Influence of Moral Behavior and Social setting on employee performace

The reason for me to start this discussion is to understand the influence of Moral behavior and social setting on employee performance and engagement. Any inputs from readers will be of immense help. In the continuing blogs I will try to touch upon the various unconventional aspects that influence or enhance employee performance.

Games sometimes provide us with an illuminating analogy for other more serious activities- mainly social activities. Politics, economics, scientific, sports even war. One thing that has always intrigued me is how we will define a ‘game’.

What governs games and what makes it most interesting is the very fact that all actions are governed by rules- without the existence of rules and without any control- games cannot be played or there can be no games. How do we now relate this back to our day to day life- any relationships that becomes stereotyped and repetitive and in which ulterior motives are at work have been termed as ‘life games’.

Even workplace- which constitutes of million relationships, mainly complex are governed by some rules-Some very explicit- some implicit. These rules are derived mainly from the ‘values’ in which the organization is built and can be found explicitly mentioned in the contract letter and day to mails on ethics and behavior. What about the unwritten ones- the rules that we mainly get to know only when we break them. Moral behavior and social environment in the work place contributes heavily to this.

So, what makes a person accepted easily in an organization, especially in a globalised world- is it complying with the written rules and values or understanding and adapting to the unwritten rules. In other words, what employees do in organizations (public) may not accord with what they do in private- in other words the individuals moral behavior is shaped not only by his character but also by his immediate social context, the nature of his relationship to other people and the social pressures of work.

Value---How to define it in an organisation

Performance Management is an effective way to understand value creation. Value is an ambiguous term. Does it refer to customer value or shareholder value? In the context of describing an organization’s assets, I am referring to shareholder value—the monetary view. Sustained value creation is another task of the senior executives. But here again executives are running into a problem. The sources of value have been shifting. Ideas are taking the place of land and property in establishing value. Organizations are now much more knowledge-based. Working smart seems to beat working hard.

A simple definition of long-term assets is things one purchases which depreciate as period expenses with time.

In 2001, for every U.S. dollar of market capitalization, only 15 cents represented tangible assets. This means that 85 cents of investor-valued worth came in the form of brands, relationships, and employees. Employees are intangible assets. The knowledge of workers who go home each night and return in the morning is what produces value in many organizations today. A simple definition of this type of intangible asset, in contrast to a tangible asset, is something with potential that grows with time, rather than depreciates.

The sources of value creation are in people’s know-how and their passion to perform. You don’t supervise a product development engineer or advertising editor to create a better product or ad copy. Rather, they do it, given the right environment. PM powers an organization as an economic engine by recognizing that social systems are the fuel. This is not to say that the organization’s mission is not fundamental—it is. It simply means that performance requires cooperation, teamwork, and people giving effort for the benefit of the whole. Value creation is central to the purpose of an organization.

Some publicly-traded corporations feel investor pressure to cut costs to meet earnings expectations, which usually translates into laying off employees. But right-sizing decisions based solely on head count and cost reductions can rob an organization of its key talent. Human resource systems need to acknowledge employees as valued intangible assets, each with unique skills and experiences. Inevitably management must come to grips with increasing bottom-line by getting more from its existing resources rather than removing them with layoffs. This imperative adds to the interest in performance management.

Despite this substantial shift toward valuing intangible assets, current accounting and performance measurement systems still reflect outdated industrial models. Recent accounting scandals, like Enron’s sudden collapse, have alerted the general public that accounting practices have failed as early warning signals. The trio of accounting watchdogs—external auditing firms, boards of directors, and stock analysts—are failing to detect or report impending disasters. The solution is not to meddle with more accounting regulations. Rather than tweak the status quo, where each party likely has vested interests in preservation, the accounting industry should take an investor’s perspective. It should provide disclosure and financial transparency of operating processes. The performance of processes does not suddenly improve or degrade—it changes gradually.