SMIB's Distinguished Lecture Series places complex workplace interactions in the spotlight
Would you behave more ethically in the workplace if your boss was watching you closely?
Would you behave more ethically in the workplace if your boss was watching you closely?
It’s one of the questions being posed by Professor Nick Lee, Professor of Marketing and Organisational Research at the UK’s Aston Business School and SMIB's inaugural speaker in their 2013 Distinguished Lecture Series. The Distinguished Lecture Series invites editors from the leading international journals in Marketing to share their cutting edge research with Victoria Business School staff, students, and alumni, as well as the local business community. Professor Lee is an alumnus of the Victoria Business School's Honours Programme in Marketing and is currently editor-in-chief of the prestigious European Journal of Marketing.
Professor Nick Lee (right), Professor of Marketing and Organisational Research at Aston Business School, with the Chancellor of Victoria University Ian McKinnon
Focusing on the environment where we spend most of our waking hours—the workplace—Professor Lee’s research looks at the social psychology of work and how actions which may seem like the ‘right’ thing to do can actually lead to unintended negative effects.
“We observed sales teams in the UK and Europe, and particularly the nature of the sales function as a link between the firm and its customers, to see how staff behaved when they felt they were closely supervised, for example if the manager spent lots of time with them observing sales calls. In such circumstances, employees tended to behave better,” says Professor Lee.
However, throw a conflict into the mix—ie. responsibility for the company versus responsibility to the customer—and the results skewed towards the unethical.
“When closely monitored employees were conflicted between making money for the company and providing good customer service, they tended to behave unethically, putting their organisation’s needs ahead of the customer.”
Uncovering such counter-intuitive outcomes requires an approach that goes beyond the notion of “common sense—of what we think should or shouldn’t work in the workplace,” says Professor Lee.
“Different drivers of behaviour require different managerial remedies. For example, our research found that a more caring manager resulted in higher job satisfaction from employees, whereas a more aggressive manager produced lower commitment from employees and greater emotional strain. But at the same time, we found employees actually valued a certain amount of aggression from their managers, because it helped clarify the appropriate standards of behaviour and role responsibilities.”
Click here to view Professor Lee's lecture on 15 April 2013.