6.4 The Role of Ethics and National Culture

Designing a Motivating Work Environment and Ethics

The design components of an organization’s internal environment, such as the presence of goal setting, performance appraisals, and the use of incentive-based reward systems, have a direct connection with the level of ethical or unethical behaviours demonstrated within a company. Although a large number of golf clubs successfully use goal setting and rewarding employees based on goal accomplishment, there is an unintended consequence to using goals: Goal setting may lead to unethical behaviours on the part of employees. When goal accomplishment is rewarded, and when rewards are desirable, employees will have two basic options: Work hard to reach the goals, or cheat.

This does not mean that goal setting always causes unethical behaviour. People who behave unethically tend to constitute a small percentage of the workforce. However, for this small percentage, goal setting and incentives act as motivation to behave unethically. The tendency to behave unethically under these systems also increases when goals are not met, but instead, employees come close to reaching them, particularly when they are competing against each other to receive the rewards (Bellizzi, 1995; Schweitzer, Ordonez, & Douma 2004). There are several ways companies can reduce the temptation to behave unethically. Specifically rewarding ethical behaviour within the company is related to lower levels of unethical behaviour (Trevino & Youngblood, 1990). Also, instead of only rewarding people who reach a high goal and not giving anything to those who come close, companies may consider creating multiple levels of goals and distributing rewards corresponding to the goal that is achieved (Locke, 2004). Enforcing an ethical code of conduct and withholding rewards from those who are not demonstrating ethical behaviours are other ways of preventing goal setting from leading to unethical behaviours.

Designing a Motivating Work Environment Around the Globe

The effectiveness of methods such as job design, goal setting, performance appraisals, and the use of incentives is likely to be culturally determined. For example, research conducted in Western countries suggests that empowering employees is an effective method of motivating them. However, not all employees around the world respond favorably to concepts such as autonomy or empowerment. For example, it has been noted that the use of self-managing teams, a method of increasing employee empowerment in the workplace, is difficult to execute in Mexican companies because of the traditionally paternalistic and hierarchical nature of many Mexican organizations. In such a context, employees may not be willing or ready to take responsibility for individual action, while managers may be unwilling to share real power with employees (Nicholls, Lane, & Brechu, 1999). Researchers also found in a four-country study that while employees in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Poland responded positively to empowerment, Indian employees were actually less satisfied when they were empowered (Robert et al., 2000). In other words, we may expect both greater levels of difficulty and potentially different reactions to empowerment depending on the cultural context.

Are all employees around the globe motivated by goal setting? Even though there is limited research in this area, existing findings point to some differences. For example, we know that American employees respond negatively to goals when these goals are perceived to be extremely difficult. However, Chinese employees were actually most motivated when the goals were very difficult. This may be because Chinese employees believe that their performance depends on their effort, and therefore, they are able to respond to goals that are very difficult with very high effort. On the other hand, there is some evidence that while specific goals motivate Western salespeople, in China, goals low in specificity were more motivational (Fang, Palmatier, & Evans, 2004).

How about performance appraisals? You may predict that concepts such as 360-degree appraisal are not suitable for all cultures. The 360-degree appraisals require a climate of openness and social equality in the workplace. Therefore, countries high in power distance and authoritarianism may respond negatively to appraisal systems where lower-level employees give performance feedback to their managers. Likewise, in cultures high in collectivism, using peer appraisals may not be as effective because employees might be hesitant to give accurate performance feedback to their colleagues for fear that negative feedback may damage interpersonal relationships.