aspects of ourselves to accommodate circumstances would have puzzled those living in ancient Greece or China. A retail manager who contributes generously to help protect endangered species but thinks nothing of working the sales staff to the point of burnout to achieve monthly goals has not successfully integrated the personal and the professional, for instance, and even poses obstacles to individual happiness and life in the community. Everyone desires efficiency in business, but compartmentalizing our personal and professional ideals can lead to “dispersed personal accountability” in an organization and the kind of financial meltdown that occurred, through greed and rule-breaking, in the housing and financial industries and led to the worldwide recession of 2008.32
What might the integration of personal and professional life look like, and how can we apply it within the relationships that are the foundation of business? To answer this question, consider the essence of the virtuous person that each ethical system strove to create. For Aristotle, the virtuous person saw the truth in every kind of situation. Once acknowledged and recognized, the truth could not be denied without compromising honor. Similarly, Confucius taught that “A gentleman will not, for the space of a meal, depart from humanity. In haste and flurry, he adheres to it; in fall and stumble, he adheres by it.”33
Despite the emphasis these systems placed on character, however, character was not ultimately what defined the virtuous individual, family, city-state, or nation. Instead, it was the individual’s transformation, through education, into a different kind of being who will act virtuously even if no one is watching. When the person concentrates on the means used to achieve an end, eventually the means become a way of life even more important than the end itself. It is not merely that the means must match the end, but that they come to define the virtuous person.
The integration of personal and professional lives has two effects: motive and awareness. Motive is the willingness to do the right thing because it is the right thing, even though there may be no perceived benefit. Arguably, it is here that the individual’s true nature is revealed. The other effect, awareness, is the ability to see the ethical dimension in all events, choices, decisions, and actions. Many business scandals could be avoided if more people understood the value of human capital and the need to see the larger picture; to put it differently: responsibility over profitability. Or, as Confucius would say, it is the person who can broaden the Way, not the Way that broadens the person.34
Is There a Universal Ethics?
A fundamental question in the study of ethics is whether we can identify universal, objective moral truths that cut across cultures, geographic settings, and time. At the most foundational level, the answer might be yes. As Aristotle noted, ethics is not a science but an art.35 Perhaps the best way to answer the question is to consider the methods used for moral decision-making. This strategy would be in line with Aristotelian and Confucian models if we assume that once they attain insight, most people will follow their conscience and act in reasonable, responsible ways. Methods of decision-making then could be adapted to any context or dilemma. But what constitutes a reasonable, responsible method, and who gets to choose it?
It is possible that standards of ethical conduct could be created to guide business affairs fairly and justly. Such standards already exist in most industries and professions. The Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) give direction to those working in accounting and finance in the United States. The International Standards Organization offers guidelines and protocols for many industries. Together with governmental regulation, these might serve as the basis for ethical behavior, perhaps even globally. Of course, those fashioning guidelines would have to be sensitive to individual autonomy and national sovereignty, especially when it comes to international jurisdiction, privacy, and human rights. For example, the International Financial Reporting Standards serve as a kind of international GAAP to help companies report financial results in a common accounting language across national boundaries.
Despite our best efforts, someone who wishes to conduct business selfishly and unethically always will be drawn to do so unless given a compelling incentive not to. It is evident why Aristotle and Confucius stressed the importance of schooling. Perhaps what is needed now, building on these two ancient approaches, is business education focused on transformation rather than on conformity to guidelines. This proposal touches the core of both Aristotelian and Confucian teachings: training and education. Training and education help internalize in us more altruistic business practices. They also permit greater integration between our personal and professional understandings of the way we should treat friends, family, customers, and clients. No matter the context, we are then encouraged to treat others with honesty and respect, so that even someone certain to get away with the most outrageous corruption or money-laundering scheme would not do it. Why not? Because doing so would be a betrayal of the person’s conscience and identity. A business education that is truly effective—one for the twenty-first century—would produce a graduate who could stand up and say no to that kind of self-betrayal.
WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
Scenario with Aristotle and Confucius
Imagine a scenario in which Aristotle and Confucius sit down to discuss Chiquita Brands International, a global produce conglomerate that paid “protection” money to right-wing and Marxist guerrilla groups in Colombia between 1997 and 2004 to ensure there would be no violence against its employees, banana plantations, and facilities. The payment violated the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (1977), which prohibits bribes and kickbacks to foreign officials. Chiquita claimed it was the victim of extortion and had no choice. However, for its actions, it eventually paid \$25 million in fines to the U.S. government. In 2007, a group of Colombians filed a lawsuit against the company under the Alien Tort Claims Act, alleging that, because of its illegal payments, Chiquita was “complicit in extrajudicial killings, torture, forced disappearances, and crimes against humanity” perpetrated against plantation workers by the guerilla “death squads.”36 The case went to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2015, but the Court declined to hear it.
Critical Thinking
• What do you suppose Confucius and Aristotle, teachers of virtue ethics, would say about the Colombians’ case, and how would they go about assessing responsibility? What would they identify as the crime committed? Would they think the executives at Chiquita had acted prudently, cravenly, or deceitfully?
• What would you do if confronted with this case?
link to learning
The Business and Human Rights Resource Centre provides helpful, detailed information concerning ethics cases and the role of business in society, including more information about the Chiquita lawsuit and other interesting cases. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_Ethics/Book%3A_Business_Ethics_(OpenStax)/02%3A_Ethics_from_Antiquity_to_the_Present/2.04%3A_Comparing_the_Virtue_Ethics_of_East_and_West.txt |
Learning objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Identify the principle elements of Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarianism
• Distinguish John Stuart Mill’s modification of utilitarianism from Bentham’s original formulation of it
• Evaluate the role of utilitarianism in contemporary business
Although the ultimate aim of Aristotelian virtue ethics was eudaimonia, later philosophers began to question this notion of happiness. If happiness consists of leading the good life, what is good? More importantly, who decides what is good? Jeremy Bentham (1748–1842), a progressive British philosopher and jurist of the Enlightenment period, advocated for the rights of women, freedom of expression, the abolition of slavery and of the death penalty, and the decriminalization of homosexuality. He believed that the concept of good could be reduced to one simple instinct: the search for pleasure and the avoidance of pain. All human behavior could be explained by reference to this basic instinct, which Bentham saw as the key to unlocking the workings of the human mind. He created an ethical system based on it, called utilitarianism. Bentham’s protégé, John Stuart Mill (1806–1873), refined Bentham’s system by expanding it to include human rights. In so doing, Mill reworked Bentham’s utilitarianism in some significant ways. In this section we look at both systems.
Maximizing Utility
During Bentham’s lifetime, revolutions occurred in the American colonies and in France, producing the Bill of Rights and the Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme (Declaration of the Rights of Man), both of which were based on liberty, equality, and self-determination. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published The Communist Manifesto in 1848. Revolutionary movements broke out that year in France, Italy, Austria, Poland, and elsewhere.37 In addition, the Industrial Revolution transformed Great Britain and eventually the rest of Europe from an agrarian (farm-based) society into an industrial one, in which steam and coal increased manufacturing production dramatically, changing the nature of work, property ownership, and family. This period also included advances in chemistry, astronomy, navigation, human anatomy, and immunology, among other sciences.
Given this historical context, it is understandable that Bentham used reason and science to explain human behavior. His ethical system was an attempt to quantify happiness and the good so they would meet the conditions of the scientific method. Ethics had to be empirical, quantifiable, verifiable, and reproducible across time and space. Just as science was beginning to understand the workings of cause and effect in the body, so ethics would explain the causal relationships of the mind. Bentham rejected religious authority and wrote a rebuttal to the Declaration of Independence in which he railed against natural rights as “rhetorical nonsense, nonsense upon stilts.”38 Instead, the fundamental unit of human action for him was utility—solid, certain, and factual.
What is utility? Bentham’s fundamental axiom, which underlies utilitarianism, was that all social morals and government legislation should aim for producing the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. Utilitarianism, therefore, emphasizes the consequences or ultimate purpose of an act rather than the character of the actor, the actor’s motivation, or the particular circumstances surrounding the act. It has these characteristics: (1) universality, because it applies to all acts of human behavior, even those that appear to be done from altruistic motives; (2) objectivity, meaning it operates beyond individual thought, desire, and perspective; (3) rationality, because it is not based in metaphysics or theology; and (4) quantifiability in its reliance on utility.39
ETHICS ACROSS TIME AND CULTURES
The “Auto-Icon”
In the spirit of utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham made a seemingly bizarre request concerning the disposition of his body after his death. He generously donated half his estate to London University, a public university open to all and offering a secular curriculum, unusual for the times. (It later became University College London.) Bentham also stipulated that his body be preserved for medical instruction (Figure 2.7) and later placed on display in what he called an “auto-icon,” or self-image. The university agreed, and Bentham’s body has been on display ever since. Bentham wanted to show the importance of donating one’s remains to medical science in what was also perhaps his last act of defiance against convention. Critics insist he was merely eccentric.
Critical Thinking
• What do you think of Bentham’s final request? Is it the act of an eccentric or of someone deeply committed to the truth and courageous enough to act on his beliefs?
• Do you believe it makes sense to continue to honor Bentham’s request today? Why is it honored? Do requests have to make sense? Why or why not?
Bentham was interested in reducing utility to a single index so that units of it could be assigned a numerical and even monetary value, which could then be regulated by law. This utility function measures in “utils” the value of a good, service, or proposed action relative to the utilitarian principle of the greater good, that is, increasing happiness or decreasing pain. Bentham thus created a “hedonic calculus” to measure the utility of proposed actions according to the conditions of intensity, duration, certainty, and the probability that a certain consequence would result.40 He intended utilitarianism to provide a reasoned basis for making judgments of value rather than relying on subjectivity, intuition, or opinion. The implications of such a system on law and public policy were profound and had a direct effect on his work with the British House of Commons, where he was commissioned by the Speaker to decide which bills would come up for debate and vote. Utilitarianism provided a way of determining the total amount of utility or value a proposal would produce relative to the harm or pain that might result for society.
Utilitarianism is a consequentialist theory. In consequentialism, actions are judged solely by their consequences, without regard to character, motivation, or any understanding of good and evil and separate from their capacity to create happiness and pleasure. Thus, in utilitarianism, it is the consequences of our actions that determine whether those actions are right or wrong. In this way, consequentialism differs from Aristotelian and Confucian virtue ethics, which can accommodate a range of outcomes as long as the character of the actor is ennobled by virtue. For Bentham, character had nothing to do with the utility of an action. Everyone sought pleasure and avoided pain regardless of personality or morality. In fact, too much reliance on character might obscure decision-making. Rather than making moral judgments, utilitarianism weighed acts based on their potential to produce the most good (pleasure) for the most people. It judged neither the good nor the people who benefitted. In Bentham’s mind, no longer would humanity depend on inaccurate and outdated moral codes. For him, utilitarianism reflected the reality of human relationships and was enacted in the world through legislative action.
To illustrate the concept of consequentialism, consider the hypothetical story told by Harvard psychologist Fiery Cushman. When a man offends two volatile brothers with an insult, Jon wants to kill him; he shoots but misses. Matt, who intends only to scare the man but kills him by accident, will suffer a more severe penalty than his brother in most countries (including the United States). Applying utilitarian reasoning, can you say which brother bears greater guilt for his behavior? Are you satisfied with this assessment of responsibility? Why or why not?41
Link to learning
A classic utilitarian dilemma considers an out-of-control streetcar and a switch operator’s array of bad choices. Watch the video on the streetcar thought experiment and consider these questions. How would you go about making the decision about what to do? Is there a right or wrong answer? What values and criteria would you use to make your decision about whom to save?
Synthesizing Rights and Utility
As you might expect, utilitarianism was not without its critics. Thomas Hodgskin (1787–1869) pointed out what he said was the “absurdity” of insisting that “the rights of man are derived from the legislator” and not nature.42 In a similar vein, the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) accused Bentham of mixing up morality with law.43 Others objected that utilitarianism placed human beings on the same level as animals and turned people into utility functions. There were also complaints that it was mechanistic, antireligious, and too impractical for most people to follow. John Stuart Mill sought to answer these objections on behalf of his mentor but then offered a synthesis of his own that brought natural rights together with utility, creating a new kind of utilitarianism, one that would eventually serve to underpin neoclassical economic principles.44
Mill’s father, James, was a contemporary and associate of Bentham’s who made sure his son was tutored in a rigorous curriculum. According to Mill, at an early age he learned enough Greek and Latin to read the historians Herodotus and Tacitus in their original languages.45 His studies also included algebra, Euclidean geometry, economics, logic, and calculus.46 His father wanted him to assume a leadership position in Bentham’s political movement, known as the Philosophical Radicals.47 Unfortunately, the intensity and duration of Mill’s schooling—utilitarian conditions of education—were so extreme that he suffered a nervous breakdown at the age of twenty years. The experience left him dissatisfied with Bentham’s philosophy of utility and social reform. As an alternative, Mill turned to Romanticism and poets like Coleridge and Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749–1832).48 What he ended up with, however, was not a rejection of utilitarianism but a synthesis of utility and human rights.
Why rights? No doubt, Mill’s early life and formation had a great deal to do with his championing of individual freedom. He believed the effort to achieve utility was unjustified if it coerced people into doing things they did not want to do. Likewise, the appeal to science as the arbiter of truth would prove just as futile, he believed, if it did not temper facts with compassion. “Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing,” he wrote.49 Mill was interested in humanizing Bentham’s system by ensuring that everyone’s rights were protected, particularly the minority’s, not because rights were God given but because that was the most direct path to truth. Therefore, he introduced the harm principle, which states that the “only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.” 50
To be sure, there are limitations to Mill’s version of utilitarianism, just as there were with the original. For one, there has never been a satisfactory definition of “harm,” and what one person finds harmful another may find beneficial. For Mill, harm was defined as the set back of one’s interests. Thus, harm was defined relative to an individual’s interests. But what role, if any, should society play in defining what is harmful or in determining who is harmed by someone’s actions? For instance, is society culpable for not intervening in cases of suicide, euthanasia, and other self-destructive activities such as drug addiction? These issues have become part of the public debate in recent years and most likely will continue to be as such actions are considered in a larger social context. We may also define intervention and coercion differently depending on where we fall on the political spectrum.
Considering the social implications of an individual action highlights another limitation of utilitarianism, and one that perhaps makes more sense to us than it would to Bentham and Mill, namely, that it makes no provision for emotional or cognitive harm. If the harm is not measurable in physical terms, then it lacks significance. For example, if a reckless driver today irresponsibly exceeds the speed limit, crashes into a concrete abutment, and kills himself while totaling his vehicle (which he owns), utilitarianism would hold that in the absence of physical harm to others, no one suffers except the driver. We may not arrive at the same conclusion. Instead, we might hold that the driver’s survivors and friends, along with society as a whole, have suffered a loss. Arguably, all of us are diminished by the recklessness of his act.
link to learning
Watch this video for a summary of utilitarian principles along with a literary example of a central problem of utility and an explanation of John Stuart Mill’s utilitarianism.
The Role of Utilitarianism in Contemporary Business
Utilitarianism is used frequently when business leaders make critical decisions about things like expansion, store closings, hiring, and layoffs. They do not necessarily refer to a “utilitarian calculus,” but whenever they take stock of what is to be gained and what might be lost in any significant decision (e.g., in a cost-benefit analysis), they make a utilitarian determination. At the same time, one might argue that a simple cost-benefits analysis is not a utilitarian calculus unless it includes consideration of all stakeholders and a full accounting of externalities, worker preferences, potentially coercive actions related to customers, or community and environmental effects.
As a practical way of measuring value, Bentham’s system also plays a role in risk management. The utility function, or the potential for benefit or loss, can be translated into decision-making, risk assessment, and strategic planning. Together with data analytics, market evaluations, and financial projections, the utility function can provide managers with a tool for measuring the viability of prospective projects. It may even give them an opportunity to explore objections about the mechanistic and impractical nature of utilitarianism, especially from a customer perspective.
Utilitarianism could motivate individuals within the organization to take initiative, become more responsible, and act in ways that enhance the organization’s reputation rather than tarnish it. Mill’s On Liberty (Figure 2.8), a short treatment of political freedoms in tension with the power of the state, underscored the importance of expression and free speech, which Mill saw not as one right among many but as the foundational right, reflective of human nature, from which all others rights derive their meaning. And therein lay the greatest utility for society and business. For Mill, the path to utility led through truth, and the main way of arriving at truth was through a deliberative process that encouraged individual expression and the clash of ideas.
As for Mill’s harm principle, the first question in trying to arrive at a business decision might be, does this action harm others? If the answer is yes, we must make a utilitarian calculation to decide whether there is still a greater good for the greatest number. Then we must ask, who are the others we must consider? All stakeholders? Only shareholders? What does harm entail, and who decides whether a proposed action might be harmful? This was the reason science and debate were so important to Mill, because the determination could not be left to public opinion or intuition. That was how tyranny started. By introducing deliberation, Mill was able to balance utility with freedom, which was a necessary condition for utility.
Where Bentham looked to numerical formulas for determining value, relying on the objectivity of numbers, Mill sought value in reason and in the power of language to clarify where truth lies. The lesson for contemporary business, especially with the rise of big data, is that we need both numbers and reasoned principles. If we apply the Aristotelian and Confucian rule of the mean, we see that balance of responsibility and profitability makes the difference between sound business practices and poor ones. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_Ethics/Book%3A_Business_Ethics_(OpenStax)/02%3A_Ethics_from_Antiquity_to_the_Present/2.05%3A_Utilitarianism-_The_Greatest_Good_for_the_Greatest_Number.txt |
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Explain Immanuel Kant’s concept of duty and the categorical imperative
• Differentiate between utilitarianism and deontology
• Apply a model of Kantian business ethics
Unlike Bentham and Mill, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) was not concerned with consequences of one’s actions or the harm caused to one’s individual interests. Instead, he focused on motives and the willingness of individuals to act for the good of others, even though that action might result in personal loss. Doing something for the right reason was much more important to Kant than any particular outcome.
Aroused From “Dogmatic Slumber”
In 1781, at the age of fifty-six years, Kant published Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der Reinen Vernunft) in Königsberg, Prussia (Figure 2.9).51 Almost immediately, it transformed him from an obscure professor of metaphysics and logic into a preeminent figure in the world of philosophy. In the 800-page tome, Kant criticized the way rationalism (“pure reason”) had assumed the mantle of absolute truth, supplanting both religious faith and empirical science. Kant referred to the unquestioned acceptance of rationalism as dogmatism. Whether Christian or revolutionary, dogmatic thinking was to be avoided because it obscured the truths of science and religion through flawed logic.
Figure \(9\): First published in 1781, Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason provided a new system for understanding experience and reality. It defended religious faith against atheism and the scientific method against the skepticism of the Enlightenment. (credit a: modification of “Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)” by “Daube aus Böblingen”/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain; credit b: modification of “Title page of 1781 edition of Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason” by “Tomisti”/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)
Kant credited the skepticism of empirical philosopher David Hume (1711–1776) with awakening him from “dogmatic slumber,” although he disagreed with Hume, who claimed that the mind did not exist at all but was the result of mental associations derived from sensory experience.52 For Kant, reality could be discerned not through reasoning or sensory experience alone but only by understanding the nature of the human mind. Kant argued that sensory experience did not create the mind but rather that the mind created experience through its internal structures. And within the mind’s complex structures there also existed an inherent and unconditional duty to act ethically, which Kant called the “categorical imperative,” first outlined in Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (1785).53
In its initial form, Kant’s described his concept of the categorical imperative as follows: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.”54 Kant’s categorical (or unconditional) imperative has practical applications for the study of ethics. The categorical imperative contains two major suppositions: (1) We must act on the basis of goodwill rather than purely on self-interested motives that benefit ourselves at the expense of others; (2) we must never treat others as means toward ends benefitting ourselves without consideration of them also as ends in themselves. Kant held that observing the categorical imperative as we consider what actions to take would directly lead to ethical actions on our part.
link to learning
Watch this video about the categorical imperative to learn more.
How do you see the imperative working in your own life? Within your family? In your personal and professional relationships? Does Kant’s understanding of the relationship between art and beauty accord with your own?
In Kant’s view, rationalism and empiricism prevented people from perceiving the truth about their own nature. What was that truth? What was sufficient to constitute it? Kant identified an a priori world of knowledge and understanding in which truth lay in the structures and categories of the mind that were beyond perception and reason. This was a radical concept for the times.
In the end, Kant’s systematic analysis of knowing and understanding provided a much-needed counterweight to the logic of Enlightenment rationalism. The existence of the mental structures he proposed has even been confirmed today. For instance, the scientific consensus is that humans are born with cognitive structures designed specifically for language acquisition and development. Even more surprising, there may be similar cognitive structures for morality, conscience, and moral decision-making.55 So, it is quite possible that conscience, if not happiness, may have a genetic component after all, although Kant himself did not believe the categories of the understanding or the a priori structures of the mind were biological.
link to leARNING
Read a good survey of Kant’s critique of Enlightenment rationalism and of empiricism in this article.
Utilitarianism and Deontology
From a Kantian perspective, it is clear that adherence to duty is what builds the framework for ethical acts. This is in direct contradiction of Bentham’s view of human nature as selfish and requiring an objective calculus for ethical action to result. Kant rejected the idea of such a calculus and believed, instead, that perceptions were organized into preexisting categories or structures of the mind. Compare his notion of an ordered and purposeful universe of laws with the similar logos, or logic, of the ancient Greeks. One of those laws included implementation of the categorical imperative to act ethically, in accordance with our conscience. However, even though that imperative ought to be followed without exception, not everyone does so. In Kant’s moral teachings, individuals still had free will to accept or reject it.
There is a definite contrast between utilitarianism, even Mill’s version, and Kant’s system of ethics, known as deontology, in which duty, obligation, and good will are of the highest importance. (The word is derived from the Greek deon, meaning duty, and logos again, here meaning organization for the purpose of study.56) An ethical decision requires us to observe only the rights and duties we owe to others, and, in the context of business, act on the basis of a primary motive to do what is right by all stakeholders. Kant was not concerned with utility or outcome—his was not a system directed toward results. The question for him was not how to attain happiness but how to become worthy of it.
Rather like Aristotle and Confucius, Kant taught that the transcendent aspects of human nature, if followed, would lead us inevitably to treat people as ends rather than means. To be moral meant to renounce uninformed dogmatism and rationalism, abide by the categorical imperative, and embrace freedom, moral sense, and even divinity. This was not a lofty or unattainable goal in Kant’s mind, because these virtues constituted part of the systematic structuring of the human mind. It could be accomplished by living truthfully or, as we say today, authentically. Such a feat transcended the logic of both rationalism and empiricism.
WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
Les Misérables
You may have seen the very popular Broadway show or movie Les Misérables, based on Victor Hugo’s epic nineteenth-century French novel of the same name. The main character, Jean Valjean, steals a loaf of bread to feed his sister’s starving family and is arrested and sent to prison. If we apply conventional reasoning and principles of law to his crime, Valjean genuinely is guilty as charged and we do not need to consider any extenuating circumstances. However, in a Kantian ethical framework, we would take into account Valjean’s motives as well as his duty to treat his sister’s family as ends in themselves who deserve to live. Valjean’s fate demonstrates what might occur when there is a gap between the legal and the moral. Clearly, Valjean broke the law by stealing the bread. However, he acted morally by correcting a wrong and possibly saving human lives. According to Kantian ethics, Valjean may have been ethical in stealing bread for his family, particularly because the action was grounded in good will and provided benefit to others more than to himself.
Critical Thinking
• It has been said that in Kantian ethics, duty comes before beauty and morality before happiness. Can you think of other instances when it is appropriate to break one moral code to satisfy another, perhaps greater one? What are the deciding factors in each case?
• What would you do if you were Jean Valjean?
Kantian Business Ethics
Unlike utilitarianism, which forms the philosophical foundation for most cost-benefit analysis in business, Kantian ethics is not so easily applied. On one hand, it offers a unique opportunity for the development of individual morality through the categorical imperative to act ethically, which emphasizes humanity and autonomy.57 This imperative addresses one major side of business ethics: the personal. Character and moral formation are crucial to creating an ethical culture. Indeed, business ethics is littered with cases of companies that have suffered damaging crises due to their leaders’ lack of commitment to act on the basis of a good will and with regard for what benefits others. Recent examples include Uber, where a toxic work environment was allowed to prevail, and Volkswagen, which knowingly misrepresented the emissions level of its cars.58 Such examples exist in government as well, as the recent Theranos and “Fat Leonard” scandals confirm.59 The latter consisted of graft and corruption in the U.S. Navy’s Pacific fleet and has been a continual source of embarrassment for an institution that prides itself on the honorable conduct of its officers. One person can make a difference, either positively or negatively.
On the other hand, Kant’s categorical imperative is just that: categorical or unconditional. It calls for morally upright behavior regardless of external circumstance or the historical context of a proposed act or decision. Kant affirmed that “the moral law is an imperative, which commands categorically, because the law is unconditioned.”60 Unconditional ethics could be a challenge for a global organization dealing with suppliers, customers, and competitors in sometimes vastly different cultures. It raises a larger philosophical issue: namely, was Kant correct in believing that morality and mental categories are independent of experience? Or can they be culturally conditioned, and, if so, does that make them relative rather than absolute, as Kant believed them to be?
This question whether ethics is universal is distinctly Kantian, because Kant believed that not only must a moral agent act with others’ interests in mind and have the right intentions, but also that the action be universally applicable. Think of how Kantian ethics might be applied not just on an individual level but throughout an organization, and then society. Kant would judge a corporate act to be ethical if it benefitted others at the same time it benefitted company leadership and stockholders, and if it did not place their interests above those of other stakeholders. If loyalty to a coworker conflicted with loyalty to a supervisor or the organization, for instance, then acts resulting from such loyalty might not meet the conditions of deontology. Either the supervisor or the company would be treated as a means rather than an end. Although the qualitative or humanizing element of Kantian ethics has broad appeal, it runs into limitations in an actual business setting. Whether the limitations have good or bad effects depends on the organization’s culture and leadership. In general, however, most companies do not adhere to strict Kantian theories, because they look to the outcome of their decisions rather than focusing on motives or intentions.
CASES FROM THE REAL WORLD
Samsung
In the fall of 2016, Samsung Electronics experienced a massive public relations disaster when its Galaxy Note 7 smartphones started exploding due to faulty batteries and casings. Initially, the company denied there were any technical problems. Then, when it became obvious the exploding phones posed a safety and health threat (they were banned from airplanes), Samsung accused its suppliers of creating the problem. In reality, the rush to beat Apple’s iPhone 7 release date was the most likely reason corners were cut in production. Samsung finally owned up to the problem, recalled more than two million phones worldwide, and replaced them with new, improved Galaxy Note 7s.
The company’s response and its replacement of the phones went a long way toward defusing the disaster and even boosting the company’s share price. Whether management knew it, its response was Kantian. Samsung focused on the end (i.e., customer safety and satisfaction) with the motive of doing the ethically responsible thing. Although some might argue the company could have done far more and much more quickly, perhaps it still acted in accordance with the categorical imperative. What do you think?
Critical Thinking
• How might the categorical imperative become a part of organizational culture? Could it ever work in business?
• Do you see the categorical imperative as applicable to your own interests and hope for a career? | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_Ethics/Book%3A_Business_Ethics_(OpenStax)/02%3A_Ethics_from_Antiquity_to_the_Present/2.06%3A_Deontology_-_Ethics_as_Duty.txt |
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Evaluate John Rawls’s answer to utilitarianism
• Analyze the problem of redistribution
• Apply justice theory in a business context
This chapter began with an image of Justice holding aloft scales as a symbol of equilibrium and fairness. It ends with an American political philosopher for whom the equal distribution of resources was a primary concern. John Rawls (1921–2002) wanted to change the debate that had prevailed throughout the 1960s and 1970s in the West about how to maximize wealth for everyone. He sought not to maximize wealth, which was a utilitarian goal, but to establish justice as the criterion by which goods and services were distributed among the populace. Justice, for Rawls, had to do with fairness—in fact, he frequently used the expression justice as fairness—and his concept of fairness was a political one that relied on the state to take care of the most disadvantaged. In his justice theory, offered as an alternative to the dominant utilitarianism of the times, the idea of fairness applied beyond the individual to include the community as well as analysis of social injustice with remedies to correct it.
Justice Theory
Rawls developed a theory of justice based on the Enlightenment ideas of thinkers like John Locke (1632–1704) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), who advocated social contract theory. Social contract theory held that the natural state of human beings was freedom, but that human beings will rationally submit to some restrictions on their freedom to secure their mutual safety and benefit, not subjugation to a monarch, no matter how benign or well intentioned. This idea parallels that of Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), who interpreted human nature to be selfish and brutish to the degree that, absent the strong hand of a ruler, chaos would result. So people willingly consent to transfer their autonomy to the control of a sovereign so their very lives and property will be secured. Rousseau rejected that view, as did Rawls, who expanded social contract theory to include justice as fairness. In A Theory of Justice (1971), Rawls introduced a universal system of fairness and a set of procedures for achieving it. He advocated a practical, empirically verifiable system of governance that would be political, social, and economic in its effects.
Rawls’s justice theory contains three principles and five procedural steps for achieving fairness. The principles are (1) an “original position,” (2) a “veil of ignorance,” and (3) unanimity of acceptance of the original position.61 By original position, Rawls meant something akin to Hobbes’ understanding of the state of nature, a hypothetical situation in which rational people can arrive at a contractual agreement about how resources are to be distributed in accordance with the principles of justice as fairness. This agreement was intended to reflect not present reality but a desired state of affairs among people in the community. The veil of ignorance (Figure 2.10) is a condition in which people arrive at the original position imagining they have no identity regarding age, sex, ethnicity, education, income, physical attractiveness, or other characteristics. In this way, they reduce their bias and self-interest. Last, unanimity of acceptance is the requirement that all agree to the contract before it goes into effect. Rawls hoped this justice theory would provide a minimum guarantee of rights and liberties for everyone, because no one would know, until the veil was lifted, whether they were male, female, rich, poor, tall, short, intelligent, a minority, Roman Catholic, disabled, a veteran, and so on.
The five procedural steps, or “conjectures,” are (1) entering into the contract, (2) agreeing unanimously to the contract, (3) including basic conditions in the contract such as freedom of speech, (4) maximizing the welfare of the most disadvantaged persons, and (5) ensuring the stability of the contract.62 These steps create a system of justice that Rawls believed gave fairness its proper place above utility and the bottom line. The steps also supported his belief in people’s instinctual drive for fairness and equitable treatment. Perhaps this is best seen in an educational setting, for example, the university. By matriculating, students enter into a contract that includes basic freedoms such as assembly and speech. Students at a disadvantage (e.g., those burdened with loans, jobs, or other financial constraints) are accommodated as well as possible. The contract between the university and students has proven to be stable over time, from generation to generation. This same procedure applies on a micro level to the experience in the classroom between an individual teacher and students. Over the past several decades—for better or worse—the course syllabus has assumed the role of a written contract expressing this relationship.
Rawls gave an example of what he called “pure procedural justice” in which a cake is shared among several people.63 By what agreement shall the cake be divided? Rawls determined that the best way to divide the cake is to have the person slicing the cake take the last piece. This will ensure that everyone gets an equal amount. What is important is an independent standard to determine what is just and a procedure for implementing it.64
The Problem of Redistribution
Part of Rawls’s critique of utilitarianism is that its utility calculus can lead to tyranny. If we define pleasure as that which is popular, the minority can suffer in terrible ways and the majority become mere numbers. This became clear in Mills’s attempt to humanize Bentham’s calculus. But Mills’s harm principle had just as bad an effect, for the opposite reason. It did not require anyone to give up anything if it had to be done through coercion or force. To extend Rawls’s cake example, if one person owned a bakery and another were starving, like Jean Valjean’s sister in Les Misérables, utilitarianism would force the baker to give up what he had to satisfy the starving person without taking into account whether the baker had greater debts, a sick spouse requiring medical treatment, or a child with educational loans; in other words, the context of the situation matters, as opposed to just the consequences. However, Mill’s utilitarianism, adhering to the harm principle, would leave the starving person to his or her own devices. At least he or she would have one slice of cake. This was the problem of distribution and redistribution that Rawls hoped to solve, not by calculating pleasure and pain, profit and loss, but by applying fairness as a normative value that would benefit individuals and society.65
The problem with this approach is that justice theory is a radical, egalitarian form of liberalism in which redistribution of material goods and services occurs without regard for historical context or the presumption many share that it inherently is wrong to take the property legally acquired by one and distribute it to another. Rawls has been criticized for promoting the same kind of coercion that can exist in utilitarianism but on the basis of justice rather than pleasure. Justice on a societal level would guarantee housing, education, medical treatment, food, and the basic necessities of life for everyone. Yet, as recent political campaigns have shown, the question of who will pay for these guaranteed goods and services through taxes is a contentious one. These are not merely fiscal and political issues; they are philosophical ones requiring us to answer questions of logic and, especially in the case of justice theory, fairness. And, naturally, we must ask, what is fair?
Rawls’s principles and steps assume that the way in which the redistribution of goods and services occurs would be agreed upon by people in the community to avoid any fairness issues. But questions remain. For one, Rawls’s justice, like the iconic depiction, is blind and cannot see the circumstances in which goods and services are distributed. Second, we may question whether a notion of fairness is really innate. Third, despite the claim that justice theory is not consequentialist (meaning outcomes are not the only thing that matters), there is a coercive aspect to Rawls’s justice once the contract is in force, replacing utility with mandated fairness. Fourth, is this the kind of system in which people thrive and prosper, or, by focusing on the worst off, are initiative, innovation, and creativity dampened on the part of everyone else? Perhaps the most compelling critic of Rawls in this regard was his colleague at Harvard University, Robert Nozick (1938–2002), who wrote A Theory of Entitlement (1974) as a direct rebuttal of Rawlsian justice theory.66Nozick argued that the power of the state may never ethically be used to deprive someone of property he or she has legally obtained or inherited in order to distribute it to others who are in need of it.
Still, one of the advantages of justice theory over the other ethical systems presented in this chapter is its emphasis on method as opposed to content. The system runs on a methodology or process for arriving at truth through the underlying value of fairness. Again, in this sense it is similar to utilitarianism, but, by requiring unanimity, it avoids the extremes of Bentham’s and Mill’s versions. As a method in ethics, it can be applied in a variety of ways and in multiple disciplines, because it can be adapted to just about any value-laden content. Of course, this raises the question of content versus method in ethics, especially because ethics has been defined as a set of cultural norms based on agreed-upon values. Method may be most effective in determining what those underlying values are, rather than how they are implemented.
lINK TO LEARNING
The “veil of ignorance” is a central concept in Rawls’s justice theory. What is it? What does it attempt to accomplish? Watch this video on how “ignorance can improve decision-making” to explore further.
Justice in Business
Although no ethical framework is perfect or fits a particular era completely, Rawls’s justice theory has distinct advantages when applied to business in the twenty-first century. First, as businesses become interdependent and globalized, they must pay more attention to quality control, human resources, and leadership in diverse settings. What will give greater legitimacy to an organization in these areas than fairness? Fairness is a value that is cross-cultural, embraced by different social groups, and understood by nearly everyone. However, what is considered fair depends on a variety of factors, including underlying values and individual characteristics like personality. For instance, not everyone agrees on whether or how diversity ought to be achieved. Neither is there consensus about affirmative action or the redistribution of resources or income. What is fair to some may be supremely unfair to others. This presents an opportunity for engaged debate and participation among the members of Rawls’s community.
Second, as we saw earlier, justice theory provides a method for attaining fairness, which could make it a practical and valuable part of training at all levels of a company. The fact that its content—justice and fairness—is more accessible to contemporary people than Confucian virtue ethics and more flexible than Kant’s categorical imperative makes it an effective way of dealing with stakeholders and organizational culture.
Justice theory may also provide a seamless way of engaging in corporate social responsibility outwardly and employee development inwardly. Fairness as a corporate doctrine can be applied to all stakeholders and define a culture of trust and openness, with all the corresponding benefits, in marketing, advertising, board development, client relations, and so on. It is also an effective way of integrating business ethics into the organization so ethics is no longer seen as the responsibility solely of the compliance department or legal team. Site leaders and middle managers understand fairness; employees probably even more so, because they are more directly affected by the lack of it. Fairness, then, is as much part of the job as it is an ongoing process of an ethics system. It no doubt makes for a happier and more productive workforce. An organization dedicated to it can also play a greater role in civic life and the political process, which, in turn, helps everyone.
WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
John Rawls’s Thought Experiment
John Rawls’s original position represents a community in which you have no idea what kind of person you will end up being. In this sense, it is like life itself. After all, you have no idea what your future will be like. You could end up rich, poor, married, single, living in Manhattan or Peru. You might be a surgeon or fishing for sturgeon. Yet, there is one community you will most likely be a part of at some point: the aged. Given that you know this but are not sure of the details, which conditions would you agree to now so that senior citizens are provided for? Remember that you most likely will join them and experience the effects of what you decide now. You are living behind not a spatial veil of ignorance but a temporal one.
Critical Thinking
• What are you willing to give up so that seniors—whoever they might be—are afforded care and security in their later years?
• Should you have to pay into a system that provides medical coverage to other people less health conscious than you? Why or why not? | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_Ethics/Book%3A_Business_Ethics_(OpenStax)/02%3A_Ethics_from_Antiquity_to_the_Present/2.07%3A_A_Theory_of_Justice.txt |
Section Summaries:
2.1 The Concept of Ethical Business in Ancient Athens
The role of ethics in Athens during Greece’s Golden Age (fifth century BCE) was substantial. Aristotle focused on the role of virtue in developing individual character and social stability. He believed a person’s actions determined whether he or she was virtuous, and the point of the virtuous life was happiness, or eudaimonia.
Aristotle identified two types of virtues: intellectual and moral. Intellectual virtues were acquired through learning and served as guides to behavior by helping the individual discover truth. Moral virtues were acquired through habit and built character by helping someone pursue what is beneficial and avoid what is harmful in daily life. Aristotle considered phrónēsis, or prudence, the most important virtue, because of its practical application.
The thirteenth-century philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas agreed with Aristotle that to act dishonorably casts disrepute on all concerned. Ends and means had to be aligned, particularly in business, which provided people’s livelihoods and secured the economic health of the city-state.
2.2 Ethical Advice for Nobles and Civil Servants in Ancient China
Confucius (551–479 BCE) attempted to revise ancient Chinese traditions and mores to counter the social chaos of his times. His system of virtue ethics emphasized relationships and, when followed faithfully, led to the dao of humanity, that is, true harmonious living. There were three ways to achieve dao: “whole-hearted sincerity and truthfulness,” the “constant mean,” and “expediency” (quan). Someone who lived virtuously became more humane, which resulted in a flourishing individual and an ordered nation.
In Confucian virtue ethics, business was viewed as a network of relationships dependent on trust and righteousness. Righteousness was a form of justice that compelled everyone to act in good faith. Considered in this way, justice allows for wealth creation, investment, and strategic planning as long as everyone fulfills his or her role and acts in accordance with the basic pattern of relationships Confucius identified.
2.3 Comparing the Virtue Ethics of East and West
Aristotle and Confucius each constructed an ethical system based on virtue, with Aristotle’s anticipated result being happiness and Confucius’s being harmony. For Aristotle, happiness consisted of the search for truth. Confucius looked to create a system that put an end to civil chaos. Although both systems relied on reason and control to achieve their ends, Aristotle placed the locus of ethical behavior on individuals, but he held that a moral upbringing and good political governance also contributed to the formation of moral character. Confucius saw this locus in the family, which provided the basic pattern of relationships for personal and professional life. Reason prevailed throughout, as in the cultivation of a more just and humane person.
In a business context, reason and control bear directly on management, leadership, and corporate culture. They constitute a way of cultivating individual virtue and corporate ethos such that the two go hand in hand. The environment or culture of an organization needs individuals of character who can follow their conscience and experience moral conversion. We might envision the emergence of universal values like reason and control that nurture both the individual and the organization.
2.4 Utilitarianism: The Greatest Good for the Greatest Number
Jeremy Bentham developed a quantifiable method for determining what was beneficial and what was detrimental. He called this method utilitarianism, because its basic unit, the “util,” acted like a monetary unit. Bentham’s protégé, John Stuart Mill, refined this system to include human rights. His “harm principle” is an outstanding element in his version of utilitarianism.
Utilitarianism in business can lead to a bottom-line mentality in which decisions are based on achieving the greatest good for the organization as it pertains to the greatest number of stakeholders, including shareholders and all others affected by the actions of the organization The outcome is the determining factor, not the intent of the actors or whether people are treated humanely.
2.5 Deontology: Ethics as Duty
Rejecting dogmatic thinking of all kinds, Kant believed people were not the sum total of reactions to stimuli but complex beings with innate structures of understanding and inborn moral sensitivity. In his view, everyone had a duty to obey a categorical imperative to do the just and moral thing, regardless of the consequences. The outcome of an act was not as important as the intent of the actor and whether the act treated others as ends or means. Here, Kant reflected Aristotelian virtue ethics in seeing people as ends in themselves and not as “living tools” or human resources.
This view does not typically govern most management decisions in business; arguably, utilitarianism is the efficient, go-to theory on which corporate leaders often rely. Yet a Kantian understanding of business ethics remains viable even today and sometimes displays itself in the most compassionate and humane actions that evolving commercial organizations take.
2.6 A Theory of Justice
Rawls developed a theory of justice based on social contract theory, holding that the natural state of human beings is freedom, not subjugation to a monarch, no matter how benign or well intentioned. Rawls’s theory views human beings as inherently good and, echoing Kant, inclined toward moral rectitude and action. In his theory, Rawls included the “veil of ignorance,” which ensures objectivity in our choices and the avoidance of bias. Criticism of Rawls’s theory focuses primarily on the issue of distribution, because decisions made in ignorance can neither reward innovation and enterprise nor encourage risk.
Key Terms
categorical imperative
Kant’s unconditional precept that we must “act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law”; to act on the basis of good will rather than purely self-interested motives and never treat others as means toward an end without consideration of them as ends in themselves
consequentialism
an ethical theory in which actions are judged solely by their consequences without regard to character, motivation, or absolute principles of good and evil and separate from their capacity to produce happiness and pleasure
eudaimonia
the happiness or human flourishing that results from virtuous activity; it is more than contentment or satisfaction
golden mean
in Aristotelian virtue ethics, the aim of ethical behavior, a value between excess and deficiency
harm principle
the idea that the only purpose for which the power of the state can rightly be used is to prevent harm to others
junzi
a person who is gracious, magnanimous, and cultured; a flourishing human being
justice as fairness
Rawls’s summary of the essence of his theory of justice
justice theory
the idea of fairness applied beyond the individual to include the community as well as analysis of social injustice with remedies to correct it
li
the proper order of the universe and the customs and rituals that support order and harmony on Earth
managerial ethics
a way of relating to self, employees, and the organization that balances individual and collective responsibility
original position
in Rawls’s justice theory, a hypothetical situation in which rational people can arrive at a contractual agreement about how resources are to be distributed in accordance with the principles of justice as fairness
phrónēsis
prudence or practical wisdom; the intellectual virtue Aristotle considered most important
quan
expediency; a practical consideration of the relative rightness of options when considering a moral dilemma
social contract theory
a theory that holds the natural state of human beings is freedom, but that human beings will rationally submit to some restrictions on their freedom to secure their mutual safety and benefit
unanimity of acceptance
in Rawls’s theory, the requirement that all agree to the contract before it goes into effect
utility function
a measure, in “utils,” of the value of a good, service, or proposed action relative to the utilitarian principle of the greater good, that is, increasing happiness or decreasing pain
veil of ignorance
in Rawls’s theory, a condition in which people arrive at the original position imagining they have no identity regarding age, sex, ethnicity, education, income, physical attractiveness, or other characteristics; in this way, they reduce their bias and self-interest
virtue ethics
an ethical system based on the exercise of certain virtues (loyalty, honor, courage) emphasizing the formation of character | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_Ethics/Book%3A_Business_Ethics_(OpenStax)/02%3A_Ethics_from_Antiquity_to_the_Present/2.08%3A_Summary.txt |
In May 2018, in the wake of a global uproar after two black men in a Philadelphia Starbucks were arrested while awaiting a friend, Starbucks closed its approximately eight thousand U.S. stores to conduct racial bias training (Figure 3.1).1 The company also officially changed its policy to allow people to visit its stores and restrooms without making a purchase, hoping to avoid more incidents like this one (sparked by a white employee calling 9-1-1 when the men did not buy anything). The two men who were arrested eventually settled with Starbucks for an undisclosed sum.
As one of the largest beverage retailers in the world, Starbucks directly affects countless stakeholders: food and drink distributors; coffee and tea growers; milk producers; urban and suburban communities; local, state, and national governments; more than 300,000 employees and 1,600 institutional investors; and millions of customers.2 The company’s decision to close its U.S. stores for half a day was financially costly, and the training session could never fully solve the problem of conscious or unconscious bias. But the firm believed it was the right thing to do. Why does it matter to its stakeholders what Starbucks does? What role do stakeholders play in a company’s decisions about its ethical behavior, and why?
3.02: Adopting a Stakeholder Orientation
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Identify key types of business-stakeholder relationships
• Explain why laws do not dictate every ethical responsibility a company may owe key stakeholders
• Discuss why stakeholders’ welfare must be at the heart of ethical business decisions
Have you ever had a stake in a decision someone else was making? Depending on your relationship with that person and your level of interest in the decision, you may have tried to ensure that the choice made was in your best interests. Understanding your somewhat analogous role as a stakeholder in businesses large and small, local and global, will help you realize the value of prioritizing stakeholders in your own professional life and business decisions.
Stakeholder Relationships
Many individuals and groups inside and outside a business have an interest in the way it brings products or services to market to turn a profit. These stakeholders include customers, clients, employees, shareholders, communities, the environment, the government, and the media (traditional and social), among others. All stakeholders should be considered essential to a business, but not all have equal priority. Different groups of stakeholders carry different weights with decision makers in companies and assert varying levels of interest and influence. As we examine their roles, consider how an organization benefits by working with its stakeholders and how it may benefit from encouraging stakeholders to work together to promote their mutual interests.
What are the roles of an organization’s many stakeholders? We begin with the internal stakeholders. The board of directors—in a company large enough to have one—is responsible for defining and evaluating the ongoing mission of a business after its founding. It broadly oversees decisions about the mission and direction of the business, the products or services offered, the markets in which the business will operate, and salary and benefits for the senior officers of the organization. The board also sets goals for income and profitability. Its most important function is to select and hire the chief executive officer (CEO) or president. The CEO is usually the only employee who reports directly to the board of directors, and he or she is charged with implementing the policies the board sets and consulting with them on significant issues pertaining to the company, such as a dramatic shift in products or services offered or discussions to acquire—or be acquired by—another firm.
In turn, the CEO hires executives to lead initiatives and carry out procedures in the various functional areas of the business, such as finance, sales and marketing, public relations, manufacturing, quality control, human resources (sometimes called human capital), accounting, and legal compliance. Employees in these areas are internal stakeholders in the success of both their division and the larger corporation. Some interact with the outside environment in which the business operates and serve as contact points for external stakeholders, such as media and government, as well.
In terms of external stakeholders for a business, customers certainly are an essential group. They need to be able to trust that products and services are backed by the integrity of the company. They also provide reviews, positive or negative, and referrals. Customers’ perceptions of the business matter, too. Those who learn that a business is not treating employees fairly, for instance, may reconsider their loyalty or even boycott the business to try to influence change in the organization. Stakeholder relationships, good and bad, can have compound effects, particularly when social media can spread word of unethical behavior quickly and widely.
Key external stakeholders are usually those outside of the organization who most directly influence a business’s bottom line and hold power over the business. Besides customers and clients, suppliers have a great deal of influence and command a great deal of attention from businesses of all sizes. Governments hold power through regulatory bodies, from federal agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency to the local planning and zoning boards of the communities in which businesses exist. These latter groups often exercise influence over the physical spaces where businesses work and try to grow (Figure 3.2).
Businesses are responsible to their stakeholders. Every purchase of a product or a service carries with it a sort of promise. Buyers promise that their money or credit is good, and businesses promise a level of quality that will deliver what is advertised. The relationship can quickly get more complex, though. Stakeholders also may demand that the businesses they patronize give back to the local community or protect the global environment while developing their products or providing services. Employees may demand a certain level of remuneration for their work. Governments demand that companies comply with laws, and buyers in business-to-business exchanges (B2B, in business jargon) demand not only high-quality products and services but on-time delivery and responsive maintenance and service should something go wrong. Meeting core obligations to stakeholders is primarily about delivering good products and services, but it is also about communicating and preparing for potential problems, whether from within the company or from external circumstances like a natural disaster.
Ethical Responsibilities Often Extend Beyond Legal Requirements
We have seen that stakeholders include the people and entities invested in and influential in the success of an organization. It is also true that stakeholders can have multiple, and simultaneous, roles. For example, an employee can also be a customer and a stockholder.
Any transaction between a stakeholder and a business organization may appear finite. For instance, after you purchase something from a store you leave and go home. But your relationship with the store probably continues. You might want to repurchase the item or ask a question about a warranty. The store may have collected future marketing data about you and your purchases through its customer loyalty program or your use of a credit card.
Samsung, based in South Korea, is a large, multinational corporation that makes a variety of products, including household appliances such as washers and dryers. When Samsung’s washers developed a problem with the spin cycle in 2017, the company warned customers that the machines could become unbalanced and tip over, and that children should be kept away. The problem persisted, however, and Samsung’s responsibility and legal exposure increased. The eventual fix was to offer all owners of the particular washer model a full refund even if the customer did not have a complaint, and to offer free pick up of the machine as well. The recall covered almost three million washers, which ranged in price from \$450 to \$1500. By choosing to spend billions to rectify the problem, Samsung limited its legal exposure to potential lawsuits, settlement of which would likely have far exceeded the refunds it paid. This example demonstrates the weight of the implicit social contract between a company and its stakeholders and the potential impact on the bottom line if that contract is broken.
When a product does not live up to its maker’s claims for whatever reason, the manufacturer needs to correct the problem to retain or regain customers’ trust. Without this trust, the interdependence between the company and its stakeholders can fail. By choosing to recognize and repay its customer stakeholders, Samsung acted at an ethical maximum, taking the strongest possible action to behave ethically in a given situation. An ethical minimum, or the least a company might do that complies with the law, would have been to offer the warning and nothing more. This may have been a defensible position in court, but the warning might not have reached all purchasers of the defective machine and many children could have been hurt.
Each case of a faulty product or poorly delivered service is different. If laws reach above a minimum standard, they can grow cumbersome and impede business growth. If businesses adhere only to laws and ethical minimums, however, they can develop poor reputations and people can be harmed. The ethically minimal course of action is not illegal or necessarily unethical, but the company choosing it will have failed to recognize the value of its customers.
CASES FROM THE REAL WORLD
Amazon Sets a Demanding Pace on the Job
In a visit to an Amazon distribution center, a group of business students and their professors met with the general manager.3After taking them on an extensive tour of the five-acre facility, the general manager commented on the slowness of the visitors’ walking pace. He described the Amazon Pace, a fast, aggressive walk, and confirmed that the average employee walks eight or nine miles during a shift. These employees are called “pickers,” and their task is to fill an order and deliver it to the processing and packing center as quickly as possible. The design of the center is a trade secret that results in a random distribution of products. Therefore, the picker has to cover a number of directions and distances while filling an order. Those who cannot keep up the pace are usually let go, just as would be those who steal.
Critical Thinking
• Does the requirement to walk an average of eight or nine miles at a fast pace every day strike you as a reasonable expectation for employees at Amazon, or any other workplace? Why or why not? Should a company that wants to impose this requirement tell job applicants beforehand?
• Is it ethical for customers to patronize a company that imposes this kind of requirement on its employees? And if not, what other choices do customers have and what can they do about it?
• The center’s general manager may have been exaggerating about the Amazon Pace to impress upon his visitors how quickly and nimbly pickers fill customer orders for the company. If not, however, is such a pace sustainable without the risk of physiological and psychological stress?
The law only partly captures the ethical obligations firms owe their stakeholders. One way many companies go beyond the legally required minimum as employers is to offer lavish amenities—that is, resources made available to employees in addition to wages, salary, and other standard benefits. They include such offerings as on-site exercise rooms and other services, company discounts, complimentary or subsidized snacks or meals, and the opportunity to buy stock in the company at a discounted price. Astute business leaders see the increased costs of amenities as an investment in retaining employees as long-term stakeholders. Stakeholder loyalty within and outside the firm is essential in sustaining any business venture, no matter how small or large.
WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
The Social Responsibility of Business
There are two opposing views about how businesses, and large publicly held corporations in particular, should approach ethics and social responsibility. One view holds that businesses should behave ethically within the marketplace but concern themselves only with serving shareholders and other investors. This view places economic considerations above all others. The other view is that stakeholders are not the means to the end (profit) but are ends in and of themselves as human beings (see our earlier discussion of deontological ethics in Ethics from Antiquity to the Present). Thus, the social responsibility of business view is that being responsible to customers, employees, and a host of other stakeholders should be not only a corporate concern but central to a business’s mission. In essence, this view places a premium on the careful consideration of stakeholders. Consider what approach you might take if you were the CEO of a multinational corporation.
Critical Thinking
• Would your business be driven primarily by a particular social mission or simply by economics?
• How do you think stakeholder relationships would influence your approach to business? Why?
LINK TO LEARNING
Read a detailed consideration of the social responsibility of business in the form of polite but fiercely oppositional correspondence between economist Milton Friedman and John Mackey, founder and CEO of Whole Foods to learn more.
One challenge for any organization’s managers is that not all stakeholders agree on where the company should strive to land when it chooses between ethical minimums and maximums. Take stockholders, for example. Logically, most stockholders are interested in maximizing the return on their investment in the firm, which earns profit for them in the form of dividends. Lynn Stout, late Professor of Law at Cornell Law School, described the role of shareholder in this way:
“Shareholders as a class want companies to be able to treat their stakeholders well, because this encourages employee and customer loyalty . . . Yet individual shareholders can profit from pushing boards to exploit committed stakeholders—say, by threatening to outsource jobs unless employees agree to lower wages, or refusing to support products customers have come to rely on unless they buy expensive new products as well. In the long run, such corporate opportunism makes it difficult for companies to attract employee and customer loyalty in the first place.” 4
Essential to Stout’s point is that shareholders do not necessarily behave as a class. Some will want to maximize their investment even at a cost to other stakeholders. Some may want to extend beyond the legal minimum and seek a long-term perspective on profit maximization, demanding better treatment of stakeholders to maximize future potential value and to do more good than harm.
In the long run, stakeholder welfare must be kept at the heart of each company’s business operations for these significant, twin reasons: It is the right thing to do and it is good for business. Still, if managers need additional incentive to act on the basis of policies that benefit stakeholders, it is useful to recall that stakeholders who believe their interests have been ignored will readily make their displeasure known, both to company management and to the much wider community of social media. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_Ethics/Book%3A_Business_Ethics_(OpenStax)/03%3A_Defining_and_Prioritizing_Stakeholders/3.01%3A_Introduction.txt |
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Explain why stakeholders’ claims vary in importance
• Categorize stakeholders to better understand their claims
As we saw earlier in this chapter and in Why Ethics Matter, the law only partially captures the ethical obligations firms owe their stakeholders. A particular stakeholder claim, that is, any given stakeholder’s interest in a business decision, may therefore challenge the ethical stance even of an organization that complies with the law. For example, some community members may oppose the opening of a “big box” chain store that threatens the livelihoods of small-business owners in the area, while shareholders, creditors, employees, and consumers within the nearby neighborhoods support it as an additional opportunity for profit and quality goods at competitive prices. Conflicts like this illustrate how complicated prioritizing stakeholder claims can be, particularly when there are ethical pros and cons on both sides. A big box store may offer a wider selection of goods at lower prices, for example, and create jobs for teens and part-time workers.
A related theme to recall is that even though all stakeholder claims are important for a company to acknowledge, not all claims are of equal importance. Most business leaders appreciate that a company’s key stakeholders are essential to its efficient operation and growth, and that its overall mission, goals, and limited resources will force its managers to make choices by prioritizing stakeholders’ needs. In this section, we look at ethical ways in which business managers can begin to make those decisions.
The Ethical Basis of Stakeholders’ Claims
Stakeholder claims vary in their significance for a firm. According to Donaldson and Preston,5 there are three theoretical approaches to considering stakeholder claims: a descriptive approach, an instrumental approach, and a normative approach. The descriptive approach sees the company as composed of various stakeholder groups, each with its own interests. These interests impinge on the company to a greater or lesser degree; thus, the main point of the descriptive approach is to develop the most accurate model and act on it in ways that weigh and balance these interests as fairly as possible. The instrumental approach connects stakeholder management and financial outcomes, proposing that appropriate management of stakeholder interests is important and useful because it contributes to a positive bottom line.
The normative approach considers stakeholders as ends in themselves rather than simply as means to achieve better financial results. According to Donaldson and Preston, in the normative approach “the interests of all stakeholders are of intrinsic value. That is, each group of stakeholders merits consideration for its own sake and not merely because of its ability to further the interests of some other group, such as the shareowners.”6 This approach is the one that most appropriately represents ethical stakeholder theory, according to Donaldson and Preston, and it places an objective consideration of all stakeholders’ interests ahead of fiscal considerations alone.
We can also view these three approaches to stakeholders as occupying levels of increasing comprehensiveness. At the lowest level is the descriptive approach, which merely sets the stage for consideration of stakeholder claims and concerns. The instrumental aspect combines a consideration for profit along with other stakeholder concerns and attempts to balance these interests with particular attention to the way the company and its shareholders might be affected. The normative approach takes the most comprehensive view of the organization and its stakeholders, putting the focus squarely on stakeholders. Although Donaldson and Preston stress that the descriptive and instrumental approaches are integral to stakeholder theory, they contend that the fundamental basis of stakeholder theory is normative.7
Of course, these are theoretical approaches, and the extent to which any of them is implemented in a given company will vary. But unfortunately, the decision to disconnect from stakeholders is both real and expensive for a corporation. A 2005 survey of customers of 362 companies is demonstrative: “Only 8% of customers described their experience as ‘superior.’ However, 80% of the companies surveyed believe that the experience they have been providing is indeed superior.”8 Another study found significant links between levels of customer satisfaction and a firm’s performance, including rates of retention, overall revenue, and stock price.9 Enlightened companies spend time and resources testing their stakeholders’ concerns and eliciting their feedback while there is time to incorporate it into management decisions.
LINK TO LEARNING
This article discusses a recent video showing United Airlines removing ticketed, seated passengers from a plane to make room for four of its employees who needed to fly to another airport igniting debate over company policies and how they are implemented. This related article about the United Airlines overbooking situation provides some more information.
Upon being asked to deplane and take a later flight, should a customer who has booked the fare for the earlier flight have the right to refuse? Which stakeholder(s) do you think United valued more in this incident? Why?
Airlines overbook to ensure that despite any no-shows or cancellations, any given flight will have as many occupied seats as possible, because an unoccupied seat represents lost revenue. In terms of valuing stakeholders, does this strategy make sense to you? Why or why not?
A classic example of negative consumer reaction is the response that met Ford Motor Company’s 1958 introduction of the Edsel (Figure 3.3). Ford had done extensive research to create a luxury family sedan aimed at an upper-income segment of the market then dominated by Buick, Oldsmobile, and Chrysler. However, the market did not identify Ford products with high status, and the Edsel did not last three years in the marketplace. Ford failed to serve the investors, suppliers, and employees who depended on the company for their livelihoods. Of course, the corporation survived that failure, perhaps because it learned the lessons of stakeholder management the hard way.
Entertainers too (as well as their clubs, venues, and studios) are sensitive to the views of their stakeholders—that is, fans and the consuming public as a whole. Scarlett Johansson recently signed on to play the role of Dante “Tex” Gill in a biographical film (or “biopic”). Gill had been identified as female at birth but spent much of his professional career self-identifying as male. When the casting was announced in July 2018, it provoked a controversy among transgender rights groups, and within a few days, Johansson announced she had withdrawn from the role.10 “In light of recent ethical questions raised surrounding my casting as Dante Tex Gill, I have decided to respectfully withdraw my participation in the project. . . . While I would have loved the opportunity to bring Dante’s story and transition to life, I understand why many feel he should be portrayed by a transgender person, and I am thankful that this casting debate, albeit controversial, has sparked a larger conversation about diversity and representation in film,” she said.11
Defining Stakeholder Categories
To better understand stakeholder theory and, ultimately, manage stakeholder claims and expectations, it may be helpful to take a closer look at categories of stakeholders. One way to categorize stakeholders is by defining their impact. For example, regulatory stakeholders including stockholders, legislatures, government regulators, and boards of directors are enabling stakeholders because they permit the firm to function. Normative stakeholders such as competitors and peers influence the norms or informal rules of the industry; functional stakeholders are those who influence inputs, such as suppliers, employees, and unions, and those influencing outputs such as customers, distributors, and retailers. Finally, diffused stakeholders include other organizations such as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), voters, and mass media organizations with less direct relationships but potential for meaningful impacts on firms (Figure 3.4).12 | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_Ethics/Book%3A_Business_Ethics_(OpenStax)/03%3A_Defining_and_Prioritizing_Stakeholders/3.03%3A_Weighing_Stakeholder_Claims.txt |
Learning objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Identify the factors that affect stakeholder prioritization
• Explain why priorities will vary based upon the interest and power of the stakeholder
• Describe how to prioritize stakeholder claims, particularly when they conflict
If we carry the idea of stakeholder to the extreme, every person is a stakeholder of every company. The first step in stakeholder management, the process of accurately assessing stakeholder claims so an organization can manage them effectively, is therefore to define and prioritize stakeholders significant to the firm. Then, it must consider their claims.
Given that there are numerous types of stakeholders, how do managers balance these claims? Ethically, no group should be treated better than another, and managers should respond to as many stakeholders as possible. However, time and resource limitations require organizations to prioritize claims as stakeholder needs rise and fall.
Stakeholder Prioritization
First, it may help to speak to the expectations that any stakeholders may have of a particular business or institution. It depends on particular stakeholders, of course, but we can safely say that all stakeholders expect a form of satisfaction from an organization. If these stakeholders are shareholders (stockowners), then they generally wish to see a high return on their purchase of company shares. If, on the other hand, they are employees, they typically hope for interesting tasks, a safe work environment, job security, and rewarding pay and benefits. If, yet again, the stakeholders are members of the community surrounding a business, they usually wish that the company not harm the physical environment or degrade the quality of life within it.
So the task confronting an organization’s management begins with understanding these multiple and sometimes conflicting expectations and ethically deciding which stakeholders to focus on and in what sequence, if not all stakeholders cannot be addressed simultaneously, that is, stakeholder prioritization. It helps to actively gather information about all key stakeholders and their claims. First, managers must establish that an individual with a concern is a member of a stakeholder group. For example, a brand may attract hundreds or thousands of mentions on Twitter each day. Which ones should be taken seriously as representative of key stakeholders? Brand managers look for patterns of communication and for context when deciding whether to engage with customers in the open expanses of social media platforms.
Link to Learning
Read this article “Five Questions to Identify Key Stakeholders” in the Harvard Business Review to learn more about identifying your key stakeholders.
After establishing that a key stakeholder group is being represented, the manager should identify what the company needs from the stakeholder. This simply helps clarify the relationship. If nothing is needed immediately or for the foreseeable future, this does not mean the stakeholder group does not matter, but it can be a good indication that the stakeholder need not be prioritized at the moment.
Note that managers are often considering these questions in real time, usually with limited resources and power, and that circumstances can change in a matter of moments. In one sense, all representatives of a company are constantly practicing stakeholder prioritization. It need not be a formal process. At times, it is a question of which supplier should be praised or prodded or which customer has a larger order to fill or a special request that might be met. What matters is establishing that someone is a stakeholder, that the concern is currently important, and that the relationship matters for the growth of the business.
If the firm cannot survive without this particular stakeholder or replace him or her relatively easily, then such a person should have priority over other stakeholders who do not meet this criterion. Key suppliers, lucrative or steady customers, and influential regulators must all be attended to but not necessarily capitulated to. For example, a local state legislator representing the district where a business is located may be urging the legislature to raise business taxes to generate more revenue for the state. By him- or herself, the legislator may not have sufficient political clout to persuade the legislature to raise taxes. Yet wise business leaders will not ignore such a representative and will engage in dialogue with him or her. The legislator may eventually be able to win others over to the cause, so it behooves perceptive management to establish a working relationship with him or her.
Not every stakeholder can command constant attention, and no firm has unlimited time or resources, so in one sense, this prioritizing is simply the business of management. Combine the inherent priority of the stakeholder relationship with the level of exigency, that is, the level of urgency of a stakeholder claim, to arrive at a decision about where to begin focusing resources and efforts.
Stakeholder prioritization will also vary based on time and circumstance. For example, a large retailer facing aggressive new competitors must prioritize customer service and value. With Amazon acquiring Whole Foods and drastically cutting prices, the grocery chain’s customer base may very well grow because prices could become more attractive while the perception of high quality may persist. Potential customers may no longer need to economize by shopping elsewhere.17 Whole Foods’ competitors, on the other hand, must now prioritize customer service, whereas before they could compete on price alone. Whole Foods can become a serious competitor to discount grocery stores like ALDI and Walmart.
Another way to prioritize stakeholder relationships is with a matrix of their power and interest. As Figure 3.5 shows, a stakeholder group can be weighted on the basis of its influence (or power) over and interest in its relationship to the firm. A stakeholder with a high level of both power and interest is a key stakeholder. If this type of stakeholder group encounters a problem, its priority rises.
On the supplier side, a small farmer or seasonal supplier could fall in the low-power, low-interest category, particularly if that farmer were selling various retailers produce from his or her fields. However, if that same farmer could connect to a huge purveyor like Kroger, he or she could sell this giant customer its entire crop. This relationship places the farmer in the low-power, high-interest category, meaning he or she will most likely have to make price adjustments to make the sale.
The model’s focus on power reveals a need for any company to carefully cultivate relationships with stakeholders. Not all stakeholders have equal influence with a firm. Still, no organization can blithely ignore any stakeholder without potentially debilitating economic consequences. For example, now that Amazon has acquired Whole Foods and increased the size of the customer stakeholder group, it must also find ways to personalize its communications with this group, because personal service has traditionally been more a hallmark of Whole Foods than of Amazon.
Successful business practice today hinges on the ethical acknowledgement of stakeholder claims. It is the right thing to do. Not only that, it also engenders satisfied stakeholders, whether they be customers, stockowners, employees, or the community in which a firm is located. Naturally, satisfied stakeholders lead to the financial well-being of a company.
Managing Stakeholder Expectations
Stakeholder management does not work if the firm’s prioritizing decisions are based on flawed, inaccurate, or incomplete information. Some tools are available to help. MITRE is a nonprofit research and development consulting firm that helps governments and other large organizations with many stakeholders conduct stakeholder assessment. The MITRE Guide to Stakeholder Assessment and Management lays out a five-step system for stakeholder management.18
Overall, MITRE stresses that an organization must sustain trust with its stakeholders through communication efforts. To accomplish this, however, stakeholders must first be clearly identified and then periodically reidentified, because stakeholder cohorts change in size and significance over time. The concerns or claims of stakeholders are identified through data gathering and analysis. Sometimes a firm will conduct surveys or focus groups with customers, suppliers, or other stakeholders. Other times, product usage data will be available as a function of sales figures and marketing data. For software in web and mobile applications, for example, user data may be readily available to show how stakeholders are using the company’s digital services or why they appear to be purchasing its products. Another source of stakeholder data is social media, where firms can monitor topics stakeholders of all types are talking about. What matters is gathering relevant and accurate data and ensuring that key stakeholders are providing it. In the next step, managers present the results of their research to the company’s decision makers or make decisions themselves.19 Finally, stakeholders should be informed that their concerns were taken into consideration and that the company will continue to heed them. In other words, the firm should convey to them that they are important.
Link to learning
One methodology for prioritizing stakeholder claims is the Stakeholder Circle, developed by Dr. Linda Bourne. Visit the Stakeholder Management website detailing the five key actions an organization can take using this model to learn more.
WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
Malaysia Airlines
Malaysia Airlines is owned by individual investors and the Malaysian government, which took over the company in 2014 after two mysterious jet crashes. The airline has lost money and struggled since that time, going through three CEOs. The current CEO, Peter Bellew, is experienced in tourism and travel and has been asked to cut costs and increase revenues. His strategy is to maximize the number of Malaysian Muslims (who make up more than 60 percent of the population) flying to Mecca for hajj, the annual holy pilgrimage and an obligation for all Muslims who are well enough to travel and can afford the trip. Bellew plans to provide charter flights to make the pilgrimage easier on travelers.20
Critical Thinking
• Describe the passenger stakeholder claims on Malaysia Airlines.
• Describe the government stakeholder claims on Malaysia Airlines.
• What would you advise Bellew to identify as a priority—the demand from pilgrims for easy travel at a reduced price or the demand from the government for profitable operations? Explain your answer.
Because every firm, no matter its mission, ultimately depends on the marketplace, its clients or customers are often high-priority stakeholders. Ethically, the company owes allegiance to customer stakeholders, but it also has an opportunity and perhaps a responsibility to shape their expectations in ways that encourage its growth and allow it to continue to provide for employees, suppliers, distributors, and shareholders.
We should note, too, that nonprofit organizations are beholden, for the most part, to the same rules that apply to for-profits for their sustainability. Nonprofits typically provide a service that is just as dependent on cash flow as is the service or product of a for-profit. A significant difference, of course, is that the client or customer for a nonprofit’s service often is unable to pay for it. Therefore, the necessary cash must come from other sources, often in the form of donations or endowments. Hence, those who give to philanthropies constitute essential stakeholders for these nonprofits and must be acknowledged as such.
Wesley E. Lindahl, who studies and advises nonprofits, notes that philanthropies have an ethical obligation to safeguard the donations that come their way. He likens this to a stewardship, because the monies given to charities are gifts intended for others very much in need of them. So those who manage nonprofits have a special obligation to ensure that these donations are well spent and distributed appropriately.21
There are three major components to bringing about change in customer or donor expectations: (1) customer receptivity to a product or service offered by the company, (2) acknowledgement of the gap between customer receptivity and corporate action to reduce it, and (3) a system to bring about and maintain change in customer desires to bring it in line with precisely what the corporation can deliver. One example of firms altering customers’ habits is the evolution of beverage containers. Most soft drinks and other beverages such as beer were once delivered in reusable glass bottles. Customers were motivated to return the bottles by the refund of a minimal cash deposit originally paid at the time of purchase. The bottles had to be thick and sturdy for reuse, which resulted in substantial transportation costs, due to their weight.
To reduce these costs of manufacturing and transportation, manufacturers first redesigned production to be local, and then, when technology allowed, introduced aluminum cans and pull tabs. Eventually, the cardboard carton that held bottles together was replaced by a plastic set of rings to hold aluminum cans together. Now, however, customers and other stakeholders object to the hazard these rings present to wildlife. Some firms have responded by redesigning their packaging yet again. This ongoing process of developing new packaging, listening to feedback, and redesigning the product over time ultimately changed stakeholder behavior and modernized the beverage industry. Stakeholders are essential parts of a cycle of mutual interest and involvement.
ETHICS ACROSS TIME AND CULTURES
Going King Sized in the United States and Crashing on the Couch in China
IKEA is a multinational corporation with a proven track record of listening to stakeholders in ways that improve relationships and the bottom line. The Swedish company has had success in the United States and, more recently, in China by adapting to local cultural norms. For example, in the United States, IKEA solicited the concerns of many of its approximately fifty thousand in-store customers and even visited some at home. The company learned, among other things, that U.S. customers assumed IKEA featured only European-size beds. In fact, IKEA has offered king-size beds for years; they simply were not on display. IKEA then began to focus on displaying furniture U.S. consumers were more familiar with and so grew its bedroom furniture sales in 2012 and 2013.22
As IKEA expands into China, it has welcomed a different trend—people taking naps on the furniture on display. “While snoozing is prohibited at IKEA stores elsewhere, the Swedish retailer has long permitted Chinese customers to doze off, rather than alienate shoppers accustomed to sleeping in public.”23 Adapting to local culture, as these examples demonstrate, is one way a company can respond to stakeholder wishes. The firm abandons some of its usual protocols in exchange for increasing consumer identification with its products.
IKEA appears to have learned what many companies with a global presence have concluded: Stakeholders, and particularly consumer-stakeholders, have different expectations in different geographic settings. Because a firm’s ethical obligations include listening and responding to the needs of stakeholders, it behooves all international companies to appreciate the varying perspectives that geography and culture may produce among them.
Critical Thinking
• Does IKEA have a system to influence stakeholder behavior? If so, describe the system and explain who changes more under the system, IKEA or its consumers.
• Does IKEA’s strategy reflect a normative approach to managing stakeholder claims? If so, how?
The ethical responsibility of a stakeholder is to make known his or her preferences to the companies he or she purchases from or relies on. Such communication can lead to an increased commitment on the part of corporations to improve. To the extent they do so, companies act more ethically in responding to the wishes and needs of their stakeholders. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_Ethics/Book%3A_Business_Ethics_(OpenStax)/03%3A_Defining_and_Prioritizing_Stakeholders/3.04%3A_Ethical_Decision-Making_and_Prioritizing_Stakeholders.txt |
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Define corporate social responsibility and the triple bottom line approach
• Compare the sincere application of CSR and its use as merely a public relations tool
• Explain why CSR ultimately benefits both companies and their stakeholders
Thus far, we have discussed stakeholders mostly as individuals and groups outside the organization. This section focuses on the business firm as a stakeholder in its environment and examines the concept of a corporation as a socially responsible entity conscious of the influences it has on society. That is, we look at the role companies, and large corporations in particular, play as active stakeholders in communities. Corporations, by their sheer size, affect their local, regional, national, and global communities. Creating a positive impact in these communities may mean providing jobs, strengthening economies, or driving innovation. Negative impacts may include doing damage to the environment, forcing the exit of smaller competitors, and offering poor customer service, to name a few. This section examines the concept of a corporation as a socially responsible entity conscious of the influences it has on society.
Corporate Social Responsibility Defined
In recent years, many organizations have embraced corporate social responsibility (CSR), a philosophy (introduced in Why Ethics Matter,) in which the company’s expected actions include not only producing a reliable product, charging a fair price with fair profit margins, and paying a fair wage to employees, but also caring for the environment and acting on other social concerns. Many corporations work on prosocial endeavors and share that information with their customers and the communities where they do business. CSR, when conducted in good faith, is beneficial to corporations and their stakeholders. This is especially true for stakeholders that have typically been given low priority and little voice, such as the natural environment and community members who live near corporate sites and manufacturing facilities.
CSR in its ideal form focuses managers on demonstrating the social good of their new products and endeavors. It can be framed as a response to the backlash corporations face for a long track record of harming environments and communities in their efforts to be more efficient and profitable. Pushback is not new. Charles Dickens wrote about the effects of the coal economy on nineteenth-century England and shaped the way we think about the early industrial revolution. The twentieth-century writer Chinua Achebe, among many others, wrote about colonization and its transformative and often painful effect on African cultures. Rachel Carson first brought public attention to corporation’s chemical poisoning of U.S. waterways in her 1962 book Silent Spring.
Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963) critiqued the way twentieth-century industrialization boxed women into traditional roles and limited their agency. Kate Chopin’s novel The Awakening (1899) and the nineteenth-century novels of Jane Austen had already outlined how limited options were for women despite massive social and economic shifts in the industrializing West. Stakeholder communities left out of or directly harmed by the economic revolution have demanded that they be able to influence corporate and governmental economic practices to benefit more directly from corporate growth as well as entrepreneurship opportunities. The trend to adopt CSR may represent an opportunity for greater engagement and involvement by groups mostly ignored until now by the wave of corporate economic growth reshaping the industrialized world.
CSR and the Environment
Corporations have responded to stakeholder concerns about the environment and sustainability. In 1999, Dow Jones began publishing an annual list of companies for which sustainability was important. Sustainability is the practice of preserving resources and operating in a way that is ecologically responsible in the long term.24 The Dow Jones Sustainability Indices “serve as benchmarks for investors who integrate sustainability considerations into their portfolios.”25 There is a growing awareness that human actions can, and do, harm the environment. Destruction of the environment can ultimately lead to reduction of resources, declining business opportunities, and lowered quality of life. Enlightened business stakeholders realize that profit is only one positive effect of business operations. In addition to safeguarding the environment, other ethical contributions that stakeholders could lobby corporate management to make include establishing schools and health clinics in impoverished neighborhoods and endowing worthwhile philanthropies in the communities where companies have a presence.
Other stakeholders, such as state governments, NGOs, citizen groups, and political action committees in the United States apply social and legal pressure on businesses to improve their environmental practices. For example, the state of California in 2015 enacted a set of laws, referred to as the California Transparency in Supply Chains Act, which requires firms to report on the working conditions of the employees of their suppliers. The law requires only disclosures, but the added transparency is a step toward holding U.S. and other multinational corporations responsible for what goes on before their products appear in shiny packages in stores. The legislators who wrote California’s Supply Chains Act recognize that consumer stakeholders are likely to bring pressure to bear on companies found to use slave labor in their supply chains, so forcing disclosure can bring about change because corporations would rather adjust their relationships with supply-chain stakeholders than risk alienating massive numbers of customers.26
As instances of this type of pressure on corporations increase around the world, stakeholder groups become simultaneously less isolated and more powerful. Firms need customers. Customers need employment, and the state needs taxes just as firms need resources. All stakeholders exist in an interdependent network of relationships, and what is most needed is a sustainable system that enables all types of key stakeholders to establish and apply influence.
People, Planet, Profit: The Triple Bottom Line
How can corporations and their stakeholders measure some of the effects of CSR programs? The triple bottom line (TBL) offers a way. TBL is a measure described in 1994 by John Elkington, a British business consultant (Figure 3.6), and it forces us to reconsider the very concept of the “bottom line.” Most businesses, and most consumers for that matter, think of the bottom line as a shorthand expression of their financial well-being. Are they making a profit, staying solvent, or falling into debt? That is the customary bottom line, but Elkington suggests that businesses need to consider not just one but rather three measures of their true bottom line: the economic and also the social and environmental results of their actions. The social and environmental impacts of doing business, called people and planet in the TBL, are the externalities of their operations that companies must take into account.
The TBL concept recognizes that external stakeholders consider it a corporation’s responsibility to go beyond making money. If increasing wealth damages the environment or makes people sick, society demands that the corporation revise its methods or leave the community. Society, businesses, and governments have realized that all stakeholders have to work for the common good. When they are successful at acting in a socially responsible way, corporations will and should claim credit. In acting according to the TBL model and promoting such acts, many corporations have reinvested their efforts and their profits in ways that can ultimately lead to the development of a sustainable economic system.
CSR as Public Relations Tool
On the other hand, for some, CSR is nothing more than an opportunity for publicity as a firm tries to look good through various environmentally or socially friendly initiatives without making systemic changes that will have long-term positive effects. Carrying out superficial CSR efforts that merely cover up systemic ethics problems in this inauthentic way (especially as it applies to the environment), and acting simply for the sake of public relations is called greenwashing. To truly understand a company’s approach toward the environment, we need to do more than blindly accept the words on its website or its advertising.
CASES FROM THE REAL WORLD
When an Image of Social Responsibility May Be Greenwashing
Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream started as a small ice cream stand in Vermont and based its products on pure, locally supplied dairy and agricultural products. The company grew quickly and is now a global brand owned by Unilever, an international consumer goods company co-headquartered in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, and London, United Kingdom.
According to its statement of values, Ben and Jerry’s mission is threefold: “Our Product Mission drives us to make fantastic ice cream—for its own sake. Our Economic Mission asks us to manage our Company for sustainable financial growth. Our Social Mission compels us to use our Company in innovative ways to make the world a better place.”
With its expansion, however, Ben and Jerry’s had to get its milk—the main raw ingredient of ice cream—from larger suppliers, most of which use confined-animal feeding operations (CAFOs). CAFOs have been condemned by animal-rights activists as harmful to the well-being of the animals. Consumer activists also claim that CAFOs contribute significantly to pollution because they release heavy concentrations of animal waste into the ground, water sources, and air.
Critical Thinking
• Does the use of CAFOs compromise Ben and Jerry’s mission? Why or why not?
• Has the growth of Ben and Jerry’s contributed to any form of greenwashing by the parent company, Unilever? If so, how?
Link to learning
Read Ben and Jerry’s Statement of Mission for more on the company’s values and mission.
Coca-Cola provides another example of practices some would identify as greenwashing. The company states the following on its website:
“Engaging our diverse stakeholders in long-term dialogue provides important input that informs our decision making, and helps us continuously improve and make progress toward our 2020 sustainability goals . . . We are committed to ongoing stakeholder engagement as a core component of our business and sustainability strategies, our annual reporting process, and our activities around the world. As active members of the communities where we live and work, we want to strengthen the fabric of our communities so that we can prosper together.” 27
Let us take a close look at this statement. “Engaging stakeholders in long-term dialogue” appears to describe an ongoing and reciprocal relationship that helps improvement be continuous. Commitment to “stakeholder engagement as a core component of business and sustainability strategies” appears to focus the company on the requirement to conduct clear, honest, transparent reporting.
Currently 20 percent of the people on Earth consume a Coca-Cola product each day, meaning a very large portion of the global population belongs to the company’s consumer stakeholder group. Depending on the process and location, it is estimated that it takes more than three liters of water to produce a liter of Coke. Each day, therefore, millions of liters of water are removed from the Earth to make Coke products, so the company’s water footprint can endanger the water supplies of both employee and neighbor stakeholders. For example, in Chiapas, Mexico, the Coca-Cola bottling plant consumes more than one billion liters of water daily, but only about half the population has running water.28 Mexico leads the world in per capita consumption of Coke products.
If consumers are aware only of Coca-Cola’s advertising campaigns and corporate public relations writings online, they will miss the very real concerns about water security associated with it and other corporations producing beverages in similar fashion. Thus it requires interest on the part of stakeholders to continue to drive real CSR practices and to differentiate true CSR efforts from greenwashing.
The Ultimate Stakeholder Benefit
CSR used in good faith has the potential to reshape the orientation of multinational corporations to their stakeholders. By positioning themselves as stakeholders in a broader global community, conscientious corporations can be exemplary organizations. They can demonstrate interest and influence on a global scale and improve the way the manufacture of goods and delivery of services serve the local and global environment. They can return to communities as much as they extract and foster automatic financial reinvestment so that people willing and able to work for them can afford not only the necessities but a chance to pursue happiness.
In return, global corporations will have sustainable business models that look beyond short-term growth forecasts. They will have a method of operating and a framework for thinking about sustained growth with stakeholders and as stakeholders. Ethical stakeholder relationships systematically grow wealth and opportunity in dynamic fashion. Without them, the global consumer economy may fail. On an alternate and ethical path of prosperity, today’s supplier is a consumer in the next generation and Earth is still inhabitable after many generations of dynamic change and continued global growth. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_Ethics/Book%3A_Business_Ethics_(OpenStax)/03%3A_Defining_and_Prioritizing_Stakeholders/3.05%3A_Corporate_Social_Responsibility_%28CSR%29.txt |
Section Summaries:
3.1 Adopting a Stakeholder Orientation
An organization has duties and responsibilities with regard to each stakeholder; however, the implicit social contract between business and society means that meeting legal requirements might support only minimal ethical standards. Society on the whole and in the long run requires that business consider a broader range of duties in its relationships with key stakeholders.
3.2 Weighing Stakeholder Claims
There are three approaches to stakeholder theory: the descriptive approach, the instrumental approach, and the normative approach. The normative approach takes the most comprehensive view of the organization and its stakeholders and is the fundamental basis of stakeholder theory. Organizations can analyze stakeholder claims by classifying them on the basis of their intensity and impact on the firm, as well as on the basis of their relationship to the firm. Such classifications may include enabling stakeholders, normative stakeholders, functional stakeholders, and diffused stakeholders. Using the lens of the four “publics” (the nonpublic, the latent, the aware, and the active), we can also understand a stakeholder claim on the basis of the public’s degree of awareness of a problem and ability to do something about it.
3.3 Ethical Decision-Making and Prioritizing Stakeholders
Business leaders prioritize those stakeholders who have immediate needs or high urgency or great significance to the organization, and the identity of these groups may shift over time. Stakeholders can also be prioritized on the basis of their relationship to the organization using a matrix of their power and interest. Steps in the MITRE stakeholder management process are to establish trust, identify stakeholders, gather and analyze appropriate data, present information to management, and let stakeholders know they matter. Because customers are often considered high-priority stakeholders, it can be essential for corporations and nonprofit organizations to manage any expectations that customers (or donors) may have.
3.4 Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
Most organizations must practice genuine corporate social responsibility to be successful in the modern marketplace. The triple bottom line places people and the planet on equal standing with profit in the mission of an organization. The genuine practice of CSR, unlike greenwashing, requires a commitment to an additional stakeholder, the planet, whose continued healthy existence is essential for any organization to operate.
Key Terms
amenities
resources made available to employees in addition to wages, salary, and other standard benefits
descriptive approach
a theory that views the company as composed of various stakeholders, each with its own interests
diffused stakeholder
a stakeholder with an interest in a company’s decisions and whose impacts on a firm can be large even if the relationship is generally weaker than other types
enabling stakeholder
a stakeholder who permits an organization to function within the economic and legal system
ethical maximum
the strongest action a company can choose to behave ethically in a given situation
ethical minimum
the least a company might do to claim it holds an ethically positive position
exigency
the level of urgency of a stakeholder claim
functional stakeholder
a stakeholder whose relationships influence or govern an organization’s inputs and outputs
greenwashing
carrying out superficial CSR efforts that merely cover up systemic ethics problems for the sake of public relations
instrumental approach
a theory proposing that good management of stakeholders is important because it can help the bottom line
normative approach
a theory that considers stakeholders as ends unto themselves rather than means to achieve a better bottom line
normative stakeholder
a stakeholder in the organization’s industry who influences its norms or informal rules
social responsibility of business
the view that stakeholders are not the means to the end (profit) but are ends in and of themselves as human beings
stakeholder claim
a particular stakeholder’s interest in a business decision
stakeholder management
the process of accurately assessing stakeholder claims so an organization can manage them effectively
stakeholder prioritization
the process of deciding which stakeholders to focus on and in what sequence
triple bottom line (TBL)
a measure that accounts for an organization’s results in terms of its effects on people, planet, and profits | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_Ethics/Book%3A_Business_Ethics_(OpenStax)/03%3A_Defining_and_Prioritizing_Stakeholders/3.06%3A_Summary.txt |
This chapter looks at sustainability and CSR from the perspective of a diverse constituency, including managers, employees, investors, government regulators, competitors, customers and clients, the community, and the environment. If you were a CEO, would you be willing to commit the time and money to incorporate CSR the right way in your company? Why might some businesses hesitate to use a nemawashi-style approach?
04: Three Special Stakeholders - Society the Environment and Government
Good business leaders know that a commitment to sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR) requires a strong foundation, one upon which a company can build and expand its commitment to every aspect of the organization.1 Companies that truly intend to incorporate CSR into their long-term strategy start by soliciting input from a large and diverse group of stakeholders, followed by a transparent process of implementation, commitment, and enforcement. Corporate social responsibility is more than just another policy; it’s a philosophy, capturing the essence of nemawashi, or “building strong roots” (Figure 4.1). CSR also demonstrates that a company is willing to commit the financial and human resources necessary to make it a reality, rather than just a talking point.
This chapter looks at sustainability and CSR from the perspective of a diverse constituency, including managers, employees, investors, government regulators, competitors, customers and clients, the community, and the environment. If you were a CEO, would you be willing to commit the time and money to incorporate CSR the right way in your company? Why might some businesses hesitate to use a nemawashi-style approach?
4.02: Corporate Law and Corporate Responsibility
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Explain how investors and owners benefit from doing business as a corporate entity
• Define the concept of shareholder primacy
• Discuss the conflict between shareholder primacy and corporate social responsibility
Corporate law, which enables businesses to take advantage of a legal structure that separates liability from ownership and control, was introduced in most states in the nineteenth century. The separation of ownership and liability means that, unlike sole proprietors and members of partnerships, owners of modern business corporations enjoy the advantage of limited liability for the corporation’s debts and other financial obligations, a concept at the heart of a U.S. economic system built on capitalism.
The Advantages of Corporate Status
The concept of limited liability means that the owners (shareholders or stockholders) of corporations, as well as directors and managers, are protected by laws stating that in most circumstances, their losses in case of business failure cannot exceed the amount they paid for their shares of ownership (Figure 4.2). The same protection applies to owners of some other business entities such as limited liability companies (LLCs). An LLC is similar to a corporation in that owners have limited liability; however, it is organized and managed more like a partnership. For purposes of granting owners the protection of limited liability, several types of entities are possible within each state, including a corporation, an LLC, a limited liability partnership, and a limited partnership.
Without state incorporation laws, business owners would be subject to personal liability for business losses, which could create several disadvantages. Ownership would be riskier, so owners could have more difficulty selling their ownership interests. They could also be subject to a pro rata share of income taxes. These types of personal financial liability could limit the ability of businesses to raise capital by selling stock. Limited liability, by reducing the amount a shareholder can lose from investing in a corporation by buying its stock, increases the investment’s attractiveness to potential new shareholders. Ultimately, corporate status increases both the potential number of willing investors and the amount of capital they are likely to invest. After all, would you be willing to invest your money in a business if you knew not only that you could lose the capital you invested, but also that you could be sued personally for any and all debts of the business?
Corporate status is conferred upon a business by state law (statute) when a state issues the business a charter of incorporation. The protective shield of corporate status enables businesses to socialize their losses in a way that traditional proprietorships and partnerships are not able to do. Socializing a loss is a means to amortize it or spread it out over society in general, so the owners do not absorb it individually. Amortization is similar to the idea behind insurance, in which many people bear a small share in a loss, rather than one or a few people bearing all of it. Therefore, it is accurate to say that society enables corporations to exist, both by passing laws that create them and by limiting the financial risk exposure of their owners. Since our society grants for-profit businesses the right to incorporate and make unlimited profits with limited liability, a reasonable person could conclude that corporations owe a debt to society in return. Corporations’ quid pro quo—a Latin term meaning this for that—is acceptance of corporate social responsibility, to benefit the many stakeholders to whom corporations may owe a duty, including customers, the community, the environment, employees, media, and the government (Figure 4.3).
Balancing the Many Responsibilities of a Corporation
A longstanding ethical debate about corporate social responsibility asks whether, in fact, a corporation owes a duty to society or only to its shareholders. The line of important court cases shaping this issue spans almost a century and includes a series of landmark cases involving the Ford Motor Company, the Wrigley Company, and Hobby Lobby.
In Dodge v. Ford Motor Company (1919), the Michigan Supreme Court ruled in favor of shareholder primacy, saying that founder Henry Ford must operate the Ford Motor Company primarily in the profit-maximizing interests of its shareholders.2 In the traditional corporate model, a corporation earns revenue and, after deducting expenses, distributes the profits to shareholders in the form of dividends. Ford had announced that his company would stop paying big dividends to shareholders and instead would use its profits to achieve several other goals, including improving product quality, expanding company facilities, and perhaps most surprisingly, lowering prices. Shareholders then sued Ford, asking the court to order Ford Motor Company to continue allocating the lion’s share of profits to high dividend payments. (It is ironic that the named shareholders who sued Ford were the Dodge brothers, former Ford suppliers who had recently started their own car company.)
At the trial, Ford (Figure 4.4) testified that he believed his company was sufficiently profitable to consider its broader obligation and engage in activities to benefit the public, including its workers and customers. This was a unique position for the founder and primary owner of a large corporation to take in the early twentieth century. During the rise of capitalism in the United States, most owners sought only to maximize profits, because that was the primary basis of their ability to attract capital and to reinvest in the company. Most investors were interested in a healthy return on their investment, rather than any type of social good. Shareholders contended that the concern Ford expressed for his workers and customers was both improper and illegal. The court agreed, and Ford was forced to abandon his managerial goal of balancing profits and realizing broader social goals.3
Ironically, in the same case, the court upheld the validity of a doctrine known as the business judgment rule, a common-law principle stating that officers, directors, and managers of a corporation are not liable for losses incurred when the evidence demonstrates that decisions were reasonable and made in good faith, which gives corporate management latitude in deciding how to run the company.4 Essentially, the business judgment rule holds that a court will not second-guess the decisions of a company’s managers or directors.
The legality and appropriateness of social responsibility as a business policy have followed a long and winding road since 1919. In the 1950s and 1960s, for example, some state courts rejected the shareholder primacy doctrine, instead ruling that a broad interpretation of the business judgment rule allowed managers discretion when it came to allocating company assets, including using them for programs demonstrating social awareness.
In 1968, in a highly publicized case, the court ruled that the board of directors of the Wrigley Company, of baseball and chewing gum fame, had a significant amount of discretion in determining how to balance the interests of stakeholders.5 The case of Shlensky v. Wrigley (1968) revolved around William Wrigley Jr.’s ownership of the Chicago Cubs. The baseball team had steadfastly refused to install the lights necessary for playing night games at Wrigley Field, even though every other stadium in major league baseball had lights. Instead, the Cubs had respected the local community’s belief that night baseball games and their associated lights would negatively affect the surrounding neighborhood, creating more opportunities for crime. In the view of some investors, however, the Cubs’ decision was depressing profits for shareholders. The shareholders brought a challenge against the Wrigley Company, but the Cubs’ owners won the case.
The Wrigley case represented a shift from the idea that corporations should pursue only the maximization of shareholder value, as had been held in the Ford Motor Company case.6 As a follow-up to this case, lights were finally installed at Wrigley Field in 1988, but only after the owner, William Wrigley III, had sold the team (in 1981) to the Tribune Company, a large media conglomerate that fought for six years to install lights. However, the case stands as precedent for the ability of management to balance various interests and profits when making decisions.
Dodge v. Ford (1919) and Shlensky v. Wrigley (1968) established the dynamic nature of the debate over the shareholder primacy doctrine and indicated a shift in both legal thought and precedent toward allowing management greater latitude in deciding how to best manage a corporation. A more recent decision, Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (2014), demonstrated what some may consider the double-edged sword of this latitude.7 In a 5–4 decision in favor of Hobby Lobby, the Supreme Court ruled that some corporations (those that are closely held by a few shareholders) can object on ethical, moral, or religious grounds to the Affordable Care Act’s rule that health insurance policies must cover various forms of contraception; such companies can elect not to offer such coverage.
The majority opinion in the case was written by Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Anthony Kennedy. In essence, the Court ruled that business owners could place their personal values first and follow their own agenda. The case received a great deal of publicity, some of it quite negative. Essentially, the Court held in this case that “corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else,”8similar to the ruling in the Chicago Cubs/Wrigley Field case.
The decision was a victory for the family that owns Hobby Lobby and has been praised by some and criticized by others for expanding the rights of corporate owners. Some analysts believe it represents more than just an expansion of management prerogative and enlarges the right of corporations to be treated as a “person.” The Hobby Lobby case can be interpreted to mean the people who control corporations (owners and/or management) may act on their own values in a way that might well be inconsistent with the interests of employees and other minority shareholders. In the majority decision, Alito wrote, “A corporation is simply a form of organization used by human beings to achieve desired ends. When rights, whether constitutional or statutory, are extended to corporations, the purpose is to protect the rights of these people.”9 Hobby Lobby is primarily owned by one family, and Alito’s comments seem to suggest that another interpretation would limit the applicability of the case to only closely held corporations, in which the majority of the stock is owned by a small number of shareholders.
Some might think Henry Ford’s attempt to forego profits in order to pay workers higher wages was a good choice but not find Hobby Lobby’s preference for limiting female employees’ health insurance benefits on religious grounds to be so. However, the law must be interpreted logically: If you give management the prerogative to put one social issue ahead of profits, should management not also be able to pursue any social issue of its choosing? An extension of the logic used in the Hobby Lobby case could lead to an expansion of the corporate rights of the personhood doctrine, for example, by allowing the individual right to privacy to become a shield against regulatory scrutiny by government agencies (although a corporation is not a natural person).
Another potential problem with giving management greater rights to pursue social agendas is protecting the interests of minority shareholders who disagree with the majority. Since corporation law is state law, the protections for minority shareholders vary widely, but owners of a small number of shares have little or no power to influence the choices the corporation makes. Some states allow cumulative voting for seats on the board of directors, which increases minority shareholder power. Others permit buyouts or dissolution statutes that apply to closely held corporations. However, in a traditional large corporation, none of these protections for minority interests are likely to apply. Of course, another option is for disgruntled shareholders to sell their shares.
The Two Sides of the Corporate Responsibility Debate
The issue of corporate social responsibility is the subject of high-level global discussion and debate among leaders in the public and private sectors, such as the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland. Numerous respected academic centers also hold forums on CSR, such as the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University and the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation.
As we have seen, slow but steady acceptance of CSR as a legitimate business concept has led to the legal and ethical position that corporate directors and managers may exercise business judgment and discretion in running a corporation. This development has come about for multiple reasons: a) the fact that society allows LLCs to exist, b) the sheer magnitude of the economic power corporations possess, and c) the desire of corporations to act responsibly in order to avoid more extensive government regulation. Managers are usually accorded significant latitude as long as they can point to a rational interpretation of their actions as benefiting the corporation as a whole in the long term. The combination of economic and political power in the world’s largest corporations necessitates that executives consider the interests of a broader set of stakeholders, rather than only stockholders. Indeed, social, environmental, and charitable programs often create shareholder value rather than take away from it. And honoring obligations to all stakeholders in a corporation—including those who own no stock shares—is the moral minimum a firm must undertake to satisfy the base threshold for acting ethically.
A recent study by researchers at Princeton and the University of Texas indicates that corporations benefit from following CSR policies in multiple ways.10 These benefits are collectively called a “halo effect” and can add value to the business. As an example, consumers frequently take CSR spending as an indirect indicator that a company’s products are of high quality, and often they are also more willing to buy these products as an indirect way of donating to a good cause.
However, some economists, such as Milton Friedman, Henry Hazlitt, Adam Smith, and others, have argued that CSR initiatives based on environmental or social justice instead limit shareholder wealth.11 The Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman(1912–2006) believed shareholders should be able decide for themselves what social initiatives to donate to or to take part in, rather than having a business executive decide for them. He argued that both government regulation and corporate social initiatives allow an outside third party to make these choices for shareholders.
In Friedman’s opinion, too much power assumed by corporate management in pursuing a social agenda might ultimately lead to a form of corporate autocracy. Supporters of the profit maximization principle believe it is a waste of corporate resources to reduce air pollution below the level required by law, to require vendors to participate in a sustainable supply chain initiative, or to pay lower-level employees a salary above the legally mandated minimum wage. Friedman asserted that “doing good deeds” is not the job of corporations; it is the right of those people who want to do them but should not be imposed on those who do not. His philosophy asserts that socially oriented initiatives are analogous to a form of outside regulation, resulting in higher costs to those corporations that follow socially responsible policies.
When Friedman was laying out this position in the 1970s, it reflected the prevailing opinion of a majority of U.S. shareholders and commentators on corporate law at that time. In the years since then, however, Friedman’s perspective has fallen into disfavor. This does not invalidate his point of view, but it does demonstrate that public opinion about corporations is subject to change over time. The subjectivity or relativity with which we view companies along with their perceived rights and responsibilities is a major theme this text addresses.
Do corporate directors owe a specific fiduciary duty to shareholders? A fiduciary duty is a very high level of legal responsibility owed by those who manage someone else’s money, which includes the duties of care and loyalty. Some examples of relationships that include a fiduciary duty are those between a trustee of an estate and its beneficiary, and between a fund manager and a client. According to the American Bar Association, the business judgment rule states “that as fiduciaries, corporate directors owe the corporation and its shareholders fiduciary duties of diligence and fidelity in performing their corporate duties. These fiduciary obligations include the duty of care and the duty of loyalty . . . the duty of care consists of an obligation to act on an informed basis; the duty of loyalty requires the board and its directors to maintain, in good faith, the corporation’s and its shareholders’ best interests over anyone else’s interests.”12 So it would seem that the answer is yes, corporate directors do have a specific fiduciary duty to promote the best interests of the corporation. But what exactly does that duty entail? Does that specifically mean returning profits to shareholders in the form of dividends? As we have seen, these questions have frequently spilled over into the courts, in the form of shareholder lawsuits challenging the actions of directors and/or management.
link to learning
Fiduciary duty also includes a duty of communication, as you can read in the oft-cited Meinhard v. Salmon case from 1928, where the New York Court of Appeals held that business partners may have a fiduciary duty to one another regarding business opportunities that arise during the course of the partnership.
UCLA law professor Steven Bainbridge wrote in the New York Times: “If directors were allowed to deviate from shareholder wealth maximization, they would inevitably turn to indeterminate balancing standards, which provide no accountability.”13 As support for his position, Bainbridge pointed to a 2010 case, eBay Domestic Holdings Inc. v. Newmark, in which a Delaware court ruled that corporate directors are bound by fiduciary duties and standards that include “acting to promote the value of the corporation for the benefit of its stockholders.”14
However, Lynn Stout, a professor at Cornell University Law School, wrote a contrasting piece in the New York Times in which she said, “There is a common belief that corporate directors have a legal duty to maximize corporate profits and shareholder value—even if this means skirting ethical rules, damaging the environment or harming employees. But this belief is utterly false. Modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not.”15 Her opinion is based in part on the Hobby Lobby decision referenced above.
Thus, while ethicists may agree that corporations do indeed owe social responsibilities to society, legal experts still differ over this point. The fact that we have seen inconsistent decisions from the courts over the last century confirms the lack of legal consensus. Of course, both legal and ethical opinion are always in flux, so where the debate stands today in no way indicates where it will be in ten years. On this issue, public opinion, as well as that of politicians and even the courts, is like a pendulum swinging back and forth, usually between points of view that are center-right or center-left, rather than at the extremes. However, the pendulum is reset every so often, and the arc within which it swings may differ from era to era.
CASES FROM THE REAL WORLD
Unilever “Enhancing Livelihoods” through Project Shakti
According to management guru Peter Drucker, whose ideas significantly contributed to the foundations of thought about the workings of the modern business corporation, workers “need to know the organization’s mission and to believe in it.” How do organizations ensure this commitment? By satisfying workers’ values.16 A program undertaken by Unilever, the Dutch-British multinational company co-headquartered in Rotterdam and London, illustrates the kind of values-oriented corporate endeavor Drucker describes. Project Shakti is a Unilever CSR initiative in India that links corporate social responsibility and financial opportunities for local women.17 It is considered a leading example of micro-entrepreneurship, and it expands the concept of sustainability to include not only environmental issues but also economic opportunity and financial networking in underdeveloped areas.
The goal, according to Unilever, is to give rural Shakti women the ability to earn money for themselves and their families as micro-entrepreneurs. Unilever’s subsidiary in India, Hindustan Lever, has started training programs for thousands of women in small towns and villages across India to help them understand how to run their own small sole proprietorships as distributors of the company’s products. With support from a team of rural sales managers, women who had been unable to support themselves are now becoming empowered by learning how a supply chain works, what products Hindustan Lever produces, and how to distribute them. The sales managers also act in a consulting capacity to help with business basics, money management, negotiations, and related skills that help the women run their businesses effectively.
The program was so successful that Unilever expanded it to include Shakti men, typically the sons, brothers, or husbands of the women already running businesses. The men, who are essentially like delivery drivers, sell Unilever products using bicycles for transportation, enabling them to cover a larger area than women cover on foot. The women spend most of their time running the business.
Project Shakti has enlisted more than 100,000 rural participants, which includes about 75,000 women. The project has changed their lives in ways that are profound, and not only because of the income earned. The women now have increased self-esteem based on a sense of empowerment, and they finally feel they have a place in Indian society. According to the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan, Project Shakti is one of the best and most sustainable ways the company can address women’s social concerns. It allows Unilever to conduct business in a socially responsible manner, helping women to help themselves while extending the reach of its products.
Critical Thinking
• Do you believe Unilever sponsors the Shakti program to help women, to boost its own profits, or both? Explain your answer.
• If Unilever has mixed motives, does this discredit the company in your eyes? Should it?
• How is this program an example of both corporate and personal sustainability?
• Could this model program be duplicated elsewhere, in another area and with different products? Why or why not?
It is clear that many different stakeholders value corporate social responsibility, including some investors, shareholders, employees, customers, and suppliers. Indeed, some businesses look at CSR as providing a perfect long-term strategic opportunity to strengthen company fundamentals while contributing to society at the same time. Effective corporate leaders will get try to get investors on board with the idea of CSR, avoiding or minimizing the potential for any litigation related to maximization of profits. And innovative companies are finding ways to create value for both the business and society simultaneously.18
Data analysis indicates that following a policy of corporate social responsibility does not have to mean losing money; on the contrary, many corporations that use an ethical approach to doing business are actually quite profitable. Mutual funds, recognizing that investors care about sustainable investing, now offer socially responsible funds, and third-party ratings companies, such as Morningstar, rate the funds so potential investors can evaluate how well the companies in them are meeting environment, social, and governance challenges. An example of such a fund is the Calvert Fund, which describes itself as a “leader in responsible investing with a mission to deliver superior long-term performance to our clients and to enable them to achieve positive impact.”19
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This website for Ellevest takes you to a digital investment platform run by women for women clients. The idea was launched in 2016 by Sallie Krawcheck, who had worked for large Wall Street firms and experienced first-hand the challenges of using an ethical approach to investing in traditional firms, especially for women.
The chart below analyzes mutual funds and their rate of return over several different time periods; included are examples of both general index funds and “socially responsible” or social index funds (Figure 4.5). If we compare the two general index funds at the top to the three funds at the bottom that invest in socially responsible companies, we see a competitive return on investment in the social funds. Social responsibility does not mean lower profitability.
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Being socially responsible does not necessarily mean being unprofitable. This video interview with George Pohle reveals how ensuring that CSR is at the core of a business’s strategy can yield financial benefits. Pohle is the vice president and global leader of the Business Strategy Consulting Division at IBM Global Business Services. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_Ethics/Book%3A_Business_Ethics_(OpenStax)/04%3A_Three_Special_Stakeholders_-_Society_the_Environment_and_Government/4.01%3A_Introduction.txt |
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Explain the concept of earth jurisprudence
• Evaluate the claim that sustainability benefits both business and the environment
• Identify and describe initiatives that attempt to regulate pollution or encourage businesses to adopt clean energy sources
Public concern for the natural environment is a relatively new phenomenon, dating from the 1960s and Rachel Carson’s seminal book Silent Spring, published in 1962. In 1992, Cormac Cullinan’s Wild Law proposed “earth justice” or “earth jurisprudence,” a concept underlying the law’s ability to protect the environment and effectively regulate businesses that pollute. The preoccupation with business success through investment in corporations, in contrast, is a much older concept, dating back at least to the creation of the British East India Company in 1600, and the widespread emergence of the corporation in Europe in the 1700s. If you were a business owner, would you be willing to spend company resources on environmental issues, even if not required to do so by law? If so, would you be able to justify your actions to shareholders and investment analysts as smart business decisions?
Environmental Justice
If a business activity harms the environment, what rights does the environment have to fight back? Corporations, although a form of business entity, are actually considered persons in the eyes of the law. Formally, corporate personhood, a concept we touched on in the preceding section, is the legal doctrine holding that a corporation, separate and apart from the people who are its owners and managers, has some of the same legal rights and responsibilities enjoyed by natural persons (physical humans), based on an interpretation of the word “person” in the Fourteenth Amendment.20
The generally accepted constitutional basis for allowing corporations to assert that they have rights similar to those of a natural person is that they are organizations of people who should not be deprived of their rights simply because they act collectively. Thus, treating corporations as persons who have legal rights allows them to enter into contracts with other parties and to sue and be sued in a court of law, along with numerous other legal rights. Before and after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010), which upheld the First Amendment free-speech rights of corporations, there have been numerous challenges to the concept of corporate personhood; however, none have been successful. Thus, U.S. law considers corporations to be persons with rights protected under key constitutional amendments, regulations, and case law, as well as responsibilities under the law, just as human persons have.
A question that logically springs from judicial interpretations of corporate personhood is whether the environment should enjoy similar legal status. Should the environment be considered the legal equivalent of a person, able to sue a business that pollutes it? Should environmental advocates have been able to file a lawsuit against BP (formerly British Petroleum) on behalf of the entire Gulf of Mexico for harm created by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill (discussed in more detail in the government regulation section of this chapter), which, at five million barrels, was ten times larger than the famous Exxon Valdez spill and remains the largest and most widespread ocean oil spill in the history of the global petroleum industry? Furthermore, the Deepwater Horizon spill affected not only thousands of businesses and people, but also the entirety of the Gulf of Mexico, which will suffer harm for years to come. Should the Gulf of Mexico have legal standing to sue, just like a person?
While U.S. jurisprudence has not yet officially recognized the concept that Earth has legal rights, there are examples of progress. Ecuador is now the first country to officially recognize the concept.21 The country rewrote its Constitution in 2008, and it includes a section entitled “Rights for Nature.” It recognizes nature’s right to exist, and people have the legal authority to enforce these rights on behalf of the ecosystem, which can itself be named as a litigant in a lawsuit.
Earth jurisprudence is an interpretation of law and governance based on the belief that society will be sustainable only if we recognize the legal rights of Earth as if it were a person. Advocates of earth jurisprudence assert that there is legal precedent for this position. As pointed out earlier in this chapter, it is not only natural persons who have legal rights, but also corporations, which are artificial entities. Our legal system also recognizes the rights of animals and has for several decades. According to earth jurisprudence advocates, officially recognizing the legal status of the environment is necessary to preserving a healthy planet for future generations, in particular because of the problem of “invisible pollution.”
Businesses that pollute the environment often hide what they are doing in order to avoid getting caught and facing economic, legal, or social consequences. The only witness may be Earth itself, which experiences the harmful impact of their invisible actions. For example, as revealed in a recent report,22 companies all over the world have for years been secretly burning toxic materials, such as carbon dioxide, at night. A company that needs to dump a toxic substance usually has three choices: dispose of it properly at a safe facility, recycle and reuse it, or secretly dump it. There is no doubt that dumping is the easiest and cheapest option for most businesses.
As another example, approximately twenty-five million people board cruise ships every year, and as a result, cruise ships dump one billion gallons (3.8 billion liters) of sewage into the oceans annually, usually at night so no one sees or smells it. Friends of the Earth, a nongovernmental organization (NGO) concerned with environmental issues, used data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to calculate this figure.23 The sewage dumped into the sea is full of toxins, including heavy metals, pathogens, bacteria, viruses, and pharmaceutical drugs (Figure 4.6). When invisibly released near coasts, this untreated sewage can kill marine animals, contaminate seafood, and sicken swimmers, and no one registers the damage except the ocean itself. Many believe the environment should have the right not to be secretly polluted in the dead of night, and Earth should have rights at least equal to those of corporations.
Cormac Cullinan, an environmental attorney, author, and leading proponent of earth jurisprudence, often collaborates with other environmental advocates such as Thomas Berry, an eco-theologian, scholar, and author. Cullinan, Berry, and others have written extensively about the important legal tenets of earth jurisprudence; however, it is not a legal doctrine officially adopted by the United States or any of its states to date. The concept of earth justice is tied indirectly to the economic theory of the “tragedy of the commons,” a phrase derived from British economist William Forster Lloyd, who, in the mid-nineteenth century, used a hypothetical example of unregulated grazing on common land to explain the human tendency to act independently, putting self-interest first, without regard for the common good of all users. The theory was later popularized by ecologist and philosopher Garrett Hardin, who tied it directly to environmental issues. In other words, when it comes to natural resources, the tragedy of the commons holds that people generally use as much of a free resource as they want, without regard for the needs of others or for the long-term environmental effects. As a way of combating the tragedy of the commons, Cullinan and others have written about the concept of earth justice,24 which includes the following tenets:
“The Earth and all living things that constitute it have fundamental rights, including the right to exist, to have a habitat or a place to be. Humans must adapt their legal, political, economic, and social systems to be consistent with the fundamental laws or principles that govern how the universe functions. Human acts, including acts by businesses that infringe on the fundamental rights of other living things violate fundamental principles and are therefore illegitimate and unlawful.”25
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The concept of earth justice relies heavily on Garrett Hardin’s discussion of the tragedy of the commons in Science in 1968.26 This classic analysis of the environmental dilemma describes how, from colonial times, Americans regarded the natural environment as something to be used for their own farming and business ends. Overuse, however, results in the inevitable depletion of resources that negatively affects the environment, so that it eventually loses all value.
Today, supporters of the environment assert that government has both a right and an obligation to ensure that businesses do not overuse any resource, and to mandate adequate environmental protection when doing so. In addition, some form of fee may be collected for using up a natural resource, such as severance taxes imposed on the removal of nonrenewable resources like oil and gas, or deposits required for possible cleanup costs after projects have been abandoned. As part of the growing acceptance of the concept of earth justice, several nonprofit educational organizations and NGOs have become active in both lobbying and environmental litigation. One such organization is the Center for Earth Jurisprudence (housed at the Barry School of Law in Orlando), a nonprofit group that conducts research in this area.
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The following video describing the Center for Earth Jurisprudence discusses support for laws that legally protect the sustainability of life and health on Earth, focusing upon the springs and other waters of Florida.
Why Sustainability Is Good for Business
The notion that the environment should be treated as a person is relatively new. But given the prominence of the environmental movement worldwide, no well-managed business today should be conducted without an awareness of the tenuous balance between the health of the environment and corporate profits. It is quite simply good business practice for executives to be aware that their enterprise’s long-term sustainability, and indeed its profitability, depend greatly on their safeguarding the natural environment. Ignoring this interrelationship between business and the environment not only elicits public condemnation and the attention of lawmakers who listen to their constituents, but it also risks destroying the viability of the companies themselves. Virtually all businesses depend on natural resources in one way or another.
Progressive corporate managers recognize the multifaceted nature of sustainability—a long-term approach to business activity, environmental responsibility, and societal impact. Sustainability affects not only the environment but also other stakeholders, including employees, the community, politics, law, science, and philosophy. A successful sustainability program thus requires the commitment of every part of the company. For example, engineers are designing manufacturing and production processes to meet the demands of companies dedicated to sustainability, and the idea of company-wide sustainability is now mainstream. Many of the largest companies in the world see sustainability as an important part of their future survivability.
The Global 100 and Sustainability’s Strategic Worth
Corporate Knights is a Canadian research and publishing company that compiles an annual list called the Global 100, identifying the world’s most sustainable companies.27 The 2018 edition of the list, presented at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, shows that an increasing number of major multinational companies take sustainability seriously, including many U.S. businesses. The highest-ranking U.S. company is technology giant Cisco, which ranks seventh on the Global 100 list.28 Other U.S. companies in the top twenty-five include Autodesk, Merck, and McCormick & Co. The countries with the best representation on the list are primarily from North America and Western Europe: the United States (18), France (15), the United Kingdom (10), Germany (7), Brazil (5), Finland (5), and Sweden (5).
You may expect that companies dedicated to sustainability would be less profitable in the long run as they face additional costs. In fact, data from the Global 100’s return on investment shows this is not the case. Let’s examine the evidence. If an investor had put \$250 in Global 100 companies in 2005, it would have been worth \$580 in 2015, compared to \$520 for the same amount invested in a typical index fund. The Global 100’s cumulative return on high-sustainability firms is about 25 percent higher than a traditional investment.29
Cisco Systems, number seven on the global list, is a good example of how green procurement and sustainable sourcing have become a regular part of the supply chain. At Cisco, according to a top-level supply chain executive, “we take seriously the responsibility of delivering products in an ethical and environmentally responsible manner.”30 Cisco relies on its Supplier Code of Conduct to set standards for suppliers so they follow fair labor practices, ensure safe working conditions, and reduce their carbon footprint, the amount of carbon dioxide and other carbon compounds released by the consumption of fossil fuels, which can be measured quantitatively (see the link below). Cisco is in the process of embedding sustainability into supply chain management at all levels.
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Do you know what your carbon footprint is? This personal footprint calculator allows you to find out where you stand.
Another company dedicated to sustainability is Siemens, which was ranked number nine on the 2018 list. Siemens is a multinational industrial conglomerate headquartered in Germany, whose businesses range from power plants to electrical systems and equipment in the medical field and high-tech electronics. Siemens was rated the most energy-efficient firm in its sector, because it produced more dollars in revenue per kilowatt used than any other industrial corporation. This is a standard technique to judge efficiency and demonstrates that Siemens has a low carbon footprint for a company in the industries in which it operates. The commitment of Siemens to sustainability is further demonstrated by its decision to manufacture and sell more environmentally friendly infrastructure products such as green heating and air conditioning systems.
Cisco and Siemens show that businesses across the globe are starting to understand that for a supply chain to be sustainable, companies and their vendors must be partners in a clean and safe environment. Do businesses simply pay lip service to environmental issues while using all available natural resources to make as much money as they can in the present, or are they really committed to sustainability? There is abundant evidence that sustainability has become a policy adopted by businesses for financial reasons, not simply public relations.
McKinsey & Company is one of the world’s largest management consulting firms and a leader in the use of data analytics, both qualitative and quantitative, to evaluate management decisions. McKinsey conducts periodic surveys of companies around the world on matters of importance to corporate leaders. In the 2010 survey, 76 percent of executives agreed that sustainability provides shareholders long-term value, and in the 2014 survey, entitled “Sustainability’s Strategic Worth,” the data indicated that many companies consider cost savings to be the number-one reason for adopting such policies. Cost cutting, improved operations, and efficiency were indicated as the primary reasons for adopting sustainability policies by over one-third of all companies (36%).31
Other major studies have demonstrated similar results. Grant Thornton is a leading global accounting and consulting firm. Its 2014 report on CSR showed that the top reason companies cite for moving towards more environmentally responsible business practices is financial savings. Grant Thornton conducted more than 2,500 interviews with clients and business executives in approximately thirty-five countries to discover why companies are making a commitment to sustainable practices. The study found that cost management was the key reason for sustainability (67%).32
A specific example is Dell Computers, headquartered outside Austin, Texas, and with operations all over the world. The “Dell Legacy of Good Plan” has set a goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from all facilities and operations by 50 percent by the year 2020, along with several other environmental goals. As part of this overall plan, Dell created the Connected Workplace, a flex-work program allowing alternative arrangements such as variable work hours to avoid rush hour, full- or part-time work at home flexibility, and job sharing. This sustainability initiative helps the company avoid about seven thousand metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions, and, directly related to the financial benefit of sustainability, it saves the company approximately \$12 million per year.33
However, adopting sustainability policies may require a long-term outlook. A recent article in the Harvard Business Reviewdiscussed the issue of sustainability and how it can create real cost savings (Figure 4.7). “It’s hard for companies to recognize that sustainable production can be less expensive. That’s in part because they have to fundamentally change the way they think about lowering costs, taking a leap of faith . . . that initial investments made in more-costly materials and methods will lead to greater savings down the road. It may also require a willingness to buck conventional financial wisdom by focusing not on reducing the cost of each part but on increasing the efficiency of the system as a whole.”34
Sustainability Standards
The International Organization for Standardization, or ISO, is an independent NGO and the world’s largest developer of voluntary international business standards. More than twenty thousand ISO standards now cover matters such as sustainability, manufactured products, technology, food, agriculture, and even healthcare. The adoption and use of these standards by companies is voluntary, but they are widely accepted, and following ISO certification guidelines results in the creation of products and services that are clean, safe, reliable, and made by workers who enjoy some degree of protection from workplace hazards.
In the environmental area, the ISO 14000 series of standards promotes effective environmental management systems in business organizations by providing cost-effective tools that make use of best practices for environmental management. These standards were developed in the 1990s and updated in 2015; they cover everything from the eco-design (ISO 14006) of factories and buildings to environmental labels (ISO 14020) to limits on the release of greenhouse gasses (ISO 14064). While their adoption is still voluntary, a growing number of countries allow only ISO 14000-certified companies to bid on public government contracts, and the same is true of some private-sector companies (Figure 4.8).
Another type of sustainability standard with which businesses may elect to comply is LEED certification. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, and it is a rating system devised by the U.S. Green Building Council to evaluate a structure’s environmental performance. The most famous example is the Empire State Building in New York City, which was awarded LEED Gold status (for existing buildings). The LEED certification was the result of a multimillion-dollar rebuilding program to bring the building up to date, and the building is the tallest in the United States to receive it. There are dozens of other examples of large commercial buildings, such as the Wells Fargo Tower in Los Angeles, as well as thousands of smaller buildings and residential homes. LEED certification is the driver behind the ongoing market transformation towards sustainable design in all types of structures, including buildings, houses, and factories.
The High Cost of Inaction
According to estimates from the EPA, by the year 2050, Earth’s population will be about ten billion people. Dramatic population growth has had a very significant and often negative human impact on the planet. Not only are there more people to feed, house, and care for, but new technologies allow businesses to harness natural resources in unprecedented amounts. NGOs and government agencies alike have taken notice. For years, the Department of State and the Department of Defense have considered climate change to be a potential threat to the long-term security of the United States. If unmanaged, climate change could pose a risk to both U.S. security and Department of Defense facilities and operations.35 Other respected organizations are also alerting the public to the risks of ignoring climate change.
The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) has released a detailed report identifying approximately twenty serious risks that will be faced if the problem is not addressed in a substantial way. These risks include rising seas and increased coastal flooding, more intense and frequent heat waves, more destructive hurricanes, wildfires that last longer and produce more damage, and heavier precipitation in some areas and more severe droughts in other areas. In addition to extreme weather events, there would likely be widespread forest death in the Rocky Mountains and other mountain ranges, the destruction of coral reefs, and shifts in the ranges of plants and animals. Both military bases and national landmarks would be at risk, as would the electrical grid and food supply. The UCS, with a membership consisting of the world’s most respected scientists, bases its projections on scientific research studies that have produced empirical evidence of climate change. Its official position is that “global warming is already having significant and very costly effects on communities, public health, and our environment.”36
Environmental protection and climate change issues receive varying degrees of support at the national level, depending on the commitment different presidents make to them. During periods in which the administration in Washington demonstrates a lower priority for climate change issues, such as the Trump administration’s announced intention to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord, private companies may take the lead on actions to reduce global warming emissions.
For example, Microsoft founder Bill Gates recently announced the creation of a private initiative to invest \$20 billion on climate-related research and development over the next five years. This is an example of government-funded early experimental research that a business may be able to turn into a commercially viable solution. If government steps back, private-sector companies concerned about long-term sustainability may have to take a leadership role.37 Ultimately, it requires the cooperation of public and private efforts to address climate change; otherwise, the impacts will continue to intensify, growing more costly and more damaging.”38
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This video produced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in conjunction with the State Department and an Oregon state agency shows the magnitude of ocean pollution. As of 2017, only two states (California and Hawaii) have banned plastic bags, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.39
Sustainability often requires the public and private sectors to cooperate. Inaction contributes to disasters like the 2017 devastation of Houston by Hurricane Harvey and of Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria. There is often tension between developers who want to build and cities that try to legislate for more green space. Green space not only offers a place for recreation and enjoyment of nature, but also provides essential natural drainage for rain and flood waters, reducing the likelihood that developed areas will end up underwater in a storm.
WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
Flooding in Houston: Is the Status Quo Sustainable?
A symbiotic relationship exists between development and flooding in urban areas such as Houston, Texas. Imagine you are a member of the urban planning commission for the city council of Houston, which recently suffered traumatic flood damage from several major storms, including Hurricanes Harvey and Ike, and Tropical Storm Allison, all of which occurred since 2001 and caused a total of approximately \$75 billion in damages.40 The floods also caused dozens of deaths and changed the lives of millions who lived through them. Future storms may increase in severity, because climate change is warming ocean waters.
The mayor and the city council have asked the planning commission to propose specific solutions to the flooding problem. This solution must not rely exclusively on taxpayer funds and government programs, but rather must include actions by the private sector as well.
One of the most direct solutions is a seemingly simple tradeoff: The greater Houston area must reduce the percentage of land covered by concrete while increasing the percentage of land dedicated to green space, which acts like a sponge to absorb flood waters before they can do severe damage. The planning commission thinks the best way to accomplish this is to issue a municipal ordinance requiring corporate developers and builders to set aside as green space an amount of land at least equal to what will be covered by concrete, (neighborhoods, office buildings, parking lots, shopping centers). However, this will increase the cost of development, because it means more land will be required for each type of project, and as a result, developers will have higher land costs.
Critical Thinking
• As a member of the urban planning commission, you will have to convince the stakeholders that a proposal to require more green space is a workable solution. You must get everyone, including developers, investors, neighborhood homeowner associations, politicians, media, and local citizens, on board with the idea that the benefit of sustainable development is worth the price. What will you do?
• Is this a matter that should be regulated by the local, state, or federal government? Why?
• Who pays for flood damage after a hurricane? Are your answers to this question and the preceding one consistent?
U.S. government agencies, such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, have identified many challenges in which sustainability can make a positive contribution. These include climate change, decreasing supplies of clean water, loss of ecological systems, degradation of the oceans, air pollution, an increase in the use and disposal of toxic substances, and the plight of endangered species.41 Progress toward solving these challenges depends in part on deciding who should help pay for the protection of global environmental resources; this is an issue of both environmental and distributive justice.
One way to address the issue of shared responsibility between corporations and society is the implementation of a “cap and trade” system. According to the Environmental Defense Fund, cap and trade is a viable approach to addressing climate change by curbing emissions that pollute the air: The “cap” is a limit on greenhouse gas emissions—if companies exceed their cap, they must pay penalties—whereas the “trade” allows companies to use the free market to buy and sell pollution allowances that permit them to emit a certain amount of pollution.
At present, there are more questions than answers, including how much of the responsibility lies with governments, how this responsibility can be allocated between developed and developing nations, how much of the cost should the private sector bear, and how should these divisions of cost and responsibility be enforced. Private companies must bear part of the cost, and the business sector recognizes they have some responsibility, but many disagree on whether that should be in the form of after-the-fact fines, or before-the-fact fees and deposits paid to the government. Regulations may very well have to be international in scope, or companies from one country may abuse the environment in another.
ETHICS ACROSS TIME AND CULTURES
Is It Ethical to Dump Toxic Waste in Countries That Allow It?
Should a multinational company take advantage of another country’s lack of regulation or enforcement if it saves money to do so?
A New York Times news correspondent reporting from Nigeria found a collection of steel drums stacked behind a village’s family living compound. In this mid-1990s case, ten thousand barrels of toxic waste had been dumped where children live, eat, and drink.42 As safety and environmental hazard regulations in the United States and Europe have driven toxic waste disposal costs up to \$3,000 per ton, toxic waste brokers are looking for the poorest nations with the weakest laws, often in West Africa, where the costs might be closer to \$3 per ton. The companies in this incident were looking for cheap waste-dumping sites, and Nigeria agreed to take the toxic chemical waste without notifying local residents. Local people wearing shorts, t-shirts, and sandals unloaded barrels of polychlorinated biphenyls, placing them next to a residential area. Nigeria has often been near the top of the United Nations’ list of most corrupt nations, with government leaders cutting deals to line their own pockets while exposing their citizens to environmental hazards.
A more recent example occurred in Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) in 2006, when residents discovered that hundreds of tons of “slops” (chemicals) from a foreign-owned ship had been dumped near Abidjan, the country’s commercial capital. The ship was owned by a multinational energy company named Trafigura. According to a report from Amnesty International, more than 100,000 residents were sickened, leading to fifteen deaths. Trafigura had illegally dumped the toxic waste in Côte d’Ivoire after searching for a disposal site in several other countries.43
Critical Thinking
• Should a U.S. or European company take advantage of a country’s weak approach to business and political ethics?
• Would your answer change if your decision saved your company \$1 million?
Inaction on issues of sustainability can lead to long-term environmental consequences that may not be reversible (the death of ocean coral, the melting of polar ice caps, deforestation). Another hurdle is that it is sometimes difficult to convince companies and their investors that quarterly or annual profits are short-term and transitory, whereas environmental sustainability is long-term and permanent.
Environmental Economics and Policy
Some politicians and business leaders in the United States believe that the U.S. system of capitalism and free enterprise is the main reason for the nation’s prosperity over the past two hundred years and the key to its future success. Free enterprise was very effective in facilitating the economic development of the United States, and many people benefited from it. But it is equally true that this could not have happened without the country’s wealth of natural resources like oil, gas, timber, water, and many others. When we consider the environment and the role of sustainability, the question is not whether our system works well with an abundance of natural resources. Rather, we should ask how well it would work in a nation, indeed in a world, in which such resources were severely limited.
Does business, as the prime user of these resources, owe a debt to society? The Harvard Business Review recently conducted a debate on this topic on its opinion/editorial pages. Business owes the world everything and nothing, according to Andrew Winston, author and consultant on environmental and social challenges. “It’s an important question,” he wrote, “but one that implies business should do the socially responsible thing out of a sense of duty. This idea is a distraction. Sustainability in business is not about philanthropy, but about profitability, innovation, and growth. It’s just plain good business.”44 On the other hand, Bart Victor, professor at Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management, wrote, “Business is far more powerful and deeply influential than any competing ideological force, political force or environmental force . . . business now has to see itself and its responsibilities and obligations in a new way.”45
Using deontological or duty-based reasoning, we might conclude that business does owe a debt to the environment. A basic moral imperative in a normative system of ethics is that someone who uses something must pay for it. In contrast, a more utilitarian philosophy might hold that corporations create jobs, make money for shareholders, pay taxes, and produce things that people want; thus, they have done their part and do not owe any other debt to the environment or society at large. However, utilitarianism is often regarded as a “here and now” philosophy, whereas deontology offers a longer-term approach, taking future generations into account and thus aligning more with sustainability.
Should businesses have to pay more in fees or taxes than ordinary citizens for public resources or infrastructure they use to make a profit? Consider the example of fracking: West Texas has seen a recent boom in oil and gas drilling due to this relatively new process. Fracking is short for hydraulic fracturing, which creates cracks in rocks beneath Earth’s surface to loosen oil and gas trapped there, thus allowing it to flow more easily to the surface. Fracking has led to a greatly expanded effort to drill horizontally for oil and gas in the United States, especially in formations previously thought to be unprofitable, because there was no feasible way to get the fossil fuels to the surface. However, it comes with a significant downside.
Fracking requires very heavy equipment and an enormous amount of sand, chemicals, and water, most of which must be trucked in. Traffic around Texas’s small towns has increased to ten times the normal amount, buckling the roads under the pressure of a never-ending stream of oil company trucks. The towns do not have the budget to repair them, and residents end up driving on dangerous roads full of potholes. The oil company trucks are using a public resource, the local road system, often built with a combination of state and local taxpayer funds. They are obviously responsible for more of the damage than local residents driving four-door sedans to work. Shouldn’t the businesses have to pay a special levy to repair the roads? Many think it is unfair for small towns to have to burden their taxpayers, most of whom are not receiving any of the profits from oil and gas development, with the cost of road repair. An alternative might be to impose a Pigovian tax, which is a fee assessed against private businesses for engaging in a specific activity (proposed by British economist A. C. Pigou). If set at the proper level, the tax is intended as a deterrent to activities that impose a net cost—what economists call “negative externalities”—on third parties such as local residents.
This issue highlights one of many environmental debates sparked by the fracking process. Fracking also causes the overuse and pollution of fresh water, spills toxic chemicals into the ground water, and increases the potential for earthquakes due to the injection wells drilled for chemical disposal. Ultimately, as is often the case with issues stemming from natural resource extraction, local residents may receive a few short-term benefits from business activity related to drilling, but they end up suffering a disproportionate share of the long-term harm.
One method of dealing with the long-term harm caused by pollution is a carbon tax, that is, a “pay-to-pollute” system that charges a fee or tax to those who discharge carbon into the air. A carbon tax serves to motivate users of fossil fuels, which release harmful carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at no cost, to switch to cleaner energy sources or, failing that, to at least pay for the climate damage they cause, based on the amount of greenhouse gas emissions generated from burning fossil fuels. A proposal to implement a carbon tax system in the United States has been recommended by many organizations, including the conservative Climate Leadership Council (CLC).46 Exxon Mobil, Shell, British Petroleum, and Total, along with other oil companies and a number of large corporations in other industries, recently announced their support for the plan to tax carbon emissions put forth by the CLC.47
link to learning
Visit the Carbon Tax Center to learn about the carbon tax as a monetary disincentive.
Would this “pay-to-pollute” method actually work? Will companies agree to repay the debt they owe to the environment? Michael Gerrard, the director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University Law School, said, “If a sufficiently high carbon tax were imposed, it could accomplish a lot more for fighting climate change than liability lawsuits.”48 Initial estimates are that if the program were implemented, companies would pay more than \$200 billion a year, or \$2 trillion in the first decade, an amount deemed sufficient to motivate the expanded use of renewable sources of energy and reduce the use of nonrenewable fossil fuels.
Some environmental organizations, including the Nature Conservancy and the World Resources Institute, are also endorsing the plan, as are some legislators in Washington, DC. “The basic idea is simple,” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) said. “You levy a price on a thing you don’t want—carbon pollution—and you use the revenue to help with things you do want.”49 According to the senator, a U.S. carbon tax or a fee of \$45 per metric ton would reduce U.S. carbon emissions by more than 40 percent in the first decade. This is an idea with global support, and it has already been tried. The World Bank has data indicating that forty countries, along with some major cities, have already enacted such programs, including all countries of the EU, as well as New Zealand and Japan.
CASES FROM THE REAL WORLD
Corporate and Personal Choices Regarding the Environment of the Future
The car manufacturer Tesla is developing new technologies to allow people to reduce their carbon footprint. In addition to a line of electric cars, the company makes other renewable energy products, such as roofing tiles that act as solar energy panels, and promotes longer-term projects such as the Hyperloop, a high-speed train project jointly designed by Tesla and SpaceX.
Of course, if businesses are to succeed in selling environmentally friendly products, they must have consumers willing to buy them. A homeowner has to be ready to spend 20 percent more than the cost of a traditional roof to install solar roofing tiles that reduce the consumption of electricity generated by fossil fuels (Figure 4.9).
Another personal decision is whether to buy a \$35,000 Tesla Model 3 electric car. While it reduces the driver’s carbon footprint, it requires charging every 250 miles, making long-distance travel a challenge until a national system of charging stations is in place.
Tesla’s founder, Elon Musk, is also the founder of SpaceX, an aerospace manufacturer that produces and launches the only space-capable rockets currently in existence in the United States. Thus, when NASA wants to launch a rocket, it must do so in partnership with SpaceX, a private company. It is often the case that private companies develop important advances in technology, with incentives from government such as tax credits, low-interest loans, or subsidies. This is the reality of capital-intensive, high-tech projects in a free-market economy, in which government spending may be limited for budgetary and political reasons. Not only is SpaceX making the rockets, but it is making them reusable, with long-term sustainability in mind.
Critical Thinking
• Should corporations and individual consumers bear joint responsibility for sustaining the environment? Why or why not?
• What obligation does each of us have to be aware of our own carbon footprint?
• If individual consumers have some obligation to support environmentally friendly technologies, should all consumers bear this responsibility equally? Or just those with the economic means to do so? How should society decide?
link to learning
Elon Musk, founder of the electric car manufacturer Tesla and other companies, recently spoke at a global conference held at the Panthéon-Sorbonne University in Paris. In this video, Musk explains the effect of carbon dioxide emissions on climate change in clear and simple terms. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_Ethics/Book%3A_Business_Ethics_(OpenStax)/04%3A_Three_Special_Stakeholders_-_Society_the_Environment_and_Government/4.03%3A_Sustainability-_Business_and_the_Environment.txt |
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Identify three public health issues that might warrant government regulation
• Explain what is meant by “revolving door” in a political context
• Compare constitutional arguments for and against government regulation of industry
Ideally, all levels of government—local, state, and federal—should work with each other and with private-sector businesses to accomplish a fair and rational balance between their respective roles in maintaining a just society. Rarely does one actor alone solve a problem; more often, it takes either a state-federal or a government-business partnership to make a significant impact on a social or economic challenge. Such partnerships are often quite effective, according to Deloitte, a global consulting and accounting firm.50
For example, the federal Clean Air Act of 1970 gives the EPA nationwide authority, but controlling air pollution, which does not recognize borders, also necessitates that state governments play a very significant role in enforcing environmental standards. In turn, about half the states also allow major cities to have their own air quality regulatory programs. “Think globally, act locally” seems to capture the essence of government regulation in air quality. For decades, California has had an air-quality program that not only attempts to comply with mandates in the federal program but also goes a step further to create state-specific rules, such as stricter auto emissions guidelines.
In another example, in May 2017, the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, together with the EPA and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, announced a settlement with Vopak, a Houston energy company, related to air-quality violations by the company.51 Both federal and state government agencies had filed actions against Vopak, stating that the company failed to comply with Clean Air Act requirements to properly manage equipment at its on-site wastewater treatment facility, resulting in excess emissions of a variety of hazardous air pollutants, as well as volatile organic compounds, in an area classified as not meeting ground-level ozone standards. Per the settlement terms, the company, at considerable cost, “will install state-of-the art pollution controls at the wastewater treatment system and use infrared cameras” to detect otherwise undetectable air pollution from its chemical storage tanks. Additionally, Vopak will pay a \$2.5 million civil penalty.52
Sustainability and the Public Interest
For two centuries, businesses have profited from using and selling the nation’s natural resources. The tradeoff in a free but regulated economic system such as that in the United States is to allow the continued extraction of natural resources but to require a commitment to protection of the environment in return. This bargain promotes long-term sustainability by balancing the interests of the environment, state and local governments, and users of natural resources. However, this public-private collaboration is not without controversy.
WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
The Keystone XL Pipeline
The case of the Keystone XL pipeline is an example of the emotional aspect of many environmental disputes, as our nation tries to come to grips with sustainability issues. Local and national opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry crude oil from Canada to the Texas Gulf Coast, have protested for years to stop its construction (Figure 4.10). These efforts accelerated after President Trump approved the pipeline in March 2017, reversing President Obama’s decision to reject it on environmental grounds. It appears that the pipeline is likely to be completed, pending legal action still unresolved in Nebraska.
To fight the pipeline, some opponents have used legal strategies such as court challenges in Nebraska, where regulators have not yet approved its route through the state. Other methods include tactics learned in the fight against the Dakota Access pipeline, in which protestors blocked equipment, occupied construction sites, and fought company employees and law enforcement officers. Protestors have vowed to use the same tactics against the Keystone XL. As Tom Goldtooth, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, told reporters, “Our dedication to stop this pipeline isn’t just for the future determination of our lives as human beings but also for the future of all generations of life, and that we stay true to the understandings of protecting mother earth to the fullest degree and do it in a prayerful way.”53
Opponents of projects such as Keystone XL are not always divided along political party lines, geography, age, or other demographics. Bret Clanton is a rancher and a registered Republican who doesn’t fit the standard profile of an environmentalist. The TransCanada Oil Company told him it planned to dig up three miles of his land to lay a section of the Keystone XL pipeline and bulldoze another two and half miles for an access road. “I’ve lived here all my life and this ground is pretty much as God, or whoever, made it, and I just want it to stay that way,” Clanton said. He fought the pipeline from the beginning and lobbied the state government for several years, but he and the others may lose their legal challenges.54
Environmentalists now face a conundrum. Should they accept the pipeline and its potential for harm? Or should they advance to more aggressive tactics such as destroying property to forestall it and hope that a candidate friendlier to environmentalists is elected in 2020? Is nonlethal violence justified in the pursuit of environmental justice?
Critical Thinking
• How should society and governments react to aggressive environmental protest?
• How would you balance a protestor’s First Amendment right of free speech, expression, and assembly with concern for public safety and protection of property?
When discussing the topic of sustainability as a function of responsible and sustainable business conduct, we consider not only environmental health but also public health. Polluting the environment is bad for public health, but so too are a wide variety of inherently dangerous products from alcohol to tobacco to guns to drugs. The World Health Organization estimates that alcohol is the cause of close to 7 percent of all deaths each year globally, or about 3.5 million people, and total global sales of alcohol are well over \$1 trillion per year.55 The question is whether society should allow businesses to market, sell, and profit from a product that causes so many deaths and creates a significant public health problem. The same question can be asked about tobacco, on which businesses make over half a trillion dollars annually and which the United States has struggled to regulate for years. Some businesses are acting on their own to rein in the sale or use of harmful products. In 2014, CVS, a drugstore and health care giant, chose to stop selling tobacco products, because such sales do not support its corporate mission.56
Few issues are the source of as much public debate as guns, but it is clear that gun violence in the United States is a major public health challenge. There are about 35,000 deaths per year in the United States due to firearms, and another 75,000 nonfatal firearm injuries. However, thousands of businesses profit from gun sales. Annual revenue in the gun and ammunition manufacturing industry is close to \$14 billion, producing a profit of \$1.5 billion, whereas the annual revenue of gun and ammunition stores is an additional \$3 billion, resulting in a profit of \$500 million.57 Based on these facts, should the sale of guns remain relatively unregulated, or, in the interest of public health, should the government increase regulatory efforts in this area? On the corporate front, after the most recent fatal mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, several companies took action without waiting for the law to change. Dick’s Sporting Goods announced it will no longer sell semi-automatic assault rifles, such as the AR-15, as has Kroger, which owns Fred Meyer stores. Walmart has announced it will no longer sell guns to anyone under twenty-one years of age.
Another pressing social issue is opioid abuse. In 2016, there were approximately sixty thousand deaths due to drug overdoses, almost double the number of gun deaths. Profits from the sale of these drugs are in the tens of billions of dollars, and the pharmaceutical industry spends \$100 million lobbying Congress not to regulate it more stringently. Some local government entities are suing opioid drug manufacturers,58 and, in the private sector, CVS recently announced it would now fill opioid prescriptions with supplies for only seven days. While opioids are legal and often legitimately prescribed for pain management, a large part of the problem is that they are also overprescribed.59 Given these facts, should pharmaceutical corporations be allowed to profit from this product? What ethical or legal responsibilities do those in the medical community have for the problem?
Although sustainability discussions justifiably focus on the protection of human life and public health issues, a related ethical issue close to the hearts of many citizens is animal rights. Businesses have begun to take notice of public demands in this area, as evidenced by a 2017 Fortune article about the Yoox Net-a-Porter Group.60 Net-a-Porter is a large, online retailer (with \$2 billion/year in sales) that markets top-line brands such as Prada, Gucci, and Michael Kors. After a survey of its customers showed that a significant majority want the company to forgo fur products, it decided to forbid the use of fur in its entire line. Other big-name brands such as Armani, Hugo Boss, North Face, Nautica, and Timberland have followed Net-a-Porter’s lead and recently announced fur-free policies.
Related developments are taking place in the cosmetics and food industries. Many cosmetics companies have announced cruelty-free product testing policies for products ranging from makeup to hairspray. In the food industry, the U.S. Department of Agriculture recently reported that cage-free eggs account for approximately one-quarter of the wholesale shell egg market.61 Why? Sales and profits are the answer, along with sustainability. According to research conducted by Walmart, over 75 percent of the retail giant’s customers said they would be more likely to shop at a store that improves its policies related to animal welfare. Thus, not only Walmart but also supermarket chains such as Kroger have announced the gradual implementation of cage-free egg-buying policies, as have fast food giants such as McDonald’s and Burger King.62 Such changes are often prompted, if not driven, by the influence of informed consumer stakeholders who are demanding the products they want to buy.
The Revolving Door between Government Regulation and the Private Sector
While private companies may take the initiative in response to public demand, and intergovernmental cooperation can accomplish many good things, sometimes the solution is for a private-sector company or industry to work directly with the government, as we saw with the example of Space X. Given the pressure on federal, state, and local agencies to reduce their budgets, many have increasingly turned to public-private partnerships, or P3s, as a means to solve problems.
Sometimes, however, the relationship between business and government can become too close, as when executives from the private sector leave their jobs to work for government agencies, becoming the regulators rather than the regulated, and then return to industry in a kind of “revolving door” effect. For example, Goldman Sachs, one of the world’s largest financial services firms, has seen many of its executives take senior leadership positions in the presidential administrations of both Democrats and Republicans, including the present secretary of the treasury, Steven Mnuchin. The same trend is occurring on a global level; Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, was previously a vice chair and managing director of Goldman Sachs International, and Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, worked for Goldman Sachs as well. The large number of executives from one of the biggest investment banks in the world moving in and out of government service causes some critics to warn of the “fox guarding the hen house” approach to regulation. Is the relationship between government and the private sector sometimes too cozy? Does this revolving door in fact result in bad policy?
Of course, it would be incorrect to assume, because multiple executives of a firm landed in government positions, that the firm is automatically guilty of wrongdoing. Goldman Sachs has created several programs with ethical goals. The company encourages clients to consider environmental and sustainability issues, and it backs green bonds, which are used to fund projects that have positive environmental and/or climate benefits. In truth, our government would find it difficult to function without the expertise from the private sector supplementing that of the public sector in public service positions.
Research by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City demonstrates how regulation and legislation in this area must strike a balance between encouraging and discouraging executives from the private sector to serve in high-level government positions. Our system of government service does not want to run the risk of undermining “the ability of regulatory agencies to seek and retain top level talent, but at the same time we do not want to impair the independence of government policy-makers.”63
A quick look at some figures indicates the scope of the problem. A 2008 General Accounting Office survey of fifty large defense contractors revealed that almost ninety thousand people who had left the Department of Defense in the preceding eight years were afterwards employed by private-sector companies doing business with the government as contractors.64 While legal restrictions exist to limit the revolving door effect, most relate only to direct government contracting. Private-sector companies seeking to acquire talent by hiring former employees of the federal government must be aware of the statutory and regulatory restrictions and their associated penalties.
One rule says former senior government employees may not make any communication with or appearance before their former agency, with the intent to influence the agency, for one year after leaving service. The ban is extended to two years for certain “very senior” officials.65 Penalties for violations can include fines of up to \$50,000 per violation and/or twice the amount of compensation received. On a company level, the penalty can be up to \$500,000 per violation and/or twice the amount of the contract. Moreover, individuals who intentionally violate the law may be subject to criminal penalties, which can include up to five years in jail.
In 2009, shortly after he took office, President Obama issued an executive order requiring all executive agency appointees to take an ethics pledge as a prerequisite for accepting appointment. The pledge included a lobbying ban and restrictions on appointees and lobbyists entering and leaving the government. For instance, appointees entering the government had to agree not to participate in any matter both “directly and substantially” related to their former employer or clients for two years.66 However, because these ethical restrictions were implemented by way of executive order, not federal statute, they may vary from president to president. Ethical questions have been raised about traditional conflict of interest concepts in the present administration, because people currently serving in it have retained ownership of private companies rather than selling them or placing them in blind trusts.
Of course, the relationship between government and business is an important one, and expertise in a field can be extremely valuable to both sides in a business-government partnership. However, this collaboration should be transparent and subject to public scrutiny, as noted by the Brookings Institution, one of the oldest nonprofit public policy think tanks. In a report entitled “Amateur Government: When Political Appointees Manage the Federal Bureaucracy,” the Institution warns against the potential for conflicts of interest stemming from allowing too many industry executives to move into government service, set overtly pro-industry policies, and then go back to their higher-paying, private-sector jobs. The key is to seek a balance.67
Government Regulation and the Constitution
Over the past decade, many politicians have run for office on a platform of reducing government regulation. There are at least two closely related positions on reducing federal government regulation. The first is essentially a states’ rights position that seeks to limit the powers of the federal government to those very specifically enumerated in the Constitution. It is based on principles embodied in the Tenth Amendment and on a narrow interpretation of the Commerce Clause. The Tenth Amendment reserves to the states any right not specifically delegated to the federal government. The Commerce Clause is the part of the Constitution that gives the federal government the right to regulate commerce between states.
The second, related view of government regulation holds that “less is better” at all levels, whether state or federal. Its followers simply seek to reduce the size of government and regulation at every level. Some might attribute this position to a libertarian or “small government” philosophy.
These two philosophies might be characterized as less government regulation vs. no government regulation, other than military defense. The preference for state regulation is often based on a belief in the business community that many states are softer on regulation that the federal government, or that states are closer to the problems businesses face and are more efficient at addressing them. However, there is little clear evidence that one branch of government is more efficient than another. The real challenge is weighing the benefits of regulation against the costs, and finding the right balance between over- and under-regulation. Weak regulation can allow a business to cut corners. For instance, auto emission regulations intended to go into effect by certain dates have been delayed multiple times during the 1980s and the early 2000s. The Obama administration announced plans to enforce tougher rules, but the current administration has said it plans to delay implementation. Auto emission regulations have become politically charged, constantly changing depending on the party in power, and some states have responded with their own legislation instead of waiting for the federal stalemate to end. Regulation that is consistently enforced in the effort to achieve the long-term goal, such as cleaner air, is preferable to a moving target.
A third position is that government is not necessarily a bad thing. Such a “federalist” philosophy might assert that centralized government provides an array of benefits for citizens. For example, in the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton emphasized that a well-intentioned central government was not the enemy of liberty but rather the best means of securing the rights achieved through the passage of the Constitution. He and others also pointed out an advantage of federal over state government—a large republic such as the United States would actually benefit from a larger electorate and a larger pool of qualified leaders, and competing state and regional interests would be more balanced under federal regulation.
Acceptance of one or the other of these philosophies may lean an administration towards more or less regulation, as well as calibrating its response to aggressive lobbying by industries seeking to reduce regulation they view as burdensome. The results for the environment and/or public health can sometimes be disastrous.
CASES FROM THE REAL WORLD
BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Government Regulation
The company that owned and operated the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, Transocean Ltd., contracted in 2010 with BP to drill a very deep water offshore oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, in a field called the Macondo. The drilling operation failed and ultimately led to an infamous environmental and human disaster called the Deepwater Horizon spill that has since been the subject of intense scrutiny and litigation.68 Eleven workers were killed and seventeen were injured, and at least five million barrels of oil poured into the ocean in the largest such spill in history. The environmental harm was epic in scale (Figure 4.11). Five years later, tar balls still dotted the beach. Oil buried beneath the sand offshore still gets pushed toward the beach whenever the surf is rough. Offshore islands have disappeared because the mangrove roots were coated in oil, killing the trees. Once the mangrove root framework that holds the land together was destroyed, the islands were washed away within a few years. Louisiana was already losing land at a concerning pace, and more has been lost since the spill. Scientists confirm that the disaster has accelerated the pace of the loss.69
Many question whether more regulation and a better relationship between regulators and the oil industry might have prevented the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Transocean, the rig owner/operator, did not install a relatively inexpensive safety device, an acoustically triggered shutoff valve, which most experts agree could have stopped the flow of oil from the well into the Gulf. Congress had not mandated such a device, largely as a result of oil industry lobbying, and since it wasn’t required, BP and Transocean were free to act as they pleased.
Other nations with offshore drilling activities, such as Norway and Brazil, mandate that all oil rigs be equipped with backup acoustically triggered shutoff valves as a safety measure. Norway has a stellar reputation for safety related to its North Sea offshore drilling. Two-thirds of Statoil, its largest oil company, is owned by the government, and, as a result, the company does not lobby the government for weakened regulation. The same is true of Petrobras, the Brazilian oil company.70 Partial government ownership makes public/private-sector cooperation more likely and is therefore likely to improve safety as well.
Critical Thinking
• Should the U.S. government pass a law requiring the use of the automatic shutoff valves on oil rigs in its waters?
• Should privately owned oil companies be allowed to lobby against safety regulations?
• Research whether public attitudes in the United States support stronger offshore drilling safety regulations. What do you think accounts for your findings?
Questions of regulation and political influence have become even more sensitive in recent years, following the decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010).71 In Citizens United, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5–4 that laws preventing corporations from using general treasury funds for political advertising violated the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech. In other words, the government may not prevent corporations from spending money to support or oppose candidates in elections. With this decision, the Court invalidated numerous campaign finance reform laws. Many commentators think the decision opened the floodgates for special-interest groups to spend without limit in U.S. elections.
link to learning
Visit the U.S. Supreme Court case website named Oyez. Read the Citizens United case, both the majority decision and the minority dissents. Judicial language can be a bit difficult to understand, so you may have to read it twice, but it’s worth it, because of the importance of the case.
What does Citizens United mean for businesses? Business entities may now seek to persuade the voting public by spending an unlimited amount of money on political ads, whether through social media or traditional print and broadcast media. Businesses opposed to government regulation can spend without limit to help elect candidates whose position on reduced regulation is the same as theirs, thereby increasing the pressure on Congress to deregulate. Many think the profusion of money in U.S. politics is one cause of the partisan divide that often paralyzes the legislative branch and unduly influences the executive branch.
One of the sponsors of the corporate governance law known as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), Senator Paul Sarbanes (D-MD), is among those who would like to see financial limits on business lobbying groups and political action committees, several of which are attempting to repeal current regulations such as SOX, which is tough on business fraud. Sarbanes-Oxley, passed in 2002 in response to several highly publicized corporate fraud cases that took down companies such as Enron and WorldCom, mandates reporting transparency in areas ranging from finance to accounting to supply chain activities. Essentially, it ensures that we now consider it both unethical and illegal to deceive shareholders, creditors, and the public at large.
Sarbanes-Oxley applies to publicly traded companies and is enforced by the Securities and Exchange Commission. It covers multiple topics such as the independence of corporate boards and outside certified public accounting firms that audit corporations. The law also makes the CEO and CFO personally responsible for errors in annual audits—thus making it harder to “cook the books.” Finally, it prohibits company loans to executives and grants protection to whistleblowers.
Some critics thought compliance with SOX might be too costly. However, after more than a decade of enforcement, it is now clear to most that Sarbanes-Oxley was, and is, a necessary regulatory step. It has allowed for significant progress to be made in slowing down the kind of unethical conduct that led to the Enron fraud. Although SOX technically applies only to publicly traded companies, many private companies also adopt SOX-style internal controls and transparency, as do not-for-profits such as universities and hospitals. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_Ethics/Book%3A_Business_Ethics_(OpenStax)/04%3A_Three_Special_Stakeholders_-_Society_the_Environment_and_Government/4.04%3A_Government_and_Private_Sector.txt |
Section Summaries:
4.1 Corporate Law and Corporate Responsibility
While some argue that corporations have a primary duty to maximize profits for the benefit of shareholders, others assert that businesses have a duty to the society in which they operate, a duty that serves as the basis of the CSR philosophy. Many court cases have addressed the issue, but it has not been conclusively resolved.
Despite the ongoing ethical debate, being a good corporate citizen is a goal toward which most contemporary corporations strive. An effective CSR policy usually means that companies have to commit to both an internal and external approach to ethics. Corporate social responsibility and good corporate governance are in reality just two sides of the very same coin. Social responsibility does not mean lower profitability.
4.2 Sustainability: Business and the Environment
Adopting sustainability as a strategy means protecting the environment. Society has an interest in the long-term survival, indeed the flourishing, of ecological habitats and natural resources, and we ask and expect companies to respect this societal goal in their business activities.
When analyzing what a business owes society in return for the freedom to extract our natural resources, we must balance development and preservation. It may be easy to say from afar that a business should cut back on how much it pollutes the air, but what happens when that means cutting back on fossil fuel use and transitioning to electric vehicles, a choice that affects everyone on a personal level?
4.3 Government and the Private Sector
One challenge in a free enterprise system is balancing the need for government regulation and private-sector corporate managers’ need for independence in running their businesses. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act tries to strike this balance by mandating transparency in corporate governance. This debate also includes the question whether businesses operating in the private sector ought to do public good on their own, regardless of whether the government mandates it. For example, many companies make a commitment to keep the environment clean, and to do so by going above and beyond what the law requires.
Key Terms
business judgment rule
the principle that officers, directors, and managers of a corporation are not liable for losses incurred when the evidence demonstrates that decisions were reasonable and made in good faith
cap and trade
a system that limits greenhouse gas emissions by companies while allowing them to buy and sell pollution allowances
carbon footprint
the amount of carbon dioxide and other carbon compounds released by the consumption of fossil fuels
carbon tax
a pay-to-pollute system in which those who discharge carbon into the air pay a fee or tax
Citizens United
a 2010 Supreme Court ruling in favor of unlimited spending by individuals and corporations on political campaigns
Commerce Clause
an enumerated power listed in the Constitution giving the federal government the right to regulate commerce between states
corporate personhood
the legal doctrine holding that a corporation, separate and apart from the people who are its owners and managers, has some of the same legal rights and responsibilities enjoyed by natural persons
fiduciary duty
a very high level of legal responsibility owed by those who manage someone else’s money, which includes the duties of care and loyalty
limited liability
a business owner’s protection against loss of personal assets, granted with corporate status
moral minimum
the minimal actions or practices a business must undertake to satisfy the base threshold for acting ethically
quid pro quo
the tradeoff someone makes in return for getting something of value; from the Latin meaning this for that
Sarbanes-Oxley
legislation passed in 2002 that mandates reporting transparency by businesses in areas ranging from finance to accounting to supply chain activities
shareholder primacy
a company’s duty to maximize profits for stockholders
states’ rights
a view that states should have more governing authority than the federal government, based on the Tenth Amendment, which reserves to the states any right not specifically delegated to the federal government
sustainability
a long-term approach to the interaction between business activity and societal impact on the environment and other stakeholders
tragedy of the commons
an economy theory highlighting the human tendency to use as much of a free natural resource as wanted without regard for others’ needs or for long-term environmental effects or issues | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_Ethics/Book%3A_Business_Ethics_(OpenStax)/04%3A_Three_Special_Stakeholders_-_Society_the_Environment_and_Government/4.05%3A_Summary.txt |
Ethics is a construct of considerable significance to human beings. Some suggest ethics emerged to allow families and clans to cooperate in harsh environments. Others point to its use in governing trade and commerce, even simple bartering. Still others say ethical behavior is wired into the cognitive structures of the brain, explaining why we find codes of ethics and morality in texts as diverse as the Code of Hammurabi (a Babylonian code of law nearly four thousand years old), the Bible, the Napoleonic Code, and The Analects of Confucius, all of which outline ways for people to live together in society.
Whatever its origin, ethics has almost certainly existed throughout human time and varied with language, culture, history, and geography (Figure 5.1). Are there underlying values that transcend time and place, however? If so, do the protocols of business ethics embody these values? For instance, we see respect for others in Dubai, where tea accompanies negotiations; in Tokyo, where formal words and bows come first; and in Lima, where polite inquiries about the family precede business. Is respect, therefore, a universal value?
In short, to what degree is any code of business ethics conditioned by culture, time, and geography? Given that individuals are responsible only for their own behavior, is it possible for business ethics to be universal?
5.02: The Relationship between Business Ethics and Culture
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Describe the processes of acculturation and enculturation
• Explain the interaction of business and culture from an ethical perspective
• Analyze how consumerism and the global marketplace might challenge the belief system of an organization
It has been said that English is the language of money and, for that reason, has become the language of business, finance, trade, communication, and travel. As such, English carries with it the values and assumptions of its native speakers around the world. But not all cultures share these assumptions, at least not implicitly. The sick leave or vacation policies of a British investment bank, for instance, may vary greatly from those of a shoe manufacturer in Laos. Because business and capitalism as conducted today have evolved primarily from European origins and profits are measured against Western standards like the U.S. dollar, the ethics that emerges from them is also beholden primarily (but not exclusively) to Western conceptions of behavior. The challenge for business leaders everywhere is to draw out the values of local cultures and integrate the best of those into their management models. The opportunities for doing so are enormous given the growing impact of China, India, Russia, and Brazil in global commerce. The cultures of these countries will affect the dominant business model, possibly even defining new ethical standards.
Business Encounters Culture
To understand the influence of culture on business ethics, it is essential to understand the concepts of enculturation and acculturation. In its most basic anthropological sense, enculturation refers to the process by which humans learn the rules, customs, skills, and values to participate in a society. In other words, no one is born with culture; all humans, regardless of their origin, have to learn what is considered appropriate behavior in their surrounding cultures. Whereas enculturation is the acquisition of any society’s norms and values, acculturation refers specifically to the cultural transmission and socialization process that stems from cultural exchange. The effects of this blending of cultures appear in both the native (original) culture and the host (adopted) culture. Historically, acculturation has often been the result of military or political conquest. Today, it also comes about through economic development and the worldwide reach of the media.
One of the earliest real estate deals in the New World exemplifies the complexity that results when different cultures, experiences, and ethical codes come into contact. No deed of sale remains, so it is difficult to tell exactly what happened in May 1626 in what is now Manhattan, but historians agree that some kind of transaction took place between the Dutch West India Company, represented by Pieter Minuit, the newly appointed director-general of the New Netherland colony, and the Lenape, a Native American tribe (Figure 5.2). Which exact Lenape tribe is unknown; its members may have been simply passing through Manhattan and could have been the Canarsee, who lived in what is today southern Brooklyn.1 Legend has it that the Dutch bought Manhattan island for \$24 worth of beads and trinkets, but some historians believe the natives granted the Dutch only fishing and hunting rights and not outright ownership. Furthermore, the price, acknowledged as “sixty guilders” (about \$1000 today), could actually represent the value of items such as farming tools, muskets, gun powder, kettles, axes, knives, and clothing offered by the Dutch. Clearly, the reality was more nuanced than the legend.2
The “purchase” of Manhattan is an excellent case study of an encounter between two vastly different cultures, worldviews, histories, and experiences of reality, all within a single geographic area. Although it is a misconception that the native peoples of what would become the United States did not own property or value individual possession, it is nevertheless true that their approach to property was more fluid than that of the Dutch and of later settlers like the English, who regarded property as a fixed commodity that could be owned and transferred to others. These differences, as well as enforced taxation, eventually led to war between the Dutch and several Native American tribes.3 European colonization only exacerbated hostilities and misunderstandings, not merely about how to conduct business but also about how to live together in harmony.
link to learning
For more information, read this article about the Manhattan purchase and the encounter between European and Native American cultures and also this article about Peter Minuit and his involvement. What unexamined assumptions by both parties led to problems between them?
Two major conditions affect the relationship between business and culture. The first is that business is not culturally neutral. Today, it typically displays a mindset that is Western and primarily English-speaking and is reinforced by the enculturation process of Western nations, which tends to emphasize individualism and competition. In this tradition, business is defined as the exchange of goods and services in a dedicated market for the purpose of commerce and creating value for its owners and investors. Thus, business is not open ended but rather directed toward a specific goal and supported by beliefs about labor, ownership, property, and rights.
In the West, we typically think of these beliefs in Western terms. This worldview explains the misunderstanding between Minuit, who assumed he was buying Manhattan, and the tribal leaders, who may have had in mind nothing of the sort but instead believed they were granting some use rights. The point is that a particular understanding of and approach to business are already givens in any particular culture. Businesspeople who work across cultures in effect have entered the theater in the middle of the movie, and often they must perform the translation work of business to put their understanding and approach into local cultural idioms. One example of this is the fact that you might find sambal chili sauce in an Indonesian McDonald’s in place of Heinz ketchup, but the restaurant, nevertheless, is a McDonald’s.
The second condition that affects the relationship between business and culture is more complex because it reflects an evolving view of business in which the purpose is not solely generating wealth but also balancing profitability and responsibility to the public interest and the planet. In this view, which has developed as a result of political change and economic globalization, organizations comply with legal and economic regulations but then go beyond them to effect social change and sometimes even social justice.4The dominant manufacture-production-marketing-consumption model is changing to meet the demands of an increasing global population and finite resources. No longer can an organization maintain a purely bottom-line mentality; now it must consider ethics, and, therefore, social responsibility and sustainability, throughout its entire operation. As a result, local cultures are assuming a more aggressive role in defining their relationship with business prevalent in their regions.
Had this change taken place four centuries ago, that transaction in Manhattan might have gone a little differently. However, working across cultures can also create challenging ethical dilemmas, especially in regions where corruption is commonplace. A number of companies have experienced this problem, and globalization will likely only increase its incidence.
CASES FROM THE REAL WORLD
Petrobras
If you were to do a top-ten list of the world’s greatest corruption scandals, the problems of Petrobras (Petróleo Brasileiro) in Brazil surely would make the list. The majority state-owned petroleum conglomerate was a party to a multibillion-dollar scandal in which company executives received bribes and kickbacks from contractors in exchange for lucrative construction and drilling contracts. The contractors paid Petrobras executives upward of five percent of the contract amount, which was funneled back into slush funds. The slush funds, in turn, paid for the election campaigns of certain members of the ruling political party, Partido dos Trabalhadores, or Workers Party, as well as for luxury items like race cars, jewelry, Rolex watches, yachts, wine, and art.5
The original investigation, known as Operation Car Wash (Lava Jato), began in 2014 at a gas station and car wash in Brasília, where money was being laundered. It has since expanded to include scrutiny of senators, government officials, and the former president of the republic, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The probe also contributed to the impeachment and removal of Lula’s successor, Dilma Rousseff. Lula and Rousseff are members of the Workers Party. The case is complex, revealing Chinese suppliers, Swiss bank accounts where money was hidden from Brazilian authorities, and wire transfers that went through New York City and caught the eye of the U.S. Department of Justice. In early 2017, the Brazilian Supreme Court justice in charge of the investigation and prosecution was mysteriously killed in a plane crash.
It is hard to imagine a more tragic example of systemic breakdown and individual vice. The loss of trust in government and the economy still affects ordinary Brazilians. Meanwhile, the investigation continues.
Critical Thinking
• Is there any aspect of the case where you think preventive measures could have been taken either by management or government? How would they have worked?
• Do you think this case represents an example of a culture with different business ethics than those practiced in the United States? Why or why not? How might corporations with international locations adjust for this type of issue?
link to learning
Read this article about the Petrobras case to learn more.
Balancing Beliefs
What about the ethical dimensions of a business in a developed country engaging in commerce in an environment where corruption might be more rampant than at home? How can an organization remain true to its mission and what it believes about itself while honoring local customs and ethical standards? The question is significant because it goes to the heart of the organization’s values, its operations, and its internal culture. What must a business do to engage with local culture while still fulfilling its purpose, whether managers see that purpose as profitability, social responsibility, or a balance between the two?
Most business organizations hold three kinds of beliefs about themselves. The first identifies the purpose of business itself. In recent years, this purpose has come to be the creation not just of shareholder wealth but also of economic or personal value for workers, communities, and investors.6 The second belief defines the organization’s mission, which encapsulates its purpose. Most organizations maintain some form of mission statement. For instance, although IBM did away with its formal mission statement in 2003, its underlying beliefs about itself have remained intact since its founding in 1911. These are (1) dedication to client success, (2) innovation that matters (for IBM and the world), and (3) trust and personal responsibility in all relationships.7 President and chief executive officer (CEO) Ginni Rometty stated the company “remain[s] dedicated to leading the world into a more prosperous and progressive future; to creating a world that is fairer, more diverse, more tolerant, more just.”8
link to learning
Johnson & Johnson was one of the first companies to write a formal mission statement, and it is one that continues to earn praise. This statement has been embraced by several succeeding CEOs at the company, illustrating that a firm’s mission statement can have a value that extends beyond its authors to serve many generations of managers and workers. Read Johnson & Johnson’s mission statement to learn more.
Finally, businesses also go through the process of enculturation; as a result, they have certain beliefs about themselves, drawn from the customs, language, history, religion, and ethics of the culture in which they are formed. One example of a company whose ethics and ethical practices are deeply embedded in its culture is Merck & Co., one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies and known for its strong ethical values and leadership. As its founder George W. Merck (1894–1957) once stated, “We try to remember that medicine is for the patient. We try never to forget that medicine is for the people. It is not for the profits. The profits follow, and if we have remembered that, they have never failed to appear. The better we have remembered it, the larger they have been.”9 Culture is deeply rooted, but businesses may make their own interpretations of its accepted norms.
link to learning
Merck & Co. is justly lauded for its involvement in the fight to control the spread of river blindness in Africa. For more information, watch this World Bank video about Merck & Co.’s efforts to treat river blindness and its partnership with international organizations and African governments.
Our beliefs are also challenged when a clash occurs between a legal framework and cultural norms, such as when a company feels compelled to engage in dubious and even illegal activities to generate business. For example, the German technology company Siemens has paid billions of dollars in fines and judgments for bribing government officials in several countries. Although some local officials may have expected to receive bribes to grant government contracts, Siemens was still bound by national and international regulations forbidding the practice, as well as by its own code of ethics. How can a company remain true to its mission and code of ethics in a highly competitive international environment (Figure 5.3)?
Business performance is a reflection of what an organization believes about itself, as in the IBM and Merck examples.10 Those beliefs, in turn, spring from what the individuals in the organization believe about it and themselves, based on their communities, families, personal biographies, religious beliefs, and educational backgrounds. Unless key leaders have a vision for the organization and themselves, and a path to achieving it, there can be no balance of beliefs about profitability and responsibility, or integration of business with culture. The Manhattan purchase was successful to the degree that Minuit and the tribal leaders were willing to engage in an exchange of mutual benefit. Yet this revealed a transaction between two very different commercial cultures. Did each group truly understand the other’s perception of an exchange of goods and services? Furthermore, did the parties balance personal and collective beliefs for the greater good? Given the distinctions between these two cultures, would that even have been possible?
Consumerism and the Global Marketplace
To paraphrase the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus (c. 535–475 BCE), the one constant in life is change. Traditional norms and customs have changed as the world’s population has grown more diverse and urbanized, and as the Internet has made news and other resources readily available. The growing emphasis on consumerism—a lifestyle characterized by the acquisition of goods and services—has meant that people have become defined as “consumers” as opposed to citizens or human beings. Unfortunately, this emphasis eventually leads to the problem of diminishing marginal utility, with the consumer having to buy an ever-increasing amount to reach the same level of satisfaction.
At the same time, markets have become more diverse and interconnected. For example, South Korean companies like LG and Samsung employ 52,000 workers in the United States,11 and many U.S. companies now manufacture their products abroad. Such globalization of their domestic markets has allowed U.S. consumers to enjoy products from around the world, but it also presents ethical challenges. The individual consumer, for instance, may benefit from lower prices and a greater selection of goods, but only by supporting a company that might be engaged in unethical practices in its overseas supply or distribution chains. Producers’ choices about wages, working conditions, environmental impact, child labor, taxation, and plant safety feature in the creation of each product brought to market. Becoming aware of these factors requires consumers to engage in an investigation of the business practices of those parties they will patronize and exercise a certain amount of cultural and ethical sensitivity.
CASES FROM THE REAL WORLD
Overseas Manufacturing
How can the purchase of a pair of sneakers be seen as an ethical act? Throughout the 1990s, the U.S. shoe and sportswear manufacturer Nike was widely criticized for subcontracting with factories in China and Southeast Asia that were little more than sweatshops with deplorable working conditions. After responding to the criticisms and demanding that its suppliers improve their workplaces, the company began to redeem itself in the eyes of many and has become a model of business ethics and sustainability. However, questions remain about the relationship between business and government.
For instance, should a company advocate for labor rights, a minimum wage, and unionization in developing countries where it has operations? What responsibility does it have for the welfare of a contractor’s workers in a culture with differing customs? What right does any Western company have to insist that its foreign contractors observe in their factories the protocols required in the West? What, for example, is sacred about an eight-hour workday? When Nike demands that foreign manufacturers observe Western laws and customs about the workplace, arguably this is capitalist imperialism. Not only that, but Western firms will be charged more for concessions regarding factory conditions. Perhaps this is as it should be, but Western consumers must then be prepared to pay more for material goods than in the past.
Some argue that demanding that companies accept these responsibilities imposes cultural standards on another culture through economic pressure. Others insist there should be universal standards of humane employee treatment, and that they must be met regardless of where they come from or who imposes them. But should the market dictate such standards, or should the government?
The rise of artificial intelligence and robotics will complicate this challenge because, in time, they may make offshoring the manufacture and distribution of goods unnecessary. It may be cheaper and more efficient to bring these operations back to developed countries and use robotic systems instead. What would that mean for local cultures and their economies? In Nike’s case, automation is already a concern, particularly as competition from its German rival, Adidas, heats up again.12
Critical Thinking
• What ethical responsibilities do individual consumers have when dealing with companies that rely on overseas labor?
• Should businesses adopt universal workplace standards about working conditions and employee protections? Why or why not?
• What would be required for consumers to have the necessary knowledge about a product and how it was made so that they could make an informed and ethical decision? The media? Commercial watchdog groups? Social-issues campaigns? Something else?
link to learning
Read this report, “A Race to the Bottom: Trans-Pacific Partnership and Nike in Vietnam,” to learn more about this issue.
In considering the ethical challenges presented by the outsourcing of production to lower costs and increase profits, let us return to the example of IBM. IBM has a responsibility to provide technology products of high quality at affordable prices in line with its beliefs about client success, innovation, and trust. If it achieved these ends in a fraudulent or otherwise illegal way, it would be acting irresponsibly and in violation of both U.S. and host country laws and as well as the company’s own code of ethics. These constraints appear to leave little room for unethical behavior, yet in a globalized world of intense competition, the temptation to do anything possible to carve out an advantage can be overpowering. This choice between ends and means is reminiscent of the philosophers Aristotle and Kant, both of whom believed it impossible to achieve just ends through unjust means.
But what about consumer responsibility and the impact on the global community? Western consumers tend to perceive globalizationas a phenomenon intended to benefit them specifically. In general, they have few compunctions about Western businesses offshoring their manufacturing operations as long as it ultimately benefits them as consumers. However, even in business, ethics is not about consumption but rather about human morality, a greater end. Considering an expansion of domestic markets, what feature of this process enables us to become more humane rather than simply pickier consumers or wasteful spenders? It is the opportunity to encounter other cultures and people, increasing our ethical awareness and sensitivity. Seen in this way, globalization affects the human condition. It raises no less a question than what kind of world we want to leave to our children and grandchildren. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_Ethics/Book%3A_Business_Ethics_(OpenStax)/05%3A_The_Impact_of_Culture_and_Time_on_Business_Ethics/5.01%3A_Introduction.txt |
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Describe the ways ethical standards change over time
• Identify major shifts in technology and ethical thinking over the last five hundred years
• Explain the impact of government and self-imposed regulation on ethical standards and practices in the United States
Besides culture, the other major influence in the development of business ethics is the passage of time. Ethical standards do not remain fixed; they transform in response to evolving situations. Over time, people change, technology advances, and cultural mores (i.e., acquired culture and manners) shift. What was considered an appropriate or accepted business practice one hundred or even fifty years ago may not carry the same moral weight it once did. However, this does not mean ethics and moral behavior are relative. It simply acknowledges that attitudes change in relationship to historical events and that cultural perspective and the process of acculturation are not stagnant.
Shifts in Cultural and Ethical Standards
We find an example of changing cultural mores in the fashion industry, where drastic evolution can occur even over ten years, let alone a century. The changes can be more than simply stylistic ones. Clothing reflects people’s view of themselves, their world, and their values. A woman in the first half of the twentieth century might be very proud to wear a fox stole with its head and feet intact (Figure 5.4). Today, many would consider that an ethical faux pas, even as the use of fur remains common in the industry despite active campaigns against it by organizations such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. At the same time, cosmetics manufacturers increasingly pledge not to test their products on animals, reflecting changing awareness of animals’ rights.
Bias is built into the human psyche and expressed through our social structures. For this reason, we should avoid making snap judgments about past eras based on today’s standards. The challenge, of course, is to know which values are situational—that is, although many values and ethics are relative and subjective, others are objectively true, at least to most people. We can hardly argue in favor of slavery, for example, no matter in which culture or historical era it was practiced. Of course, although some values strike us as universal, the ways in which they are interpreted and applied vary over time, so that what was once acceptable no longer is, or the reverse.
ETHICS ACROSS TIME AND CULTURES
When Even Doctors Smoked
From the 1940s to the 1970s, cigarettes were as common as water bottles are today. Nearly everyone smoked, from judges in court to factory workers and pregnant women. Edward Bernays, the Austrian-American founder of the field of public relations, promoted smoking among women in a 1929 campaign in New York City in which he marketed Lucky Strike cigarettes as “torches of freedom” that would lead to equality between men and women. However, by the late 1960s, and in the wake of the release of the landmark Surgeon General’s report on “Smoking and Health” on January 11, 1964, it had become clear that there was a direct link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. Subsequent research has added heart and lung diseases, stroke, and diabetes. Smoking has decreased in Western countries but remains well established in the global East and South, where cigarette manufacturers actively promote the products in markets like Brazil, China, Russia, and Singapore, especially among young people.
Critical Thinking
Are such practices ethical? Why or why not?
link to learning
Explore these statistics on cigarette smoking in young adults from the CDC and these charts on the global state of smoking from the World Bank for information about cigarette use in the United States and globally, including demographic breakdowns of smoking populations.
Thus, we acknowledge that different eras upheld different ethical standards, and that each of these standards has had an impact on our understanding of ethics today. But this realization raises some basic questions. First, what should we discard and what should we keep from the past? Second, on what basis should we make this decision? Third, is history cumulative, progressing onward and upward through time, or does it unfold in different and more complicated ways, sometimes circling back upon itself?
The major historical periods that have shaped business ethics are the age of mercantilism, the Industrial Revolution, the postindustrial era, the Information Age, and the age of economic globalization, to which the rise of the Internet contributed significantly. Each of these periods has had a different impact on ethics and what is considered acceptable business practice. Some economists believe there may even be a postglobalization phase arising from populist movements throughout the world that question the benefits of free trade and call for protective measures, like import barriers and export subsidies, to reassert national sovereignty.13 In some ways, these protectionist reactions represent a return to the theories and policies that were popular in the age of mercantilism.
Unlike capitalism, which views wealth creation as the key to economic growth and prosperity, mercantilism relies on the theory that global wealth is static and, therefore, prosperity depends on extracting wealth or accumulating it from others. Under mercantilism, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, the exploration of newly opened markets and trade routes coincided with the impulse to colonize, producing an ethical code that valued acculturation by means of trade and often brute force. European powers extracted raw commodities like cotton, silk, diamonds, tea, and tobacco from their colonies in Africa, Asia, and South America and brought them home for production. Few questioned the practice, and the operation of business ethics consisted mainly of protecting owners’ interests.
During the Industrial Revolution and the postindustrial era, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, business focused on the pursuit of wealth, the expansion of overseas markets, and the accumulation of capital. The goal was to earn as high a profit as possible for shareholders, with little concern for outside stakeholders. Charles Dickens (1812–1870) famously exposed the conditions of factory work and the poverty of the working class in many of his novels, as did the American writer Upton Sinclair (1878–1968). Although these periods witnessed extraordinary developments in science, medicine, engineering, and technology, the state of business ethics was perhaps best described by critics like Ida Tarbell (1857–1944), who said of industrialist John D. Rockefeller (1839–1937) (Figure 5.5), “Would you ask for scruples in an electric dynamo?”14
With the advent of the Information and Internet ages in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, a code of professional conduct developed for the purpose of achieving goals through strategic planning.15 In the past, ethical or normative rules were imposed from above to lead people toward right behavior, as the company defined it. Now, however, more emphasis is placed on each person at a firm embracing ethical standards and following those dictates to arrive at the appropriate behavior, whether at work or when off the clock.16 The creation of human resources departments (increasingly now designated as human capital or human assets departments) is an outgrowth of this philosophy, because it reflects a view that humans have a unique value that ought not be reduced simply to the notion that they are instruments to be manipulated for the purposes of the organization. Millennia earlier, Aristotle referred to “living tools” in a similar but critical way.17 Although one characteristic of the information age—access to information on an unprecedented scale—has transformed business and society (and some say made it more egalitarian), we must ask whether it also contributes to human flourishing, and to what extent business should concern itself with this goal.
A Matter of Time
What effect does time have on business ethics, and how is this effect achieved? If we accept that business today has two purposes—profitability and responsibility—we might assume that business ethics is in a much better position now than in the past to affect conduct across industries. However, much of the transformation of business over time has been the result of direct government intervention; one recent example is the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act that followed the financial crisis of 2008. Yet, despite such regulation and increased management vigilance in the form of ethics training, compliance reporting, whistleblower programs, and audits, it is tempting to conclude that business ethics is in worse shape than ever. The Information Age and the Internet may even have facilitated unethical behavior by making it easier to move large sums of money around undetected, by enabling the spread of misinformation on a global scale, and by exposing the public to the theft and misuse of vast stores of personal data gathered by companies as diverse as Equifax and Facebook.
However, since the mercantile era, there has been a gradual increase in awareness of the ethical dimension of business. As we saw in the preceding chapter, businesses and the U.S. government have debated and litigated the role of corporate social responsibility throughout the twentieth century, first validating the rule of shareholder primacy in Dodge v. Ford Motor Company (1919) and then moving away from a strict interpretation of it in Shlensky v. Wrigley (1968). In Dodge v. Ford Motor Company (1919), the Michigan Supreme Court famously ruled that Ford had to operate in the interests of its shareholders as opposed to its employees and managers, which meant prioritizing profit and return on investment. This court decision was made even though Henry Ford had said, “My ambition is to employ still more men, to spread the benefits of this industrial system to the greatest possible number, to help them build up their lives and their homes. To do this we are putting the greatest share of our profits back in the business.”18 By mid-century and the case of Shlensky v. Wrigley (1968), the courts had given boards of directors and management more latitude in determining how to balance the interests of stakeholders.19 This position was confirmed in the more recent case of Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (2014), which held that corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else.
Governmental regulation and legal interpretations have not been the only avenues of change over the past century. The growing influence of consumers has been another driving force in recent attempts by businesses to self-regulate and voluntarily comply with global ethical standards that ensure basic human rights and working conditions. The United Nations (UN) Global Compact is one of these standards. Its mission is to mobilize companies and stakeholders to create a world in which businesses align their strategies and operations with a set of core principles covering human rights, labor, the environment, and anticorruption practices. The Global Compact is a “voluntary initiative based on CEO commitments to implement universal sustainability principles and to undertake partnerships in support of UN goals.”20 Of course, as a voluntary initiative, the initiative does not bind corporations and countries to the principles outlined in it.
link to learning
Read the Ten Principles of the United Nations Global Compact urging corporations to develop a “principled approach to doing business.” The principles cover human rights, labor, the environment, and corruption.
Whenever we look at the ways in which our perception of ethical business practice changes over time, we should note that such change is not necessarily good or bad but rather a function of human nature and of the ways in which our views are influenced by our environment, our culture, and the passage of time. Many of the examples discussed thus far illustrate a gradual increase in social awareness due to the actions of individual leaders and the historical era in which they found themselves. This does not mean that culture is irrelevant, but that human nature exists and ethical inclination is part of that nature. Historical conditions may allow this nature to be expressed more or less fully. We might measure ethical standards according to the degree they allow human compassion to direct business practice or, at least, make it easier for compassion to hold sway. We might then consider ethics not just a nicety but a constitutive part of business, because it is an inherent human trait. This is a perspective Kant and Rawls might have agreed with. Ethical thinking over time should be measured, deliberate, and open to examination. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_Ethics/Book%3A_Business_Ethics_(OpenStax)/05%3A_The_Impact_of_Culture_and_Time_on_Business_Ethics/5.03%3A_Business_Ethics_over_Time.txt |
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Describe the impact of geography on global relationships and business ethics
• Explain how religion informs ethical business practice around the world
Business ethics guides people to practice commerce professionally and honestly and in a way that permits as many as possible to flourish. However, as we have seen, the ethical standards by which business is conducted can vary depending on culture and time. Geography and regional cultural practices also play a significant role. As global markets become increasingly connected and interdependent, we navigate more of our valued relationships across international boundaries.
Business as Global Relationships
Global relationships teach us to be sensitive not just to other languages and customs but also to other people’s worldviews. A company looking to move its production to another country may be interested in setting up supply, distribution, and value chains that support human rights, worker safety, and equity for women, while the local culture is excited about the economic benefits it will gain from the company’s investment in employment and the local tax base and infrastructure. These goals need not be in conflict, but they must be integrated if the company is to reach an ethically sound agreement with the host country. Dialogue and openness are crucial to this process, just as they are in every other kind of relationship.
Geography affects a business’s relationship with almost any type of stakeholder, from stockholders and employees to customers, the government, and the environment. Hence the growing importance of localization, the process of adapting a product for non-native environments and languages, especially other nations and cultures. Such adaption often starts with language translation but may include customizing content or products to the tastes and consumption habits of the local market; converting currencies, dates, and other measurements to regional standards; and addressing community regulations and legal requirements.
Research has shown that successful leaders and organizations with global responsibilities “need to understand and exceed the leadership expectations in the cultures they are interacting with.”21 In its study of leadership effectiveness and organizational behavior across cultures, the GLOBE leadership project of the Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, found leader effectiveness is contextual and strongly connected to cultural and organizational values. The study also concluded that, although leaders learn to adapt to cultural expectations, they often have to exceed those expectations to be truly successful.22 In other words, business has a role beyond merely reflecting the culture in which it operates.
One element of business culture you may not realize is based on local custom and culture is the notion of time. Unlike the notion of historical time discussed in the previous module, the concept of time in business—people’s approach to punctuality, for example—varies widely in different cultures. To put it in economic terms, all cultures share the resource of time, but they measure and use that resource very differently. These differences might significantly affect the foundation of any business relationships you may want to establish around the world. For this and many other reasons, basic cultural literacy must be at the forefront of any ethical system that governs business behavior.
Consider, for example, that in the United States, we might speak of “a New York minute,” “the nick of time,” “the eleventh hour,” and so on. Such expressions make sense in a culture where the enculturation process emphasizes competition and speed. But even among Western business cultures, conceptions of time can differ. For example, the Italian subito and the German sofort both refer to something happening “at once” or “straightaway,” but with different expectations about when the action, in fact, will take place. And some cultures do not measure the passage of time at all.
Generally, the farther east and south we travel from the United States, the more time becomes relational rather than chronological. In Kenya, tutaonana baadaye means “see you later,” although “later” could be any time, open to context and interpretation. The nomadic inhabitants of North Africa known as the Tuareg sit down to tea before discussing any business, and as a rule, the longer the time spent in preliminary conversation, the better. A Tuareg proverb has it that the first cup of tea is bitter like life, the second sweet like love, and the third gentle like death.23 Compare this with the Western attitude that “time flies” and “time is money.” Finally, Westerners doing business in some English-speaking African countries have learned that if they want something immediately, they have to say “now now” as “now” by itself does not convey the desired sense of immediacy.
Another aspect of international business relationships is the question of personal space. In Nigeria, for example, standing either too close or too far from someone to whom you are speaking might be seen as impolite. In some cultures, touch is important in establishing connection, whereas in others it may be frowned upon. As a general rule, “contact” cultures—where people stand closer together when interacting, touch more often, and have more frequent direct eye contact—are found in South America, the Middle East, and southern Europe, while “noncontact” cultures—where eye contact and touching are less frequent, and there is less physical proximity during interactions—are in northern Europe, the Far East, and the United States. So, the seemingly innocuous gesture of a handshake to cement a new business relationship might be viewed very differently depending on where it occurs and who is shaking hands.
All of this speaks to the awareness and cultural sensitivity that must be exhibited by an ethical manager doing business in a region different from his or her own. Certain mistakes, particularly accidental ones and those not motivated by malicious design, will likely be forgiven. Still, a global ethical demeanor requires that we be as conscious as possible as to what constitutes courtesy wherever we find ourselves conducting business.
WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
Tucked In, Tucked Out
Time and space are just two examples of cultural characteristics that you may take for granted but that are not universal. Business attire is another, as is humor, which is notoriously hard to translate across languages and cultures. And, of course, miscommunications can occur not just across regional boundaries and business cultures but even within them. For example, unless you are a barista at a hipster coffee bar, it may not be a good idea to wear piercings, tattoos, or colorfully dyed hair to work. Employers have the right to establish a dress code and expect employees to abide by it.
In the movie The Intern, Robert De Niro’s senior character wears conservative blue and gray suits to his job at an e-commerce fashion startup, whereas the younger men dress very casually. At one point in the film, De Niro’s character asks, “Doesn’t anybody tuck in their shirt?” Leaving your shirt untucked has become more acceptable in recent years, and the black t-shirt and jeans favored in Silicon Valley are now quite fashionable in some business environments.
Many today would disagree with the old adage that “clothes make the man,” yet studies show that well-dressed employees are held in higher esteem and may earn more, on average, than those who dress down. The age of uncomfortable dresses and starched white shirts may be over, but cultural standards, along with underlying values that prioritize, say, innovation over uniformity, change over time and even within the same company.
Critical Thinking
• How do you think clothing choices affect the relationships we form at work or in other business situations?
• What is your opinion about workplace dress codes, and how far should employers go in setting dress and other behavior standards? Why are these standards important (or not) from an ethical perspective?
• How do you think clothing might affect an international company’s approach to business ethics?
link to learning
The Italian Jesuit priest Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) learned Mandarin, adopted Chinese dress, translated Confucian texts into Latin, and was welcomed into the Chinese emperor’s court as a scholar. His message was religious, not commercial, but his respectful attitude allowed him to be accepted and trusted by the emperor and administrators. Learn more about Ricci’s approach and the relationship between Western and Ming Chinese views of ethics on this webpage.
Religion and Ethics
A major factor in the difference that geography and culture make in our ethical standards is the influence of religious practice. For example, just as the current debate over the redistribution of goods and services has Christian roots, so the Industrial Revolution in England and northern Europe looked to Protestant Christianity in particular for the values of frugality, hard work, industriousness, and simplicity. Until the seventeenth century, religion and ethics were nearly inseparable. Many believed that people could not be persuaded to do the right thing without the threat of eternal damnation. The Enlightenment’s attempt to peel religion away from ethics was short-lived, with even Kant acknowledging the need to base morality on something beyond the rationalism of his time.
Religions are neither uniform nor monolithic, of course, nor are they unchanging over time. The core of Christianity, for instance, does not change, but its emphasis in any given period does. Moreover, the state or crown often worked side by side with the church in the past, choosing certain teachings over others to promote its own interests. This cooperation was evident during the era of mercantilism when the issue of personhood, or the privilege of having the freedom and capacity to make decisions and act morally, was hotly debated in the context of slavery, a practice that had been going on for centuries in the Christian West and the Islamic East. Although the church officially opposed slavery, the conquest of new lands was justified theologically as bringing salvation and civilization to populations considered savage and unsophisticated. Christianity was thought to save them from their pagan ways just as Islam and the message of the prophet saved unbelievers in the East. Behavioral norms for the clergy were founded and supported by the divine right of kings and the authority of religious tradition (Figure 5.6). Commerce and trade followed these norms.
By the time of the Industrial Revolution and postindustrial eras, Protestantism and its values of frugality, hard work, and simplicity (the “Protestant ethic”) had helped create a culture of individualism and entrepreneurship in the West, particularly in Great Britain and the United States. In fact, the Protestant work ethic, religion, and a commitment to hard work all are intertwined in the business history of both these countries. One example of this singular association is John D. Rockefeller, who, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, commanded the attention given today to Bill Gates and Warren Buffet as emblems of free enterprise.
No one was more convinced of the link between religious faith and success in business than Rockefeller, who clung to his Baptist faith from his early years until his death in 1937. The richest person of his age, Rockefeller earned his fortune as the founder and major shareholder of Standard Oil but always regarded his billions as a public trust rather than his personal prize. “As his fortune grew big enough to beggar the imagination, [Rockefeller] retained his mystic faith that God had given him money for mankind’s benefit . . . or else why had He lavished such bounty on him?”24 Despite criticism, even from family members, Rockefeller donated enormous sums to many causes, especially medical research (in the form of Rockefeller University) and higher education. He financed the founding of the University of Chicago as an institution that would train students to pursue their professional and business interests under the guidance of Christian faith.
Still, as Ida Tarbell pointed out in her work, Rockefeller’s business ethics were not above reproach. In making his fortune, he pursued markedly Darwinian practices revealing a conviction in survival of the fittest. Later in life, and as his philanthropic motivation increased, his endowment of several charitable causes more fully reflected his belief as to how God wished him to dispose of a sizable portion of his wealth.
link to learning
Watch this episode of “American Experience” on John D. Rockefeller, Sr. from the Public Broadcasting System to learn more about him.
Of course, Rockefeller’s concept of stewardship—an attitude toward money and capital that stresses care and responsibility rather than pure utility—can be found across cultures and religions in various forms, and there are many similarities among the Judaic, Islamic, and Christian views of money and its use toward a greater end. All three of these religions teach that no harm should be done to others, nor should people be treated as means toward a material end like wealth. Yet what role does a religious concept of stewardship play in the ethics of the twenty-first century? The Enlightenment attempted to separate religion and ethics but could not. Are the two concepts inextricably linked? Might the business leaders of today succeed where the Enlightenment failed?
Although religious practices and cultural assumptions remain strongly in place, fewer people in the West today profess a religion than in the past.25 Does this development affect the way you approach business relationships and conduct negotiations? Might we see a universal, secular code of ethics developing in place of religion? If so, how would it accommodate the differences across time, regions, and cultures discussed in this chapter? The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1948, contains a list of basic human rights such as the right to life, liberty, due process, religion, education, marriage, and property. Business ethics will have to balance all these factors when adopting standards of conduct and local practices.
WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
Ramadan
Jillian Armstrong leads an external audit team reviewing the financial statements of Islamabad Investment Bank in Islamabad, Pakistan. It is Ramadan, and the employees on her team are Muslims who fast each day for a month. Jillian has never fasted and believes the practice can be harmful over prolonged periods, especially in the heat of summer. She proposes several times that team members keep up their strength by drinking water or tea, but her suggestions are met with awkward silence. She has decided to leave well enough alone as long as everyone does their work, but now she faces a dilemma. What should she do for lunch? Should she eat in her office, out of sight of the team and bank employees? Have lunch in one of the local restaurants that cater to Westerners? Or perhaps fast with her team and eat at sundown?
Critical Thinking
• What do you think would be the effect of Jillian’s accepting the local custom but continuing her own personal preference at mealtimes?
• Can two ways of life exist side by side at work? Why or why not? | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_Ethics/Book%3A_Business_Ethics_(OpenStax)/05%3A_The_Impact_of_Culture_and_Time_on_Business_Ethics/5.04%3A_The_Influence_of_Geography_and_Religion.txt |
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Explain the difference between relative and absolute ethical values
• Discuss the degree to which compliance is linked with organizational responsibility and personal values
• Identify the criteria for a system of normative business ethics
• Evaluate the humanistic business model
One of the perennial themes in business ethics—indeed, in ethics in general—is the difference between relative and absolute values. Is it possible to identify a set of universal values that is consistent across cultures and time? We might begin with always honoring the terms of a contract, consistently treating customers and partners with honesty, and never cheating. Where could we go from there? No matter our culture, geography, or time, could we identify some basic normative behaviors to govern business conduct in general?
Absolute Values versus Relative Values
To put this question another way, is there a set of universal values that all can endorse? Are there “human values” that apply everywhere despite differences in time, place, and culture (Figure 5.7)? If not, and if ethical standards are relative, are they worth having? Again, the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a useful starting point for the way business can conduct itself. Let us look at how it is possible to align business with human rights in such a way that both profitability and responsibility are honored across the globe.
According to the Union Internationale des Avocats, an international, nongovernmental association of legal professionals, corruption “corrodes the democratic principles of accountability, equality, and transparency. It poses an extremely high cost to the citizenry, it saps the credibility of government and it places companies under an unbearable economic burden.”26 The UN Convention Against Corruption has called corruption “an insidious plague” that exists everywhere and “hurts the poor disproportionately by diverting funds intended for development, undermining a Government’s ability to provide basic services, feeding inequality and injustice and discouraging foreign aid and investment.”27 Corruption appears to exist everywhere, so it would seem to require a persistent and consistent answer everywhere. Can business ethics provide one?
Business ethics exists on three levels: the individual, the organizational, and the societal. At the organizational and societal levels, laws, regulations, and oversight can go a long way toward curtailing illegal activity. Business ethics motivates managers to (1) meet legal and industry governing and reporting requirements and (2) shape corporate culture so that corrupt practices such as bribery, embezzlement, and fraud have no place in the organization. In the ideal case, the organization’s culture never allows the latter, because scandals not only damage reputations but they make companies and countries much less attractive to investors. Corruption is expensive: According to the World Economic Forum, no less than \$2 trillion is lost each year worldwide as a result of corruption, a staggering waste not just of resources but of credibility for business in general.28
At the individual level, when corruption takes place, it is a matter of conscience. Corruption can be defeated only by individuals acting in accordance with their conscience and being supported by systems and corporate culture that encourage such action. Transparency, whistleblower programs, ethics training, and modeling of appropriate behavior by upper management can create the conditions for employees to act ethically, but conscience is a personal phenomenon. So, although the work of national, regional, and international organizations can limit corruption through enforcement and the prosecution of cases (as was the case with the revelation of the so-called Panama Papers), corruption will not be reduced in any significant way unless efforts have been made to form individual conscience and teach practical ways to act on it.
link to learning
Read the article “Perspective: Panama Papers and ‘responsible’ journalism” on the Panama Papers and how journalists might hold the corporate world to account in cases of fraud and corruption for a detailed explanation.
Although ethical practice has been directly influenced by religion, as noted, ethics is not religion and religious belief is not a prerequisite for a commitment to business ethics. For example, although what constitutes ethical behavior in Islamic society is strongly linked to religious values, secular philosophers can endorse a highly developed commitment to commercial ethics, too. Furthermore, most religions have high ethical standards but do not address many of the problems faced in business. And although a good system of law incorporates ethical standards, the law can and sometimes does deviate from what is ethical. Finally, in the same vein, ethics is not science. The social and natural sciences provide data to make better ethical choices, but science cannot tell people what they ought to do (nor should it).
Absolute values do exist. Abstaining from cheating customers, defrauding clients, lying, and murder are fairly objective ethical values; the reason for making any exceptions must be carefully laid out. Ethical systems, whether utilitarian, rights based, or based on natural law and virtue ethics, are attempts to translate absolute values like these into workable solutions for people. From these systems has emerged a basic set of ethical norms for the business world.
Business Ethics and Compliance
A hallmark of any profession is the existence of ethical guidelines, often based on values like honesty, integrity, and objectivity. Organizational responsibility is fairly straightforward: Comply with applicable local, state, national, and international regulations. Compliance can be an immense task for industries like aerospace, pharmaceuticals, banking, and food production, due to the large number of employees involved, the certification of them that sometimes is necessary, and the requisite record keeping. Still, legal requirements are usually clear, as are the ways an organization can exceed them (as do, for example, companies such as Whole Foods, Zappos, and Starbucks). Personal responsibility is a different matter. It is either less clear what to do or harder to do it because of constant pressure to increase the organization’s profitability and the perception that “everybody else is doing it.”29
In the United States, companies spend more than \$70 billion annually on ethics training; worldwide, the figure is more than double that.30 Unfortunately, in the United States, much of this money is spent on merely meeting the minimum requirements of compliance, so that if there is ever a problem with the Department of Justice or the Securities and Exchange Commission, the organization is insulated from criticism or liability because its employees have engaged in the recommended training. Federal Sentencing Guidelines for felonies and serious misdemeanors now carry mandatory prison time for individual executives who are convicted. These guidelines also are designed to help organizations with compliance and reporting, and they introduce seven steps toward that end: (1) create a Code of Ethics, (2) introduce high-level oversight, (3) place ethical people in positions of authority, (4) communicate ethics standards, (5) facilitate employee reporting of misconduct, (6) react and respond to instances of misconduct, and (7) take preventive steps.
Many organizations focus on the letter of the law so that they can claim “good faith” in their effort to create an ethical environment. However, middle managers and employees often complain their ethics training consists of passing a computerized sexual harassment or fraud program once a year but that nothing is done to address issues in a substantive way or to change the culture of the organization, even those that have experienced problems.31 The focus still seems to be on organizational responsibility and compliance as opposed to individual responsibility and the formation of ethical conscience. We might argue that it is not the business of business to form people in their conscience, but the result of not doing so has become expensive for everyone concerned.32
The damage done to an organization’s or government’s reputation due to scandal can be enormous and long lasting. The 2017 conviction for bribery and embezzlement of Lee Jae-yong, heir to the Samsung electronics empire, was part of a widespread corruption scandal that brought down the president of South Korea. Bribery was also at the heart of the FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) corruption scandal, in which soccer officials, marketing executives, and broadcasters were accused of racketeering, wire fraud, and money laundering by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2015. The Volkswagen emissions scandal also began in 2015, when the Environmental Protection Agency cited the German automaker for violating the Clean Air Act by cheating on emissions tests. To date, the fallout has cost the company nearly \$30 billion in fines.
As the LIBOR (London Interbank Offered Rate) scandal, in which banks were manipulating rates to profit from trades, showed, ethical breakdowns often occur because systems fail or people make bad decisions, and sometimes both. In the case of LIBOR, the United Kingdom’s Serious Fraud Office determined there were inadequate systems of oversight in the setting of rates and that individual executives encouraged rate fixing, which led to the conviction of several traders, at least one of whom still maintains his innocence.33 The result was a staggering \$6 billion cumulative fine for the banks involved (i.e., Barclay’s, J.P. Morgan Chase, Citicorp, Royal Bank of Scotland, and Deutsche Bank).34
link to learning
Read this article on the LIBOR scandal and the consequences for an in-depth overview.
If there is anything to be learned from these scandals, it is that organizations will succumb to ethics crises if they do not pay attention to their organizational culture and foster their employees’ growth as moral beings. This is even more important in industries like banking that are more susceptible to unethical behavior because of the great sums of money that change hands. Compliance is important, but business managers must attempt to go above and beyond to clearly model and enforce the highest standards of ethical behavior.
Normative Business Ethics
Normative business ethics should address systemic issues such as oversight and transparency as well as the character of individuals who make up the organization. Human flourishing may not be the immediate concern of business, but managers and employees have a significant impact on business performance. Giving employees common-sense advice and training in practical ways to counter unethical behavior, as well as ethical role models at the top of the organization, can be more effective than prevention. There are programs that do this, such as “Giving Voice to Values” at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia.35 These programs are effective for their ability to help individuals act on their principles. As effective as they may be, however, they beg the larger question not of how someone can act on what their conscience tells them but how to determine what their conscience is telling them in the first place.
One model of ethical behavior, sometimes called the humanistic business model, may provide the answer for businesses that wish to achieve the dual goal of human flourishing and responsible profits. In this model, organizations focus on employees as a vital part of the operation and support them in their professional training, health care, education, family responsibilities, and even spiritual concerns. Leaders create positive relationships with stakeholders, including their employees, to cultivate investor goodwill and because they believe in the underlying values of trust and authenticity. The influence of positive psychology is evident, and there is much to commend in this kinder approach to the job of management that makes an effort to establish “sustainable human welfare.”36 However, happy employees are one thing; the human flourishing identified by Aristotle and John Stuart Mill is quite another. What, then, is missing from humanistic business?
The problem is that if anything flourishes in this model, it is often the business rather than the employees. After all, free enterprise has the interests of the enterprise at heart. But employees are human beings first, which means any attempt to improve their welfare must begin by thinking of them as human beings rather than as employees. How can businesses do this?
One alternative is to put the humanities into business. Businesses currently rely heavily on data analytics, algorithms, and statistical analyses to drive decision-making. The use of these tools is often backed by social science research in consumer behavior, behavioral finance, and cognitive studies. But looking to the humanities to understand business is an opportunity to engage business in subjects and ideas that have a tremendous, if often overlooked, impact on people. After all, literature that has stood the test of time can provide tremendous insight into human behavior, and Homer or Shakespeare may be more relevant to contemporary executive leadership than a business seminar on how to motivate employees.
In fact, we could argue that anything that makes an impact on people should legitimately be within the scope of business. Richard DeGeorge (1933–) of the University of Kansas describes what adding the humanities to business education entails:
“Students do not need psychosociological jargon in their business interactions. They do need to understand people and their motives, to know how to read and judge character, and to have the ability to imagine themselves in another’s shoes, be they those of a competitor, a boss, or a subordinate. For those dedicated to the case method, novels, short stories, and plays offer an inexhaustible storehouse of riches, more detailed, subtle, and complete than most cases written up for courses.”37
In DeGeorge’s humanities model, business ethics would not prepare students to do certain things, for which they likely will be trained by their employers, but to be certain persons. DeGeorge suggests that “a course in the philosophy of business would enable students to think about the foundations of business—its values, ends, purpose, and justification . . . philosophy could add a critical element to business education, an element that would keep business education always alive and prevent it from becoming an accepted, orthodox ideology.”38
Finally, if normative business ethics is to recognize and, ultimately, be based on the individual, it must address another human trait: bias. Intellectual, emotional, and social biases affect all decision-making, including those of an ethical nature. Some bias is good, as in having a favorable disposition toward those who work hard in intellectually honest ways. Bias also rewards those who support and nurture the best elements of a culture, whether corporate, social, or political. But it becomes dangerous when people use it to blind themselves to the reality around them, reinforce hardened positions even in the face of contradictory evidence, and shirk their responsibility as moral beings.
An example of bias occurs when employees engage in unethical activity because it has been sanctioned by higher-ups. They abdicate personal responsibility by assigning blame elsewhere. However, no amount of rationalization of the fear of job loss, financial pressure, desire to please a supervisor, and the rest, can justify such behavior, because it diminishes moral agency, the self-awareness, freedom, and ability to make choices based on our perception of right and wrong. And such agency needs to be at the heart of business ethics. After all, we cannot make a commitment to serve customers, develop leaders, and improve life for all stakeholders unless there is freedom and moral agency, the necessary ingredients in establishing an attitude of concern, that is, respect for oneself and for others, including all appropriate stakeholders.
ETHICS ACROSS TIME AND CULTURES
“What’s Love Got to Do with It?”
Philosopher and historian Martin Buber (1878–1965) taught that love is not a feeling but a responsibility of one person for another. Feelings may come and go, but the solidarity that people have with each other and the care they take with one another define them as human beings (Figure 5.8). Thus, love, as responsibility, depends on relationships based on good faith and concern. Business, too, is about relationships. Without a relationship of trust, there can be no exchange of goods or services upon which economies are built.
Many people question the place of love in a business setting. When seen from Buber’s perspective, however, love is not an idyllic feeling but a driving force for justice and care. This does not deny the need for profit and financial success. It simply emphasizes the other side of the twofold purpose of business (profit and responsibility). In fact, John Mackey, the founder of Whole Foods, has said that love has been the basis of his success in business, which translates into care and concern for customers beyond profit and for workers beyond productivity (Figure 5.8).39
Recall the statement by IBM quoted earlier in the chapter: “[IBM] remain[s] dedicated to leading the world into a more prosperous and progressive future; to creating a world that is fairer, more diverse, more tolerant, more just.”40
Critical Thinking
• Can Martin Buber’s notion of love play a role in business? What would that look like?
• What responsibilities do companies have regarding justice and care? Should business ethics be grounded only on more concrete tenets? Why or why not? | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_Ethics/Book%3A_Business_Ethics_(OpenStax)/05%3A_The_Impact_of_Culture_and_Time_on_Business_Ethics/5.05%3A_Are_the_Values_Central_to_Business_Ethics_Universal.txt |
Section Summaries:
5.1 The Relationship between Business Ethics and Culture
Culture has a tremendous influence on ethics and its application in a business setting. In fact, we can argue that culture and ethics cannot be separated, because ethical norms have been established over time by and make sense to people who share the same background, language, and customs. For its part, business operates within at least two cultures: its organizational culture and the wider culture in which it was founded. When a business attempts to establish itself in a new environment, a third culture comes into play. With increasingly diverse domestic and global markets and the spread of consumerism, companies must consider the ethical implications of outsourcing production and resist the temptation to look the other way when their values are challenged by the reality of overseas supply or distribution chains.
5.2 Business Ethics over Time
As a function of culture, ethics is not static but changes in each new era. Technology is a driving force in ethical shifts, as we can see in tracing changes from the age of mercantilism to the Industrial Revolution to the postindustrial era and the Information Age. Some of the most successful recent efforts to advance ethical practices have come from influences outside industry, including government regulation and consumer pressure.
5.3 The Influence of Geography and Religion
Business is primarily about relationships—with employees, business partners, and customers and clients. Ethical standards and practices governing these relationships depend on the environment they exist in, an environment that, in turn, depends on additional factors such as geography and religion. Religion’s role in business is less certain today; we are perhaps more likely to see a universal, secular code of ethics develop than to see religion serve as common ground for different cultures to come together.
5.4 Are the Values Central to Business Ethics Universal?
Any system of business ethics must consider the processes of enculturation and acculturation as well as the fact that ethical standards may shift depending on geography or time, even if certain underlying ethical values (e.g., prohibitions against lying, fraud, or murder) may remain constant. It is usually in a business’s best interest to promote human flourishing within the organization, providing comprehensive training along a humanistic business model, which applies the social sciences to ensure profitability and responsibility in an organization as well as happy, productive employees.
Key Terms
acculturation
the cultural transmission and socialization process that stems from cultural exchange
consumerism
a lifestyle characterized by the acquisition of goods and services
enculturation
the process by which humans learn the rules, customs, skills, and values to participate in a society
humanistic business model
a business model for balancing profitability and responsibility fairly, especially with regard to stakeholders
localization
the process of adapting a product for non-native environments and languages, especially in other nations and cultures
mercantilism
the economic theory that global wealth is static and prosperity comes from the accumulation of wealth through extraction of resources or trade
moral agency
the self-awareness, freedom, and ability to make choices based on one’s perception of right and wrong
universal values
ethical principles that apply everywhere despite differences in time, geography, and culture | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_Ethics/Book%3A_Business_Ethics_(OpenStax)/05%3A_The_Impact_of_Culture_and_Time_on_Business_Ethics/5.06%3A_Summary.txt |
The 2020 Gender Diversity Index shows that many Fortune 1000 boards of directors still lack diversity.1 Women and minorities continue to be underrepresented at the chief executive officer (CEO) level too.2Does this sameness merely look bad, or are there ethical and business reasons why top U.S. management should be more diverse (Figure 6.1)?
A demographic disconnect between leadership and workforce influences working conditions in many ways. For example, if more women held leadership roles, would workplace sexual harassment have come to light before the #MeToo movement? Would more companies offer paid family leave? If minorities were better represented at the executive level, would corporate lobbyists advocate differently for immigration and health care policies? When 70 percent of boardroom seats are occupied by white men,3 who make up only 30 percent of the population, many people’s views, ideas, and opinions will go unheard in decisions that affect their lives and livelihoods. We have seen progress, but much remains to be accomplished. Does management have an ethical duty to try to diversify top leadership? Whatever individual responses we might offer to each of these questions, a significant theme in this chapter is that ethical behavior in the workplace is most effectively instituted when it is modeled by senior leadership.
6.02: The Workplace Environment and Working Conditions
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Identify specific ethical duties managers owe employees
• Describe the provisions of the Occupational Safety and Health Act
• Identify Equal Employment Opportunity Commission protections, including those against sexual harassment at work
• Describe how employees’ expectations of work have changed
All employees want and deserve a workplace that is physically and emotionally safe, where they can focus on their job responsibilities and obtain some fulfillment, rather than worrying about dangerous conditions, harassment, or discrimination. Workers also expect fair pay and respect for their privacy. This section will explore the ethical and legal duties of employers to provide a workplace in which employees want to work.
Ethical Decision-Making and Leadership in the Workplace
A contemporary corporation always owes an ethical, and in some cases legal, duty to employees to be a responsible employer. In a business context, the definition of this responsibility includes providing a safe workplace, compensating workers fairly, and treating them with a sense of dignity and equality while respecting at least a minimum of their privacy. Managers should be ethical leaders who serve as role models and mentors for all employees. A manager’s job, perhaps the most important one, is to give people a reason to come back to work tomorrow.
Good managers model ethical behavior. If a corporation expects its employees to act ethically, that behavior must start at the top, where managers hold themselves to a high standard of conduct and can rightly say, “Follow my lead, do as I do.” At a minimum, leaders model ethical behavior by not violating the law or company policy. One who says, “Get this deal done, I don’t care what it takes,” may very well be sending a message that unethical tactics and violating the spirit, if not the letter, of the law are acceptable. A manager who abuses company property by taking home office supplies or using the company’s computers for personal business but then disciplines any employee who does the same is not modeling ethical behavior. Likewise, a manager who consistently leaves early but expects all other employees to stay until the last minute is not demonstrating fairness.
Another responsibility business owes the workforce is transparency. This duty begins during the hiring process, when the company communicates to potential employees exactly what is expected of them. Once hired, employees should receive training on the company rules and expectations. Management should explain how an employee’s work contributes to the achievement of company-wide goals. In other words, a company owes it to its employees to keep them in the loop about significant matters that affect them and their job, whether good or bad, formal or informal. A more complete understanding of all relevant information usually results in a better working relationship.
That said, some occasions do arise when full transparency may not be warranted. If a company is in the midst of confidential negotiations to acquire, or be acquired by, another firm, this information must be kept secret until a deal has been completed (or abandoned). Regulatory statutes and criminal law may require this. Similarly, any internal personnel performance issues or employee criminal investigations should normally be kept confidential within the ranks of management.
Transparency can be especially important to workers in circumstances that involve major changes, such as layoffs, reductions in the workforce, plant closings, and other consequential events. These kinds of events typically have a psychological and financial impact on the entire workforce. However, some businesses fail to show leadership at the most crucial times. A leader who is honest and open with the employees should be able to say, “This is a very difficult decision, but one that I made and will stand behind and accept responsibility for it.” To workers, euphemisms such as “right sizing” to describe layoffs and job loss only sounds like corporate doublespeak designed to help managers justify, and thereby feel better (and minimize guilt), about their (or the company’s) decisions. An ethical company will give workers advance notice, a severance package, and assistance with the employment search, without being forced to do so by law. Proactive rather than reactive behavior is the ethical and just thing to do.
Historically, however, a significant number of companies and managers failed to demonstrate ethical leadership in downsizing, eventually leading Congress to take action. The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act of 1989 has now been in effect for almost three decades, protecting workers and their families (as well as their communities) by mandating that employers provide sixty days’ advance notice of mass layoffs and plant closings (Figure 6.2). This law was enacted precisely because companies were not behaving ethically.
A report by the Cornell University Institute of Labor Relations indicated that, prior to passage of WARN, only 20 percent of displaced workers received written advance notice, and those who did received very short notice, usually a few days. Only 7 percent had two months’ notice of their impending displacement.4 Employers typically preferred to get as many days of work as possible from their workforces before a mass layoff or closing, figuring that workers might reduce productivity or look for other jobs sooner if the company were transparent and open about its situation. In other words, when companies put their own interests and needs ahead of the workforce, we can hardly call that ethical leadership.
Other management actions covered by WARN include outsourcing, automation, and artificial intelligence in the workplace. Arguably, a company has an ethical duty to notify workers who might be adversely affected even if the WARN law does not apply, demonstrating that the appropriate ethical standard for management often exceeds the minimum requirements of the law. Put another way, the law sometimes is often slow to keep up with ethical reflection on best management practices.
Workplace Safety under the Occupational Safety and Health Act
The primary federal law ensuring physical safety on the job is the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA), which was passed in 1970.5 The goal of the law is to ensure that employers provide a workplace environment free of risk to employees’ safety and health, such as mechanical or electrical dangers, toxic chemicals, severe heat or cold, unsanitary conditions, and dangerous equipment. OSHA also refers to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which operates as a division of the Department of Labor and oversees enforcement of the law. This act created the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), which serves as the research institute for OSHA and enunciates appropriate standards for safety and health on the job.
Employer obligations under OSHA include the duty to provide a safe workplace free of serious hazards, to identify and eliminate health and safety hazards (Figure 6.3), to inform employees of hazards present on the job and institute training protocols sufficient to address them, to extend to employees protective gear and appropriate safeguards at no cost to them, and to publicly post and maintain records of worker injuries and OSHA citations.
OSHA and related regulations give employees several important rights, including the right to make a confidential complaint with OSHA that might result in an inspection of the workplace, to obtain information about the hazards of the workplace and ways to avoid harm, to obtain and review documentation of work-related illnesses and injuries at the job site, to obtain copies of tests done to measure workplace hazards, and protection against any employer sanctions as a consequence of complaining to OSHA about workplace conditions or hazards.6 A worker who believes his or her OSHA rights are being violated can make an anonymous report. OSHA will then establish whether there are reasonable grounds for believing a violation exists. If so, OSHA will conduct an inspection of the workplace and report any findings to the employer and employee, or their representatives, including any steps needed to correct safety and health issues.
OSHA has the authority to levy significant fines against companies that commit serious violations. The largest imposed to date were against BP, the oil company responsible for the largest oil spill in U.S. history, discussed in the feature box on BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Government Regulation. OSHA took into account that seventeen workers died on BP’s rig, Deepwater Horizon, as a result of the initial explosion and fire in April 2010. Consequently, rig-worker safety was upgraded by statute. Total OSHA penalties issued to BP from 2005 to 2009 exceed \$102 million.7
Other large fines issued over the last thirty years include \$2.8 million against Union Carbide for violations related to an explosion and fire at its plant in Seadrift, Texas, in March 1991; \$8.2 million levied against Samsung Guam in the wake of numerous worksite accidents at Guam’s International Airport in 1995; and \$8.7 million against Imperial Sugar in connection with an explosion at the company’s plant in Port Wentworth, Georgia, in February 2008.8 More recently, OSHA fined the producers of The Walking Dead\$12,675 (the maximum allowable for a single citation) in the wake of the death of a stuntman working on an episode of the television show in Georgia in July 2017.9 These fines demonstrate that the agency is serious about trying to protect the environment and workers. However, for some, the question remains whether it is more profitable for a business to gamble on cutting corners on safety and pay the fine if caught than to spend the money ahead of time to make workplaces completely safe. OSHA fines do not really tell the whole story of the penalties for workplace safety issues. There can also be significant civil liability exposure and public relations damage, as well as worker compensation payments and adverse media coverage, making an unsafe workplace a very expensive risk on multiple levels.
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Read this OSHA Fact Sheet about fines and penalties to learn more.
A Workplace Free of Harassment
Employers have an ethical and a legal duty to provide a workplace free of harassment of all types. This includes harassment based on sex, race, religion, national origin, and any other protected status, including disability. Employees should not be expected to work in an atmosphere where they feel harassed, prejudiced against, or disadvantaged. The two complaints most frequently filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which strives to eliminate racial, gender, and religious discrimination in the workplace, are sexual harassment and racial harassment. Together, these categories made up two-thirds of all cases filed during 2017. More than thirty thousand complaints of sexual, gender, racial, or creedal harassment are filed each year, illustrating the frequency of the problem.10
The EEOC enforces Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (CRA) of 1964, which prohibits workplace discrimination including sexual harassment.11 (As discussed elsewhere in the text, the CRA also protects employees from discrimination based on race, gender, religion, and national origin.) According to EEOC guidelines, it is unlawful to sexually harass a person because of that person’s sex, either through explicit offers in exchange for sexual favors (known as quid pro quo) or through actions at a broader more systemic level that create a “hostile working environment.” Sexual harassment includes unwelcome touching, requests for sexual favors, any other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature, offensive remarks based on a person’s sex, and off-color jokes. The harasser can be the victim’s supervisor (which creates company liability the first time it happens) or a peer coworker (which usually creates liability after the second time it happens, assuming the company had notice of the first occurrence). It can even be someone who is not an employee, such as a client or customer, and the law applies to men and women. Thus, the victim and the harasser both can be either a woman or a man, and offenses include both opposite-sex and same-sex harassment.
Although the law does not prohibit mild teasing, offhand comments, or isolated incidents that are not serious, harassment does become illegal when, according to the law, it is so frequent “that it creates a hostile or offensive work environment or when it is so severe that it results in an adverse employment decision (such as the victim being fired or demoted).”12 It is management’s responsibility to prevent harassment through education, training, and enforcement of a policy against it, and failure to do so will result in legal liability for the company.
Two relatively recent examples of workplace environments that descended into the worst excesses of sexist and other inappropriate behavior occurred at American Apparel and Uber. In both cases, principal leaders were mostly men who engaged in ruthless, no-holds-barred management practices that benefitted only those subordinates who most resembled the leaders themselves. Such environments may thrive for a while, but the long-term consequences can include criminal violations that produce hefty fines and imprisonment, bankruptcy, and radical upheaval in corporate management. At American Apparel and at Uber, these events resulted in the dismissal of each company’s CEO, Dov Charney (who also was the founder of the company) and Travis Kalanick (who was one of the corporation’s founders), respectively.13
In 2017 and 2018, a renewed focus on sexual harassment in the workplace and other inappropriate sexual behaviors brought a stream of accusations against high-profile men in politics, entertainment, sports, and business. They included entertainment industry mogul Harvey Weinstein; Pixar’s John Lasseter; on-air personalities Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose; politicians such as Roy Moore, John Conyers, and Al Franken; and Uber’s Kalanick, to name just a few (Figure 6.4).
The workplace harassment problem has continued for many decades despite the EEOC’s enforcement efforts; it remains to be seen whether new public scrutiny will prompt a permanent change in the workplace. The Ford Motor Company serves as a relevant example. Decades after Ford tried to address sexual harassment at two Chicago-area assembly plants, the abuse at the plants evidently continues. According to legal action filed with the EEOC in the early 1990s, conditions for women working at some Ford auto assembly plants were hostile. Female employees alleged they were groped, that men pressed against them and simulated sex acts, and that men even masturbated in front of them. They further asserted that men would routinely make crude comments about the figures of female coworkers, and graffiti depictions of penises were everywhere—carved into tables, spray painted onto floors, and scribbled on walls. Managers and floor supervisors were accused of giving women better assignments in return for sex and punishing those who refused.14
In the 1990s, lawsuits and an EEOC action led to a \$22 million settlement in which Ford admitted to widespread misconduct and committed to crack down on the offenders. However, it seems Ford still did not learn its lesson, or, after almost three decades, the memory dimmed and they slipped right back into old habits. In August 2017, the EEOC reached a new \$10 million settlement with Ford for sexual and racial harassment at the two Chicago plants. Though Ford did not admit any wrongdoing in the recent settlement, it appears that neither millions of dollars in earlier damages nor promises by management led to any serious change. The New York Times interviewed some of the women at Ford,15 and Sharon Dunn, who was a party of the first case and is now again a party of the second, said, “For all the good that was supposed to come out of what happened to us, it seems like Ford did nothing. If I had that choice today, I wouldn’t say a damn word.”
A Satisfied Workforce
Although the workplace should be free of harassment and intimidation of every sort, and management should provide a setting where all employees are treated with dignity and respect, ideally, employers should go much further.
Most people spend at least one-third and possibly as much as one-half of their waking hours at work. Management, therefore, should make work a place where people can thrive, that fosters an atmosphere in which they can be engaged and productive. Workers are happier when they like where they work and when they do not have to worry about childcare, health insurance, or being able to leave early on occasion to attend a child’s school play, for example. For our grandparents’ generation, a good job was dependably steady, and employees tended to stay with the same employer for years. There were not many extras other than a secure job, health insurance, and a pension plan. However, today’s workers expect these traditional benefits and more. They may even be willing to set aside some salary demands in exchange for an environment featuring perquisites (or “perks”; nonmonetary benefits) such as a park-like campus, an on-the-premises gym or recreational center, flextime schedules, on-site day care and dry cleaning, a gourmet coffee house or café, and more time off. This section will explore how savvy managers establish a harmonious, compassionate workplace while still setting expectations of top performance.
Happy employees are more productive and more focused, which enhances their performance and leads to better customer treatment, fewer sick days, fewer on-the-job accidents, and less stress and burnout. They are more focused on their work, more creative, and better team players, and they are more likely to help others and demonstrate more leadership qualities. How, then, does an employer go about the process of making workers happy? Research has identified several pitfalls that managers should avoid if they want to have a good working relationship with their direct reports and, indeed, all their employees.16 One is making employees feel like they are just employees. To be happy at work, employees, instead, need to feel like they know each other, have friends at work, are valued, and belong. Another pitfall is remaining aloof or above your employees. Taking an authentic interest in who they are as people really does matter. When surveys ask employees, “Do you feel like your boss cares about you?,” too frequently the answer is no. One way to show caring and interest is to recognize when employees are making progress; another might be to take a personal interest in their lives and families. Asking employees to share their ideas and implementing these ideas whenever possible is another form of acknowledgement and recognition. Pause and highlight important milestones people achieve, and ensure that they feel their contributions are noticed by saying thank you.
Good advice to new managers includes making work fun. Allow people to joke around as appropriate so that when mistakes occur they can find humor in the situation and move forward without fixating simply on the downside. Celebrate accomplishments. Camaraderie and the right touch of humor can build a stronger workplace culture. Encourage exercise and sleep rather than long work hours, because those two factors improve employees’ health, focus, attention, creativity, energy, and mood. In the long run, expecting or encouraging people to regularly work long hours because leaving on time looks bad is counterproductive to the goals of a firm. Accept that employees need to disengage sometimes. People who feel they are always working because their management team expects they must remain in touch via e-mail or mobile phone can become tremendously stressed. To combat this, companies should not expect their workers to be available around the clock, and workers should not feel compelled to be so available. Rather, employers should allow employees to completely disengage regularly so they can focus on their friends and families and tend to their own personal priorities. By way of international comparison, according to a recent article in Fortune, Germany and France have actually gone as far as banning work-related e-mails from employers on the weekends, which is a step in the right direction, even if only because disconnecting from work is now mandated by law.17
Employers must decide exactly how to spend the resources they have allocated to labor, and it can be challenging to make the right decision about what to provide workers (Figure 6.5). Should managers ask employees what they want? Benchmark the competition? Follow the founder’s or the board’s recommendations? How does a company make lifestyle benefits fair and act ethically when there is backlash against family-friendly policies from people who do not have their own families? Unlike the purchase of raw materials, utilities, and other budgetary items, which is driven primarily by cost and may present only a few choices, management’s offering of employee benefits can present dozens of options, with costs ranging from minimal to very high. Work-at-home programs may actually cost the company very little, for example, whereas health insurance benefits may cost significantly more. In many other industrialized countries, the government provides (i.e., subsidizes) benefits such as health insurance and retirement plans, so a company does not have to weigh the pros and cons (i.e., do a cost-benefit analysis) of what to offer in this area. In the United States, employee benefits become part of a cost-benefit analysis, especially for small and mid-sized companies. Even larger companies today are debating what benefits to offer.
Management has to decide not only how much money to spend on benefits and perks but precisely what to spend the money on. Another decision is what benefit choices management should allow each employee to make, and which choices to make for the workforce as a whole. The best managers communicate regularly with their workforce; as a result, they are more likely to know (and be able inform top management about) the types of perks most desired and most likely to attract and keep good workers. Figure 6.6shows that men and women do not always want the same benefits, which presents a challenge for management. For instance, many women place about twice as much value as many men do on day care (23%–11%) and on paid family leave (24%–14%). Also valued more highly generally by women than by men are better health insurance, work-from-home options, and flexible hours, whereas more men value an on-site gym and free coffee more than women typically do.
Age and generation also play a role in the types of perks that employees value. Workers aged eighteen to thirty-five rank career advancement opportunities (32%) and work-life balance (33%) as most important to them at work. However, 42 percent of workers older than thirty-five say work-life balance is the most important feature. This is likely because Generation X (born in the years 1965–1980) place a high value on opportunities for work-life balance, although, like Baby Boomers (born in the years 1946–1964), they also value salary and a solid retirement plan. On the other hand, Millennials (born in the years 1981–1997) appreciate flexibility: having a choice of benefits, paid time off, the ability to telecommute, flexible hours, and opportunities for professional development.18
The menu of benefits and perks thus depends on several variables, such as what the company can afford, whether employees value perks over the more direct benefit of higher pay, what the competition offers, what the industry norm is, and the company’s geographic location. For example, Google is constantly searching for ways to improve the health, well-being, and morale of its “Googlers.” The company is famous for offering unusual perks, like bicycles and electric cars to get staff around its sprawling California campus. Additional benefits are generous paid parental leave for new parents, on-site childcare centers at one location, paid leaves of absence to pursue further education with tuition covered, and on-site physicians, nurses, and health care. Other perks are gaming centers, organic gardens, eco-friendly furnishings, a pets-at-work policy, meditation and mindfulness training, and travel insurance and emergency assistance on personal and work-related travel. On the death of a Google employee, his or her spouse or domestic partner is compensated with a check for 50 percent of the employee’s salary each year for a decade. In addition, all a deceased employee’s stock options vest immediately for the surviving spouse or domestic partner. Furthermore, a deceased employee’s children receive \$1000 per month until they reach the age of nineteen, or until the age of twenty-three if they are full-time students.19
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Of course, Google is not the only company that offers good perks. Another is the software giant SAS. Glassdoor has an article describing some interesting benefits offered by other companies in 2017. Do a quick comparison of a few of these companies. Do the perks influence your choice? Would you be willing to work for any of them?
In addition to offering benefits and perks, managers can foster a healthy workplace by applying good “people skills” as well. Managers who are respectful, open, transparent, and approachable can achieve two goals simultaneously: a workforce that is happier and also one that is more productive. Good management requires constant awareness that each team member is also an individual working to meet both personal and company goals. Effective managers act on this by regularly meeting with employees to recognize strengths, identify constructive ways to improve on weaknesses, and help workers realize collective and individual goals. Ethical businesses and good managers also invest in efforts like performance management and employee training and development. These commitments call for giving employees frequent and honest feedback about what they do well and where they need improvement, thereby enabling them to develop the skills they need, not only to succeed in the current job but to move on to the next level. Fostering teamwork by treating people fairly and acknowledging their strengths is also an important responsibility of management. Ethical managers, therefore, demonstrate most, if not all, of the following qualities: cultural awareness, positive attitude, warmth and empathy, authenticity, emotional intelligence, patience, competence, accountability, respectful, and honesty. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_Ethics/Book%3A_Business_Ethics_(OpenStax)/06%3A_What_Employers_Owe_Employees/6.01%3A_Introduction.txt |
Learning objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Explain why compensation is a controversial issue in the United States
• Discuss statistics about the gender pay gap
• Identify possible ways to achieve equal pay for equal work
• Discuss the ethics of some innovative compensation methods
The Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization funded by many of the largest American companies to research issues affecting workers and their employers. Findings of CFSI studies indicate that employee financial stress permeates the workplaces of virtually all industries and professions. This stress eats away at morale and affects business profits. A recent CFSI report details data showing that “85% of Americans are anxious about their personal financial situation, and admit that their anxiety interferes with work. Furthermore, this financial stress leads to productivity losses and increased absenteeism, healthcare claims, turnover and costs affecting workers who cannot afford to retire.”20 The report also indicates that employees with high financial anxiety are twice as likely to take unnecessary sick time, which is can be expensive for an employer.
The CFSI report makes clear that ensuring workers are paid a fair wage is not only an ethical practice; it is also an effective way to achieve employees’ highest and most productive level of performance, which is what every manager wants. In the process, it also makes workers more loyal to the company and less likely to jump ship at the first sign of a slightly better wage somewhere else.
The concept of a fair wage has a greater significance than simply one worker’s pay or one company’s policy. It is an economic concept critical to the nation as a whole in an economic system like capitalism, in which individuals pay for most of what they need in life rather than receiving government benefits funded by taxes. The ethical issues for the business community and for society at large are to identify democratic systems that can effectively eradicate the financial suffering of the poorest citizens and to generate sufficient wages to support the economic sustainability of all workers in the United States. Put another way, has the real income of average American workers declined so much over the past few decades that it now threatens the productivity of the largest economy in the world?
Economic Data as an Indicator of Fair Wages
The Pew Research Center indicates that over the thirty-five years between 1980 and 2014, the inflation-adjusted hourly wages of most middle-income American workers were nearly stagnant, rising just 6 percent, or an average of less than 0.2 percent, per year.21 (The Pew Research Center defines middle-class adults as those living in households with disposable incomes ranging from 65 percent to 200 percent of the national median, which is approximately \$60,000.) The data collected by the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank, show the same stagnant trend.22 Contrast this picture with the wages of high-income workers, which rose 41 percent over the same years. Many economists, political leaders, and even business leaders admit that increasing wage and wealth disparities are not a sustainable pattern if the U.S. economy is to succeed in the long term.23 Wage growth for all workers must be fair, which, in most cases, means higher wages for low- and middle-income workers. Figure 6.7presents evidence of the growth of the income gap in the United Sates since the start of the great recession in 2007.
No reasonable person, regardless of profession or political party, would dispute that employees are entitled to a fair or just wage. Rather, it is in the calculation of a fair wage that the debate begins. Economists, sociologists, psychologists, and politicians all have opinions about this, as have most workers. Some of the factors that feature in calculations are federal and state minimum-wage standards, the cost of living, and the rate of inflation. Should a fair wage include enough money to raise a family, too, if the wage earner is the sole or principal support of a family?
Figure 6.8 shows the growth, or lack of growth, in the buying power of a minimum-wage earner since 1940. Compare the twenty-year period of 1949 through 1968 with the fifty-year period from 1968 through 2017. The difference has created a sobering reality for many workers. In the nearly six decades since 1960, the inflation-adjusted real minimum wage actually declined by 23 percent. That means minimum-wage workers did not even break even; the value of their wages declined over fifty years, meaning they have effectively worked half a century with no raise. In the following chart, nominal wage represents the actual amount of money a worker earns per hour; real wage represents the nominal wage adjusted for inflation. We consider real wages because nominal wages do not take into account changes in prices and, therefore, do not measure workers’ actual purchasing power.
One positive development for minimum-wage workers is that state governments have taken the lead in what was once viewed primarily as a federal issue. Today, most states have a higher minimum hourly wage than the federal minimum of \$7.25. States with the highest minimum hourly wages are Washington (\$11.50), California and Massachusetts (\$11.00), Arizona and Vermont (\$10.50), New York and Colorado (\$10.40), and Connecticut (\$10.00). Some cities have even higher minimum hourly wages than under state law; for example, San Francisco and Seattle are at \$15.00. As of the end of 2017, twenty-nine states had higher minimum hourly wages than the federal rate, according to Bankrate.com (Figure 6.9).
Unfair Wages: The Gender Pay Gap
Even after all possible qualifiers have been added, it remains true that women earn less than men. Managers sometimes offer multiple excuses to justify pay inequities between women and men, such as, “Women take time off for having babies” or “Women have less experience,” but these usually do not explain away the differences. The data show that a woman with the same education, experience, and skills, doing the same job as a man, is still likely to earn less, at all levels from bottom to top. According to a study by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, even women in top positions such as CEO, vice president, and general counsel often earn only about 80 percent of what men with the same job titles earn.24 Data from the EEOC over the five years from 2011 through 2015 for salaries of senior-level officials and managers (defined by the EEOC as those who set broad policy and are responsible for overseeing execution of those policies) show women in these roles earned an average of about \$600,000 per year, compared with their male counterparts, who earned more than \$800,000 per year.25 That \$200,000 difference amounts to a wage gap of about 35 percent each year.
The same is true in mid-level jobs as well. In a long-term study of compensation in the energy industry, researchers looked at the job of a land professional—who negotiates with property owners to lease land on which the oil companies then drill wells—and found evidence of women consistently getting paid less than men for doing the same job. Median salaries were compared for male and female land professionals with similar experience (one to five years) and educational background (bachelor’s degree), and men earned \$7000 more per year than their female counterparts.26
Doesn’t the law require men and women to be paid the same? The answer is yes and no. Compensation discrimination has been illegal for more than fifty years under a U.S. law called the Equal Pay Act, passed in 1963. But the problem persists. Women earned about 60 percent of what men earned in 1960, and that value had risen to only 80 percent by 2016. Given these historic rates, women are not projected to reach pay equity until at least 2059, with projections based on recent trends predicting dates as late as 2119.27 These are aggregate data; thus, they include women and men with the same job, or similar jobs, or jobs considered to fall in the same general category, but the data do not compare the salary of a secretary to that of a CEO, which would be an unrealistic comparison.
Equal pay under the law means equal pay for the “same” job, but not for the “equivalent” job. Those companies wishing to avoid strict compliance with the law may use several devices to justify unequal pay, including using slightly different job titles, slightly different lists of job duties, and other techniques that lead to different pay for different employees doing essentially the same job. Women have taken employers to court for decades, only to find their lawsuits unsuccessful because proving individual compensation discrimination is very difficult, especially given that multiple factors can come into play in compensation decisions. Sometimes class-action lawsuits have been more successful, but even then plaintiffs often lose.
Can anything be done to achieve equal pay? One step would be to pass a new law strengthening the rules on equal pay, but two recent attempts to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act (S.84, H.R.377) and the Fair Pay Act (S.168, H.R.438) narrowly failed.28 These or similar bills, if ever enacted into law, would significantly reduce wage discrimination against those who work in similar job categories by establishing equal pay for “equivalent” work, rather than the current law which uses the term “same” job. The idea of pay equivalency is closely related to comparable worth, a concept that has been put into action on a limited basis over the years, but never on a large scale. Comparable worth holds that workers should be paid on the basis of the worth of their job to the organization. Equivalent work and comparable worth can be important next steps in the path to equal pay, but they are challenging to implement because they require rethinking the entire basis for pay decisions.
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Though the federal government has not yet passed the Paycheck Fairness Act, some states have taken action on their own. The website for the National Conference of State Legislatures’ section on state equal pay laws provides a chart listing states that go beyond the current federal law to mandate equal pay for comparable or equivalent work. Look up your state in the chart. How does it compare with others in this regard?
If a woman’s starting salary for the first job of her career is less than that of a man, the initial difference, even if small, tends to cause a systemic, career-long problem in terms of pay equity. Researchers at Temple University and George Mason University found that if a new hire gets \$5000 more than another worker hired at the same time, the difference is significantly magnified over time. Assuming an average annual pay increase of 5 percent, an employee starting with a \$55,000 salary will earn at least \$600,000 more over a forty-year career than an employee who starts an equivalent job with a \$50,000 salary. This significantly affects many personal decisions, including retirement, because, all other things equal, a lower-paid woman will have to work three years longer than a man to earn the same amount of money over the course of her career.29
ETHICS ACROSS TIME AND CULTURES
European Approaches to the Gender Pay Gap
The policies of other nations can offer some insight into how to address pay inequality. Iceland, for example, has consistently been at the top of the world rankings for workplace gender equality in the World Economic Forum survey.30 A new Icelandic law went into effect on January 1, 2018, that makes it illegal to pay men more than women, gauged not by specific job category, but rather in all jobs collectively at any employer with twenty-five or more employees, a concept known as an aggregate salary data approach.31 The burden of proof is on employers to show that men and women are paid equally or they face a fine. The ultimate goal is to eliminate all pay inequities in Iceland by the year 2022. The United Kingdom has taken a first step toward addressing this issue by mandating pay transparency, which requires employers with 250 workers or more to publish details on the gaps in average pay between their male and female employees.32
Policies not directly linked to salary can help as well. German children have a legal right to a place in kindergarten from the age of three years, which has allowed one-third of mothers who could not otherwise afford nursery school or kindergarten to join the workforce.33 In the United Kingdom, the government offers up to thirty hours weekly of free care for three- and four-year-old children to help mothers get back in the workforce. Laws such as these allow women, who are often the primary caregivers in a household, to experience fewer interruptions in their careers, a factor often blamed for the wage gap in the United States.
The World Economic Forum reports that about 65 percent of all Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries have introduced new policies on pay equality, including requiring many employers to publish calculations every year showing the gender pay gap.34 Steps such as the collection and reporting of aggregate salary data, or some form of early education or subsidized childcare, are positive steps toward eventually achieving the goal of wage equality.
Critical Thinking
• Which of these policies do you think would be the most likely to be implemented in the United States and why?
• How would each of the normative theories of ethical behavior (virtue ethics, utilitarianism, deontology, and justice theory) view this issue and these proposed solutions?
Part of the reason that initial pay disparity is heightened over a career is that when a worker changes jobs, the new employer usually asks what the employee was making in his or her last job and uses that as a baseline for pay in the new job. To combat the problem of history-based pay, which often hurts women, eight states (and numerous municipalities) in the United States now ban employers from asking job applicants to name their last salary.35 Although this restriction will not solve the entire problem, it could have a positive effect if it spreads nationally. In a survey by the executive search firm Korn Ferry, forty-six of one hundred companies said they usually comply with the legal requirements in force in the strictest of the locations in which they operate, meaning workers in states without this law might not be asked about their salary history during new-job negotiations either.36
Experiments in Compensation
Whether we are discussing fair wages, minimum wages, or equal wages, the essence of the debate often boils down to ethics. What should people get paid, who should determine that, and should managers and upper management do only what is required by law or go above and beyond if that means doing what they think is right? Organizational pay structures are set by a variety of methods, including internal policies, the advice of outside compensation consultants, and external data, such as market salaries.
An innovative compensation decision in Seattle may provide some insight. In 2011, a young man earning \$35,000 a year told his boss at Gravity, a credit-card payments business, that his earnings were not sufficient for a decent life in expensive Seattle. The boss, Dan Price, who cofounded the company in 2004, was somewhat surprised as he had always taken pride in treating employees well. Nevertheless, he decided his employee was right. For the next three years, Gravity gave every employee a 20 percent annual raise. Still, profit continued to outgrow wages. So Price announced that over the next three years, Gravity would phase in a minimum salary of \$70,000 for all employees. He reduced his own salary from \$1 million to \$70,000, to demonstrate the point and help fund it. The following week, five thousand people applied for jobs at Gravity, including a Yahoo executive who took a pay cut to transfer to a company she considered fun and meaningful to work for.
Price’s decision started a national debate: How much should people be paid? Since 2000, U.S. productivity has increased 22 percent, yet inflation-adjusted median wages have increased only 2 percent. That means a larger share of capitalism’s rewards are going to shareholders and top executives (who already earn an average of three hundred times more than typical workers, up from seventy times more just a decade ago), and a smaller share is going to workers. If Gravity profits while sharing the benefits of capitalism more broadly, Price’s actions will be seen as demonstrating that underpaying the workforce hurts employers. If it fails, it may look like proof that companies should not overpay.
Price recognized that low starting salaries were antithetical to his values and felt that struggling employees would not be motivated to maintain the high quality that made his company successful with that compensation. He calls the \$70,000 minimum wage an ethical and moral imperative rather than a business strategy, and, though it will cost Gravity about \$2 million per year, he has ruled out price increases and layoffs. More than half the initial cost was offset by his own pay cut, the rest by profit. Revenue continues to grow at Gravity, along with the customer base and the workforce. Currently, the firm has a retention rate of 91 percent.37 Yet Price says managers’ scorecards should measure purpose, impact, and service, as much as profit.
Michael Wheeler, a professor at Harvard Business School who teaches a course called “Negotiation and The Moral Leader,” recently discussed the aftermath of Dan Price’s decision at Gravity. He interviewed other entrepreneurs about their plans for creative compensation to help develop a happy and motivated workforce, and it appears that some other companies are taking notice of how successful Gravity has been since Price made the decision to pay his workers more.38 One of these entrepreneurs was Megan Driscoll, the CEO of Pharmalogics Recruiting, who, after hearing Dan Price speak to a group of executives, was inspired to raise the starting base pay of her employees by 33 percent. When Driscoll put her plan to work, her business had forty-six employees and \$6.7 million in revenue. A year later, staff and revenues had jumped to seventy-two and \$15 million, respectively. Driscoll points to data showing her people are working harder and smarter after the pay raise than before. There has been a 32 percent increase in clients, and the client retention rate doubled to 80 percent.39
Stephan Aarstol, CEO of Tower Paddleboards, wanted to give his workers a raise, but his company did not have the cash. Instead, Aarstol boldly cut the work day to five hours from the ten hours most employees had been working. Essentially that doubled their pay, and as a result, he says, employee focus and engagement have skyrocketed, as have company profits.40
Managers must carefully balance the short term, such as quarterly profits, versus long-term sustainability as a successful company. This requires recognizing the value of work that each person contributes and devising a fair, and sometimes creative, compensation plan. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_Ethics/Book%3A_Business_Ethics_(OpenStax)/06%3A_What_Employers_Owe_Employees/6.03%3A_What_Constitutes_a_Fair_Wage.txt |
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Discuss trends in U.S. labor union membership
• Define codetermination
• Compare labor union membership in the United States with that in other nations
• Explain the relationship between labor productivity gains and the pay ratio in the United States
The issue of worker representation in the United States is a century-old debate, with economic, ethical, and political aspects. Are unions good for workers, good for companies, good for the nation? There is no single correct response. Your answer depends upon your perspective—whether you are a worker, a manager, an executive, a shareholder, or an economist. How might an ethical leader address the issue of the gap between labor’s productivity gains and their relatively stagnant wages as compared with that of management?
Organized Labor
Americans’ longstanding belief in individualism makes some managers wonder why employees would want or need to be represented by a labor union. The answer is, for the same reasons a CEO wants to be represented by an attorney when negotiating an employment contract, or that an entertainer wants to be represented by an agent. Unions act as the agent/lawyer/negotiator for employees during collective bargaining, a negotiation process aimed at getting management’s agreement to a fair employment contract for members of the union. Everyone wants to be successful in any important negotiation, and people often turn to professionals to help them in such a situation.
However, in the United States, as elsewhere around the globe, the concept of worker organization has been about more than simply good representation. Unionization and worker rights have often been at the core of debates related to class economics, political power, and ethical values. There are legitimate points on each side of the union debate (Table 6.1).
Pros and Cons of Unions
Pros of Unions Cons of Unions
Unions negotiate increased pay and benefits for workers. Unions can make it harder to fast-track promotions for high-performing workers and/or get rid of low-performing ones.
Unions create a formal dispute resolution process for workers. Workers are required to pay union dues/fees that some might rather not pay.
Unions act as an organized lobbying group for worker rights. Unions sometimes lead to a closed culture that makes it harder to diversify the workforce.
Collective bargaining agreements often set norms for employment for an entire industry—benefiting all workers, including those who are not at a union company. Collective bargaining contracts can drive up costs for employers and lead to an adversarial relationship between management and workers.
Table6.1
The value of unions is a topic that produces significant disagreement. Historically, unions have attained many improvements for workers in terms of wages and benefits, standardized employment practices, labor protections (e.g., child labor laws), workplace environment, and on-the-job safety. Nevertheless, sometimes unions have acted in their own interests to sustain their own existence, without primary concern for the workers they represent.
The history of the worker movement (summarized in the video in the following Link to Learning) reveals that in the first half of the twentieth century, wages were abysmally low, few workplace safety laws existed, and exploitive working conditions allowed businesses to use child labor. Unions stepped in and played an important role in leveling the playing field by representing the interests of the workers. Union membership grew to a relatively high level (33% of wage and salary workers) in the 1950s, and unions became a force in politics. However, their dominance was relatively short-lived, not least because in the 1960s, the federal government started to enact employment laws that codified many of the worker protections unions had championed. In the 1980s and 1990s, the U.S. economy gradually evolved from manufacturing, where unions were strong, to services, where unions were not as prevalent. The service sector is more difficult to organize, due to a variety of factors such as the historical absence of unions in the sector, workers’ widely differing work functions and schedules, challenging organizational status, and white-collar bias against unions.
link to learning
This three-minute video entitled “The Rise and Fall of U.S. Labor Unions” summarizes the history of the union movement. It is based on information from University of California Santa Cruz Professor William Domhoff and the University of Houston Bauer College of Business.
These developments, along with the appearance of state right-to-work laws, have led to a decline in unions and their membership. Right-to-work laws give workers the option of not joining the union, even at companies where the majority has voted to be represented by a union, resulting in lower membership. Right-to-work laws attempt to counter the concept of a union shop or closed shop, which requires that all new hires automatically be enrolled in the labor union appropriate to their job function and that union dues automatically be deducted from their pay.
Some question the fairness of right-to-work laws, because they allow those who do not join the union to get the same pay and benefits as those who do join and who pay unions dues for their representation. On the other hand, right-to-work laws provide workers the right of choice; those who do not want to join a union are not forced to do so. Those who do not choose to join may end up having a strained relationship with union workers, however, when a union-mandated strike occurs. Some non-union members, and even union members, elect to cross the picket line and continue to work. Traditionally, these “scabs,” as they are derisively labeled by unions, have faced both overt and subtle retaliation at the hands of their coworkers, who prioritize loyalty to the union.
Twenty-eight states have right-to-work laws (Figure 6.10). Notice that many right-to-work states, such as Michigan, Missouri, Indiana, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi, are among the top ten states where automobiles are manufactured and unions once were strong.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, total union membership in the United States dropped to 20 percent of the workforce in 1980; by 2016, it was down to about half that (Figure 6.11).41 Public sector (government) workers have a relatively high union membership rate of 35 percent, more than five times that of private-sector workers, which is at an all-time low of 6.5 percent. White-collar workers in education and training, as well as first responders such as police and firefighters now have some of the highest unionization rates, also 35 percent. Among states, New York continues to have the highest union membership rate at 23 percent, whereas South Carolina has the lowest, at slightly more than 1 percent.
Codetermination is a workplace concept that goes beyond unionization to embrace shared governance, in which management and workers cooperate in decision-making and workers have the right to participate on the board of directors of their company. Board-level representation by employees is widespread in European Union countries. Most codetermination laws apply to companies over a certain size. For example, in Germany, they apply to companies with more than five hundred employees.42 The labor union movement never has been quite as strong in the United States as in Europe—the trade-union movement began in Europe and remains more vibrant there even today—and codetermination is thus not common in U.S. companies (Table 6.2).
Unionization as Percentage of Workforce in Eight Industrialized Nations
Country Workforce in Unions, %
Australia 25
Canada 30
France 9
Germany 26
Italy 35
Japan 22
Sweden 82
United Kingdom 29
United States 12
Table6.2 Labor union membership remains much higher in Europe and other Group of Seven (G7) countries than in the United States. Only France has a lower percentage of union membership.43
Codetermination has worked relatively well in some countries. For example, in Germany, workers, managers, and the public at large support the system, and it has often resulted in workers who are more engaged and have a real voice in their workplaces. Management and labor have cooperated, which, in turn, has led to higher productivity, fewer strikes, better pay, and safer working conditions for employees, which is a classic win-win for both sides.
Pay and Productivity in the United States
Some managers, politicians, and even members of the general public believe unions are a big part of the reason that U.S. companies have difficulty competing in the global economy. The conservative think tank Heritage Foundation conducted a study that concluded unions may be responsible, in part, for a slower work process and reduced productivity.44 However, multiple other studies indicate that U.S. productivity is up.45
Productivity in the United States increased 74 percent in the period 1973 to 2016, according to the OECD. In global productivity rankings, most studies indicate the United States ranks quite high, among the top five or six countries in the world and number two on the list compiled by the OECD (Table 6.3).
Productivity in 2015 by Country (Sample of Eight Industrialized Nations)
Country Productivity (output/hours worked)
Australia 102.20
Canada 109.45
Germany 105.90
Japan 103.90
Mexico 105.10
South Korea 97.60
United Kingdom 100.80
United States 108.87
Table6.3 This table compares 2015 productivity among several industrialized nations. U.S. productivity ranks high on the list.46
During the same period as the productivity gains discussed in the preceding paragraph, 1973 to 2016, wages for U.S. workers increased only 12 percent. In other words, productivity has grown six times more than pay. Taken together, these facts mean that American workers, union members or not, should not shoulder the blame for competitive challenges faced by U.S. companies. Instead, they are a relative bargain for most companies. Figure 6.12 compares productivity and pay and demonstrates the growing disparity between the two, based on data collected by the Economic Policy Institute.
Is Management Compensation Fair?
We gain yet another perspective on labor by looking at management compensation relative to that of employees. Between 1978 and 2014, inflation-adjusted CEO pay increased by almost 1,000 percent in the United States, while worker pay rose 11 percent.47 A popular way to compare the fairness of a company’s compensation system with that in other countries is the widely reported pay ratio, which measures how many times greater CEO pay is than the wages for the average employee.
The average multiplier effect in the United States is in the range of three hundred. This means that CEO pay is, on average, three hundred times as high as the pay of the average worker in the same company. In the United Kingdom, the multiplier is twenty-two; in France, it is fifteen; and in Germany, it is twelve.48 The 1965 U.S. ratio was only twenty to one, which raises the question, why and how did CEO pay rise so dramatically high in the United States compared with the rest of the world? Are CEOs in the United States that much better than CEOs in Germany or Japan? Do American companies perform that much better? Is this ratio fair to investors and employees? A large part of executive compensation is in the form of stock options, which frequently are included in the calculation of an executive’s salary and benefits, rather than direct salary. However, this, in turn, raises the question of whether all or a portion of the general workforce should also share in some form of stock options.
link to learning
Some corporate boards claim executive pay is performance based; others claim it is a retention strategy to prevent CEOs from going to another company for more money. This video shows former CEO Steven Clifford discussing CEO pay and claiming that U.S. executives often dramatically, and in many cases unjustifiably, boost their own pay to astronomical levels, leaving shareholders and workers wondering why. He also discusses how it can be stopped.
Everyone wants to be paid fairly for their work. Whether CEO or administrative assistant, engineer or assembly-line worker, we naturally look out for our own best interest. Thus, management compensation is a topic that often causes resentment among the rank and file, especially when organized workers go on strike. From the employee viewpoint, the question is why management often wants to hold the line when it comes to everyone’s wages but their own.
CASES FROM THE REAL WORLD
Verizon Strike
More than forty thousand Verizon workers went on strike in 2016 (Figure 6.13). The strike was eventually settled, with workers getting a raise, but bitter feelings and distrust remained on both sides. Workers thought management salaries were too high; management thought workers were seeking excessive raises. To continue basic phone services for its customers during the strike, Verizon called on thousands of non-union employees to perform the strikers’ work. Non-union staff had to cross picket lines formed by fellow employees to go to work each day during the strike. Enmity toward these picket-line crossers was exceptionally high among some union members.
Critical Thinking
• How does management reintroduce civility to the workplace to keep peace between different factions?
• How could Verizon please union workers after the strike without firing the picket-line crossers, some of whom were Verizon union employees who consciously chose to cross the picket line? | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_Ethics/Book%3A_Business_Ethics_(OpenStax)/06%3A_What_Employers_Owe_Employees/6.04%3A_An_Organized_Workforce.txt |
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Explain what constitutes a reasonable right to privacy on the job
• Identify management’s responsibilities when monitoring employee behavior at work
Employers are justifiably concerned about threats to and in the workplace, such as theft of property, breaches of data security, identity theft, viewing of pornography, inappropriate and/or offensive behavior, violence, drug use, and others. They seek to minimize these risks, and that often requires monitoring employees at work. Employers might also be concerned about the productivity loss resulting from employees using office technology for personal matters while on the job. At the same time, however, organizations must balance the valid business interests of the company with employees’ reasonable expectations of privacy.
Magnifying ethical and legal questions in the area of privacy is the availability of new technology that lets employers track all employee Internet, e-mail, social media, and telephone use. What kind and extent of monitoring do you believe should be allowed? What basic rights to privacy ought a person have at work? Does your view align more closely with the employer’s or the employee’s?
Legal and Ethical Aspects of Electronic Monitoring
Monitored workstations, cameras, microphones, and other electronic monitoring devices permit employers to oversee virtually every aspect of employees’ at-work behavior (Figure 6.14). Technology also allows employers to monitor every aspect of computer use by employees, such as downloads of software and documents, Internet use, images displayed, time a computer has been idle, number of keystrokes per hour, words typed, and the content of e-mails. According to a survey by the American Management Association, 48 percent of employers used a form of video monitoring in the workplace, and 67 percent monitored employee Internet use. In 30 percent of the organizations responding to the survey, this electronic monitoring had ultimately led to an employee’s termination. 49
The laws and regulations governing electronic monitoring are somewhat indirect and inconsistent. Very few specific federal statutes directly regulate private employers when it comes to broad workplace privacy issues. However, monitoring is subject to various state rules under both statutory and common law, and sometimes federal and state constitutional provisions as well. The two primary areas of the law related to workplace monitoring are a federal statute called the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986(ECPA) and various state common law protections against invasion of privacy.50
Although the ECPA may appear to prohibit an employer from monitoring its employees’ oral, wire, and electronic communications, it contains two big exceptions that weaken its protection of employees’ rights. One is the business purpose exception. This allows employers—on the basis of legitimate business purposes—to monitor electronic and oral communications, and employers generally assert a legitimate business purpose to be present. The other widely used exception is the consent exception, which allows employers to monitor employee communications provided employees have given their consent. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, the ECPA definition of electronic communication applies to the electronic transmission of communications but not to their electronic storage. Therefore, courts have distinguished between monitoring electronic communications such as e-mail during transmission and viewing e-mails in storage. Viewing emails during transmission is broadly allowed, whereas viewing stored e-mail is considered similar to searching an employee’s private papers and thus is not routinely allowed under the ECPA unless certain circumstances apply (e.g., the e-mails are stored in the employer’s computer systems).51
In general, it is legal for a company to monitor the use of its own property, including but not limited to computers, laptops, and cell phones. According to the ECPA, an employer-provided computer system is the property of the employer, and when the employer provides employees with a laptop they can take home, it likely violates no laws when it monitors everything employees do with that computer, whether business-related or personal. The same is true of an employer-provided cell phone or tablet, and always true when an employer gives employees notice of a written policy regarding electronic monitoring of equipment supplied by the company. Generally, the same is not true of equipment owned by the employee, such as a personal cell phone.
However, an important distinction is based on the issue of consent. The consent provision in the ECPA is not limited to business communications only; therefore, a company might be able to assert the right to monitor personal electronic communications if it can show employee consent (although this is very likely to worry employees, as discussed in the next section). Another consideration is whose e-mail server is being used. The ECPA and some state laws generally make it illegal for employers to intercept private e-mail by using an employee’s personal log-on/user ID/password information.
Although the ECPA and National Labor Relations Act are both federal laws, individual states are free to pass laws that impose greater limitations, and several states have done so. Some require employers to provide employees advance written notice that specifies the types or methods of monitoring to which they will be subjected. Examples of state laws creating some degree of protection for workers include laws in California and Pennsylvania that require consent of both parties before any conversation can be monitored or recorded.
Employees can bring common law privacy claims to challenge employer monitoring. (Common laws are those based on prior court decisions rather than on legislatively enacted statutes.) To prevail on a common law claim of invasion of privacy, which is a tort, the employee must demonstrate a right to privacy with respect to the information being monitored. Several state constitutions, such as those in Louisiana, Florida, South Carolina, and California, expressly provide citizens a right to privacy, which may protect employees with respect to monitoring of their personal electronic information and personal communication in the workplace.
One additional regulatory consideration applicable to electronic monitoring is whether the company’s workforce is unionized. The National Labor Relations Board, the federal labor law agency, has ruled that the video surveillance of any portion of the workplace is a condition of employment subject to collective bargaining and must be agreed to by the union before implementation, so employees have notice. If a workplace is not unionized (the majority are not), then this federal regulation requiring notice does not apply, and as stated previously in this chapter, if there is any protection at all, it would have to be given by state regulation (which is rare in the private [nongovernmental] sector).
What Constitutes a Reasonable Monitoring Policy?
Many employees generally are not be familiar with the specific details of the law. They may feel offended by monitoring, especially of their own equipment. Companies must also consider the effect on workplace morale if everyone feels spied upon, and the risk that some high-performing employees may decide to look elsewhere for career opportunities. Employers should develop a clear, specific, and reasonable monitoring policy. The policy should limit monitoring to that which is directly work related. For example, if a company is concerned about productivity and the goal of monitoring is to keep tabs on employee performance, then neither keystroke logging nor screenshot recording is necessary; software designed to show idle time or personal Internet use would be more helpful in identifying wasted time, which is the ultimate goal.
Employers should always remember their business goals when monitoring employees. It is not only a matter of treating employees ethically; it also makes good business sense to ensure that monitoring pertains only to business matters and does not unnecessarily intrude into the privacy of employees. Perhaps most importantly, in the interest of fairness, the monitoring policy must be communicated to the employees. When, if ever, is it acceptable to monitor without notice to the employee and without his or her knowledge?
link to learning
This notice by the State of Connecticut mandates that all employers inform employees of the kinds of electronic monitoring of their activities and communications that may be undertaken at work, and the responsibilities of an employer. Read the notice and decide whether you think it is a reasonable policy. Would it make sense to the average worker? Do you think it is unfair to either party?
The Connecticut policy in the preceding Link to Learning applies to all employers (i.e., in state and in private sector workplaces). However, many states have policies that apply only to employees who work for the government. State employees hold a special status that conveys certain state constitutional rights with regard to due process, reasonable searches, and related legal doctrines. The same is true for federal government employees and the U.S. Constitution, which means the government has a duty of fairness in employee surveillance. It does not mean, however, that the government cannot monitor its employees at all, as demonstrated by an incident involving a California police officer. In a unanimous decision in Ontario v. Quon,52 the U.S. Supreme Court in 2010 ruled in favor of a police chief in Ontario, California, who read nearly five hundred text messages sent by one of his sergeants on a police-issued pager. Many of the text messages were personal and some were sexually explicit. Only a few dozen were work related. The justices agreed that constitutional limits on unreasonable searches by public employers (under the Fourth Amendment) were minimal given a work-related purpose.
This decision creates precedent for more than 25 million employees of federal, state, and local governments and limits their expectation of privacy when using employer-issued tools. “Because the search [by the police chief] was motivated by a legitimate work-related purpose and because it was not excessive in scope, the search was reasonable,” said Justice Anthony M. Kennedy.
In the private sector, where employees are not working for the government and the constitutional prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures has very little applicability, if any, employers have even more latitude in terms of employee monitoring than in a government setting. The Ontario v. Quon case in all likelihood would never even make it to court if the employer were a private-sector company, because the issue of whether getting the text message was a reasonable search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment does not apply in a nongovernment employment setting. The Constitution acts to limit government intrusions but does not generally restrict private companies in this type of situation. However, ethical considerations may encourage private-sector employers to treat their workers respectfully, even if not required by law.
WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
Security versus Privacy
You manage a large, high-end jewelry store with an international clientele. Your workforce of 150 is demographically diverse, and your employees are trustworthy as a rule. However, you have experienced some unexplained loss of inventory and suspect a couple of employees are stealing valuable pieces, removing them from backroom storage safes and handing them off to another person somewhere in the store who leaves with them or to a third person pretending to be a customer. To prevent this, your assistant managers are urging you to place discreet cameras in the restrooms and break rooms, where these exchanges are likely occurring. Some managers might be concerned about using cameras at all due to privacy issues; others might want to use them without notifying employees or putting up signs because they do not want to tip off the suspects or deal with the negative reaction of the workforce (although that brings up invasion of privacy issues). You are weighing the pros of catching the thieves against the possible loss of other employees’ trust.
Critical Thinking
• What issues must you confront as you decide whether you will take the recommendation of your assistant managers?
• What, ultimately, will you do? Explain your decision.
Drug Testing in the Workplace
Key issues that arise about a drug testing or monitoring program begin with whether an employer wants or needs to do it. Is it required by law for a particular job, under state or local regulations? Is it for pre-employment clearance? Does the employer need employees’ permission? Does a failed test require mandatory termination? With the exception of employers in industries regulated by the federal government, such as airlines, trucking companies, rail lines, and national security-related firms, federal law is not controlling on the issue of drug testing in the workplace; it is largely a state issue. At the federal level, the Department of Transportation does mandate drug testing for workers such as airline crews and railway conductors and has a specific procedure that must be followed. However, for the most part, drug testing is not mandatory and depends on whether the employer wants to do it. Multiple states do regulate drug testing, but to varying degrees, and there is no common standard to be followed.
Testing of job applicants is the most common form of drug testing. State laws typically allow it, but the employer must follow state rules, if they exist, about providing notice and following standard procedures intended to prevent inaccurate samples. Testing current employees is much less common, primarily due to cost; however, companies that do use drug testing include some in the pharmaceutical and financial services industries. Some states put legal constraints on drug testing of private-sector employees. For example, in a few states. the job must include the possibility of property damage or injury to others, or the employer must believe the employee is using drugs.
Challenging a drug test is difficult because tests are considered highly accurate. An applicant or employee can refuse to take the test, but that often means not being hired or losing the job, assuming the worker is an employee at will. The concept of employment at will affirms that either the employee or the employer may dissolve an employment arrangement at will (i.e., without cause and at any time unless an employment contract is in effect that stipulates differently). Most workers are considered employees at will because neither the employer nor employee is obligated to the other; the worker can quit or be fired at any time for any reason because there is no contractual obligation. In some states, the employee risks not only job loss but also the denial of unemployment benefits if fired for refusing to take a drug test. Thus, the key concept that makes drug testing possible is employment at will, which covers approximately 85 percent of the employees in the private sector (unionized workers and top executives have contracts and thus are not at will, nor are government employees who have due process rights). The only legal limitation is that, in some states, the drug testing procedure must be fair, accurate, and designed to minimize errors and false-positive results.
The drug testing process, however, raises some difficult privacy issues. Employers want and are allowed to protect against specimen tampering by taking such steps as requiring subjects to wear a hospital gown. Some employers use test monitors who check the temperature of the urine and/or listen as a urine sample is collected. According to the Cornell University Law School Legal Information Institute, some state courts (e.g., Georgia, Louisiana, Hawaii) have found it an unreasonable invasion of privacy for the monitor to watch an employee in the restroom; however, in other states (e.g., Texas, Nevada), this is allowed.53
Case examples abound of challenges based on privacy concerns. In an article in the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, University of Houston Law School professor Mark Rothstein, who is director of the Health Law and Policy Institute, summarized examples of legal challenges.54 In one case, the court ruled that an employer engaged in unlawful retaliation as defined by the Mine Safety and Health Act. The employer dismissed two employees who were required to urinate in the presence of others but found themselves unable to do so. In a different case, \$125,000 in tort damages was awarded to a worker for invasion of privacy and negligent infliction of emotional distress as a consequence of his being forced to submit a urine sample as he was being directly observed. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_Ethics/Book%3A_Business_Ethics_(OpenStax)/06%3A_What_Employers_Owe_Employees/6.05%3A_Privacy_in_the_Workplace.txt |
Section Summaries:
The Workplace Environment and Working Conditions
A company and its managers need to provide a workplace at which employees want to work, free of safety hazards and all types of harassment. Perks and benefits also make the company an attractive place to work. Yet another factor is managers who make employees feel valued and respected. A company can use all these tools to attract and retain top talent, helping to reach the goals of having a well-run company with a satisfied workforce. Philosophers Aristotle and Immanuel Kant said taking ethical action is the right thing to do. The decision to create an environment in which employees want to come to work each day is, in large part, an ethical choice, because it creates a healthy environment for all to encounter. However, the bonus comes when a satisfied workforce fosters increased quality and productivity, which leads to appreciative customers or clients and increased profitability. There is a financial payoff in that a well-treated workforce is also a productive one.
6.2 What Constitutes a Fair Wage?
The concept of paying people fairly can become complicated. It includes trying to allocate and compensate workers in the most effective manner for the company, but it takes judgement, wisdom, and a moral imperative to do it fairly. Managers must balance issues of compensation equity, employee morale, motivation, and profits—all of which may have legal, ethical, and business elements. The issue of a fair wage is particularly salient for those earning the minimum wage, which, in real terms, has declined by 23 percent since 1960, and for women, who continue to experience a significant pay gap as compared with their male counterparts.
6.3 An Organized Workforce
Employees seek fair treatment in the workplace and sometimes gain a negotiating advantage with management by choosing to be represented by a labor union. Union membership in the United States has fallen in recent years as federal and state law have expanded to include worker protections unions fought for, and as the nation has shifted from a manufacturing to a service economy. Public-sector employee groups such as teachers, professors, first responders, and nurses are unionized in some cities and states. U.S. workers have contributed to a long rise in productivity over the last forty years but have not generally shared in wage gains.
6.4 Privacy in the Workplace
Monitoring of employees, whether electronically or through drug testing, is a complex area of workforce management. Numerous state and federal legal restrictions apply, and employers must decide not only what they are legally allowed to do but also what they should do ethically, keeping in mind the individual privacy concerns of their employees.
Key Terms
business purpose exception
an exception to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 that permits employers to monitor all oral and electronic communications, assuming they can show a legitimate business purpose for doing so
closed shop
a union environment that requires new hires to be automatically enrolled in the labor union and union dues to be automatically deducted from their pay
codetermination
a concept popular in Europe that gives workers the right to participate on the board of directors of their company
collective bargaining
union negotiations with an employer on behalf of employees
comparable worth
the idea that pay should be based upon a job holder’s worth to the organization rather than on salary history
consent exception
an exception to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 that allows employers to monitor employee communications provided employees have given their consent
EEOC
the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, created by the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964 and which attempts to eliminate discrimination in the workplace based on race, gender, or creed
employment at will
a legal philosophy that holds that either the employee or the employer may dissolve the employment arrangement at will (i.e., without cause and at any time unless an employment contract is in effect that stipulates differently)
OSHA
the Occupational Safety and Health Act, which governs workplace safety, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which administers the act at the federal level
pay ratio
the number of times greater the average executive’s salary is than the average worker’s
right-to-work law
a state law that says a worker cannot be forced to join a union
sexual harassment
unwelcome touching, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature from a supervisor, coworker, client, or customer | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_Ethics/Book%3A_Business_Ethics_(OpenStax)/06%3A_What_Employers_Owe_Employees/6.06%3A_Summary.txt |
What Employers Owe Employees discussed the duties, obligations, and responsibilities managers and companies owe their employees. This chapter looks at the other side of that relationship to weigh the ethical dimensions of being a worthy employee and responsible coworker (Figure 7.1).
Coworkers may express their opinions differently, for instance, agreeing or disagreeing, perhaps in very animated ways. Although we and our peers at work may not see eye to eye on every issue, we work best when we understand the need to get along and to show a degree of loyalty to our employer and each other, as well as to ourselves, our values, and our own best interests. Balancing these factors requires a concerted effort.
What would you do, for example, if one of your coworkers were being bullied or harassed by another employee or a manager? Suppose a former colleague tried to recruit you to her new firm. What is the ethical action for you to take? How would you react if you learned your company’s managers were behaving unethically or breaking the law? Who could you tell, and what could you expect as a result? What is the right response if a client or customer behaves badly toward you as an employee representing your firm? How do you provide good customer service and support the company brand in the face of difficult working conditions?
7.02: Loyalty to the Company
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Define employees’ responsibilities to the company for which they work
• Describe a non-compete agreement
• Explain how confidentiality applies to trade secrets, intellectual property, and customer data
The relationship between employee and employer is changing, especially our understanding of commitment and loyalty. An ethical employee owes the company a good day’s work and his or her best effort, whether the work is stimulating or dull. A duty of loyalty and our best effort are our primary obligations as employees, but what they mean can change. A manager who expects a twentieth-century concept of loyalty in the twenty-first century may be surprised when workers express a sense of entitlement, ask for a raise after six months, or leave for a new job after twelve months. This chapter will explore a wide range of issues from the perspective of what and how employees contribute to the overall success of a business enterprise.
A Duty of Loyalty
Hard work and our best effort likely make sense as obligations we owe an employer. However, loyalty is more abstract and less easily defined. Most workers do not have employment contracts, so there may not be a specific agreement between the two parties detailing their mutual responsibilities. Instead, the common law (case law) of agency in each state is often the source of the rules governing an employment relationship. The usual depiction of duty in common law is the duty of loyalty, which, in all fifty states, requires that an employee refrain from acting in a manner contrary to the employer’s interest. This duty creates some basic rules employees must follow on the job and provides employers with enforceable rights against employees who violate them.
In general terms, the duty of loyalty means an employee is obligated to render “loyal and faithful” service to the employer, to act with “good faith,” and not to compete with but rather to advance the employer’s interests.1 The employee must not act in a way that benefits him- or herself (or any other third party), especially when doing so would create a conflict of interest with the employer.2The common law of most states holds as a general rule that, without asking for and receiving the employer’s consent, an employee cannot hold a second job if it would compete or conflict with the first job. Thus, although the precise boundaries of this aspect of the duty of loyalty are unclear, an employee who works in the graphic design department of a large advertising agency in all likelihood cannot moonlight on the weekend for a friend’s small web design business. However, employers often grant permission for employees to work in positions that do not compete or interfere with their principal jobs. The graphic designer might work for a friend’s catering business, for example, or perhaps as a wedding photographer or editor of a blog for a public interest community group.
link to learning
Moonlighting has become such a common phenomenon that the website Glassdoor now has a section reserved for such jobs. The Glassdoor website has a number of postings for different moonlighting opportunities to explore.
What is clear is that it is wrong for employees to make work decisions primarily for their own personal gain, rather than doing what is in the employer’s best interest. An employee might have the authority to decide which other companies the employer will do business with, for example, such as service vendors that maintain the copiers or clean the offices. What if the employee owned stock in one of those companies or had a relative who worked there? That gives him or her an incentive to encourage doing business with that particular company, whether it would be best for the employer or not.
The degree to which the duty of loyalty exists is usually related to the degree of responsibility or trust an employer places in an employee. More trust equals a stronger duty. For example, when an employee has very extensive authority or access to confidential information, the duty can rise to its highest level, called a fiduciary duty, which is discussed in an earlier chapter.
Differing Concepts of Loyalty
There is no generally agreed-upon definition of an employee’s duty of loyalty to his or her employer. One indicator that our understanding of the term is changing is that millennials are three times more likely than older generations to change jobs, according to a Forbes Human Resources Council survey (Figure 7.2).3 About nine in ten millennials (91 percent) say they do not expect to stay with their current job longer than three years, compared with older workers who often anticipated spending ten years or even an entire career with one employer, relying on an implicit social contract between employer and employee that rewarded lifetime employment.
The Loyalty Research Center, a consulting firm, defines loyal employees as “being committed to the success of the organization. They believe that working for this organization is their best option . . . and loyal employees do not actively search for alternative employment and are not responsive to offers.”4 Likewise, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, professor Matthew Bidwell says there are two halves to the term: “One piece is having the employer’s best interests at heart. The other piece is remaining with the same employer rather than moving on.” Bidwell goes on to acknowledge, “There is less a sense that your organization is going to look after you in the way that it used to, which would lead [us] to expect a reduction in loyalty.”5
Why are employees less likely to feel a duty of loyalty to their companies? One reason is that loyalty is a two-way street, a feeling developed through the enactment of mutual obligations and responsibilities. However, most employers do not want to be obligated to their workers in a legal sense; they usually require that almost all workers are employees “at will,” that is, without any long-term employment contract. Neither state nor federal law mandates an employment contract, so when a company says an employee is employed at will, it is sending a message that management is not making a long-term commitment to the employee. Employees may naturally feel less loyalty to an organization from which they believe they can be let go at any time and for any legal reason (which is essentially what at-will employment means). Of course, at-will employment also means the employee can also quit at any time. However, freedom to move is a benefit only if the employee has mobility and a skill set he or she can sell to the highest bidder. Otherwise, for most workers, at-will employment usually works to the employer’s advantage, not the employee’s.
Another reason the concept of loyalty to an organization seems to be changing at all levels is the important role money plays in career decisions. When they see chief executive officers (CEOs) and other managers leaving to work for the highest bidder, subordinates quickly conclude that they, too, ought to look out for themselves, just as their bosses do, rather than trying to build up seniority with the company. Switching jobs can often be a way for employees to improve their salaries. Consider professional sports. For decades professional athletes were tied to one team and could not sell their services to the highest bidder, meaning that their salaries were effectively capped. Finally, after several court decisions (including the Curt Flood reserve clause case involving the St. Louis Cardinals and Major League Baseball),6 players achieved some degree of freedom and can now switch employers frequently in an effort to maximize their earning potential.
The same evolution occurred in the entertainment industry. In the early years of the movie business, actors were tied to studios by contracts that prevented them from making movies for any other studio, effectively limiting their earning power. Then the entertainment industry changed as actors gained the freedom to sell their services to the highest bidder, becoming much more highly compensated in the process. Employees in any industry, not just sports and entertainment, benefit from being able to change jobs if their salary at their current job stagnates or falls below the market rate.
Another economic phenomenon affecting loyalty in the private sector was the switch from defined-benefit to defined-contribution retirement plans. In the former, often called a pension, employee benefits are usually sponsored (paid) fully by the employer and calculated using a formula based on length of employment, salary history, and other factors. The employer administers the plan and manages the investment risk, promising the employee a set payout upon retirement. In the defined-contribution plan, however, the employee invests a certain percentage of his or her salary in a retirement fund, often a 401(k) or 403(b) plan, where it is sometimes matched (partially or wholly) by the employer. (These savings plans with their seemingly strange designations are part of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code, and the letter/number combinations indicate subsections of the Code. 401(k) Plans typically are featured in for-profit employment settings and 403(b) plans in nonprofit environments.) Defined-benefit plans reward longevity in the firm, whereas defined-contribution plans reward high earnings over seniority. Thus, with the growth of defined-contribution plans, some reasons for staying with the same employer over time are no longer applicable.
According to PayScale’s Compensation Best Practices Report, the two leading motivators people give for leaving their job are first, higher pay, and second, personal reasons (e.g., family, health, marriage, spousal relocation).7 Of course, beyond money, workers seek meaning in their work, and it is largely true that money alone does not motivate employees to higher performance. However, it is a mistake for managers to think money is not a central factor influencing employees’ job satisfaction. Money matters because if employees are not making enough money to meet their financial obligations or goals, they will likely be looking to for a higher-paying job. And, of course, increasing salary or other benefits can be a way of demonstrating both the company’s loyalty to its employees and the role it believes employees’ best interests play in its mission—navigating the aforementioned two-way street. For some employees, simply being acknowledged and thanked for their service and good work can go a long way toward sparking their loyalty; for others, more concrete rewards may be necessary.
Finally, many people work for themselves as freelance or contract workers in the new “gig” economy. They may take assignments from one or more companies at a time and are not employees in the traditional sense of the word. Therefore, it seems more reasonable that they would approach work in the same way a certified public accountant or attorney would—as completing a professional job for a client, after which they move on the next client, always keeping their independent status. We would not expect gig workers to demonstrate employer loyalty when they are not employees.
WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
The Ties That Bind
If building employee loyalty is a challenge for managers and they see their workers leaving for better opportunities, what can they do to change the situation? Some companies focus on team-building activities, company picnics, rock-climbing walls, or zip lines, but do these actually make workers decide to stay with their company for less salary? The answer is usually no. The reality is that salary plays an important role in an employee’s decision to move to a new job. Therefore, retention bonuses are a popular and perhaps more successful technique for instilling loyalty. The company provides a payment to an employee contingent on his or her committing to remain at the company for a specific period.
According to a Glassdoor study,8 when changing jobs, employees earn an average increase of more than 5 percent in salary alone, not including benefits. Thus, the offer of a salary increase and/or a retention or performance bonus can help turn many would-be former employees into newly loyal ones. The same study found that a 10 percent increase in pay upped the odds that an employee would stay at the company. According to Dr. Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist of Glassdoor, “While it is important to provide upward career paths for workers, a simple job title promotion may not be enough. Maintaining competitive pay is an important part of reducing turnover.”9
Of course, a retention bonus may not be enough to keep someone at a job he or she hates, but it might help someone who likes the job to decide to stay. The Society for Human Resource Management believes retention plans should be part of an overall pay strategy, not merely giveaways for tenure.10 Imagine that your colleague is considering leaving your firm for another company: Your manager has offered him a retention bonus to stay and your colleague is seeking your advice about what to do. What would you advise?
Critical Thinking
• What questions would you ask your colleague to better determine the advice you should give him or her?
• Consider your summer jobs, part-time employment, work-study hours on campus, and internships. What meant more to you—the salary you made or the extent to which you were treated as a real contributor and not just a line on a payroll ledger? Or a combination of both?
• What lessons do you now draw about reciprocal loyalty between companies and their workers?
Confidentiality
In the competitive world of business, many employees encounter information in their day-to-day work that their employers reasonably expect they will keep confidential. Proprietary (private) information, the details of patents and copyrights, employee records and salary histories, and customer-related data are valued company assets that must remain in-house, not in the hands of competitors, trade publications, or the news media. Employers are well within their rights to expect employees to honor their duty of confidentiality and maintain the secrecy of such proprietary material. Sometimes the duty of confidentiality originates specifically from an employment contract, if there is one, and if not, the duty still exists in most situations under the common law of agency.
Most companies do not consider U.S. common law on confidentiality sufficient protection, so they often adopt employment agreements or contracts with employees that set forth the conditions of confidentiality. (Note that such contracts define a one-way obligation, from the employee to the employer, so they do not protect the at-will employee from being terminated without cause.) Typically, an employment agreement will list a variety of requirements. For example, although in most situations the law would already hold that the employer owns copyrightable works created by employees within the scope of their employment (known as works for hire), a contract usually also contains a specific clause stating that the company owns any and all such works and assigning ownership of them to the company. The agreement will also contain a patent assignment provision, stating that all inventions created within the scope of employment are owned by or assigned to the company.
link to learning
If one day you might be a freelancer, gig worker, or contractor, watch this video showing how a nondisclosure agreement can help you protect your ideas to learn more.
Employers also want to protect their trade secrets, that is, information that has economic value because it is not generally known to the public and is kept secret by reasonable means. Trade secrets might include technical or design information, advertising and marketing plans, and research and development data that would be useful to competitors. Often nondisclosure agreements are used to protect against the theft of all such information, most of which is normally protected only by the company’s requirement of secrecy, not by federal intellectual property law. Federal law generally protects registered trademarks (commercial identifications such as words, designs, logos, slogans, symbols, and trade dress, which is product appearance or packaging) and grants creators copyrights (to protect original literary and artistic expressions such as books, paintings, music, records, plays, movies, and software) and patents (to protect new and useful inventions and configurations of useful articles) (Figure 7.3).
U.S. companies have long used non-compete agreements as a way to provide another layer of confidentiality, ensuring that employees with access to sensitive information will not compete with the company during or for some period after their employment there. The stated purpose of such agreements is to protect the company’s intellectual property, which is the manifestation of original ideas protected by legal means such as patent, copyright, or trademark. To be enforceable, non-compete agreements are usually limited by time and distance (i.e., they are in effect for a certain number of months or years and within a certain radius of the employer’s operations). However, some companies have begun requiring these agreements even from mid- and lower-level workers in an attempt to prevent them from changing jobs, including those who have no access to any confidential intellectual property. About 20 percent of the U.S. private-sector workforce, and about one in six people in jobs earning less than \$40,000 a year, are now covered by non-compete agreements.11 The increased use of such agreements has left many employees feeling trapped by their limited mobility.
link to learning
A template for a typical non-compete agreement can be found at PandaDoc.
An ethical question arises regarding whether this practice is in the best interests of society and its workers, and some states are responding. California enacted a law in 2017 saying that most non-compete agreements are void, holding that although an employee may owe the employer a responsibility not to compete while employed, that duty ceases upon termination of employment.12 In other words, an employee does not “belong” to a company forever. In California, therefore, a non-compete arrangement that limits employment after leaving the employer is now unenforceable. Does this law reflect the approach that most states will now take? A California company may still legally prohibit its employees from moonlighting during the term of their employment, particularly for a competitor.
CASES FROM THE REAL WORLD
Non-Compete Agreements
After an investigation by then–New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman, fast-food franchisor Jimmy John’s announced in 2016 that it would not enforce non-compete agreements signed by low-wage employees that prohibited them from working at other sandwich shops, and it agreed to stop using the agreements in the future. Jimmy John’s non-compete agreement had prohibited all workers, regardless of position, from working during their employment and for two years after at any other business that sold “submarine, hero-type, deli-style, pita, and/or wrapped or rolled sandwiches” in a geographic area within two miles of any Jimmy John’s shop anywhere in the United States.13
Schneiderman said of the agreements, “They limit mobility and opportunity for vulnerable workers and bully them into staying with the threat of being sued.” Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan had also initiated action, filing a lawsuit that asked the court to strike down such clauses. “Preventing employees from seeking employment with a competitor is unfair to Illinois workers and bad for Illinois businesses,” Madigan said. “By locking low-wage workers into their jobs and prohibiting them from seeking better paying jobs elsewhere, the companies have no reason to increase their wages or benefits.”14
Jimmy John’s has more than 2,500 franchises in forty-six states, so its agreement meant it would be difficult for a former worker to get a job in a sandwich shop in almost any big city in the United States.
Critical Thinking
• Other than being punitive, what purpose do non-compete agreements serve when low-level employees are required to sign them?
• Suppose an executive chef or vice president of marketing or operations at Jimmy John’s or any large sandwich franchise leaves the firm with knowledge of trade secrets and competitive strategies. Should he or she be compelled to wait a negotiated period of time before working for a competitor? Why or why not?
• What is fair to all parties when high-level managers possess unique, sensitive information about their former employer?
Employers may also insert a nonsolicitation clause, which protects a business from an employee who leaves for another job and then attempts to lure customers or former colleagues into following. Though these clauses have limitations, they can be effective tools to protect an employer’s interest in retaining its employees and customers. However, they are particularly difficult for employees to comply with in relatively closed markets. Sample language for all the clauses we have discussed is found in Figure 7.4.
A final clause an employee might be required to sign is a nondisparagement clause, which prohibits defaming or deliberately running down the reputation of the former employer. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_Ethics/Book%3A_Business_Ethics_(OpenStax)/07%3A_What_Employees_Owe_Employers/7.01%3A_Introduction.txt |
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Describe how employees help build and sustain a brand
• Discuss how employees’ customer service can help or hurt a business
A good employment relationship is beneficial to both management and employees. When a company’s products or services are legitimate and safe and its employment policies are fair and compassionate, managers should be able to rely on their employees’ dedication to those products or services and to their customers. Although no employee should be called upon to lie or cover up a misstep on the part of the firm, every employee should be willing to make a sincere commitment to an ethical employer.
Respecting the Brand
Every company puts time, effort, and money into developing a brand, that is, a product or service marketed by a particular company under a particular name. As Apple, Coca-Cola, Amazon, BMW, McDonald’s, and creators of other coveted brands know, branding—creating, differentiating, and maintaining a brand’s image or reputation—is an important way to build company value, sell products and services, and expand corporate goodwill. In the sense discussed here, the term “brand” encompasses an image, reputation, logo, tagline, or specific color scheme that is trademarked, meaning the company owns it and must give permission to others who would legally use it (such as Tiffany’s unique shade of blue).
Companies want and expect employees to help in their branding endeavors. For example, according to the head of training at American Express, the company’s brand is its product, and its mantra has always been, “Happy employees make happy customers.”15 American Express places significant emphasis on employee satisfaction because it is convinced this strategy helps protect and advance its brand. One company that uses positive employee involvement in branding is the technology conglomerate Cisco, which started a branding program on social media that reaches out to employees (Figure 7.5). Employees are encouraged to be creative in their brand-boosting posts in the program. The benefit is that prospective job candidates get a peek into Cisco life, and current employees feel the company trusts and values their ideas.16
link to learning
Watch this video explaining the concept of brand loyalty to learn more.
However, protecting the brand can be a special challenge today, thanks to the ease with which customers and even employees can post negative information about the brand on the Internet and social media. Consider these examples in the fast-food industry. A photo posted on Taco Bell’s Facebook page showed an employee licking a row of tacos. A Domino’s Pizza employee can be seen in a YouTube video spitting on food, putting cheese into his nose and then putting that cheese into a sandwich, and rubbing a sponge used for dishwashing on his groin area.17 On Twitter, a Burger King employee in Japan posted a photo of himself lying on hamburger buns while on duty.
The companies all responded swiftly. A Taco Bell spokesperson said the food was not served to customers and the employee in the photo was fired. The two Domino’s employees behind the videos were fired and faced felony charges and a civil lawsuit; Domino’s said the tainted food was never delivered. According to a Burger King news release, the buns in the photo were waste material because of an ordering mistake and were promptly discarded after the photo was taken; the employee in the photo was fired.
These examples demonstrate how much damage disloyal or disgruntled employees can create, especially on social media. All three companies experienced financial and goodwill losses after the incidents and struggled to restore public trust in their products. The immediate and long-term costs of such incidents are the reason companies invest in developing brand loyalty among their employees.
According to a Harvard Business Review interview with Colin Mitchell, global vice president, McDonald’s Brand, McDonald’s, good branding requires that a business think of marketing not just to its customers but also to its employees, because they are the “very people who can make the brand come alive for your customers”.18 The process of getting employees to believe in the product, to commit to the idea that the company is selling something worth buying, and even to think about buying it, is called internal marketing. Of course, some employees may not want to be the equivalent of a company spokesperson. Is it reasonable to expect an employee to be a kind of roving ambassador for the company, even when off the clock and interacting with friends and neighbors? Suppose employers offer employees substantial discounts on their products or services. Is this an equitable way to sustain reciprocal loyalty between managers and workers? Why or why not?
Internal marketing is an important part of the solution to the problem of employees who act as if they do not care about the company. It helps employees make a personal connection to the products and services the business sells, without which they might be more likely to undermine the company’s expectations, as in the three fast-food examples cited in this section. In those cases, it is clear the employees did not believe in the brand and felt hostile toward the company. The most common problem is usually not as extreme. More often it is a lack of effort or “slacking” on the job. Employees are more likely to develop some degree of brand loyalty when they share a common sense of purpose and identity with the company.
link to learning
The Working Advantage website offers corporate discounts to check out. Companies sometimes offer employees significant discounts to encourage them to buy, and support, their products.
Obligations to Customers
As the public’s first point of contact with a company, employees are obliged to assist the firm in forming a positive relationship with customers. How well or poorly they do so contributes a great deal to customers’ impression of the company. And customers’ perceptions affect not only the company but all the employees who depend on its success for their livelihood. Thus, the ethical obligations of an employee also extend to interactions with customers, whom they should treat with respect. Employers can encourage positive behavior toward customers by empowering employees to use their best judgment when working with them.
link to learning
Watch this video giving a light-hearted take on bad customer service to learn more.
It may take only one bad customer interaction with a less-than-engaged or committed employee to sour brand loyalty, no matter how hard a company has worked to build it. In the same way, just one good experience can build up good will.
CASES FROM THE REAL WORLD
Redefining Customers
Sometimes engaged employees go above and beyond in the interest of customer service, even if they have no “customers” to speak of. Kathy Fryman is one such employee. Fryman was a custodian for three decades at a one hundred-year-old school in the Augusta (KY) Independent School District. She was not just taking care of the school building, she was also taking care of the people inside.19
Fryman fixed doors that would not close, phones that would not ring, and alarms that did not sound when they should. She kept track of keys and swept up dirty floors before Parents’ Night. That was all part of the job of custodian, but she did much more.
Fryman would often ask the nurse how an ill student was doing. She would check with a teacher about a kid who was going through tough times at home. If a teacher mentioned needing something, the next day it would show up on his or her desk. A student who needed something for class would suddenly find it in his or her backpack. Speaking of Fryman, district superintendent Lisa McCrane said, “She just has a unique way of making others feel nurtured, comforted, and cared for.” According to Fryman, “I need to be doing something for somebody.”
Fryman’s customers were not there to buy a product on which she would make a commission. Her customers were students and teachers, parents and taxpayers. Yet she provided the kind of service that all employers would be proud of, the kind that makes a difference to people every day.
Critical Thinking
• Is there a way for a manager to find, develop, and encourage the next Fryman, or is the desire to “do something good for somebody” an inherent trait in some employees that is missing in others?
• What is the appropriate means to reward a worker with Fryman’s level of commitment? Her salary was fixed by school district pay schedules. Should she have been given an extra stipend for service above and beyond the expected? Additional time off with pay? Some other reward?
• Employees who display Fryman’s zeal often do so for their own internal rewards. Others may simply want to be recognized and appreciated for their effort. If you were the superintendent in her district, how would you recognize Fryman? Could she, for example, be invited to speak to new hires about opportunities to render exceptional service?
Employees who treat customers well are assets to the company and deserve to be treated as such. Sometimes, however, customers are rude or disrespectful, creating a challenge for an employee who wants to do a good job. This problem is best addressed by management and the employee working together. In the Pizza Hut case that follows, an employee was placed in a bad situation by customers.
CASES FROM THE REAL WORLD
Is the Customer Always Right?
At an independently owned Pizza Hut franchise in Oklahoma,20 two regular customers made sexually offensive remarks to a female employee named Lockard, who then told her boss she did not like waiting on them. One evening, these customers again entered the restaurant, and her boss instructed Lockard to wait on them. She did, but this time the customers became physically abusive. Although it is the employee’s duty to provide good customer service, that does not mean accepting harassment.
Lockard sued her employer, the owner of the franchise, for failing to take her complaints seriously and for making her continue to suffer sexual harassment and assault by customers. The jury ruled in her favor, awarding her \$360,000, and an appeals court upheld the judgment.
Critical Thinking
• Clearly, no employee should expect to be physically assaulted, but how far should an employee be expected to go in the name of customer service? Is taking verbal taunts expected? Why or why not?
• Just as every employee should treat customers and clients with respect, so every employer is ethically—and often legally—obligated to safeguard employees on the job. This includes establishing a workplace atmosphere that is safe and secure for workers. If you were the owner of this Pizza Hut franchise, what protections might you put in place for your employees? | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_Ethics/Book%3A_Business_Ethics_(OpenStax)/07%3A_What_Employees_Owe_Employers/7.03%3A_Loyalty_to_the_Brand_and_to_Customers.txt |
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Explain employees’ responsibility to treat their peers with respect
• Describe employees’ duty to follow company policy and the code of conduct
• Discuss types of workplace violence
You may spend more time with your coworkers than you spend with anyone else, including your family and friends. Thus, your ability to get along with work colleagues can have a significant impact on your life, as well as your attitude toward your job and your employer. All sorts of personalities populate our workplaces, but regardless of their working style, preferences, or quirks, employees owe one another courtesy and respect. That does not mean always agreeing with them, because evaluating a diversity of perspectives on business problems and opportunities is often essential for finding solutions. At the same time, however, we are responsible for limiting our arguments to principles, not personalities. This is what we owe to one another as human beings, as well as to the firm, so worksite arguments do not inflict lasting harm on the people who work there or on the company itself.
Getting Along with Coworkers
An employee who gets along with coworkers can help the company perform better. What can employees do to help create a more harmonious workplace with a positive atmosphere?
One thing you can do is to keep an open mind. You may be wondering as you start a new job whether you will get along with your colleagues as well as you did at your old job. Or, if you did not get along with the people there and were looking for a change, you might fear things will be the same at the new job. Do not make any prejudgments. Get to know a bit about your new coworkers. Accept, or extend, lunch invitations, join weekend activities and office social events, and perhaps join those office traditions that bind long-serving employees and newcomers together in a collaborative spirit.
Another thing you can do it to remember to be kind. Everyone has a bad day every now and then, and if you spot a coworker having one, performing a random act of kindness may make that person’s day better. You do not need to be extravagant. Offer to stay late to help the person meet a tight deadline, or bring coffee or a healthy snack to someone working on particularly difficult tasks. Remember the adage, “It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice.”
For any relationship to succeed, including the relationship between coworkers, the parties must respect each other—and show it. Avoid doing things that might offend others. For example, do not take credit for someone else’s work. Do not be narrow minded; when someone brings up a topic such as politics or religion, be willing to listen and tolerate differing points of view.
A related directive is to avoid sexual jokes, stories, anecdotes, and innuendos. You might think it is okay to talk about anything and everything at work, but it is not. Others may not find the topic funny and feel offended, and you may make yourself vulnerable to action by management if such behavior is reported. Your coworkers might be a captive audience, but you should never place them in an awkward position.
Make an effort to get along with everyone, even difficult people. You did not choose your coworkers, and some may be hard to get along with. But professionalism requires that we attempt to establish the best working relationships we can on the job, no matter the opinions we might have about our colleagues. Normally, we might like some of them very much, be neutral about some others, and genuinely dislike still others. Yet our responsibility in the workplace is to respect and act at least civilly toward all of them. We likely will feel better about ourselves as professionals and also live up to our commitments to our companies.
Finally, do no use social media to gossip. Gossiping at work can cause problems anywhere, perhaps especially on social media, so resist the urge to vent online about your coworkers. It makes you appear petty, small, and untrustworthy, and colleagues may stop communicating with you. You may also run afoul of your employer’s social media policy and risk disciplinary action or dismissal.
Understanding Personalities
Understanding the various personalities at work can be a complex task, but it is a vital one for developing a sense of collegiality. One technique that may be helpful is to develop your own emotional intelligence, which is the capacity to recognize other people’s emotions and also to know and manage your own. One aspect of using emotional intelligence is showing empathy, the willingness to step into someone else’s shoes.
link to learning
Do you think you know yourself? Take this free online personality test from IDR Labs; it may tell you something you did not know that you can use to your benefit at work.
All of us have different workplace personalities, which express the way we think and act on the job. There are many such personalities, and none is superior or inferior to another, but they are a way in which we exhibit our uniqueness on the job (Figure 7.6). Some of us lead with our brains and emphasize logic and reason. Others lead with our hearts, always emphasizing mercy over justice in our relationships with others.
Figure \(6\): Which type of personality are you? (credit: Jackson Ceszyk/Flickr, CC BY 4.0)
Employees can also have very different work styles, the way in which we are most comfortable accomplishing our tasks at work. Some of us gravitate toward independence and jobs or tasks we can accomplish alone. Others prefer team or project work, bringing us into touch with different personalities. Still others seek a mix of these environments. Some prioritize getting the job done as efficiently as possible, whereas others value the journey of working on the project with others and the shared experiences it brings. There is no right or wrong style, but it benefits any worker to know his or her preferences and something about the work personalities of colleagues. When in the office, the point for any of us individually is to appreciate what motivates our greatest success and happiness on the job.
WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
Personality Test
Imagine you are a department director with twenty-five employees reporting directly to you. Two of them are experts in their fields: You like and respect them individually, as do the others in your department, but they simply cannot get along with each other and so never work together.
How do you resolve this personality clash? You cannot simply insist that the two colleagues cooperate, because personalities do not change. Still, you have to do your best to establish an atmosphere in which they can least collaborate civilly. Even though managers have no power to change human nature or the personality conflicts that inevitably occur, part of their responsibility is to establish a harmonious working environment, and others will judge you on the harmony you cultivate in your department.
Critical Thinking
Working relationships are extremely important to an employee’s job satisfaction. What options would you use to foster a cooperative working relationship in your department?
Reducing Workplace Violence
As recent incidents have shown—for example, the April 2018 shooting at YouTube headquarters in San Bruno, California21—workplace violence is a reality, and all employees play a role in helping make work a safe, as well as harmonious place. Employees, in fact, have a legal and ethical duty not to be violent at work, and managers have a duty to prevent or stop violence. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health reports that violence at work usually fits into one of four categories: traditional criminal intent, violence by one worker against another, violence stemming from a personal relationship, and violence by a customer.22
In violence based on traditional criminal intent, the perpetrator has no legitimate relationship to the business or its employees, and often the violence is part of a crime such as robbery or shoplifting. Violence between coworkers occurs when a current or former employee attacks another employee in the workplace. Worker-on-worker deaths account for approximately 15 percent of all workplace homicides. All companies are at risk for this type of violence, and contributing factors include failure to conduct a criminal background check as part of the hiring process.
When the violence arises from problems in a personal relationship, the perpetrator often has a direct relationship not with the business but with the victim, who is an employee. This category of violence accounts for slightly less than 10 percent of all workplace homicides. Women are at higher risk of being victims of this type of violence than men. In the fourth scenario, the violent person has a legitimate relationship with the business, perhaps as a customer or patient, and becomes violent while on the premises. A large portion of customer incidents occur in the nightclub, restaurant, and health care industries. In 2014, about one-fifth of all workplace homicides resulted from this type of violence.23
Codes of Conduct
Companies have a right to insist that their employees, including managers, engage in ethical decision-making. To help achieve this goal, most businesses provide a written code of ethics or code of conduct for all employees to follow. These cover a wide variety of topics, from workplace romance and sexual harassment to hiring and termination policies, client and customer entertainment, bribery and gifts, personal trading of company shares in any way that hints of acting on insider knowledge of the company’s fortunes, outside employment, and dozens of others. A typical code of conduct, regardless of the company or the industry, will also contain a variety of standard clauses, often blending legal compliance and ethical considerations (Table 7.1).
Sample Code of Conduct
Compliance with all laws Employees must comply with all laws, including bribery, fraud, securities, environmental, safety, and employment laws.
Corruption and fraud Employees must not accept certain types of gifts and hospitality from clients, vendors, or partners. Bribery is prohibited in all circumstances.
Conflict of interest Employees must disclose and/or avoid any personal, financial, or other interests that might influence their ability to perform their job duties.
Company property Employees must treat the company’s property with respect and care, not misuse it, and protect company facilities and other material property.
Cybersecurity and digital devices policy Employees must not use company computer equipment to transfer illegal, offensive, or pirated material, or to visit potentially dangerous websites that might compromise the safety of the company network or servers; employees must respect their duty of confidentiality in all Internet interactions.
Social media policy Employees may [or may not] access personal social media accounts at work but are expected to act responsibly, follow company policies, and maintain productivity.
Sexual harassment Employees must not engage in unwelcome or unwanted sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature. Behaviors such as conditioning promotions, awards, training, or other job benefits upon acceptance of unwelcome actions of a sexual nature are always wrong.24
Workplace respect Employees must show respect for their colleagues at every level. Neither inappropriate nor illegal behavior will be tolerated.
Table7.1
link to learning
Exxon Mobil’s Code of Conduct is typical of that of most large companies. Read Exxon Mobil’s code of conduct on their website, and note that it demands ethical conduct at every level of the organization. Exxon expects its leadership team to model appropriate behavior for all employees. Decide whether, if you were an Exxon employee, you would find the code understandable and clear regarding what is allowed and what is not. Still thinking as an employee, identify the section of the code you think is most important for you, and explain why.
Two areas that deserve special mention are cybersecurity and harassment. Recent news stories have highlighted the hacking of electronic tools such as computers and databases, and employees and managers can indirectly contribute to such data breaches through unauthorized web surfing, sloppy e-mail usage, and other careless actions. Large companies such as Equifax, LinkedIn, Sony, Facebook, and JP Morgan Chase have suffered the theft of customer information, leading to loss of consumer confidence; sometimes large fines have been levied on companies. Employees play a part in preventing such breaches by strictly following company guidelines about data privacy and confidentiality, the use and storage of passwords, and other safeguards that limit access to only authorized users.
link to learning
For more on recent data breaches, watch a couple of videos. Watch this video about how J.P. Morgan Chase’s \$13 billion fine was the largest in history from CBS Evening News. Also watch this video about how the Sony PlayStation was hacked and data was stolen from 77 million users from CBS Early.
We are also witnessing an increased level of public awareness about harassment in the workplace, particularly because of the #MeToo movement that followed revelations in 2017 and 2018 of years of sexual predation by powerful men in Hollywood and Washington, DC, as well as across workplaces of all kinds, including in sports and the arts. A victim of sexual harassment can be a man or a woman, and/or the same sex as the harasser. The harasser can be a supervisor, coworker, other employee, officer/director, intern, consultant, or nonemployee. Whatever the situation, harassing and threatening behavior is wrong (and sometimes criminal) and should always be reported. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_Ethics/Book%3A_Business_Ethics_(OpenStax)/07%3A_What_Employees_Owe_Employers/7.04%3A_Contributing_to_a_Positive_Work_Atmosphere.txt |
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Describe an employee’s responsibilities to the employer in financial matters
• Define insider trading
• Discuss bribery and its legal and ethical consequences
Employees may face ethical dilemmas in the area of finance, especially in situations such as bribery and insider trading in securities. Such dubious “profit opportunities” can offer the chance of realizing thousands or millions of dollars, creating serious temptation for an employee. However, insider trading and bribery are serious violations of the law that can result in incarceration and large fines.
Insider Trading
The buying or selling of stocks, bonds, or other investments based on nonpublic information that is likely to affect the price of the security being traded is called insider trading. For example, someone who is privy to information that a company is about to be taken over, which will cause its stock price to rise when the information becomes public, may buy the stock before it goes up in order to sell it later for an enhanced profit. Likewise, someone with inside information about a coming drop in share price may sell all his or her holdings at the current price before the information is announced, avoiding the loss other shareholders will suffer when the price falls. Although insider trading can be difficult to prove, it is essentially cheating. It is illegal, unethical, and unfair, and it often injures other investors, as well as undermining public confidence in the stock market.
Insider trading laws are somewhat complex. They have developed through federal court interpretations of Section 10(b)5 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as well as through actions by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The laws identify several kinds of violations. These include trading by an insider (generally someone who performs work for the company) who possesses significant confidential information relevant to the valuation of the company’s stock, and trading by someone outside of the company who is given this sort of information by an insider or who obtains it inappropriately. Even being the messenger (the one communicating material nonpublic information to others on behalf of someone else) can be a legal violation.
The concept of an “insider” is broad and includes officers, directors, and employees of a company issuing securities. A person can even constitute what is called a “temporary insider” if he or she temporarily assumes a unique confidential relationship with a firm and, in doing so, acquires confidential information centered on the firm’s financial and operational affairs. Temporary insiders can be investment bankers, brokers, attorneys, accountants, or other professionals typically thought of as outsiders, such as newspaper and television reporters.
A famous case of insider trading, Securities and Exchange Commission v. Texas Gulf Sulphur Co. (1968), began with the discovery of the Kidd Mine and implicated the employees of Texas mining company.25 When first notified of the discovery of a large and very valuable copper deposit, mine employees bought stock in the company while keeping the information secret. When the information was released to the public, the price of the stock went up and the employees sold their stock, making a significant amount of money. The SEC and the Department of Justice prosecuted the employees for insider trading and won a conviction; the employees had to give back all the money they had made on their trades. Insider trading cases are often highly publicized, especially when charges are brought against high-profile figures.
ETHICS ACROSS TIME AND CULTURES
Insider Trading and Fiduciary Duty
One of the most famous cases of insider trading implicated Michael Milken, Dennis Levine, and Martin Siegel, all executives of Drexel Burnham Lambert (DBL), and the company itself.26 Ivan Boesky, also accused, was an arbitrageur, an outside investor who bet on corporate takeovers and appeared to be able to uncannily anticipate takeover targets, buy their stock ahead of time, and earn huge profits. Everyone wondered how; the answer was that he cheated. Boesky went to the source—the major investment banks—to get insider information. He paid Levine and Siegel to give him pretakeover details, an illegal action, and he profited enormously from nearly every major deal in the merger-crazy 1980s, including huge deals involving oil companies such as Texaco, Getty, Gulf, and Chevron.
The SEC started to become suspicious after receiving a tip that someone was leaking information. Investigators discovered Levine’s secret Swiss bank account, with all the money Boesky had paid him. Levine then gave up Boesky in a plea deal; the SEC started watching Boesky and subsequently caught Siegel and Milken.
The penalties were the most severe ever given at the time. Milken, the biggest catch of all, agreed to pay \$200 million in government fines, \$400 million to investors who had been hurt by his actions, and \$500 million to DBL clients—for a grand total of \$1.1 billion. He was sentenced to ten years in prison and banned for life from any involvement in the securities industry. Boesky received a prison sentence of 3.5 years, was fined \$100 million, and was permanently barred from working with securities. Levine agreed to pay \$11.5 million and \$2 million more in back taxes; he too was given a lifetime ban and was sentenced to two years in prison.
Milken and Levine violated their financial duties to their employer and the company’s clients. Not only does insider trading create a public relations nightmare, it also subjects the company to legal liability. DBL ended up being held liable in civil lawsuits due to the actions of its employees, and it was also charged with violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act) and ultimately failed, going bankrupt in 1990.
(As a note of interest regarding the aftermath of all of this for Milken, he has tried to redeem his image since his incarceration. He resolutely advises others to avoid his criminal acts and has endowed some worthy causes in Los Angeles.)
Critical Thinking
• Employers in financial services must have stringent codes of professional behavior for their employees to observe. Even given such a code, how should employees honor their fiduciary duty to safeguard the firm’s assets and treat clients equitably? What mechanisms would you suggest for keeping employees in banking, equities trading, and financial advising within the limits of the law and ethical behavior?
• This case dominated the headlines in the 1980s and the accused in this case were all severely fined and received prison sentences. How do you think this case might be treated today?
• Should employees in these industries be encouraged or even required to receive ethical certification from the state or from professional associations? Why or why not?
Bribery and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act
Another temptation that may present itself to employees is the offer of a bribe. A bribe is a payment in some material form (cash or noncash) for an act that runs counter to the legal or ethical culture of the work environment. Bribery constitutes a violation of the law in all fifty U.S. states, as well as of a federal law that prohibits bribery in international transactions, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Bribery generally injures not only individuals but also competitors, the government, and the free-market system as a whole. Of course, often the bribe is somewhat less obvious than an envelope full of money. It is important, therefore, to understand what constitutes a bribe.
Numerous factors help establish the ethics (and legality) of gift giving and receiving: the value of the gift, its purpose, the circumstances under which it is given, the position of the person receiving it, company policy, and the law. Assuming an employee has decision-making authority, the company wants and has the right to expect him or her to make choices in its best interest, not the employee’s own self-interest. For example, assume an employee has the authority to buy a copy machine for the company. The employer wants to get the best copy machine for the best price, taking into account quality, service, warranties, and other factors. But what if the employee accepts a valuable gift card from a vendor who sells a copy machine with higher operating and maintenance charges, and then places the order with that vendor. This is clearly not in the best interests of the employer. It constitutes a failure on the part of the employee to follow ethical and legal rules, and, in all likelihood, company policy as well. If a company wants its employees always to do the right thing, it must have policies and procedures that ensure the employees know what the rules are and the consequences for breaking them.
A gift may be only a well-intentioned token of appreciation, but the potential for violating company rules (and the law) is still present. A well-written and effectively communicated gift policy provides guidance to company employees about what is and is not appropriate to accept from a customer or vendor and when. This policy should clearly state whether employees are allowed to accept gifts on or outside the work premises and who may give or accept them. If gifts are allowed, the gift policy should define the acceptable value and type, and the circumstances under which an employee may accept a gift.
When in doubt about whether the size or value of a gift renders it impossible for an employee to accept it, workers should be advised to check with the appropriate officer or department within their company. Be it an “ethics hotline” or simply the human resources department, wise firms provide an easy protocol for employees to follow in determining what falls within and without the protocols for accepting gifts.
As an example of a gift policy, consider the federal government’s strict rules.27 A federal employee may not give or solicit a contribution for a gift to an official superior and may not accept a gift from an employee receiving less pay if that employee is a subordinate. On annual occasions when gifts are traditionally given, such as birthdays and holidays, an employee may give a superior a gift valued at less than \$10. An employee may not solicit or accept a gift given because of his or her official position, or from a prohibited source, including anyone who has or seeks official action or business with the agency. In special circumstances such as holidays, and unless the frequency of the gifts would appear to be improper, an employee generally may accept gifts of less than \$20. Gifts of entertainment, such as expensive restaurant meals, are also restricted. Finally, gifts must be reported when their total value from one source exceeds \$390 in a calendar year. Some companies in the private sector follow similar rules.
Bribery presents a particular ethical challenge for employees in the international business arenas. Although every company wants to land lucrative contracts around the world, most expect their employees to follow both the law and company policy when attempting to consummate such deals. The U.S. law prohibiting bribery in international business dealings is the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), which is an amendment to the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, one of the most important laws promoting transparency in corporate governance. The FCPA dates to 1977 and was amended in 1988 and 1998. Its main purpose is to make it illegal for companies and their managers to influence or bribe foreign officials with monetary payments or rewards of any kind in an attempt to get or keep business opportunities outside the United States. The FCPA is enforced through the joint efforts of the SEC and the Department of Justice.28 It applies to any act by U.S. businesses, their representatives, foreign corporations whose stock is traded in U.S. markets, and all U.S. citizens, nationals, or residents acting in furtherance of a foreign corrupt practice, whether they are physically present in the United States or not (this is called the nationality principle). Antibribery law is a serious issue for companies with overseas business and cross-border sales. Any companies or individuals convicted of these activities may pay significant fines, and individuals can face prison time.
The FCPA prohibits an agent of any company incorporated in the United States from extending a bribe to a foreign government official to achieve a business advantage in that country, but it does not specifically prohibit the extension of a bribe to a private officer of a nongovernmental company in a foreign country. The definition of a foreign government official can be expansive; it includes not only those working directly for the government but also company officials if the company is owned or operated by the government. An exception is made for “facilitating or grease payments,” small amounts of money paid to low-level government workers in an effort to speed routine tasks like processing paperwork or turning on electricity, but not to influence the granting of a contract.
Illegal payments need not be cash; they can include anything of value such as gifts and trips. For example, BHP Billiton, a U.S. energy company, and GlaxoSmithKline, a U.K. pharmaceutical company, were each fined \$25 million for buying foreign officials tickets to the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China.29 Fines for violations like these can be large and can include civil penalties as well as forfeited profits. For example, Telia, a Swedish telecommunications provider whose shares are traded on Nasdaq, recently agreed to pay nearly a billion dollars (\$965 million) in a settlement to resolve FCPA violations that consisted of using bribery to win business in Uzbekistan.30
Link to learning
The SEC website provides an interactive list of the SEC’s FCPA enforcement actions by calendar year and company name for more information. Click on Telia to read more details on the case cited in the preceding paragraph. Do you think the penalty was too harsh, or not harsh enough? Why?
The potential effect of laws such as the FCPA that impose ethical duties on employees and the companies they work for is often debated. Although some believe the FCPA disadvantages U.S. firms competing in foreign markets, others say it is the backbone of an ethical free enterprise system. The argument against strong enforcement of the FCPA has some merit according to managers in the field, and there is a general sense that illegal or unethical conduct is sometimes necessary for success. An attorney for energy-related company Cinergy summed up the feelings of many executives: “Shame on the Justice Department’s myopic view and inability to understand the realities of the world.”31 Some nations consider business bribery to be culturally acceptable and turn a blind eye to such activities.
The argument in favor of FCPA enforcement has its supporters as well, who assert that the law not only covers the activities of U.S. companies but also levels the playing field because of its broad jurisdiction over foreign enterprises and their officials. The fact is that since the United States passed the FCPA, other nations have followed suit. The 1997 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Anti-Bribery Convention has been instrumental in getting its signatories (the United Kingdom and most European Union nations) to enact stricter antibribery laws. The United Kingdom adopted the Bribery Act in 2010, Canada adopted the Corruption of Foreign Officials Act of 1999, and European Union nations have done the same. There is also the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions, which has forty-three signatories, including all thirty-five OECD countries and eight other countries.
Companies and employees engaging in transactions in foreign markets face an increased level of regulatory scrutiny and are well served if they put ethics policies in place and enforce them. Companies must train employees at all levels to follow compliance guidelines and rules, rather than engaging in illegal conduct such as “under the table” and “off the books” payments (Figure 7.7).
Ethical Leadership
Of course, bribery is just one of many ethical dilemmas an employee might face in the workplace. Not all such dilemmas are governed by the clear-cut rules generally laid out for illegal acts such as bribery. Employees may find themselves being asked to do something that is legal but not considered ethical. For example, an employee might receive confidential proprietary knowledge about another firm that would give his or her firm an unfair competitive advantage. Should the employee act on this information?
WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
Should You Act on Information If You Have Doubts?
Assume you are a partner in a successful computer consulting firm bidding for a contract with a large insurance company. Your chief rival is a firm that has usually offered services and prices similar to yours. However, from a new employee who used to work for that firm, you learn that it is unveiling a new competitive price structure and accelerated delivery dates, which will undercut the terms you had been prepared to offer the insurance company. Assume you have verified that the new employee is not in violation of any non-compete or nondisclosure agreement and therefore the information was not given to you illegally.
Critical Thinking
Would you change prices and delivery dates to beat your rival? Or would you inform both your rival and potential customer of what you have learned? Why?
Most companies say they want all employees to obey the law and make ethical decisions. But employees typically should not be expected to make ethical decisions based just on gut instinct; they need guidance, training, and leadership to help them navigate the maze of grey areas that present themselves daily in business. This guidance can be provided by the company through standard setting and the development of ethical codes of conduct and policies. Senior managers modeling ethical behavior and so leading by direct example also provide significant direction. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_Ethics/Book%3A_Business_Ethics_(OpenStax)/07%3A_What_Employees_Owe_Employers/7.05%3A_Financial_Integrity.txt |
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Outline the rules and laws that govern employees’ criticism of the employer
• Identify situations in which an employee becomes a whistleblower
This chapter has explained the many responsibilities employees owe their employers. But workers are not robots. They have minds of their own and the freedom to criticize their bosses and firms, even if managers and companies do not always welcome such criticism. What kind of criticism is fair and ethical, what is legal, and how should a whistleblowing employee be treated?
Limiting Pay Secrecy
For decades, most U.S. companies enforced pay secrecy, a policy that prohibits employees from disclosing or discussing salaries among themselves. The reason was obvious: Companies did not want to be scrutinized for their salary decisions. They knew that if workers were aware of what each was paid, they would question the inequities that pay secrecy kept hidden from them.
Recently, the situation has begun to change. Ten states have enacted new laws banning employers from imposing pay secrecy rules: California, Colorado, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Vermont.32 The real game changer came in 2012, when multiple decisions by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and various federal courts made it clear that most pay secrecy policies are unenforceable and violate federal labor law (National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. § 157-158).33 Generally speaking, labor law lends employees the right to engage in collective activities, including that of discussing with each other the specifics of their individual employment arrangements, which includes how much they are paid. Moreover, the applicable sections of the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) apply to union and non-union employees, so there is no exception made for companies whose employees are non-unionized, meaning the law protects all workers. In 2014, President Barack Obama issued an executive order banning companies that engaged in federal contracting from prohibiting such salary discussions.34
Opening up the discussion of pay acknowledges the growing desire of employees to be well informed and to have the freedom to question or criticize their company. If employees cannot talk about something at work because they think it will make their boss angry, where do they go instead? Social media can be a likely answer. Protections generally extend to salary discussions on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram; Section 7 of the NRLA protects two or more employees who act together or discuss improving their terms and conditions of employment in person or online, just as it does in other settings.
Speaking Out on Social Media
Does the First Amendment protect employees at work who criticize their boss or their company? Generally, no. That answer may surprise those who believe that the First Amendment protects all speech. It does not. The Bill of Rights was created to protect citizens from an overreaching government, not from their employer. The First Amendment reads as follows:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
The key words are “Congress shall make no law,” meaning the content of speech is something the government and politicians cannot control with laws or policies. However, this right of free speech is generally not applicable to the private sector workplace and does not cover criticism of your employer.
Does that mean an employee can be fired for criticizing the company or boss? Yes, under most circumstances. Therefore, if someone posts a message on social media that says, “My boss is a jerk” or “My company is a terrible place to work,” the likelihood is that the person can be fired without any recourse, assuming he or she is an employee at will (see the discussion of at-will employment earlier in this chapter). Unless the act of firing constitutes a violation under federal law, such as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the speech is not protected speech, and thus the speaker (the employee) is not protected.
At some point, all of us may get angry with our companies or supervisors, but we still have a duty to keep our disputes in-house and not make public any situations we are attempting to resolve internally. Employers typically are prohibited from discussing human resource matters relating to any specific employees. Employees, too, should keep complaints confidential unless and until crimes are charged or civil suits are filed.
CASES FROM THE REAL WORLD
Adrian Duane and IXL Learning
Adrian Duane had worked for IXL, a Silicon Valley educational technology company,35 for about a year when he got into a dispute with his supervisor over Duane’s ability to work flexible hours after he returned from medical leave following transgender surgery.
Duane posted a critical comment on Glassdoor.com after he said his supervisor refused to accommodate a scheduling request. Duane’s critique said, in part: “If you’re not a family-oriented white or Asian straight or mainstream gay person with 1.7 kids who really likes softball—then you’re likely to find yourself on the outside. . . . Most management do not know what the word ‘discrimination’ means, nor do they seem to think it matters.”36
According to court documents, Paul Mishkin, IXL’s CEO, confronted Duane with a printout of the Glassdoor review during a meeting about his complaints, at which time IXL terminated Duane. IXL claimed the derogatory post showed “poor judgment and ethical values.” Security had already cleared out Duane’s desk and boxed his personal effects, and he was escorted from the premises. According to IXL, the company had granted Duane’s requests for time off or modified work schedules and welcomes all individuals equally regardless of gender identity.
The NLRB heard Duane’s case. Judge Gerald M. Etchingham said he did not believe the post was part of a concerted or group action among Duane’s fellow employees at the company, and therefore it was not protected under the NLRA, because it was not an attempt to improve collective terms and conditions of employment. Furthermore, Etchingham said Duane’s post was more like “a tantrum” and “childish ridicule” of his employer rather than speech protected under Section 7 of the NLRA. In other words, this was not an attempt to stimulate discussion but rather an anonymous one-way (and one-time) post. “Here, Duane’s posting on Glassdoor.com was not a social media posting like Facebook or Twitter. Instead, Glassdoor.com is a website used by respondent and prospective employees as a recruiting tool to recruit prospective employees.”37
The NLRB decision is an interesting step in the development of the law as the NLRB tries to apply the NLRA’s protections to employee use of social media. Duane has a pending Equal Employment Opportunity Commission lawsuit alleging employment discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Critical Thinking
• What ethical and legal obligations do employees have to refrain from badmouthing their employers in a fit of pique, especially on the firm’s own website?
• Should management allow employees to criticize the company without fear of retaliation? Could management benefit from allowing such criticism? Why or why not?
The rules related to social media are evolving, but applicable laws do not generally distinguish between sites or locations in which someone might criticize an employer, so criticism of the boss remains largely unprotected speech. As discussed earlier, employees can go online and post information about wages, hours, and working conditions, and that speech is protected by federal statute. So, although some general complaints against employers are not protected under the First Amendment, they may be protected under the NLRA (because arguably they may be related to terms and conditions of employment). However, most courts agree that statements personally critical of the boss or the company on a basis other than wages and working conditions are not protected. Obviously, there is no protection when employees post false or misleading information on social media in an attempt to harm the company’s reputation or that of management.
Whistleblowing: Risks and Rewards
The act of whistleblowing—going to an official government agency and disclosing an employer’s violation of the law—is different from everyday criticism. In fact, whistleblowing is largely viewed as a public service because it helps society reduce bad workplace behavior. Being a whistleblower is not easy, however, and someone inclined to act as one should expect many hurdles. If a whistleblower’s identity becomes known, his or her revelations may amount to career suicide. Even if they keep their job, whistleblowers often are not promoted, and they may face resentment not only from management but also from rank-and-file workers who fear the loss of their own jobs. Whistleblowers may also be blacklisted, making it difficult for them to get a job at a different firm, and all as a result of doing what is ethical.
Blowing the whistle on your employer is thus a big decision with significant ramifications. However, most employees do not want to cover up unethical or illegal conduct, nor should they. When should employees decide to blow the whistle on their boss or company? Ethicists say it should be done with an appropriate motive—to get the company to comply with the law or to protect potential victims—and not to get revenge on a boss at whom you are angry. Of course, even if an employee has a personal revenge motive, if the company actively is breaking the law, it is still important that the wrongdoing be reported. In any case, knowing when and how to blow the whistle is a challenge for an employee wanting to do the right thing.
The employee should usually try internal reporting channels first, to disclose the problem to management before going public. Sometimes workers mistakenly identify something as wrongdoing that was not wrongdoing after all. Internal reporting gives management a chance to start an investigation and attempt to rectify the situation. The employee who goes to the government should also have some kind of hard evidence that wrongful actions have occurred; the violation should be serious, and blowing the whistle should have some likelihood of stopping the wrongful act.
Under many federal laws, an employer cannot retaliate by firing, demoting, or taking any other adverse action against workers who report injuries, concerns, or other protected activity. One of the first laws with a specific whistleblower protection provision was the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970. Since passage of that law, Congress has expanded whistleblower authority to protect workers who report violations of more than twenty different federal laws across various topics. (There is no all-purpose whistleblower protection; it must be granted by individual statutes.)
A sample of the specific laws under which whistleblowing employees are protected can be found in the environmental area, where it is in the public interest for employees to report violations of the law to the authorities, which, in turn, helps the average citizen concerned about clean air and water. The Clean Air Act protects any employee reporting air emission violations from area, stationary, and mobile sources from any retaliation for such reporting. The Water Pollution Control Act similarly protects from retaliation any employee who reports alleged violations relating to discharge of pollutants into water.
Without the help of employees who are “on the ground” and see the violations occur, it could be difficult for government regulators to always find the source of pollution. Even when whistleblowers are not acting completely altruistically, their revelations may still be true and worthy of being brought to the public’s attention. Thus, in such situations, the responsible employee becomes a steward of the public interest, and we all should want whistleblowers to come forward. Yet not all whistleblowers are white knights, and not all their firms are evil dragons worthy of being slain.
link to learning
Go to this U.S. Department of Labor website that lists all the laws under which whistleblowers have protection to learn more.
Blowing the whistle may bring the employee more than just intrinsic ethical rewards; it may also result in cash. The most lucrative law under which employees can blow the whistle is the False Claims Act (FCA), 31 U.S.C. §§ 3729–3733. This legislation was enacted in 1863, during the American Civil War, because Congress was worried that suppliers of goods to the Union Army might cheat the government. The FCA has been amended many times since then, and today it serves as a leading example of a statutory law that remains important after more than 150 years. The FCA provides that any person who knowingly submits false claims to the government must pay a civil penalty for each false claim, plus triple the amount of the government’s damages. The amount of this basic civil penalty is regularly adjusted by the cost of living, and the current penalty range is from \$5500 to \$11,000.
More importantly for our discussion, the qui tam provision of the law allows private persons (called relators) to file lawsuits for violations of the FCA on behalf of the government and to receive part of any penalty imposed. The person bringing the action is a type of a whistleblower, but one who initiates legal action on his or her own rather than simply reporting it to a government agency. If the government believes it is a worthwhile case and intervenes in the lawsuit, then the relator (whistleblower) is entitled to receive between 15 and 25 percent of the amount the government recovers. If the government thinks winning is a long shot and declines to intervene in the lawsuit, the relator’s share increases to 25 to 30 percent.
A few whistleblowers have become rich (and famous, thanks to an ABC News story), with awards ranging in the neighborhood of \$100 million.38 In 2012, a single whistleblower, Bradley Birkenfeld, a former UBS employee, was awarded \$104 million by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), making him the most highly rewarded whistleblower in history. Birkenfeld also spent time in prison for participating in the tax fraud he reported. In 2009, ten former Pfizer employees were awarded \$102 million for exposing an illegal promotion of prescription medications. John Kopchinski, the original whistleblower and one of the ten, received \$50 million. In another case involving the health care company HCA, two employees who blew the whistle on Medicare fraud ended up receiving a combined total of \$100 million.
It is not just the size of the reward that should get your attention but also the amount of money these employees saved taxpayers and/or shareholders. They turned in companies that were cheating the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (affecting taxpayers), the IRS (affecting government revenues), and private health insurance (affecting premiums). The public saved far more than the reward paid to the whistleblowers.
Incredibly high rewards such as the aforementioned are somewhat unusual, but according to National Whistleblower Center director Stephen Kohn, “Birkenfeld’s and Eckard’s rewards act like advertisements for the U.S. government’s whistleblower programs, which make hundreds of rewards every year.”39 The FCA is one of four laws under which whistleblowers can receive a reward; the others are administered by the IRS, the SEC, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Most whistleblowers do not get paid until the lawsuit and all appeals have concluded and the full amount of any monetary penalty has been paid to the government. Many complex cases of business fraud can go on for several years before a verdict is rendered and appealed (or a settlement is reached). An employee whose identity has been disclosed and who has been unofficially blacklisted may not see any reward money for several years.
CASES FROM THE REAL WORLD
Sherron Watkins and Enron
Enron is one of the most infamous examples of corporate fraud in U.S. history. The scandal that destroyed the company resulted in approximately \$60 billion in lost shareholder value. Sherron Watkins, an officer of the company, discovered the fraud and first went to her boss and mentor, founder and chairperson Ken Lay, to report the suspected accounting and financial irregularities. She was ignored more than once and eventually went to the press with her story. Because she did not go directly to the SEC, Watkins received no whistleblower protection. (The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was not passed until after the Enron scandal. In fact, it was Watkins’s circumstance and Enron’s misdeeds that helped convince Congress to pass the law.40)
Now a respected national speaker on the topic of ethics and employees’ responsibility, Watkins talks about how an employee should handle such situations. “When you’re faced with something that really matters, if you’re silent, you’re starting on the wrong path . . . go against the crowd if need be,” she said in a speech to the National Character and Leadership Symposium, (a seminar to instill leadership and moral qualities in young men and women).
Watkins talks openly about the risk of being an honest employee, something employees should consider when evaluating what they owe their company, the public, and themselves. “I will never have a job in corporate America again. The minute you speak truth to power and you’re not heard, your career is never the same again.”
Enron’s corporate leaders dealt with the looming crisis by a combination of blaming others and leaving their employees to fend for themselves. According to Watkins, “Within two weeks of me finding this fraud, [Enron president] Jeff Skilling quit. We did feel like we were on a battleship, and things were not going well, and the captain had just taken a helicopter home. The fall of 2001 was just the bleakest time in my life, because everything I thought was secure was no longer secure.”
Critical Thinking
• Did Watkins owe an ethical duty to Enron, to its shareholders, or to the investing public to go public with her suspicions? Explain your answer.
• How big a price is it fair to ask a whistleblowing employee to pay?
link to learning
Visit the National Whistleblower Center website and learn more about some of the individuals discussed in this chapter who became whistleblowers.
Watch this video about one of the most famous whistleblowers, Sherron Watkins, former vice president of Enron to learn more.
Sometimes employees, including managers, face an ethical dilemma that they seek to address from within rather than becoming a whistleblower. The risk is that they may be ignored or that their speaking up will be held against them. However, companies should want and expect employees to step forward and report wrongdoing to their superiors, and they should support that decision, not punish it. Sallie Krawcheck, a financial industry executive, was not a whistleblower in either the classical or the legal sense. She went to her boss with her discovery of wrongdoing at work, which means she had no legal protection under whistleblower statutes. Read her story in the following box.
CASES FROM THE REAL WORLD
Sallie Krawcheck and Merrill Lynch
Shortly after Sallie Krawcheck took over as chief of Merrill Lynch’s wealth management division at Bank of America, she discovered that a mutual fund called the Stable Value Fund, a financial product Merrill had sold to customers as an investment for their 401k plans, was not as stable as its name implied. The team at Merrill had made a mistake by managing the fund in a way that assumed a higher risk than was acceptable to its investors, and the fund ended up losing much of its value. Unfortunately, because it was supposed to be a low-risk fund, the people who had invested in it, and who would suffer most from Merrill’s mistakes, were earners of relatively modest incomes, including Walmart employees, who made up the largest group.
According to Krawcheck, she had two options. Option one was to say tough luck to the Stable Value Fund’s investors, including the Walmart employees, explaining that all investments carry some degree of risk. Option two was to bail out the investors by pouring money into the fund to increase its value. Krawcheck had already been burned once by trying to be ethical. She had been head of CitiGroup’s wealth management division (Smith Barney); in that capacity, she had made a decision to reimburse clients for some of their losses she felt were due to company mistakes. Rather than supporting her decision, however, CitiGroup terminated her, in large part for making the ethical decision rather than the profitable one. Now she was in the same predicament with a new company. Should Krawcheck risk her job again by choosing the ethical act, or should she make a purely financial decision and tell the 401k investors they would have to take the loss?
Krawcheck began talking to people inside and outside the company to see what they thought. Most told her to just keep her head down and do nothing. One “industry titan” told her there was nothing to be done, that everyone knows stable-value funds are not really stable. Unconvinced, Krawcheck took the problem to Bank of America’s CEO. He agreed to back her up and put company money into the depleted stable-value funds to prop them up.
Krawcheck opted to be honest and ethical by helping the small investors and felt good about it. “I thought, ethical business was good business,” she says. “It came down to my sense of purpose as well as my sense of my industry’s purpose; it wasn’t about some abstract ethical theorem . . . the answer wasn’t that I got into the business simply to make a lot of money. It was because it was a business that I knew could have a positive impact on clients’ lives.”41
But the story does not really have a happy ending. Krawcheck writes that she thought at the time she had done the right thing and still had her job, a win/win outcome of a very tough ethical dilemma. However, speaking out did come at a cost. Krawcheck lost some important and powerful allies within the company, and although she did not lose her job at that time, she writes “the political damage was done; when that CEO retired, the clock began ticking down on my time at Bank of America, and before long I was ‘reorganized out’ of that role.”42
Critical Thinking
• Could you do what Sallie Krawcheck did and risk being fired a second time? Why or why not?
• Krawcheck went on to start her own firm, Ellevest, specializing in investments for female clients. Why do you think she chose this route rather than moving to another large Wall Street firm?
WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
Underestimating and Overcharging
Suppose you are a supervising engineer at a small defense contractor of about one hundred employees. Your firm had barely been breaking even, but the recent award of a federal contract has dramatically turned the situation around. Midway through the new project, though, you realize that the principal partners in your firm have been overcharging the Department of Defense for services provided and components purchased. (You discovered this accidentally, and it would be difficult for anyone else to find it out.) You take this information to one of the principals, whom you know well and respect. He tells you apologetically that the overcharges became necessary when the firm seriously underestimated total project costs in its bid on the contract. If the overcharges do not continue, the firm will again be perilously close to bankruptcy.
You know the firm has long struggled to remain financially viable. Furthermore, you have great confidence in the quality of the work your team is providing the government. Finally, you feel a special kinship with nearly all the employees and particularly with the founding partners, so you are loath to take your evidence to the government.
Critical Thinking
What are you going to do? Will you swallow your discomfort because making the overcharges public may very well put your job and those of one hundred friends and colleagues at risk? Would the overall quality of the firm’s work on the contract persuade you it is worth what it is charging? Or would you decide that fraud is never permissible, even if its disclosure comes at the cost of the survivability of the firm and the friendships you have within it? Explain your reasoning. | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_Ethics/Book%3A_Business_Ethics_(OpenStax)/07%3A_What_Employees_Owe_Employers/7.06%3A_Criticism_of_the_Company_and_Whistleblowing.txt |
Section Summaries:
7.1 Loyalty to the Company
Although employees’ and employers’ concepts of loyalty have changed, it is reasonable to expect workers to have a basic sense of responsibility to their company and willingness to protect a variety of important assets such as intellectual property and trade secrets. Current employees should not compete with their employer in a way that would violate conflict-of-interest rules, and former employees should not solicit previous customers or employees upon leaving employment.
7.2 Loyalty to the Brand and to Customers
Employees have a duty to be loyal to the brand and treat customers well. Internal marketing is one process by which a company instills employee commitment to the brand and builds loyalty in its workforce. This loyalty should be a two-way street, however. If the company wants its employees to treat customers with respect, it must treat them with respect as well.
7.3 Contributing to a Positive Work Atmosphere
Ethical employees accept their role in creating a workplace that is respectful, safe, and welcoming by getting along with coworkers and doing what is best for the company. They also comply with corporate codes of conduct, which cover a wide range of behaviors, from financial dealings and bribery to sexual harassment. In addition, they are alert to any situation in the workplace that could escalate into violence. In short, the employee has a duty to be a responsible person in the job.
7.4 Financial Integrity
Legal and cultural differences may allow bribes in other countries, but bribery and insider trading (which allows someone with private information about securities to profit from that knowledge at the public’s expense) are illegal in the United States, as well as unethical. A clear gift policy should be in place to help employees understand when it is acceptable to accept a gift from another employee or an outsider (such as a vendor), and to distinguish gifts from bribes.
7.5 Criticism of the Company and Whistleblowing
Employees should understand that there are limits to what can be posted about their employer online, just as there are limits to what they can say in the workplace, and that the First Amendment generally does not protect such speech. Whistleblowers are protected, and sometimes rewarded, for their willingness to come forward, but they can still face a hostile environment in some situations. Employees should not use whistleblowing as an attempt to get back at a boss or employer they do not like; rather, they should use it as a means to stop serious wrongdoing.
Key Term
brand
a type of product or service marketed by a particular company under a particular name
branding
the process of creating, differentiating, and maintaining a particular image and/or reputation for a company, product, or service
bribe
a payment in some form (cash or noncash) for an act that runs counter to the legal and ethical culture of the work environment
duty of confidentiality
a common-law rule giving an employee responsibility to protect the secrecy of the employer’s proprietary information, such as trade secrets, material covered by patents and copyrights, employee records and salary information, and customer data
duty of loyalty
a common-law rule that requires an employee to refrain from acting in a manner contrary to the employer’s interest
Foreign Corrupt Practices Act
an amendment to the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934; its main purpose is to make it illegal for companies and their managers to influence or bribe foreign officials with monetary payments or rewards of any kind in an attempt to get or keep business opportunities outside the United States
insider trading
the buying or selling of stocks, bonds, or other investments based on nonpublic information that is likely to favorably affect the price of the security being traded
intellectual property
the manifestation of original ideas, protected by legal means such as patent, copyright, or trademark
internal marketing
the process of getting employees to believe in the company’s product and even to buy it
non-compete agreement
a contract clause ensuring that employees will not compete with the company during or after employment there
nondisclosure agreement
an agreement to prevent the theft of trade secrets, most of which are protected only by a duty of secrecy and not by federal intellectual property law
nonsolicitation clause
an agreement that protects a business from an employee who leaves for another job and then attempts to lure customers or former colleagues away
pay secrecy
a policy of some companies to prevent employees from discussing their salary with other workers
qui tam provision
the section of the False Claims Act of 1863 that allows private persons to file lawsuits for violations of the act on behalf of the government as well as for themselves and so receive part of any penalty imposed
trade secret
a company’s technical or design information, advertising and marketing plans, and research and development data that would be useful to competitors
whistleblowing
the act of reporting an employer to a governmental entity for violating the law
work style
the way and order in which we are most comfortable accomplishing our tasks at work
workplace personality
the manner in which we think and act on the job | textbooks/biz/Business/Business_Ethics/Book%3A_Business_Ethics_(OpenStax)/07%3A_What_Employees_Owe_Employers/7.07%3A_Summary.txt |
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