Everyday ethics: Encouraging workplace conscientiousness

As told to Susan Muldowney

Question: “I’m a leader at a large firm that is undergoing a cultural reset, and I want to encourage more conscientiousness among employees. At times, I get the sense that our employees are only responsible, hardworking and organised when their work is highly visible and they are being closely monitored. How can I engender a conscious desire in people to always do the right thing, without being too demanding or condescending?”

Answer: To understand modern-day conscientiousness, it helps to know a little about the origin of this virtue.

In ancient times, the foundations of good character were thought to be based on the four cardinal virtues:

1. Prudence: the ability to make sound judgements in ethical matters
2. Justice: fairness, ensuring that everyone gets their due deserts 
3. Fortitude: facing fear and adversity with courage and resilience
4. Temperance: the virtue of moderation and self-control, demonstrating an ability to balance duty and desire.

In the late 17th and 18th centuries, Enlightenment philosophers shifted their focus from character to actions. German philosopher Immanuel Kant based his theory of ethics on treating people as an end, not a means, positing that before acting we should ask, “What if everyone did this?”

English philosophers Jeremy Betham and John Stuart Mill constructed an ethical system based on utility: “Which actions will lead to the greatest good of the greatest number?” 

By the middle of the 20th century, ethical arguments about the rights and wrongs of different actions had become so complicated that philosophers had taken to arguing about the meaning of the words themselves. 

For example, what does “good” actually mean? It took a highly intelligent, courageous and outspoken female philosopher, Elisabeth Anscombe, to suggest that moral philosophers had fundamentally lost their way, and so she called for a return to ancient virtue ethics.

Conscientiousness is one of modern psychology’s big five personality factors, along with agreeableness, neuroticism, openness to experience and extraversion.

While moral philosophy considers normative questions about how people “should” behave, moral psychology examines how people in practice “do” behave, which makes it particularly relevant to the issue of conscientiousness.

Moral development, a subset of moral psychology, investigates how individuals develop a sense of right and wrong, and how they formulate their values, ethical beliefs and the standards that guide their behaviour. This process involves changes in moral reasoning, emotions and actions over time. It begins in early childhood and continues throughout adult life.

The workplace is a particularly important theatre of moral development. Perhaps your company needs to focus less on performance management, incentives and rewards, and concentrate instead on personal development, building character in the workplace and growing a workforce that exhibits the modern equivalents of the classic cardinal virtues.

 

 

Therefore, my advice, if you want your cultural reset to succeed, is to get your HR department, leaders and employees to ensure that the company’s ethical approach and employee development program are co-created and focus on modern cardinal virtues.