It is true people are susceptible to organizational dynamics as Messick and Bazerman suggest. The manager of an organization makes decisions every day, all the time on behalf of the organization. He/she should be careful to always make the right decision, otherwise, it affects the entire operations of the institution. Decision-making is identifying and choosing from alternatives to be able to achieve what you require or intend to achieve as an individual or an organization. A decision affects the outcome of your activities or duties to be accomplished.
Managing organizational deviance
For any leader to insist on good behavior in the organization, he/she must set an example to the employees or his/her junior staff.
Organizational culture influences behavior at all levels of organizational life. This is particularly true for ethical behavior. Managers set the moral tone within an organization, and the belief systems they endorse have significant consequences for ethical decision making, Managers who create an organizational culture with a strong ethical climate influence employees by affecting normative beliefs and subsequent subjective norms. That is, organizational culture creates social pressure for employees to act in specific ways.
Structures, mechanisms, and values practiced within an organization may lead the employees to be deviant. Practice the work ethics as a leader and the rest will learn from you and follow.
As managers… it is time to get beyond the formulation of all deviance as an unethical negative act… learn how to manage deviance…
Ethical standards
Managers set the ethical standards through their actions and inactions, for an organization.
Leaders create an ethical organization by the way in which they behave, allocate rewards, hire and fire people, focus their attention and set standards. They should always anticipate disasters and plan for them in advance. These disasters may take the form of financial scandals, disruptions in operations, organizational cataclysm, or even product letdowns. For instance, if the manager of an organization always comes to work late or never does not deliver, nor is productive, he should not expect his senior to be. They look up to the manager for a good example, and then they will follow. A manager who leads by example usually gets results from the employees. It is through their actions that the employees emulate and it becomes easier to follow regulations in the company.
Also, a manager should be able to listen to the view of the employee so that they may also feel part of the organization. The employees are the people who handle the daily tasks and understand better what can be done to improve the situation. If for instance technology is needed in the organization, and the manager does not realize its importance, he should not be reluctant to inquire before ruling it out.
The way forward
The senior managers of an organization should exercise rational decision-making to decrease bias when making decisions for the organization, thus improve the quality of business decisions. In the same way, a manager’s judgment should not be prejudiced by private biases to the detriment of the organization. Managers may only be influenced by their own bias based on solid experience and careful considerations about the decision required. They should therefore learn how to shun private biases in order to be better decision-makers. According to Messick and Max Bazerman, time tried theories stand to bear the brunt of “selective perception” by:
- Restricting ourselves to high-probability events while disregarding the events considered as improbable.
- Ignoring some stakeholders based on their perceived financial status;
- Assuming that the public will not “find out”;
- Overlooking what might happen in the future focusing only on short-term consequences and
- Underestimating the potential of teams and concentrating on unitary effort.
Managers of an organization make decisions all the time on behalf of the organization. There are no systems an institution could put in place to check decision-making. The result of your decision should tell you if you made the right decision or not. If not, you should try a different approach to the situation you are facing.
Assessing your own decision-making skills should be part of your personal debriefing after any episode that required your decision-making skills. If the problem was one of insufficient help to manage a crisis, what system could the institution put in place for crisis management?