Honesty Within the Workplace
Recently, Pamela Meyer presented an eye opening TED talk on the nature of deception and created this infographic to illustrate the key points she made in her talk. It depicts and defines the grey middle regions that lie between truth and deception, with truth symbolically at the polar north end of the infographic, and deception at the south. Meyer’s guest blog post for a new TED Weekends column by the Hufington Post alludes to the larger implications of her research findings well- that lies and deception can take place even when an individual chooses to withhold or exaggerate information. Meyers delineation of truth and deception raises important concerns about the nature of self-marketing, and of the buttery interpersonal interactions that tend to be implicit within the nature of promotion in general. Moreover, her research raises important normative questions about how employers should measure the integrity of their employees when evaluating resumes or performance metrics within the workplace. Ultimately, although Meyer’s research gives rise to much skepticism over the validity of employee credentials, it does call for more careful and analytical review on the part of future human resource managers, as well as thoroughly substantiated resume items from prospective employees, to build a more principled future global job market.
Business Applications To Leadership Settings
Although building a strong, dynamic company culture under the right leadership can be essential to a company’s success (as seen with iconic cases like Zappos and Google), much insight drawn from business settings can be transferrable to other collaborative settings as well. A recent Fast Company blogpost titled “The Employee-Motivation Checklist” provides a comprehensive set of practical thoughtful advice that, while intended to advise on how to strengthen employee-management relations, can also have similar transformative effects when applied by leaders in any type of setting. Zavinsky (author of the blog post, as well as the book Start at the End) talks about how effective personal fulfillment is as an incentive to employees. He emphasizes the importance of providing adequate developmental and professional support to employees, and building a relationship with them through trust and transparency. As an individual who was very involved in community leadership and volunteer activities and is very interested in how leaders can best bring out the potential of the people they work with, I saw straight away that this advice would be useful within environments where individuals could gain leadership experience.
Corporate Social Responsibility or Personal Moral Obligation?
Popular societal belief advocates that those who ‘do good’ tend to have good reciprocated to them in return. Following this logic, you would expect businesses that decide to adhere to strict local and international ethics standards to ultimately prevail in their endeavors, experiencing monetary and personal success, in spite of the difficulties that are often faced when striking a balance between profit and ethics. Chiquita Brands bananas is an American firm working hard to conduct their business in a ethically and socially responsible way, though it has yet to see the fruits of their labor.
Chiquita Brands is a firm that has demonstrated it’s commitment to sustainable and ethical business practice on repeated occasions. For example, Chiquita Brands does not use oil from the tar sands to transport their goods, and has worked to elevate the status and presence of women in their workforce. It has also ratified local and global food agreements, and allows their products to be tested against environmental standards.
The case of Chiquitas Bananas brings up the question of whether or not there is an incentive for businesses to spend/expend resources/capital committing to ethical and responsible practice, if there is no greater reward than a guilt-free conscience. If businesses could monetize and capitalize on the guilt free conscience of its stakeholders, adhering to business ethics would not cause concern. Unfortunately, that is not the case. This leaves it up to the individuals within businesses themselves to determine what values their business is built upon, and to decide whether they would be willing to sacrifice anything to compromise those values at any point down the line. It also brings to question whether certain corporations deserve the criticism they face regarding the nature of their ‘corporate social responsibility platforms’ – if their pursuit of ethical business continues to harm their profit margins, the words personal moral obligation may be a more apt term.
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