Organizational Culture: What Lies Beneath the Surface?
How do organizations both innovate and create a culture of fairness that supports ethical behavior? It comes down to psychological safety and embodiment of organizational values. While Professor Amy Edmonson (1999) might quibble with my definition, psychological safety is essentially perceived trust between a manager and a subordinate, and within one’s larger team. Trust can extend across groups of teams to encompass an entire organization. Additionally, organizations can either embody the stated values they hold, usually centering around excellence, integrity, and concern for others, but sometimes they do not.
What are the risks of not having psychological safety embedded within organizations? What types of behaviors stem from a lack of psychological safety or a lack of adherence to organizational values? I look to the recent disasters on Boeing 737-Max 8 planes as illustrative examples. As noted in the popular press, employees were afraid to speak up about the impacts on work products that rushed timelines created (Shepardson & Silviana, 2019). They saw that this would lead to reduced product integrity and that speaking up would lead to castigation. That led to a lack of information about critical processes and outputs that ultimately resulted in a major loss of life. Furthermore, when other stakeholders (in this case pilots) voiced concerns and demanded further training that would cover how to fly the new planes, their demands were discarded, deemed unimportant, and even penalized by leadership (Lahiri, 2019). Finally, innovation might have been spurned (Amabile et al, 2004) because the environment and leadership did not support voicing new ideas (or push back against bad ones) leading to stifling the progress of technology.
Had the organization been willing to listen to stakeholder concerns, this disaster may not have occurred. Psychological safety was (and is) needed at Boeing. So, how do we create psychological safety on teams and within organizations? A major factor relates to leaders “walking the talk” and modeling humility – that they, in fact, do not have all the answers and are willing to listen to feedback from the bottom up. The process of giving feedback needs to feel safe for employees of all levels. Part of this may stem from personality traits a leader possesses (emotional intelligence and the ability to empathize with others), and part of this likely stems from an environment in which organizational values of equity and fairness are embodied.
As stated, organizational values and how they are embodied by employees are critical in this process. Consider the following scenario. At a large consulting firm, a junior consultant (let’s call her Susan) experienced several incidents that illustrated unethical behavior. Susan’s Project Manager, a very senior employee named Don, pressed Susan to falsify hours billable to the client such that the client would be billed for more hours than were actually worked. Given the newness of her relationship with Don and the fact that he signed off on her project expenses, she was afraid to speak up. The following week, at the client site, Susan witnessed a degrading interaction in which Don physically accosted a client, even though he meant it as a “joke.” Fearing for the progress of her project and sensing that the client did not perceive the interaction as a “joke,” Susan mentioned this to a peer in her practice, who was not on the project team. She had a high-quality working relationship with her peer and experienced him as empathic and willing to listen. Susan’s peer, in turn, reported the incident to the senior executive in charge of managing the client relationship. Then, the senior executive reported the matter to HR. HR opened an investigation and spoke to other project team members who witnessed the event on the client site. As the investigation progressed, new information came to light. Don had bullied other members of the project team and made a series of racist and sexist “jokes” resulting in significant discomfort among members of the team.
These unethical behaviors were in direct opposition to the firm’s stated values of equity and fairness. Because the stated values were very much embodied by other employees at the firm, and this culture was generally widely spread, HR took swift action and terminated Don’s employment. Additionally, Susan had a positive and trusting working relationship with her direct manager, Alice. When she reported the incident to Alice, she experienced Alice as empathic and concerned about Susan’s well-being. Because of their high-quality relationship, Susan knew that confiding in Alice about Don’s behavior would not result in penalization.
None of the equity and fairness that Susan experienced would have been possible without two things: Leaders who demonstrated empathy and concern (as evidenced by a range of stakeholders noted above). This empathy and concern likely permeated throughout the organization’s culture to create a climate of psychological safety in which team members felt that they could speak out after witnessing unethical behavior. Furthermore, the firm’s values were actively embodied in employee behavior such that equity, safety, and fairness were deemed extremely important.
In the academic literature, the importance of psychological safety and adherence to organizational values (or not) is noted time and time again. However, many leaders and organizations fail to live up to their own standards. My hope is that the wide-spread press resulting in Boeing’s recent failures will bring more awareness to the importance of creating a psychologically safe culture that embodies ethical organizational values.
Amabile, T. M., Schatzel, E. A., Moneta, G. B., & Kramer, S. J. (2004). Leader behaviors and the work environment for creativity: Perceived leader support. The Leadership Quarterly, 15(1), 5-32.
Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350-383.
Lahiri, T. (2019, April 07). What happened when one US pilot asked for more training before flying the 737 Max. Retrieved May 9, 2019, from https://qz.com/1584233/boeing-737-max-what-happened-when-one-us-pilot-asked-for-more-training/
Shepardson, D., & Silviana, C. (2019, March 22). U.S. lawmaker seeks Boeing whistleblowers, some MAX 737 orders in... Retrieved May 9, 2019, from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ethiopia-airplane-idUSKCN1R30L1