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Ethics and human potential
Introduction
Organisations of the 1980s and 1990s relied to a large extent on their ability to attract and spend capital
wisely. The current league of successful organisations is by and large dominated by those entities with
superior technology. In real terms however, technology is becoming cheaper. What then will distinguish
successful organisations from less successful ones in future? In the words of Walt Disney, “You can
create, design and build the most wonderful place in the world … but it takes people to make the dream a
reality” (Just-Disney, 2017). Over time, it is human capital that creates financial capital, not the reverse. It
is increasingly recognised that it is the people, or human resources, of the organisation that are most
likely to supply the core competencies, which will be the primary source of sustained competitive
advantage and successful long-term financial performance.
Although many organisations describe people as their most important asset, a large proportion of these
organisations do not practice this credo. The phenomenom that people are regarded as assets but not
treated as such remains a mystery. Unfortunately, many senior managers fail to appreciate the impact that
the thinking, attitudes and actions of people at all levels can have on profits, growth, efficiency and
relationships. It is clear that organisations that invest in their human capital, develop it and reward people
for performance, make more money than those who place less emphasis on human capital.
The Peters and Waterman (1982) study, which is described in their book In Search of Excellence,
remains a landmark in studies seeking to establish what exactly it is that makes superior organisations
tick. Having analysed several high-performing companies over time, they identified the effective
utilisation of people as a central criterion for excellence (financial and otherwise) in all the companies
they investigated. If managed properly, people can be an organisation’s greatest competitive edge.
If, therefore, people are perceived to be assets, and are perceived to be an organisation’s competitive
edge, the business case for investing in, nurturing and developing human talent is clear. Organisations
that do not do this may survive, and may even achieve success in the short run. Their long-term
sustainability may, however, be at risk. The way that organisations think about their people, and what
they choose to do (or not to do) in unlocking their human potential, determines their future sustainability.
In this chapter we will analyse the role that ethics can play in unlocking human potential. The
discussion commences with the notion of ethical neglect as the phenomenon whereby some organisations
disregard their workforce as an asset. The use of ethics in the unlocking of human potential in
under U.S. or applicable copyright law.
organisations is then suggested as a remedy for ethical neglect. The chapter is concluded with a number
of ethics-based strategies that may be useful in unlocking human potential.
Ethical neglect
When inadequate ethical mindsets exist, or are absent in organisations, a condition of ethical neglect, in a
mild to severe form, may be observed. Ethical neglect occurs when organisations negate the effect that
their actions may have on the legitimate rights and expectations of stakeholders, and employees in
particular, to be treated ethically, that is with trust, fairness, honesty, empathy and consistency. Ethical
neglect often manifests as job dissatisfaction. Job dissatisfaction may, in turn, vary in intensity. This may
severely inhibit the organisation’s employees from flourishing and reaching their full potential.
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, The organisational mindset that cultivates a state of ethical neglect is characterised by an unethical
organisational culture, or lack of ethical conscience. The mentality that often prevails in such
organisations is described by Lantos (1999) as a ‘business is war’ mentality. He states that (Lantos,
Copyright © 2017. Oxford University Press Southern Africa. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted
1999:223):
This philosophy is held by basically ‘good guys’ who are moral in their personal lives but are convinced that
business is a game, sport, or even war, governed by its own rules of fairness, and therefore must be played
outside the realm of individual morality and societal mores (all’s fair in love and war!).
Business leaders are often sceptical about the need for business to be concerned about the goodness for
‘the other’. In the process they, sometimes irrevocably, contaminate the trust of their stakeholders. The
employee as an important stakeholder requires ‘goodness’ (fairness, honesty, justice, empathy,
recognition and respect) to experience trust and security. If organisations, through their leaders, fail to
demonstrate a cognisance of the importance of ethics and fail to incorporate it into the life of the
organisation and its employees, a harsh business culture may prevail. In short, organisations that have no
ethical culture may be guilty of ethical neglect.
Ethical neglect may vary markedly from workplace to workplace. Neglect could vary from mild
neglect caused by ignorance about employees’ rights, at the one end of the spectrum, to severe neglect
caused by deliberate denial at the other. The latter results in treating employees as mere resources to be
used to achieve organisational success.
The impact of ethical neglect on employees may manifest from feelings or perceptions of slight or
moderate discomfort about the organisation to deviant employee behaviour. The discomfort that is
experienced may manifest as job dissatisfaction. Job dissatisfaction can be described as an affective
(emotional) attitude of dislike towards one or more job- or organisationally related dimensions
(Newstrom & Davis, 1997). Since attitudes, and negative attitudes in this case, are reasonably good
predictors of behaviour, a wide variety of consequences, from mild to destructive, may follow. The
milder forms of dissatisfaction include psychological withdrawal (feelings of inadequacy, apathy, fear,
depression and frustration) or physical withdrawal (tardiness and absenteeism). Another consequence of
ethical neglect is the deliberate or inadvertent withholding of effort or performance. This includes wasting
time, shirking, job neglect, social loafing and free riding (Bennett & Naumann, 2005), and a reluctance
to be creative. Dissatisfaction clearly has an extremely adverse impact on individual, group and
organisational performance.
Even worse are the detrimental and harmful consequences of serious dissatisfaction. As Ciulla (2002)
states, individual workers are now able to do greater harm and greater good than ever before. Destructive
and overt forms of dissatisfaction, as a result of ethical neglect, is prevalent in many organisations. This
category of work behaviour has received particular attention in organisational behaviour literature of late
and is labelled as deviant behaviour (Kidwell & Martin, 2005; Thorne & Jones, 2005). Deviant behaviour
consists of “voluntary acts that defy organisational norms and standards and threaten the well-being of the
organisation and/or its members” (Robinson & Bennett, 1995, cited in Kidwell & Martin, 2005:5).
‘Deviant behaviour’ is used as a collective term for what is also labelled by other authors in Kidwell
and Martin (2005) as organisational antisocial behaviour, counterproductive behaviour, dysfunctional
behaviour and organisational misbehaviour. The central themes of deviant behaviour, under whatever
under U.S. or applicable copyright law.
label it is presented, appear to be the severity of the behaviour and the harmful nature of its consequences.
Deviant behaviour thus represents the ‘dark side’ of employee behaviour (Kidwell & Martin, 2005).
Typical forms of deviant behaviour are overt acts of aggression and retaliation, lying and dishonesty,
alcohol and substance abuse, workplace violence, theft, sabotage of equipment and processes, verbal
sabotage (gossiping, bullying, badmouthing others and rumour mongering), abuse or destruction of
property, harassment, and fraud and corruption.
The productivity and cost implications of an inability to deal with all these manifestations are obvious.
Less obvious though is the effect of ethical neglect on human well-being, which, in turn, inhibits the
optimal utilisation of human potential. And, where neglect is continuous and pervasive, it is unlikely that
the people in the organisation, and the organisation as an entity, will reach their full potential.
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