Managing Employees’ Cultural Values and Emotions

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Factors influencing cultural values and emotions of employees
Groupthink and Conformism
Ethical aspects of managing cultural values and emotions
Conclusion
References

Introduction

This paper is aimed at showing that in most cases, the management of employees’ emotions and cultural values is ineffective and unethical even despite the fact that this idea appeals to many business administrators. In order to elaborate this argument, it is first necessary to discuss the concept of organizational culture and explain how the values of employees are formed.

In particular, I will try to demonstrate that people’s attitudes toward an organization depend mostly on the nature of their work and their long-term experiences with the company. Moreover, they are dependent on their cultural background. The main task is to show that they cannot be shaped through a planned initiative.

These issues will be discussed in Section One. Furthermore, in Section Two, I will try to show that the management of workers’ values and emotions can result in conformist thinking in the organization and inability to critique other people.

Finally, Section Three will be aimed at examining the ethical aspects of managing cultural values and emotions of employees. In particular, I will try to demonstrate such attempts can encroach on the ethical integrity of a person. These are the issues that I would like to address in this paper.

Factors influencing cultural values and emotions of employees

Overall, organizational culture is one of the first concepts that should be discussed. In their article, Shahzad et al. (2012) provide several definitions of this notion. First, they define culture as a set of assumptions or values that differentiate a particular organization (Shahzad et al. 2012, p. 976).

Moreover, in this context, this term can be understood as beliefs and feelings that employees have about their job, the company in which they work, its goals, and its principles (Shahzad et al. 2012, p. 976).

These attitudes depend on a variety of factors, for instance, the nature of work, the rewards that employees receive, the relations between managers and employees, career prospects and the social status that a person receive due to his/her work.

Therefore, a manager who strives to change organizational culture will have to manipulate these factors. The problem is that this task is hardly possible. This person would have to change the compensational policies of the company, its structure, and probably the attitude of the community toward a certain profession.

For example, the study carried out by Stephen Ackroyd and Phillip Crowdy (1990) shows that the values and behaviour of workers often depend not on organizational, but occupational culture (p. 4). These authors examined the behaviour of those people who worked in slaughter houses (Ackroyd & Crowdy 1990, p. 3).

Many of these people viewed their job as a necessary evil, but they did not take much pride in it (Ackroyd & Crowdy 1990, p. 3). This example is important because it illustrates that the values and emotions of workers are not dependent on the actions of managers. In some cases, their attempts to manage the values and emotions of workers are not feasible.

The advocates of cultural management can say that in some companies workers identify themselves with the organization, for instance, one can mention such corporations as Honda or Toyota (Wilmott 1993, p. 545).

Nevertheless, one should take into account that this loyalty to the group can be explained by social and cultural development of Japanese society (Wilmott 1993, p. 545). It cannot be fully attributed to the actions of managers. These are some of the objections to the management of a person’s values or emotions in the workplace.

The second issue that should be discussed is how to demonstrate that the change in cultural values has really been made. The first argument that scholars put forward is that there is no theory that describe the construction of personal or group values (Fitzgerald 1988, p. 5).

Additionally, Thomas Fitzgerald points out that it is necessary to explain how the values of employees can be replaced or modified and how this change can be measured (1988, p. 9). Yet, this question still has not been examined by psychologists or social scientists. Secondly, managers have to compare old cultural values or emotions of employees with new ones.

In order to do it, a person should conduct a serious of interviews with employees for several times. Even if a company chooses to conduct such interviews, it is quite possible that workers will give responses that management expects from them.

In other words, one cannot ensure the validity of such results. Again the problem of measuring values and attitudes can undermine the very idea of managing the employees’ values, feelings, or emotions.

Admittedly, there are some ways in which managers can change the attitudes of workers. For instance, in those companies where leaders encourage workers to take in decision-making, people are more likely to have positive experiences.

However, these experiences are the result of long-term effort of the leaders. They cannot be attributed to a short-term planned initiative. For instance, in his article, Michael Rosen (1988) describes a Christmas party that was organized to improve the relations among employees (p. 478).

Yet, one cannot ensure that such parties can improve the atmosphere in the workplace. Thus, administrators cannot always provide convincing empirical evidence proving that they did change the worker’s values and that this change positively affected the productivity of the company. This methodology has not been fully developed.

Apart from that, one can refer to the research conducted by Emmanuel Ogbonna and Barry Wilkninson (2003) who demonstrated that the so-called cultural shift in many companies can be better explained by structural changes, job insecurity, or the threat of punishment (p. 1151).

Studies suggest that in most cases, culture change initiatives do not help to internalize the values advocated by the management (Ogbonna & Harris, 1998, p. 286). In other words, they may follow the principles or rules that are imposed on them, but they do not see them as internal obligations.

Therefore, people who claim to produce a cultural change in an organization will have to provide evidence showing that this goal has really been achieved. Currently, psychology or social sciences cannot provide methods for measuring the achievement of this goal. This is one of the main issues that business administrators should take into account.

Groupthink and Conformism

Many business administrators regard the management of employee’s culture as a positive phenomenon. They believe that this strategy can increase workers’ loyalty to the company, and its goals. Assuming that this goal can be attained, there are many potential problems, and one of them is conformist thinking (Won-Woo 2000, p. 873).

It should be noted that very often managers attempt to make workers think and act in a similar way. In their opinion, the adherence to the rules of the company has to be the top priority for an employee. In many cases, such a requirement is quite understandable; moreover, good coordination is necessary for any organization.

However, business administrators should remember about the dangers of groupthink. This is a situation when employees cannot critique or question the decisions of top management only because they take their opinion of these managers for granted (Won-Woo 2000, p. 882).

Corporate leaders should put more value in individuality to ensure the diversity of opinions in the workplace. Without this diversity of opinion, they companies can become stagnated.

As it has been said before the very concept of organizational culture suggest that employees have a shared set of beliefs, feelings, and emotions. Thus, managers attach more importance to collectivism and attachment to the group.

This strategy can include to some of the following outcomes: 1) self-censorship or unwillingness to contradict the group; 2) the belief in the infallibility of the group; 3) lack of attention to the details which contradict the dominant views; 4) failure to evaluate and critique the decisions of the organization; 5) poor assessment of risks (Won-Woo 2000, p. 882).

Therefore, business administrators should remember that decision-making in their organizations can decline because of their attempts to manage the emotions and cultural values of workers.

They can reach a situation when employees will be unwilling or unable to think critically. One can easily assume that the performance of such a company may soon decline. This is the risks that managers should be aware of.

Ethical aspects of managing cultural values and emotions

Another issue that should be discussed is the ethical aspects of emotions and cultural values of workers. Even it is possible to manipulate the values and emotions of a worker, one can still ask a question whether this activity can be acceptable from an ethical point of view.

The thing is that every employee is a unique individual who has a distinct set of goals, beliefs, or principles. In his article, Hugh Willmott (1993) argues that companies that try to manipulate the values and emotions of workers closely resemble totalitarian societies (p. 523).

He points out that these attempts completely contradict some liberal values of freedom of expression or privacy (Willmott 1993, p. 523). Moreover, a worker might be reduced to a mere cog in the machine.

This is one way of looking at this problem and it does not support the idea of creating specific cultural values that should be shared by every employee.

Additionally, employees themselves can reject any attempt to influence his/her emotions or values. The problem is that many managers want their employees to be completely loyal to the company. Its needs and goals have to be the top-most priority for them.

However, these goals can be achieved in different ways, and some of them may not be ethical. Thus, a question arises as to how an employee should act when the strategies of the company contradict his/her ethical principles. In companies, in which the loyalty to group is viewed as an obligation, a person can be afraid of acting in an ethical way (Maharaj 2008, p 68).

The thing is that in the long-term, this lack of moral independence can eventually produce catastrophic effects on a company. Many of the corporate scandals that broke out during the last decade can be explained by the fact that many people did not try to evaluate the morality of the decisions taken by corporate leaders.

For example, one can refer to the well-known Enron scandal which can be partly explained by the firm belief in the morality of the group (Gini 2004, p. 9).

Thus, managers should consider how the management of cultural values or emotions can eventually affect the reputation of the company and its public image. Moreover, these initiatives can create a gap between corporate leaders and workers who will believe that they are manipulated.

Conclusion

Overall, these examples show that the attempts to manage cultural values and emotions of workers can be questioned from ethical and scientific points of view. As it has been shown there is not clear method explaining how business administrators can actually affect the attitudes, goals, feelings, or principles of employees.

One of the main problems is that there are no theoretical frameworks that can accurately describe the process of changing or influencing the emotions and values of workers. Secondly, it has been shown that the attitudes of an employee are dependent on many factors like the nature of work, cultural background, his/her social status, and so forth.

Not all of these factors can be manipulated or altered by the organization. Additionally, managers should remember that these attempts can compromise ethical principles within the company and impoverish its decision-making. Managers or corporate leaders may like the idea that they can affect employees’ inner world, but at this point this task cannot be done.

References

Ackroyd, S. & Crowdy P 1990 ‘Can Culture be Managed? Working with “Raw’ Material: The Case of the English Slaughtermen”, Personnel Review, vol. 19 no. 5, pp.3 – 13.

Fitzgerald, T 1988, ‘Can Change in Organizational Culture Really Be Managed?’, Organizational Dynamics, vol. 17 no. 2, pp. 5-15.

Gini, A 2004, ‘Business, Ethics, and Leadership in a Post Enron Era’, Journal Of Leadership & Organizational Studies, vol. 11 no. 1, pp. 9-15.

Maharaj, R 2008, ‘Corporate governance, groupthink and bullies in the boardroom’, International Journal Of Disclosure & Governance, vol. 5 no. 1, pp. 68-92.

Ogbonna, E, & Harris, L 1998, ‘Managing Organizational Culture: Compliance or Genuine Change?’, British Journal Of Management, vol. 9 no. 4, p. 273-288.

Ogbonna, E, & Wilkinson, B 2003, ‘The False Promise of Organizational Culture Change: A Case Study of Middle Managers in Grocery Retailing’, Journal Of Management Studies, vol. 40 no. 5, pp. 1151-1178.

Rosen, M 1988, ‘You Asked for It: Christmas at the Bosses’ Expense’, Journal of Management Studies, vol. 25 no. 5, pp. 465-480.

Shahzad, F, Luqman, R, Khan, A, & Shabbir, L 2012, ‘Impact of Organizational Culture on Organizational Performance: An Overview’, Interdisciplinary Journal Of Contemporary Research In Business, vol. 3 no. 9, pp. 975-985.

Won-Woo, P 2000, ‘A comprehensive empirical investigation of the relationships among variables of the groupthink..’, Journal Of Organizational Behavior, vol. 21 no 8, pp. 873-887.

Wilmott, H 1993, ‘Strength Is Ignorance; Slavery Is Freedom: Managing Culture in Modern Organizations’, Journal of Management Studies, vol. 30 no. 4, pp. 515-552.

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