- We're going to talk about Organizational Ethics
and why they're so important.
And to do that, we have a very special guest,
Dr. Ryan Bisel.
So let's get into the details.
(upbeat music)
Hey there, Alex Lyon.
Welcome back to The Channel.
Today, we have a very special guest with us, Dr. Ryan Bisel.
He is a professor at the University of Oklahoma.
He studies organizational communication.
And also, he has a special focus on leadership,
morals and ethics.
And so he is the perfect person to come and talk to us
about this topic, organizational ethics.
And in fact, he wrote a book
about "Organizational Moral Learning."
And this is actually the second video in a two-part series.
In that first video, we talked about
what are organizational ethics and morals,
and looking at comparing and contrasting
the similarities and differences.
So I encourage you to go take a look at that video
when you're done with with one.
I will put a link to that in the description below.
And you can find his book on Amazon.
I will also put a link to his book in the description below.
Feel free to check it out.
So Ryan, welcome back to The Channel.
Good to have you on again.
- Thanks, Alex; good to be back.
- I'm really excited today because we're just getting deeper
and deeper into your particular area of expertise.
So let's start with the big question.
What are organizational ethics?
- Yes, great, so let's just start with ethics first.
Ethics refers to widely shared standards of right conduct.
They're widely shared standards of right conduct.
And so, organizational ethics then
is widely shared standards of right conduct
in the workplace setting,
and of course a very important topic.
- And so why do organizational ethics matter?
- Yeah, organizational ethics matter because
without standards of right conduct,
organizations can hurt people,
their employees and customers, the environment as well.
That list goes on and on.
Without strong organizational ethics of course,
organizations run the risk of hurting their reputations,
not just people but hurting themselves.
I mean, the fact of the matter is
with poor organizational ethics, organizations run the risk
of undoing themselves, downright failing.
A classic example of this of course would be Enron
during the 2000s.
Enron was doing a lot of unscrupulous accounting practices
which were eventually caught.
And of course, Enron eventually folded
and lots of people were devastated because of it,
just a really sad story.
Furthermore, it's not just that bad ethics hurt.
It's that good ethics help.
There's some fascinating studies of the fact that,
at least in the long run you might say,
virtuous organizations do tend to do quite well.
A study right after 9/11 of some of the U.S. airlines,
of course people weren't flying as much after 9/11.
There was some constriction of the airline industry.
And there was a study of how
airline industry companies handled that.
And what you find is where airlines did the right thing,
where they were generous and compassionate
and transparent with employees,
12 months later they were doing well.
A lot of airlines were not compassionate and transparent
and as a matter of fact,
you saw that in their profits a year later.
You saw it harm their profits.
Now, I think it's important also when we talk about
why do ethics matter, ethics matter also
just to say they matter 'cause they matter.
It matters because doing the right thing
is important, full stop.
We can do it just for its own good and we're right to do so.
- Yeah, I love that.
They're just the right thing to do.
I have an expression that I talk about in workshops
and also in my college classes is that
good ethics is good business.
They're one and the same.
When organizations are doing unethical things,
it harms their organization.
It harms their bottom line.
And when they're acting well,
when they're behaving ethically,
it helps their business grow and thrive.
So they're one and the same.
It's not like oh, ethics are off to the side.
It's central to what organizations do.
But nevertheless, as you mentioned,
they don't always do well.
It seems like organizations are always in the news.
They're leaders are often in the news
for doing and getting caught doing unethical things,
even criminal activity.
So what does the research
in organizational communication offer?
What kind of explanations do we have for that?
- Yeah, great questions.
Absolutely true.
As we read the news, we just see organizations
behaving badly, even criminally, all over the place.
Organizational communication research provides
some interesting insights as to why that might be.
Now one idea is that there exists what's called
a moral mum effect, a moral mum effect in the workplace.
Now, a moral mum effect basically refers to this idea
that organizational members have a tendency to avoid
labeling unethical behavior as unethical.
They might privately have concerns,
but they don't tend to publicly discuss those concerns.
And that can kick off a series of other problematic
communication dynamics.
We don't speak up about private ethical concerns
because we think that ethics talk,
or what I call here and now ethics talk,
it's just out of bounds for the workplace.
It doesn't belong in the workplace.
We just don't like to talk that way.
And of course, that's even besides
the silencing power of power where people, of course,
are concerned about retribution and what would happen
if they do bring up a concern that they might have.
- Yeah, really hard to talk about.
It's much easier to talk about
how we lost money last quarter.
Much harder to talk about:
"Hey that was a moral failing on your part."
- Or my part. - Right, or my part.
- Make it very personal.
- Yeah, how do I talk about my own problems.
So it's super interesting research.
You know I've read some of your research.
But how do we know the moral mum effect
is common in organizations?
- Yes, great, and this is where
the research can really help us.
So in communication, what we will often do
in order to demonstrate this is rely on experiments.
And what you do is you put people in a situation,
a scenario, and you see how they communicate.
So imagine yourself in this kind of scenario.
I'll give you a flavor for what that seems like.
So imagine that you're a bookkeeper of a company.
And your coworker asks you to write a check
from company funds to reimburse them
for their own personal computer.
Now you know this request is unethical.
It's a violation of the wage policy.
There wouldn't even be discretionary funds after this
for the rest of the month if you did it.
Now respond to your coworker
as though this were a real situation.
And so we put people in scenarios like that.
And one of the key things that we do is
we then ask them privately, "So was that request unethical?"
And we absolutely confirm that yeah,
that was unethical of my coworker to ask of me.
But then we go ahead and code what they say.
Now we now have several datasets of hundreds
of working adults; and here's what we find.
Despite the fact that 100% of these working adults
say that request was unethical, only a fraction,
only 10% ever deny the request on ethical grounds.
I mean they deny the request.
They might say, "I can't do that,"
or there's an operational reason why I can't do that,
or maybe there's a policy, but they don't bring up ethics.
They don't say, "I can't do that
"'cause that seems wrong or not right,"
or "That would be against my integrity or my conscience."
They don't talk that way because we've been socialized
to say that that doesn't belong in the workplace.
And that's a problem because if we can't talk that way,
how can we think that way together.
So that's what's important.
- Yeah, really hard to talk about those kinds of issues
even when we know personally that's not ethical,
that's not the right way to go.
But how do I say something about it?
It's like we lack the vocabulary.
So what's the big deal with the moral mum effect?
- Yeah, absolutely.
So I think one of the big deals with the moral mum effect
is the more we understand how pervasive this issue is
in the workplace,
that people might privately have a concern,
but they don't publicly discuss it.
And then we start the clock a little bit
and we start thinking: Well what's the implication
of that over time.
We start to have some interesting realizations.
Now if people can't or won't talk ethics
in the here and now, it'll be hard for them
to catch ethical concerns or problems
while those problems are still small and resolvable.
And that can be a huge thing where if issues are allowed
to go on, people might privately have concerns
but they look around and nobody else is talking that way.
And then that might lead them to believe over time:
Oh, maybe I'm alone here and maybe that's silly of me.
This is just the way business is done.
This is just the way it works.
And so then, you get that gradual incremental step down.
Unfortunately, you get rationalizations,
self-deceptions or group self-deceptions.
In other words, then you get ethical problems
and private ethical concerns that go unaddressed.
They begin to fester and grow unfortunately
until they become intractable.
They become impossible to address.
- Yeah, huge; they grow in the dark.
They become extremely harmful, extremely expensive
to rectify when we don't address them early.
And then by the time it eventually becomes public knowledge,
which it almost always does.
It's very hard nowadays to keep any secrets
and especially in corporations.
People will post things on social medial eventually
and it'll get out.
And then, you have to pay sometimes
10 times the amount of money.
It's caused 10 times the amount of harm.
We've seen case after case in the news
where people knew about this stuff.
- Yes, that's a common theme.
Somebody knew, yes.
- So when they know, let's transition now
to these five steps that I wanna talk about,
that you wanna talk about.
And that is what can we do to combat the moral mum effect?
You have five steps; so let's walk through them.
Number one: Speak by example.
Tell us more about that.
- Yeah great, I think for the people who care
about ethics in the workplace,
leaders and aspiring leaders out there,
I want you to not just lead by example.
I want you to speak by example.
Use language like integrity and ethics, right and wrong.
And go ahead and use that language.
The research is showing that when bosses use
that kind of plain but ethically charged language,
it helps everybody else say: Okay, I can talk that way.
And it can be a really powerful way in which
we speak by example.
We say, "This is what I care about.
"Talk to me about it because
"this is an important value to us."
- So you use those labels which is funny because
we're told: Labels are bad.
But when you see something unethical, something immoral,
it's a moment where you pop that bubble of silence
and you say, "That's wrong."
Then everybody goes, "Hey look, the world didn't end.
Someone said it was wrong and now, like you said,
now it's discussable.
We can talk about right and wrong.
Number two: Avoid excessively philosophical language.
Tell us about that.
- Yeah, yeah, I think one of the reasons
that people avoid ethics talk is 'cause it might feel
like too fuzzy, philosophical, or religious.
And the fact of the matter is
not everybody needs to be a philosopher.
We can all just take a deep breath here.
There really are ethical dilemmas and puzzles.
But for the most part, we know we shouldn't steal;
we know we shouldn't harm people.
And for the most part, a lot of us agree with that.
So just be comfortable and confident in that fact.
And what we wanna do is we wanna focus
on the realization that for the most part,
people have private ethical judgments.
They already have them.
They're already there.
And so can we just have the conversation, be mindful
and try to adapt our work and pursue ethical excellence.
Work towards moving the conversation from:
Is this right or wrong only
to how can we be better today.
How can we keep doing work with an increasing amount
of integrity and worth, something we can be proud of.
So we're gonna avoid that philosophical language
where possible because we want to hear from people.
And we don't wanna end up excluding voices
when people feel like: Oh, I can't really participate
in high philosophy discourse with you.
Say, "Hey, don't worry about that.
"Just tell me what you think and where are you.
"And then let's have the conversation."
- Great.
Number three: Talk about what the body knows.
What does that mean?
- Yeah, this is sort of an interesting realization
that the research is pointing to,
and it's related to the first two really.
When we make a habit of talking about the body
and what the body knows:
for example: Hey, follow your heart
or what's our heart telling us here?
What's our gut telling us here?
What do we know to be true in our bones?
What do we know to be really valuable in our bones?
All of those kinds of uses, descriptions of the body
believe it or not helps people feel more calm
and more willing to have here and now ethics talk.
Because I think what's happening there is
they do trust some of those signals
they're getting from their body,
and they feel like they can reference those
maybe easier than they can engage
in some sort of philosophical discourse or religious debate.
That's not where we need to go necessarily.
We can actually do, have a lot of conversation
where we just sort of reference,
"Hey, this is the way I'm feeling."
And it's gonna open some of those doors for us
to be able to have an authentic moral dialogue.
- Yeah, we're gonna feel it before we have the words.
- Yes, we will.
- I'm not gonna say what it was.
I remember years ago I saw something happen at work
and I felt it like: Ooh, that's not right.
But there's a distance there between feeling it
and knowing in my body that it was not cool
what I was witnessing and being able to talk about it.
But you gotta trust that feeling that look, that's real;
what you saw wasn't right.
And that's the beginning
of being able to have that conversation.
- That's great.
- Number four: Retell stories of heroes who spoke up.
Tell us about that.
- Yeah, for leaders and aspiring leaders out there,
I just wanna encourage you to find examples
of times in your past or in the team's past where
somebody spoke up and really helped you,
really helped you all pursue ethical excellence,
helped you pursue work with a lot of integrity,
and tell those stories.
They can be quick little stories, little reminders.
And it begins to put people on notice that
that's what we're looking for, that's really what we want.
We don't want yes men and yes women.
We want people who can help us be moral barometers
as we move through the complexity of work life sometimes.
Organizational communication scholar, Dr. Jack Kassing,
he reminds us of an organization who described
their quote guardian angels.
And you would get guardian angel status
if you were somebody who spoke up when the time was right
with something we really needed to hear.
I think that's a wonderful way in which leaders
can demonstrate that this is what they value,
this is the kind of talk that they want from people.
- Yeah great, and then they hear that other people
have done it who have come before them,
and it makes the path forward much more clear for them
when those heroes are being held up as the people
to look up to and emulate.
And number five: Build trusting relationships.
Can you explain that?
- Yeah, I think this is really the backbone to all of it.
When we build trusting relationships,
that's really what helps people have the courage
to talk this way and feel safe about talking this way.
And we need to build those trusting relationships.
We need to be humble and patient and loving towards people,
but we need to also have this conversation.
Because the alternative is silence.
And that silence can be the source
of a lot of festering problems.
So as we build trusting relationships,
what does that look like?
Sometimes that looks like just
remembering people's kids' names or their grandkids' names,
asking about their hobbies,
not five days out of five days a week,
but enough to just let people know
hey, we're approachable.
We do care about you as an individual and you can trust us.
You can trust me to speak up
and tell me what you really think.
So building trusting relationships really is such a key.
It's a foundation to all of this.
- Wonderful, those are five excellent steps
to have the hard conversations about ethical questions,
unethical activities, something that you might notice
and not know how to begin that conversation.
These five approaches are excellent.
So thank you for unpacking that for us.
So Ryan, thanks again for being on The Channel.
And I wanna remind everybody that Ryan does have
this book "Organizational Moral Learning"
and that is available on Amazon.
You can find the link in the description below.
Feel free to check that out.
Ryan, thanks for being on, man.
- Thank you; had a great time.
- Until the next time, we'll see you all later.
Take care.