Cultural Dimensions of Leadership
February 12, 2025
David McClelland and his associates proposed McClelland’s theory of Needs/Achievement Motivation Theory. This theory states that human behaviour is affected by three needs: Need for Power, Need for Achievement, and Need for Affiliation Need for power is the desire to influence other individual’s behaviour as per your wish. In other words, it is the desire […]
Etiquette refers to good manners required by an individual to find a place in the society. It is important for an individual to behave appropriately in public to earn respect and appreciation. One must learn to maintain the decorum of the work place. It is important to respect one’s organization to expect the same in […]
The decades starting with the 1990s witnessed the proliferation of a new kind of sector among the various agencies and governmental departments engaged in public service. This sector was the Non-Profit or the NGO (Non Governmental Organizations) that mushroomed all over the world to fill the gap between the governmental agencies and the public. The […]
Whether it is a job interview or a follow-up interview with selected respondents who filled a survey questionnaire, it is essential that right questions are asked. However, asking a right question is just not it… There is more to conducting effective interviews. Read on to know how an interview conversation can be made effective… Avoid […]
Corporate decision making happens at various levels in organizations and can be top down or bottom up. The difference between these two styles of decision making is that the top down decision making is done at the higher levels of the hierarchy and the decisions are passed down the corporate ladder to be implemented. On […]
It is often the practice in organizations that whenever new recruits are being on-boarded, they are required to attend sessions on ethics and values. These sessions cover the need for ethical and transparent behavior by the employees and usually, someone from the compliance team or the senior management addresses them to impress upon them the ethical imperative and the importance of values.
However, when we considers the situation that has manifested itself in the recent past with several top management and business leaders being implicated in scandals, we wonder what the new recruits are being told in these sessions.
When the senior management themselves are implicated in wrongdoing, it becomes difficult to preach to the middle and entry-level employees about following ethical standards and practicing values.
In other words, when senior leadership does not practice what they preach, the ensuing hypocritical situation resembles chaos and confusion in the organizations.
Indeed, the ethical imperative must come from the top and the values must be inculcated by the senior management through personal example of honesty and transparency.
The point here is that when business leaders themselves become implicated in unethical practices, we can only speculate what would happen to those lower down the hierarchy who see no point in being ethical or transparent and practice values.
The examples of companies like Apple, Google, and Infosys are illustrative of how the senior management ought to lead by example. In all these companies, the founders of the companies ensured that they were setting high standards of ethical behavior for the other employees to follow.
As the tagline of Google, Do No Evil, and that of Infosys, Powered by Intellect and Driven by Values, shows, the founders in these companies set the benchmark for ethical behavior and hence, these companies are often cited as examples of how ethics and values can be actualized in the practice of organizational behavior. Of course, another matter once the management changes in many companies, it becomes difficult for those who succeed them to emulate or follow their examples and this is an example of how ethics and values must be part of the organizational DNA and not limited to individuals.
The point here is that the senior leadership must first raise the bar for ethical and value based behavior and then ensure that the organizational structures and processes are established where any deviation from the norm is dealt with strictly.
In other words, the ethics and values must be institutionalized so that they become part of the organizational culture and are not person dependent. After all, no individual is bigger than the organization and hence, the objective must be to establish leaders at all levels of the hierarchy who act as benchmarks for ethical and value based behavior.
Returning to the main theme of the article that is what happens when the senior leadership becomes unethical. In that case, the organization loses its mojo or the motivation and the sense of purpose and as we have seen in the case of Enron in the US, Satyam Computers in India, and other companies in Asia, they either are wound up or become part of another company so that at least the organization in some basic form survives.
Indeed, this is a sad state of affairs where the organization suffers because of the senior management and this situation must be avoided at all costs. Hence, the need for top management to institute and inculcate ethical and value based behavior becomes that much more important.
Finally, though ethics and values depend to a large extent on the personality of the individual, the fact remains that organizational structures can help in fostering a sense of purpose and ethical attitudes.
The key theme here is that when ethical behavior is rewarded and incentives exist for the same and when unethical behavior is punished and the organizational culture has zero tolerance towards the same, it is possible for organizations to follow lofty ideals.
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