When an organization faces a crisis of public trust, there are predictable stages it will follow. In this stage, there are warning signs that corporate behavior may be introducing conflict. The crisis becomes acute when controversy erupts in a public forum, with a chronic period of apology and compensation to offended parties to follow. At last, the organization may seek final resolution when the apologies are accepted and the future brightens.
However, current crisis management literature focuses only on transmission of accurate and timely information without meeting the audience's psychological needs during a crisis. The typical framework for crisis communication makes the assumption that crisis communication is important and influences opinions of internal and external constituents only during a crisis. Further, one must determine how communication will affect opinions regarding the organization after the termination of a crisis's life cycle. The Sundstrand case demonstrates that strategic communication which modifies cultural expectations within the organization can be effective during an ethical crisis resolution.
When leaders make visible attempts to manage their organization's images (e.g. General Motors' investigation of Ralph Nader after his criticism of the Corvair) risk being viewed as manipulative and as "protesting too much. Such efforts can backfire and reduce legitimacy when organizations are viewed as "clumsy" (unethical, heavy-handed, or insensitive), "nervous" (dogmatic, intolerant, or evasive), or "overacting" (exaggerating strengths or reacting too strongly to faults).
Institutional theorists, for example, assert that organizations often decouple illegitimate or controversial actions from legitimate and socially acceptable structures. The excuses claims that the organization could not be blamed for members' unlawful actions (e.g. disabling logging equipment) because such actions were conducted by autonomous (i.e. decoupled) individuals or groups without the organization's knowledge or endorsement.
Direct sales organizations suggest that having a charismatic founder who can create excitement, commitment, and effort in followers is essential to organizational success. Most of the organizations had charismatic founders who used their emotional expressiveness, linguistic ability, confidence, and vision to inspire followers and build their corporations. For example, Mary Kay Ash of Mary Kay Cosmetics used both personal attention and inspirational songs to instill felt and displayed enthusiasm in the 150,000 women who sold her cosmetics.
House et al's (2001) study of United States presidents provides intriguing quantitative data on the influence of charismatic leaders on followers. The researchers used information from presidential biographies and other sources coded by independent raters to measure charisma, operationalized as self-confidence, strong ideological conviction, high expectations of followers, and consideration. This measure of charisma also reflected followers' reactions to the leader, including affect, mission involvement, extra effort, agreement, and self-confidence. Charisma explained substantial amounts of variance in presidential performance in economic, domestic, and foreign affairs. A separate measure of charisma based on editorials appearing in the New York Times the day after each president's inaugural address explained similar amounts of variance in these performance measures, thus adding greater credibility to the conclusions.
Notwithstanding the observation that the four mechanisms may vary in importance with time and circumstance, it seems probable that there are systematic differences between societies in their dependence upon the mechanisms. It is emphasised that if there are differences, they are differences of degree, or in the relative importance of the mechanisms.
There is little doubt that there are variations in the efficacy of legal compliance mechanisms because of varying degrees of legal sophistication. For example, it is widely agreed that the law does not offer the same level of commercial protection in many Southeast Asian countries as in most Western countries. Legal problems occur in protecting technology and intellectual property and in administration of the law by 'due process' .
There are some general indications that social influences are stronger in many Asian societies than in the West. In many Asian countries, expectations about behavior often emphasize communal or group responsibilities rather than individual rights compared to most Western countries. There is also widespread belief that in many Asian societies shame has more importance than guilt in comparison with many European societies. 'Oriental face' is part of the shame syndrome. Shame operates as a social process whereas guilt is an emotional process.
Variations in behavior between one society and another as a result of the emotional returns to honesty. It is argued that the psychological returns to honest dealing can vary according to the prevailing moral code in a particular community and the moral element can be altered or manipulated by leaders. The proportion of transactions with psychological dimensions will vary according to the strength of the moral code, and to the proportion of the population that comes under the influence of the strong moral code.
Established procedures for assessing risk in particular classes of contract at home may not work as well when transplanted to another culture. The firm will need to develop alternative procedures for assessing and handling risk for that class of contract in the foreign environment.
In countries where legal processes are weak, but reputation or social processes are important, firms may avoid licensing arrangements, preferring other modes of entry that are less dependent upon legal enforcement.
These personal environments are complex, including diverse and sometimes conflicting organizational, economic, cultural, and organizational elements.
The first step in the ethical decision-making process requires that the individual be capable of recognizing the moral dilemma in an act or in the failure to act. Failure to recognize a moral choice places the individual's behavior outside the realm of the ethical decision-making process. Once a moral dilemma is recognized, the individual is then asked to make a moral judgment and establish a moral intent. Included in the moral intent phase are individual and situational moderating variables as well as variables of opportunity and significant others. Following the establishment of moral intent, the final step of Jones' model depicts the individual engaging in moral behavior.
Past models failed to consider the explicit characteristics of the issue as either an independent or moderating variable. If the issue itself is not significant, then the individual's process of making ethical decisions will be the same for all moral issues. By explicitly rejecting such a notion and assuming that the characteristics of the issue do matter in the ethical decision-making process, moral intensity is included into the model.
This concept and practice can be extended easily and fruitfully to the subject of professional and social work unrealistic. A social work unrealistic audit should focus on what currently is considered to be essential or core knowledge in the profession. Social work's literature suggests two key knowledge areas that should form the foundation of the audit: (1) the extent of social workers' familiarity with known unrealistic -related risks in practice settings, based on empirical trend data summarizing actual unrealistic complaints and lawsuits filed against social workers and summarizing unrealistic committee and court findings and dispositions; and (2) current agency procedures and protocols for handing ethical issues, dilemmas, and decisions.
A rational model is changed by what produces the ripple. Dropping a stone into a pond usually produces a steady, predictable pattern. However, dropping an opened can of paint leaves an unpredictable color design. Dropping two moving motorboats with twin propellers creates a different, changing pattern, and dropping a nuclear bomb may alter the entire ecosystem and even ripple speed.
Similarly, introducing one new technology into society may produce a seemingly predictable ripple pattern of effects, at least on the surface. Another new technology will act differently and raise unforeseen social and ethical issues. To further complicate matters, introducing technologies into different countries and cultures produces patterns as different as dropping unlit fireworks into a pond and into a fire. The nature of the technology, who has access to it, and the context into which it is introduced may greatly alter its impact on society.
Present-day health care ethics focus on two very different areas whose relationship to each other is essentially like the opposite ends of a U curve. At one end are the rapidly developing and changing applications of medical research and medical technology. This area is the focus of both unrealistic expectations and major commercial interests.
At the other end of the U curve are the various groups of patients with common, chronic and incurable illnesses, or who suffer from a complex web of social and health-related problems. These groups may seem to present difficult care problems, while the measurable results of treatment may be rather modest. This is also true of efforts to reduce the suffering of the terminally ill. In a society that worships competition, performance and peak achievements there is a danger that these types of patient may end up being excluded. But it is not only the patients themselves who are under threat of exclusion. Both their relatives and the health care professionals whose job it is to care for them can also easily end up in an unreasonably difficult and vulnerable position. Entire areas of life could become excluded from mainstream society.
It is not realistic to expect that health care could survive as some sort of separate enclave abiding by an entirely different system of values from the rest of society. The values of the age — both good and bad — will inevitably permeate health care, if a little more slowly in the public than the private sector. However, this does not mean health care has to be merely a passive observer of what is happening in society. Those involved in the health care arena can join the debate and highlight the experiences and observations the health care sector has of Finnish society and its development. Health care professionals have a wealth of untapped knowledge, understanding and wisdom about life. They are aware in very concrete terms of the human costs of social change. It is in the interests of us all to harness this knowledge for common consideration and use.
For these and many other reasons, it is important to study each new technology before and during its introduction into countries, tribes, businesses, schools, and neighborhoods. Hidden effects and ethical issues discovered after the fact have led to confusion, frustration, social dilemmas, and corporate lawsuits. Because new communication and information technologies are being introduced more rapidly into society than ever before, and into some societies for the first time, it is especially important to study the effects and ethical issues accompanying new communications media.
References
- Harris, T. (2003). Applied organizational communication: Perspective, principles and pragmatics. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
- Porter (Eds.), Handbook of organizational communication (pp. 228-263). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
- Elsbach, K. D., Sutton, R. I. 2002. Acquiring organizational legitimacy through illegitimate actions: a marriage of institutional and impression management theory.
