Using moral compass in the workplace

Business ethics represents a big buzz word in our domestic commerce. We hear commentators spouting off about ethics, integrity, doing what is right, and who we are when no one is looking. But the science behind ethics remains incredibly complex and not black and white as many might think. Ethics is also bigger than just the big “C” word: corruption.

Ethics and integrity also encompass other favourable social behaviour as not lying, following through with promises, and treating others with respect.

Humans hold a self-perception bias. We tend to see unethical behaviour in others and mentally cloud the other individuals in judgement based on the unsightly actions we notice. But when we ourselves act in unethical ways, we tend to forgive ourselves and think that we only behaved poorly due to a situation and do not colour our whole judgement of ourselves based on that behaviour. But research widely shows that the average person lies an average of 10 times each day. So do we actually misbehave too frequently? Do we try to influence favour or disrespect others? What is your moral compass in the workplace?

Xiaowan Lin and Raymond Loi newly published study seeks to highlight an interesting aspect of ethics: how do we behave when we see other people in the workplace misbehave. Incivility in the workplace between office bullies or arrogant bosses represents a real challenge in today’s modern job market. The following four components to ethics impact how we behave when we see unethical actions in others.

First, workers differ in the intensity of their responses to unethical behaviour in others. Moral outrage happens when witnessing uncivil actions in the workplace. We can feel anger, shock, distress, aggravation, or hostility towards a badly-behaved perpetrator.

Second, people tend to look at their own personal ethics based on two different paradigms about their moral thinking orientation. We tend to look at ethics as either rule-based moral thinking where one constructs a labyrinth of ethical lines in the sand with rules of right and wrong behaviour or we look more at outcome-based moral thinking that incorporates consequences, responses, and magnitudes.

Third, people retain a personal internal compass about their own moral identity. Those who think that caring, friendliness, and fairness are more important to them hold a higher moral threshold for behaviour expectations in others.

Fourth, our responses to an uncivil bully in the workplace could take the forms of doing nothing about it, doing something destructive in a punitive reaction, or acting punitively but constructively. Essentially, those people with conflict avoiding traits will fail to act. But those who do choose to act will do either something destructive like punishing the perpetrator with similarly uncivil response that could include demeaning or derogatory remarks.

Alternatively, we could behave constructively to the uncivility we witness by warning others about the offensive individual, write a letter or message of concern, write a formal complaint, among other steps.

Interestingly in the Lin and Loi study, those with low moral identity actually have higher levels of moral outrage when viewing incivility in others. Almost as if the sight of immorality makes someone think through their own response with high emotions for those who do not value moral characteristics as strongly. Also, most surprising, individuals who see morality as outcome-based are dramatically more likely to engage in direct destructive action to punish a perpetrator than those who see morality as more rules-based. So, in both situations, the people who lay less of a pre-groundwork for ethical scenarios react stronger to unethical behaviour than workers with more pre-conceived situations, lines, notions, and rules on ethics and morality.

Which category do you fall into in morality thinking? How you view your own ethical levels and see morality will dramatically influence your moral outrage and corrective behaviour towards injustice.