Food Co., a pseudonym for a large food processing plant in the U.S. Northeast, had been operating successfully for several years when the plant manager realized he had a problem he couldn’t solve alone.
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The employees did their jobs well, but they didn’t seem to care much about taking care of each other. Workers were reluctant to call out unsafe practices when they witnessed them and rarely offered a helping hand when it was needed.
“The plant manager said to me, ‘I want people to do the right thing when no one is watching,’ recalls Wharton management professor Michael Parke. “Well, that’s organizational citizenship.”
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Comments
Fantastic goals, but missing a piece of the puzzle
There's a lot to like about the goals for better leadership within companies, starting from the ground up with employees on all levels.
But as much as people may want employees to step up with personal responsibility, you're essentially talking about a trait that develops in childhood, not early adulthood. Intrinsic motivation is the reason that some people will do the right thing even when they're no direct reward correlated with their actions, and that depends largely on family and societal norms that have nothing to do with the business world.
For most people living with incomes of $20-$50k annually, asking them to put their team first (a team that likely has seen upheaval and turnover due to low pay, poor management, and a host of other issues) because it "will pay off in the end" is like asking them to assume that every driver who cuts them off in traffic is on their way to the hospital.
The trust necessary for people to fall into a pattern of good habits during adulthood, and specifically within the workplace, is arguably more than the trust required among spouses or family members. Why? It involves less knowledge of the people to whom they’re entrusting their fate, and with that the lack of a guarantee that their coworkers will act in kind when they put their team first rather than plow ahead with their planned vacation days and individual career goals. Secondly, it demands an unspoken agreement in an environment that is becoming more legalistic by the day.
The solution is a long way off, but it probably starts less with organization and industrial psychology and more with investment in communities and families, where integrity and care for the collective good is first established.
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