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– 2 years ago
**files (6)**
– ## WellnessInHealthCareWorksheet.docx
– ## HowtoDesignanEthicalOrganization.pdf
– EuthnasiaAssistedSuicideandPalliativeSedation.pdf
– SmokingNormsRegulationofECigs.pdf
– EthicsWithouttheSermonBook.pdf
– AssistedSuicideArticle.pdf
**## WellnessInHealthCareWorksheet.docx**
**Wellness in Health Care**
Name:
Professor:
Date:
An important part of health care is the wellness of health care providers. Negligence in these areas can result in a tangible reduction in effective care for patients. It can also affect the work environment and pour over into other areas in the life of a provider. However, there are tools available and ways to aid in the mental, physical, and spiritual wellness of practitioners.
For this assignment, review the scenario and respond to the provided prompts. Along with the textbook, use a minimum of two scholarly sources from the GCU Library.
**_Scenario_**
Dr. Davis frequently works long shifts in the Emergency Department. Recently, he began picking up extra shifts to provide coverage due to understaffing. Within the last 6 months, two providers have left. Until additional staff are hired, those remaining are left to cover the vacated shifts. Additionally, Dr. Davis has a wife, twin girls who are eight, and son who is not yet one year old. The extra hours are beginning to take a toll. Dr. Davis has always had lots of energy and is very positive in the workplace. However, as of late, Dr. Davis seems to be acting differently with patients. Within the last week, his mood has transitioned from being joyful and engaging to being sad, disengaged, and distant. Dr. Davis has also been heard making comments about not feeling appreciated by the organization. It is clear that there should be concern regarding Dr. Davis's mental state and well-being.
With this scenario in mind, please answer the following questions:
1.
**Explain how working together as a team can have a positive impact on a medical professional's health and wellness. What could staff do to help Dr. Davis feel more appreciated and supported? (200-300 words)**
| |
| — |
| <Text> |
2.
**Discuss the impact that spiritual wellness can have on a medical professional's stress. How might spiritual wellness be emphasized more in the workplace? (200-300 words)**
| |
| — |
| <Text> |
3.
**Identify ways in which burnout and stress can be reduced. What can employers do to help? (200-300 words)**
| |
| — |
| <Text> |
4.
**Given the scenario above, how would you make sure that the proper people were made aware to step in and help Dr. Davis? (200-300 words)**
| |
| — |
| <Text> |
**References:**
| |
| — |
| <Text> |
© 2019. Grand Canyon University. All Rights Reserved.
© 2019. Grand Canyon University. All Rights Reserved.
## image1.jpeg
**## HowtoDesignanEthicalOrganization.pdf**
144 Harvard Business Review
May–June 2019
How to Design an
Ethical Organization
_HBR_MayJun19
Harvard Business Review
May–June 2019 145
Nicholas Epley
Professor, Booth School
of Business
Amit Kumar
Assistant professor,
University of Texas
at Austin
PHOTOGRAPHER STEVEN DERKS ETHICS
AUTHORS
IDEA IN BRIEF
THE PROBLEM
Unethical behavior
ruins reputations,
harms employee
morale, and increases
regulatory costs—
not to mention
damages society’s
trust in business. Yet
corporate scandals
are a recurring reality.
WHAT DOESN’T WORK
Compliance
programs take a
legalistic approach
to ethics that
focuses on individual
accountability—but
a large body of
behavioral science
research suggests that
even well-meaning
and well-informed
individuals are
ethically malleable.
A BETTER WAY
Leaders must design
workplace contexts
that encourage good
behavior. Keeping
prosocial values
top of mind for
employees as they
make decisions will
reduce the likelihood
of transgressions
while making workers
happier and more
productive.
From Volkswagen’s emissions fiasco to Wells Fargo’s deceptive
sales practices to Uber’s privacy intrusions, corporate wrongdoing
is a continuing reality in global business. Unethical behavior takes a
significant toll on organizations by damaging reputations, harming
employee morale, and increasing regulatory costs—not to mention
the wider damage to society’s overall trust in business. Few executives
set out to achieve advantage by breaking the rules, and most
companies have programs in place to prevent malfeasance at all
levels. Yet recurring scandals show that we could do better.
START HERE
146 Harvard Business Review
May–June 2019
Interventions to encourage ethical behavior are often
based on misperceptions of how transgressions occur,
and thus are not as e!ective as they could be. Compliance
programs increasingly take a legalistic approach to ethics
that focuses on individual accountability. They’re designed
to educate employees and then punish wrongdoing among
the “bad apples” who misbehave. Yet a large body of behav-
ioral science research suggests that even well-meaning and
well-informed people are more ethically malleable than one
might guess. When watching a potential emergency unfold,
for example, people are much more likely to intervene if they
are alone than if other bystanders are around—because they
think others will deal with the situation, believe that others
are more quali"ed to help, or fail to recognize an emergency
because others don’t look alarmed. Small changes to the
context can have a signi"cant e!ect on a person’s behav-
ior. Yet people in the midst of these situations tend not to
recognize the in#uence of context. In Stanley Milgram’s
famous obedience experiments, participants who were
told by an authority "gure to deliver increasingly powerful
electric shocks to another person progressed to a much
higher voltage than other people predicted they themselves
would deliver. Context is not just powerful, researchers have
learned; it is surprisingly powerful.
Pillars of an Ethical Culture
CREATI NG AN ET H ICA L culture thus requires thinking about
ethics not simply as a belief problem but also as a design prob-
lem. We have identi"ed four critical features that need to be
addressed when designing an ethical culture: explicit values,
thoughts during judgment, incentives, and cultural norms.
EXPLICIT VALUES > Strategies and practices should be
anchored to clearly stated principles that can be widely
shared within the organization. A well-crafted mission
statement can help achieve this, as long as it is used correctly.
Leaders can refer to it to guide the creation of any new
strategy or initiative and note its connection to the compa-
ny’s principles when addressing employees, thus reinforcing
the broader ethical system. Employees should easily be
able to see how ethical principles in#uence a company’s
practices. They’re likely to behave di!erently if they think
the organization is being guided by the ethos of Mr. Rogers,
the relentlessly kind PBS show host, versus that of Gordon
Gekko, the relentlessly greedy banker in the "lm Wall Street.
Indeed, in one experiment, 70% of participants playing an
economic game with a partner cooperated for mutual gain
when it was called the Community Game, but only 30%
cooperated when it was called the Wall Street Game. This
dramatic e!ect occurred even though the "nancial incen-
tives were identical.
A mission statement should be simple, short, actionable,
and emotionally resonant. Most corporate mission state-
ments today are too long to remember, too obvious to need
stating, too clearly tailored for regulators, or too distant from
day-to-day practices to meaningfully guide employees. A
statement can’t be just words on paper; it must undergird not
only strategy but policies around hiring, "ring, promoting,
and operations so that core ethical principles are deeply
embedded throughout the organization. Patagonia’s mission
statement, for instance, is “Build the best product, cause
no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and imple-
ment solutions to the environmental crisis.” Its Worn Wear
initiative implements its mission by enabling employees to
help consumers repair or recycle their products. Patagonia
also developed a standardized metric, posted on its website,
to evaluate the environmental impact of its entire supply
chain. Zappos says its number one core value is to “Deliver
WOW through service” to customers, according them respect
and dignity. It implements this value by not measuring the
average length of customer service calls (the industry stan-
dard), so employees can spend as much time with customers
as necessary. Mission statements like these help keep an
organization’s values crystal clear in employees’ minds.
THOUGHTS DURING JUDGMENT > Most people have
less di$culty knowing what’s right or wrong than they do
keeping ethical considerations top of mind when making
decisions. Ethical lapses can therefore be reduced in a
culture where ethics are at the center of attention. You might
know that it’s wrong to hurt someone else’s chances of being
hired but fail to think of the harm you cause to unknown
applicants when trying to help a friend, a family member,
or a business school classmate land a job. Behavior tends
to be guided by what comes to mind immediately before
Even well-meaning and well-informed people are
more ethically malleable than one might guess.
ETHICS
Harvard Business Review
May–June 2019 147
engaging in an action, and those thoughts can be meaning-
fully a!ected by context. Should someone remind you that
helping a friend necessarily hurts the chances of people you
don’t happen to know, you might think twice about whether
your advocacy e!orts are appropriate.
Several experiments make this point. In one, people were
more likely to tell the truth when an honor code came at the
beginning of a form—thereby putting ethics top of mind as
they completed the form—than when it was posted at the
end. In a large "eld experiment of approximately 18,000
U.S. government contractors, simply adding a box for "lers
to check certifying their honesty while reporting yielded
$28.6 million more in sales tax revenue than did a condition
that omitted the box. And in a simulation that asked MBA
students to play the role of "nancial adviser, having them
complete an ethics checklist before recommending potential
investment funds signi"cantly decreased the percentage
who recommended what turned out to be the Mado! feeder
fund. When ethics were top of mind, the students were more
alert to the possibility that the fund was too good to be true.
As a counterexample, Enron was notorious for its constant
focus on stock price, even posting it in the elevators. Re#ect-
ing on his own misdeeds, its former CFO Andy Fastow said,
“I knew it was wrong.… But I didn’t think it was illegal.… The
question I should have asked is not what is the rule, but what
is the principle.” People working in an ethical culture are
routinely triggered to think, Is it right? rather than Is it legal?
INCENTIVES > It is a boring truism that people do what
they’re incentivized to do, meaning that aligning rewards
with ethical outcomes is an obvious solution to many ethical
problems. That may sound simple (just pay people for acting
ethically), but money goes only so far, and incentive pro-
grams must provide a variety of rewards to be e!ective.
Along with earning an income, employees care about
doing meaningful work, making a positive impact, and
being respected or appreciated for their e!orts. In one
experiment, hospital sta! members were more likely to
follow correct handwashing procedures when a sign above
the sink reminded them of consequences to others (“Hand
hygiene prevents patients from catching diseases”) than
when it reminded them of personal consequences. Never-
theless, managers may easily overlook the importance of
non"nancial incentives. When asked how important such
incentives were to employees, customer service managers at
one Fortune 500 "rm tended to dramatically underestimate
what they meant to their reports.
In addition to aligning "nancial incentives with desired
outcomes, ethical cultures provide explicit opportunities to
bene"t others and reward people who do so with recogni-
tion, praise, and validation. If, for instance, your employees
are making people’s lives meaningfully better in some way,
pointing that out will encourage future ethical behavior.
It may even improve performance, because the reward is
aligned with ethical motivation. In one experiment, sales-
people for a large pharmaceutical company performed
dramatically better after participating in a prosocial bonus
system, which encouraged them to spend a small award on
their teammates, compared with a typical “proself” bonus
system, in which they spent the award on themselves.
This approach to incentives may have ancillary HR
bene"ts. People tend to underestimate both how positive
they will feel about connecting with others in a prosocial way
and the positive impact their behavior will have on others. In
a "eld experiment with Virgin Atlantic pilots, a bonus system
for increasing fuel economy was structured so that the bonus
went to a charity of their choosing. The resulting increase in
their job satisfaction was similar in magnitude to the e!ect
of moving from poor health to good health. Companies that
use prosocial incentives are likely to produce happier, more
satis"ed, and more loyal employees. An ethical culture not
only does good; it also feels good.
CULTURAL NORMS > Most leaders intuitively recog-
nize the importance of “tone at the top” for setting ethical
standards in an organization. Easily overlooked is “tone
in the middle,” which may actually be a more signi"cant
driver of employees’ behavior. Good leaders produce good
followers; but if employees in the middle of the organization
are surrounded by coworkers who are lying, cheating, or
stealing, they will most likely do the same, regardless of what
their bosses say. So-called descriptive norms—how peers
actually behave—tend to exert the most social in#uence. In
one "eld experiment conducted by a UK government agency,
13 versions of a letter were sent to delinquent taxpayers,
including versions that referenced moral principles, the ease
ETHICS
Money goes only so far; incentive programs must
provide a variety of rewards to be effective.
148 Harvard Business Review
May–June 2019
of paying taxes, or !nancial penalties. The most e"ective
letter compared the recipient’s behavior with that of fellow
citizens: “Nine out of ten people in the UK pay their taxes on
time. You are currently in the very small minority of people
who have not paid us yet.”
People often fail to appreciate the power of social norms.
When researchers were interested in determining how best
to encourage energy e#ciency among a group of Califor-
nians, for instance, they !rst asked a group of nearly 1,000
residents to predict the e"ectiveness of various approaches,
including appeals to environmental protection, personal
!nancial bene!ts, societal bene!ts, and social norms (what
percentage of neighbors conserved energy by using fans).
These residents expected that the environmental appeal
would be most persuasive and the social norm appeal least
persuasive. But when the researchers sent about 1,000 other
residents one of the four appeals, the social norm had by far
the biggest e"ect on reducing energy use.
Leaders can encourage an ethical culture by highlighting
the good things employees are doing. Although the natural
tendency is to focus on cautionary tales or “ethical black
holes,” doing so can make undesirable actions seem more
Harvard Business Review
May–June 2019 149
common than they really are, potentially increasing uneth-
ical behavior. To create more ethical norms, focus instead
on “ethical beacons” in your organization: people who are
putting the mission statement into practice or behaving in
an exemplary fashion.
Putting Ethical Design into Practice
A LE AD E R D E S I G NI NG an ethical culture should try to create
contexts that keep ethical principles top of mind, reward
ethics through formal and informal incentives and opportu-
nities, and weave ethics into day-to-day behavior. Precisely
how this is achieved will vary among organizations, but here
are a few examples.
HIRING > First impressions are inordinately powerful. For
many employees, an organization’s values were revealed
during the hiring process. Although interviews are typically
treated as opportunities for identifying the best candidate,
they also begin the acculturation process. At one Fortune 100
!rm, for instance, interview questions are designed around a
core value, such as putting customer needs !rst. In one inter-
view script, candidates are told of this value and then asked,
“Tell me about a time when you uncovered an unmet need
of a customer that you were able to address.” We don’t know
if this question identi!ed people who are good at treating
customers respectfully, but that’s not necessarily the point.
Highlighting values in the interview reveals their importance
to the organization. It is one piece of a broader system that
draws attention to ethics.
EVALUATION > Ethics can also be woven into the design of
performance evaluations to highlight their importance to an
organization as well as to reward and encourage good behav-
ior. At Johnson & Johnson, for instance, each executive’s
360-degree evaluation is built on the four components of
the company’s famous credo, which expresses commitment
to customers, employees, communities, and stakeholders.
In one version of the evaluation we saw, each executive was
rated on items such as “nurtures commitment to our Credo,”
“confronts actions that are, or border on, the unethical,”
and “establishes an environment in which uncompromising
integrity is the norm.”
COMPENSATION > Aligning !nancial incentives with eth-
ical outcomes may sound easy in principle, but it is tricky in
practice. This is where a mission statement can help. South-
west Airlines has used an executive scorecard to tie compen-
sation to its four core values: every employee matters, every
"ight matters, every customer matters, and every share-
holder matters. Each value is demonstrated by an objective
measurement—“every employee matters” by voluntary
turnover; “every "ight matters” by ontime performance. This
scorecard highlights how well core ethical values align with
business success, helps keep employees’ attention on them,
and suggests the behaviors needed to realize them.
Leaders can reward ethical actions by showing employees
the positive impact of their work on others and recognizing
their actions in presentations and publications. They can also
create opportunities within the organization to behave ethi-
cally toward colleagues. In one recent !eld experiment, man-
agers were randomly assigned to perform !ve acts of kindness
for certain fellow employees over a four-week period. Not only
did this increase the number of kind acts observed within the
organization, but recipients were more likely than controls
to subsequently do kind things for other employees, demon-
strating that ethical behavior can be contagious. These acts
of kindness improved well-being for those performing them
as well as for recipients. Perhaps most important, depressive
symptoms dropped dramatically among both groups com-
pared with the control condition, a result that continued for at
least three months beyond the initial one-month intervention.
Ethics, by Design
NO COMPAN Y WILL ever be perfect, because no human
being is perfect. Indeed, some companies we’ve used as
examples have had serious ethical lapses. Real people are not
purely good or purely evil but are capable of doing both good
and evil. Organizations should aim to design a system that
makes being good as easy as possible. That means attending
carefully to the contexts people are actually in, making ethi-
cal principles foundational in strategies and policies, keeping
ethics top of mind, rewarding ethical behavior through a
variety of incentives, and encouraging ethical norms in day-
to-day practices. Doing so will never turn an organization full
of humans into a host of angels, but it can help them be as
ethical as they are capable of being. HBR Reprint R1903K
NICHOLAS EPLEY is the John Templeton Keller Professor of
Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago Booth School of
Business and the author of Mindwise: How We Understand What
Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want (Knopf, 2014). AMIT KUMAR is
an assistant professor of marketing and psychology at the University
of Texas at Austin.
ETHICS
150 Harvard Business Review
May–June 2019
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**EuthnasiaAssistedSuicideandPalliativeSedation.pdf**
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**## WellnessInHealthCareWorksheet.docx**
**Wellness in Health Care**
Name:
Professor:
Date:
An important part of health care is the wellness of health care providers. Negligence in these areas can result in a tangible reduction in effective care for patients. It can also affect the work environment and pour over into other areas in the life of a provider. However, there are tools available and ways to aid in the mental, physical, and spiritual wellness of practitioners.
For this assignment, review the scenario and respond to the provided prompts. Along with the textbook, use a minimum of two scholarly sources from the GCU Library.
**_Scenario_**
Dr. Davis frequently works long shifts in the Emergency Department. Recently, he began picking up extra shifts to provide coverage due to understaffing. Within the last 6 months, two providers have left. Until additional staff are hired, those remaining are left to cover the vacated shifts. Additionally, Dr. Davis has a wife, twin girls who are eight, and son who is not yet one year old. The extra hours are beginning to take a toll. Dr. Davis has always had lots of energy and is very positive in the workplace. However, as of late, Dr. Davis seems to be acting differently with patients. Within the last week, his mood has transitioned from being joyful and engaging to being sad, disengaged, and distant. Dr. Davis has also been heard making comments about not feeling appreciated by the organization. It is clear that there should be concern regarding Dr. Davis's mental state and well-being.
With this scenario in mind, please answer the following questions:
1.
**Explain how working together as a team can have a positive impact on a medical professional's health and wellness. What could staff do to help Dr. Davis feel more appreciated and supported? (200-300 words)**
| |
| — |
| <Text> |
2.
**Discuss the impact that spiritual wellness can have on a medical professional's stress. How might spiritual wellness be emphasized more in the workplace? (200-300 words)**
| |
| — |
| <Text> |
3.
**Identify ways in which burnout and stress can be reduced. What can employers do to help? (200-300 words)**
| |
| — |
| <Text> |
4.
**Given the scenario above, how would you make sure that the proper people were made aware to step in and help Dr. Davis? (200-300 words)**
| |
| — |
| <Text> |
**References:**
| |
| — |
| <Text> |
© 2019. Grand Canyon University. All Rights Reserved.
© 2019. Grand Canyon University. All Rights Reserved.
## image1.jpeg
**## HowtoDesignanEthicalOrganization.pdf**
144 Harvard Business Review
May–June 2019
How to Design an
Ethical Organization
_HBR_MayJun19
Harvard Business Review
May–June 2019 145
Nicholas Epley
Professor, Booth School
of Business
Amit Kumar
Assistant professor,
University of Texas
at Austin
PHOTOGRAPHER STEVEN DERKS ETHICS
AUTHORS
IDEA IN BRIEF
THE PROBLEM
Unethical behavior
ruins reputations,
harms employee
morale, and increases
regulatory costs—
not to mention
damages society’s
trust in business. Yet
corporate scandals
are a recurring reality.
WHAT DOESN’T WORK
Compliance
programs take a
legalistic approach
to ethics that
focuses on individual
accountability—but
a large body of
behavioral science
research suggests that
even well-meaning
and well-informed
individuals are
ethically malleable.
A BETTER WAY
Leaders must design
workplace contexts
that encourage good
behavior. Keeping
prosocial values
top of mind for
employees as they
make decisions will
reduce the likelihood
of transgressions
while making workers
happier and more
productive.
From Volkswagen’s emissions fiasco to Wells Fargo’s deceptive
sales practices to Uber’s privacy intrusions, corporate wrongdoing
is a continuing reality in global business. Unethical behavior takes a
significant toll on organizations by damaging reputations, harming
employee morale, and increasing regulatory costs—not to mention
the wider damage to society’s overall trust in business. Few executives
set out to achieve advantage by breaking the rules, and most
companies have programs in place to prevent malfeasance at all
levels. Yet recurring scandals show that we could do better.
START HERE
146 Harvard Business Review
May–June 2019
Interventions to encourage ethical behavior are often
based on misperceptions of how transgressions occur,
and thus are not as e!ective as they could be. Compliance
programs increasingly take a legalistic approach to ethics
that focuses on individual accountability. They’re designed
to educate employees and then punish wrongdoing among
the “bad apples” who misbehave. Yet a large body of behav-
ioral science research suggests that even well-meaning and
well-informed people are more ethically malleable than one
might guess. When watching a potential emergency unfold,
for example, people are much more likely to intervene if they
are alone than if other bystanders are around—because they
think others will deal with the situation, believe that others
are more quali"ed to help, or fail to recognize an emergency
because others don’t look alarmed. Small changes to the
context can have a signi"cant e!ect on a person’s behav-
ior. Yet people in the midst of these situations tend not to
recognize the in#uence of context. In Stanley Milgram’s
famous obedience experiments, participants who were
told by an authority "gure to deliver increasingly powerful
electric shocks to another person progressed to a much
higher voltage than other people predicted they themselves
would deliver. Context is not just powerful, researchers have
learned; it is surprisingly powerful.
Pillars of an Ethical Culture
CREATI NG AN ET H ICA L culture thus requires thinking about
ethics not simply as a belief problem but also as a design prob-
lem. We have identi"ed four critical features that need to be
addressed when designing an ethical culture: explicit values,
thoughts during judgment, incentives, and cultural norms.
EXPLICIT VALUES > Strategies and practices should be
anchored to clearly stated principles that can be widely
shared within the organization. A well-crafted mission
statement can help achieve this, as long as it is used correctly.
Leaders can refer to it to guide the creation of any new
strategy or initiative and note its connection to the compa-
ny’s principles when addressing employees, thus reinforcing
the broader ethical system. Employees should easily be
able to see how ethical principles in#uence a company’s
practices. They’re likely to behave di!erently if they think
the organization is being guided by the ethos of Mr. Rogers,
the relentlessly kind PBS show host, versus that of Gordon
Gekko, the relentlessly greedy banker in the "lm Wall Street.
Indeed, in one experiment, 70% of participants playing an
economic game with a partner cooperated for mutual gain
when it was called the Community Game, but only 30%
cooperated when it was called the Wall Street Game. This
dramatic e!ect occurred even though the "nancial incen-
tives were identical.
A mission statement should be simple, short, actionable,
and emotionally resonant. Most corporate mission state-
ments today are too long to remember, too obvious to need
stating, too clearly tailored for regulators, or too distant from
day-to-day practices to meaningfully guide employees. A
statement can’t be just words on paper; it must undergird not
only strategy but policies around hiring, "ring, promoting,
and operations so that core ethical principles are deeply
embedded throughout the organization. Patagonia’s mission
statement, for instance, is “Build the best product, cause
no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and imple-
ment solutions to the environmental crisis.” Its Worn Wear
initiative implements its mission by enabling employees to
help consumers repair or recycle their products. Patagonia
also developed a standardized metric, posted on its website,
to evaluate the environmental impact of its entire supply
chain. Zappos says its number one core value is to “Deliver
WOW through service” to customers, according them respect
and dignity. It implements this value by not measuring the
average length of customer service calls (the industry stan-
dard), so employees can spend as much time with customers
as necessary. Mission statements like these help keep an
organization’s values crystal clear in employees’ minds.
THOUGHTS DURING JUDGMENT > Most people have
less di$culty knowing what’s right or wrong than they do
keeping ethical considerations top of mind when making
decisions. Ethical lapses can therefore be reduced in a
culture where ethics are at the center of attention. You might
know that it’s wrong to hurt someone else’s chances of being
hired but fail to think of the harm you cause to unknown
applicants when trying to help a friend, a family member,
or a business school classmate land a job. Behavior tends
to be guided by what comes to mind immediately before
Even well-meaning and well-informed people are
more ethically malleable than one might guess.
ETHICS
Harvard Business Review
May–June 2019 147
engaging in an action, and those thoughts can be meaning-
fully a!ected by context. Should someone remind you that
helping a friend necessarily hurts the chances of people you
don’t happen to know, you might think twice about whether
your advocacy e!orts are appropriate.
Several experiments make this point. In one, people were
more likely to tell the truth when an honor code came at the
beginning of a form—thereby putting ethics top of mind as
they completed the form—than when it was posted at the
end. In a large "eld experiment of approximately 18,000
U.S. government contractors, simply adding a box for "lers
to check certifying their honesty while reporting yielded
$28.6 million more in sales tax revenue than did a condition
that omitted the box. And in a simulation that asked MBA
students to play the role of "nancial adviser, having them
complete an ethics checklist before recommending potential
investment funds signi"cantly decreased the percentage
who recommended what turned out to be the Mado! feeder
fund. When ethics were top of mind, the students were more
alert to the possibility that the fund was too good to be true.
As a counterexample, Enron was notorious for its constant
focus on stock price, even posting it in the elevators. Re#ect-
ing on his own misdeeds, its former CFO Andy Fastow said,
“I knew it was wrong.… But I didn’t think it was illegal.… The
question I should have asked is not what is the rule, but what
is the principle.” People working in an ethical culture are
routinely triggered to think, Is it right? rather than Is it legal?
INCENTIVES > It is a boring truism that people do what
they’re incentivized to do, meaning that aligning rewards
with ethical outcomes is an obvious solution to many ethical
problems. That may sound simple (just pay people for acting
ethically), but money goes only so far, and incentive pro-
grams must provide a variety of rewards to be e!ective.
Along with earning an income, employees care about
doing meaningful work, making a positive impact, and
being respected or appreciated for their e!orts. In one
experiment, hospital sta! members were more likely to
follow correct handwashing procedures when a sign above
the sink reminded them of consequences to others (“Hand
hygiene prevents patients from catching diseases”) than
when it reminded them of personal consequences. Never-
theless, managers may easily overlook the importance of
non"nancial incentives. When asked how important such
incentives were to employees, customer service managers at
one Fortune 500 "rm tended to dramatically underestimate
what they meant to their reports.
In addition to aligning "nancial incentives with desired
outcomes, ethical cultures provide explicit opportunities to
bene"t others and reward people who do so with recogni-
tion, praise, and validation. If, for instance, your employees
are making people’s lives meaningfully better in some way,
pointing that out will encourage future ethical behavior.
It may even improve performance, because the reward is
aligned with ethical motivation. In one experiment, sales-
people for a large pharmaceutical company performed
dramatically better after participating in a prosocial bonus
system, which encouraged them to spend a small award on
their teammates, compared with a typical “proself” bonus
system, in which they spent the award on themselves.
This approach to incentives may have ancillary HR
bene"ts. People tend to underestimate both how positive
they will feel about connecting with others in a prosocial way
and the positive impact their behavior will have on others. In
a "eld experiment with Virgin Atlantic pilots, a bonus system
for increasing fuel economy was structured so that the bonus
went to a charity of their choosing. The resulting increase in
their job satisfaction was similar in magnitude to the e!ect
of moving from poor health to good health. Companies that
use prosocial incentives are likely to produce happier, more
satis"ed, and more loyal employees. An ethical culture not
only does good; it also feels good.
CULTURAL NORMS > Most leaders intuitively recog-
nize the importance of “tone at the top” for setting ethical
standards in an organization. Easily overlooked is “tone
in the middle,” which may actually be a more signi"cant
driver of employees’ behavior. Good leaders produce good
followers; but if employees in the middle of the organization
are surrounded by coworkers who are lying, cheating, or
stealing, they will most likely do the same, regardless of what
their bosses say. So-called descriptive norms—how peers
actually behave—tend to exert the most social in#uence. In
one "eld experiment conducted by a UK government agency,
13 versions of a letter were sent to delinquent taxpayers,
including versions that referenced moral principles, the ease
ETHICS
Money goes only so far; incentive programs must
provide a variety of rewards to be effective.
148 Harvard Business Review
May–June 2019
of paying taxes, or !nancial penalties. The most e"ective
letter compared the recipient’s behavior with that of fellow
citizens: “Nine out of ten people in the UK pay their taxes on
time. You are currently in the very small minority of people
who have not paid us yet.”
People often fail to appreciate the power of social norms.
When researchers were interested in determining how best
to encourage energy e#ciency among a group of Califor-
nians, for instance, they !rst asked a group of nearly 1,000
residents to predict the e"ectiveness of various approaches,
including appeals to environmental protection, personal
!nancial bene!ts, societal bene!ts, and social norms (what
percentage of neighbors conserved energy by using fans).
These residents expected that the environmental appeal
would be most persuasive and the social norm appeal least
persuasive. But when the researchers sent about 1,000 other
residents one of the four appeals, the social norm had by far
the biggest e"ect on reducing energy use.
Leaders can encourage an ethical culture by highlighting
the good things employees are doing. Although the natural
tendency is to focus on cautionary tales or “ethical black
holes,” doing so can make undesirable actions seem more
Harvard Business Review
May–June 2019 149
common than they really are, potentially increasing uneth-
ical behavior. To create more ethical norms, focus instead
on “ethical beacons” in your organization: people who are
putting the mission statement into practice or behaving in
an exemplary fashion.
Putting Ethical Design into Practice
A LE AD E R D E S I G NI NG an ethical culture should try to create
contexts that keep ethical principles top of mind, reward
ethics through formal and informal incentives and opportu-
nities, and weave ethics into day-to-day behavior. Precisely
how this is achieved will vary among organizations, but here
are a few examples.
HIRING > First impressions are inordinately powerful. For
many employees, an organization’s values were revealed
during the hiring process. Although interviews are typically
treated as opportunities for identifying the best candidate,
they also begin the acculturation process. At one Fortune 100
!rm, for instance, interview questions are designed around a
core value, such as putting customer needs !rst. In one inter-
view script, candidates are told of this value and then asked,
“Tell me about a time when you uncovered an unmet need
of a customer that you were able to address.” We don’t know
if this question identi!ed people who are good at treating
customers respectfully, but that’s not necessarily the point.
Highlighting values in the interview reveals their importance
to the organization. It is one piece of a broader system that
draws attention to ethics.
EVALUATION > Ethics can also be woven into the design of
performance evaluations to highlight their importance to an
organization as well as to reward and encourage good behav-
ior. At Johnson & Johnson, for instance, each executive’s
360-degree evaluation is built on the four components of
the company’s famous credo, which expresses commitment
to customers, employees, communities, and stakeholders.
In one version of the evaluation we saw, each executive was
rated on items such as “nurtures commitment to our Credo,”
“confronts actions that are, or border on, the unethical,”
and “establishes an environment in which uncompromising
integrity is the norm.”
COMPENSATION > Aligning !nancial incentives with eth-
ical outcomes may sound easy in principle, but it is tricky in
practice. This is where a mission statement can help. South-
west Airlines has used an executive scorecard to tie compen-
sation to its four core values: every employee matters, every
"ight matters, every customer matters, and every share-
holder matters. Each value is demonstrated by an objective
measurement—“every employee matters” by voluntary
turnover; “every "ight matters” by ontime performance. This
scorecard highlights how well core ethical values align with
business success, helps keep employees’ attention on them,
and suggests the behaviors needed to realize them.
Leaders can reward ethical actions by showing employees
the positive impact of their work on others and recognizing
their actions in presentations and publications. They can also
create opportunities within the organization to behave ethi-
cally toward colleagues. In one recent !eld experiment, man-
agers were randomly assigned to perform !ve acts of kindness
for certain fellow employees over a four-week period. Not only
did this increase the number of kind acts observed within the
organization, but recipients were more likely than controls
to subsequently do kind things for other employees, demon-
strating that ethical behavior can be contagious. These acts
of kindness improved well-being for those performing them
as well as for recipients. Perhaps most important, depressive
symptoms dropped dramatically among both groups com-
pared with the control condition, a result that continued for at
least three months beyond the initial one-month intervention.
Ethics, by Design
NO COMPAN Y WILL ever be perfect, because no human
being is perfect. Indeed, some companies we’ve used as
examples have had serious ethical lapses. Real people are not
purely good or purely evil but are capable of doing both good
and evil. Organizations should aim to design a system that
makes being good as easy as possible. That means attending
carefully to the contexts people are actually in, making ethi-
cal principles foundational in strategies and policies, keeping
ethics top of mind, rewarding ethical behavior through a
variety of incentives, and encouraging ethical norms in day-
to-day practices. Doing so will never turn an organization full
of humans into a host of angels, but it can help them be as
ethical as they are capable of being. HBR Reprint R1903K
NICHOLAS EPLEY is the John Templeton Keller Professor of
Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago Booth School of
Business and the author of Mindwise: How We Understand What
Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want (Knopf, 2014). AMIT KUMAR is
an assistant professor of marketing and psychology at the University
of Texas at Austin.
ETHICS
150 Harvard Business Review
May–June 2019
Copyright © Harvard Business Publishing. All Rights Reserved. This content is intended for
individual research use only, subject to the following:
Unless permission is expressly granted in a separate license, this content may NOT be used
for classroom or teaching use, which includes teaching materials, electronic reserves, course
packs or persistent linking from syllabi. Please consult your institution's librarian about the
nature of relevant licenses held by your institution and the restrictions that may or may not
apply.
Unless permission is expressly granted in a separate license, this content may NOT be used in
corporate training and/or as corporate learning materials. For corporate users, please consult
the specific terms of your company's license(s) for complete information and restrictions.
For more information and teaching resources from Harvard Business Publishing including
Harvard Business School Cases, eLearning products, and business simulations please visit
hbsp.harvard.edu.
**EuthnasiaAssistedSuicideandPalliativeSedation.pdf**
This file is too large to display. [View in new window](https://www.sweetstudy.com/files/euthnasiaassistedsuicideandpalliativesedation-pdf)
**SmokingNormsRegulationofECigs.pdf**
This file is too large to display. [View in new window](https://www.sweetstudy.com/files/smokingnormsregulationofecigs-pdf)
**EthicsWithouttheSermonBook.pdf**
This file is too large to display. [View in new window](https://www.sweetstudy.com/files/ethicswithoutthesermonbook-pdf)
**AssistedSuicideArticle.pdf**
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**## WellnessInHealthCareWorksheet.docx**
**Wellness in Health Care**
Name:
Professor:
Date:
An important part of health care is the wellness of health care providers. Negligence in these areas can result in a tangible reduction in effective care for patients. It can also affect the work environment and pour over into other areas in the life of a provider. However, there are tools available and ways to aid in the mental, physical, and spiritual wellness of practitioners.
For this assignment, review the scenario and respond to the provided prompts. Along with the textbook, use a minimum of two scholarly sources from the GCU Library.
**_Scenario_**
Dr. Davis frequently works long shifts in the Emergency Department. Recently, he began picking up extra shifts to provide coverage due to understaffing. Within the last 6 months, two providers have left. Until additional staff are hired, those remaining are left to cover the vacated shifts. Additionally, Dr. Davis has a wife, twin girls who are eight, and son who is not yet one year old. The extra hours are beginning to take a toll. Dr. Davis has always had lots of energy and is very positive in the workplace. However, as of late, Dr. Davis seems to be acting differently with patients. Within the last week, his mood has transitioned from being joyful and engaging to being sad, disengaged, and distant. Dr. Davis has also been heard making comments about not feeling appreciated by the organization. It is clear that there should be concern regarding Dr. Davis's mental state and well-being.
With this scenario in mind, please answer the following questions:
1.
**Explain how working together as a team can have a positive impact on a medical professional's health and wellness. What could staff do to help Dr. Davis feel more appreciated and supported? (200-300 words)**
| |
| — |
| <Text> |
2.
**Discuss the impact that spiritual wellness can have on a medical professional's stress. How might spiritual wellness be emphasized more in the workplace? (200-300 words)**
| |
| — |
| <Text> |
3.
**Identify ways in which burnout and stress can be reduced. What can employers do to help? (200-300 words)**
| |
| — |
| <Text> |
4.
**Given the scenario above, how would you make sure that the proper people were made aware to step in and help Dr. Davis? (200-300 words)**
| |
| — |
| <Text> |
**References:**
| |
| — |
| <Text> |
© 2019. Grand Canyon University. All Rights Reserved.
© 2019. Grand Canyon University. All Rights Reserved.
## image1.jpeg
**## HowtoDesignanEthicalOrganization.pdf**
144 Harvard Business Review
May–June 2019
How to Design an
Ethical Organization
_HBR_MayJun19
Harvard Business Review
May–June 2019 145
Nicholas Epley
Professor, Booth School
of Business
Amit Kumar
Assistant professor,
University of Texas
at Austin
PHOTOGRAPHER STEVEN DERKS ETHICS
AUTHORS
IDEA IN BRIEF
THE PROBLEM
Unethical behavior
ruins reputations,
harms employee
morale, and increases
regulatory costs—
not to mention
damages society’s
trust in business. Yet
corporate scandals
are a recurring reality.
WHAT DOESN’T WORK
Compliance
programs take a
legalistic approach
to ethics that
focuses on individual
accountability—but
a large body of
behavioral science
research suggests that
even well-meaning
and well-informed
individuals are
ethically malleable.
A BETTER WAY
Leaders must design
workplace contexts
that encourage good
behavior. Keeping
prosocial values
top of mind for
employees as they
make decisions will
reduce the likelihood
of transgressions
while making workers
happier and more
productive.
From Volkswagen’s emissions fiasco to Wells Fargo’s deceptive
sales practices to Uber’s privacy intrusions, corporate wrongdoing
is a continuing reality in global business. Unethical behavior takes a
significant toll on organizations by damaging reputations, harming
employee morale, and increasing regulatory costs—not to mention
the wider damage to society’s overall trust in business. Few executives
set out to achieve advantage by breaking the rules, and most
companies have programs in place to prevent malfeasance at all
levels. Yet recurring scandals show that we could do better.
START HERE
146 Harvard Business Review
May–June 2019
Interventions to encourage ethical behavior are often
based on misperceptions of how transgressions occur,
and thus are not as e!ective as they could be. Compliance
programs increasingly take a legalistic approach to ethics
that focuses on individual accountability. They’re designed
to educate employees and then punish wrongdoing among
the “bad apples” who misbehave. Yet a large body of behav-
ioral science research suggests that even well-meaning and
well-informed people are more ethically malleable than one
might guess. When watching a potential emergency unfold,
for example, people are much more likely to intervene if they
are alone than if other bystanders are around—because they
think others will deal with the situation, believe that others
are more quali"ed to help, or fail to recognize an emergency
because others don’t look alarmed. Small changes to the
context can have a signi"cant e!ect on a person’s behav-
ior. Yet people in the midst of these situations tend not to
recognize the in#uence of context. In Stanley Milgram’s
famous obedience experiments, participants who were
told by an authority "gure to deliver increasingly powerful
electric shocks to another person progressed to a much
higher voltage than other people predicted they themselves
would deliver. Context is not just powerful, researchers have
learned; it is surprisingly powerful.
Pillars of an Ethical Culture
CREATI NG AN ET H ICA L culture thus requires thinking about
ethics not simply as a belief problem but also as a design prob-
lem. We have identi"ed four critical features that need to be
addressed when designing an ethical culture: explicit values,
thoughts during judgment, incentives, and cultural norms.
EXPLICIT VALUES > Strategies and practices should be
anchored to clearly stated principles that can be widely
shared within the organization. A well-crafted mission
statement can help achieve this, as long as it is used correctly.
Leaders can refer to it to guide the creation of any new
strategy or initiative and note its connection to the compa-
ny’s principles when addressing employees, thus reinforcing
the broader ethical system. Employees should easily be
able to see how ethical principles in#uence a company’s
practices. They’re likely to behave di!erently if they think
the organization is being guided by the ethos of Mr. Rogers,
the relentlessly kind PBS show host, versus that of Gordon
Gekko, the relentlessly greedy banker in the "lm Wall Street.
Indeed, in one experiment, 70% of participants playing an
economic game with a partner cooperated for mutual gain
when it was called the Community Game, but only 30%
cooperated when it was called the Wall Street Game. This
dramatic e!ect occurred even though the "nancial incen-
tives were identical.
A mission statement should be simple, short, actionable,
and emotionally resonant. Most corporate mission state-
ments today are too long to remember, too obvious to need
stating, too clearly tailored for regulators, or too distant from
day-to-day practices to meaningfully guide employees. A
statement can’t be just words on paper; it must undergird not
only strategy but policies around hiring, "ring, promoting,
and operations so that core ethical principles are deeply
embedded throughout the organization. Patagonia’s mission
statement, for instance, is “Build the best product, cause
no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and imple-
ment solutions to the environmental crisis.” Its Worn Wear
initiative implements its mission by enabling employees to
help consumers repair or recycle their products. Patagonia
also developed a standardized metric, posted on its website,
to evaluate the environmental impact of its entire supply
chain. Zappos says its number one core value is to “Deliver
WOW through service” to customers, according them respect
and dignity. It implements this value by not measuring the
average length of customer service calls (the industry stan-
dard), so employees can spend as much time with customers
as necessary. Mission statements like these help keep an
organization’s values crystal clear in employees’ minds.
THOUGHTS DURING JUDGMENT > Most people have
less di$culty knowing what’s right or wrong than they do
keeping ethical considerations top of mind when making
decisions. Ethical lapses can therefore be reduced in a
culture where ethics are at the center of attention. You might
know that it’s wrong to hurt someone else’s chances of being
hired but fail to think of the harm you cause to unknown
applicants when trying to help a friend, a family member,
or a business school classmate land a job. Behavior tends
to be guided by what comes to mind immediately before
Even well-meaning and well-informed people are
more ethically malleable than one might guess.
ETHICS
Harvard Business Review
May–June 2019 147
engaging in an action, and those thoughts can be meaning-
fully a!ected by context. Should someone remind you that
helping a friend necessarily hurts the chances of people you
don’t happen to know, you might think twice about whether
your advocacy e!orts are appropriate.
Several experiments make this point. In one, people were
more likely to tell the truth when an honor code came at the
beginning of a form—thereby putting ethics top of mind as
they completed the form—than when it was posted at the
end. In a large "eld experiment of approximately 18,000
U.S. government contractors, simply adding a box for "lers
to check certifying their honesty while reporting yielded
$28.6 million more in sales tax revenue than did a condition
that omitted the box. And in a simulation that asked MBA
students to play the role of "nancial adviser, having them
complete an ethics checklist before recommending potential
investment funds signi"cantly decreased the percentage
who recommended what turned out to be the Mado! feeder
fund. When ethics were top of mind, the students were more
alert to the possibility that the fund was too good to be true.
As a counterexample, Enron was notorious for its constant
focus on stock price, even posting it in the elevators. Re#ect-
ing on his own misdeeds, its former CFO Andy Fastow said,
“I knew it was wrong.… But I didn’t think it was illegal.… The
question I should have asked is not what is the rule, but what
is the principle.” People working in an ethical culture are
routinely triggered to think, Is it right? rather than Is it legal?
INCENTIVES > It is a boring truism that people do what
they’re incentivized to do, meaning that aligning rewards
with ethical outcomes is an obvious solution to many ethical
problems. That may sound simple (just pay people for acting
ethically), but money goes only so far, and incentive pro-
grams must provide a variety of rewards to be e!ective.
Along with earning an income, employees care about
doing meaningful work, making a positive impact, and
being respected or appreciated for their e!orts. In one
experiment, hospital sta! members were more likely to
follow correct handwashing procedures when a sign above
the sink reminded them of consequences to others (“Hand
hygiene prevents patients from catching diseases”) than
when it reminded them of personal consequences. Never-
theless, managers may easily overlook the importance of
non"nancial incentives. When asked how important such
incentives were to employees, customer service managers at
one Fortune 500 "rm tended to dramatically underestimate
what they meant to their reports.
In addition to aligning "nancial incentives with desired
outcomes, ethical cultures provide explicit opportunities to
bene"t others and reward people who do so with recogni-
tion, praise, and validation. If, for instance, your employees
are making people’s lives meaningfully better in some way,
pointing that out will encourage future ethical behavior.
It may even improve performance, because the reward is
aligned with ethical motivation. In one experiment, sales-
people for a large pharmaceutical company performed
dramatically better after participating in a prosocial bonus
system, which encouraged them to spend a small award on
their teammates, compared with a typical “proself” bonus
system, in which they spent the award on themselves.
This approach to incentives may have ancillary HR
bene"ts. People tend to underestimate both how positive
they will feel about connecting with others in a prosocial way
and the positive impact their behavior will have on others. In
a "eld experiment with Virgin Atlantic pilots, a bonus system
for increasing fuel economy was structured so that the bonus
went to a charity of their choosing. The resulting increase in
their job satisfaction was similar in magnitude to the e!ect
of moving from poor health to good health. Companies that
use prosocial incentives are likely to produce happier, more
satis"ed, and more loyal employees. An ethical culture not
only does good; it also feels good.
CULTURAL NORMS > Most leaders intuitively recog-
nize the importance of “tone at the top” for setting ethical
standards in an organization. Easily overlooked is “tone
in the middle,” which may actually be a more signi"cant
driver of employees’ behavior. Good leaders produce good
followers; but if employees in the middle of the organization
are surrounded by coworkers who are lying, cheating, or
stealing, they will most likely do the same, regardless of what
their bosses say. So-called descriptive norms—how peers
actually behave—tend to exert the most social in#uence. In
one "eld experiment conducted by a UK government agency,
13 versions of a letter were sent to delinquent taxpayers,
including versions that referenced moral principles, the ease
ETHICS
Money goes only so far; incentive programs must
provide a variety of rewards to be effective.
148 Harvard Business Review
May–June 2019
of paying taxes, or !nancial penalties. The most e"ective
letter compared the recipient’s behavior with that of fellow
citizens: “Nine out of ten people in the UK pay their taxes on
time. You are currently in the very small minority of people
who have not paid us yet.”
People often fail to appreciate the power of social norms.
When researchers were interested in determining how best
to encourage energy e#ciency among a group of Califor-
nians, for instance, they !rst asked a group of nearly 1,000
residents to predict the e"ectiveness of various approaches,
including appeals to environmental protection, personal
!nancial bene!ts, societal bene!ts, and social norms (what
percentage of neighbors conserved energy by using fans).
These residents expected that the environmental appeal
would be most persuasive and the social norm appeal least
persuasive. But when the researchers sent about 1,000 other
residents one of the four appeals, the social norm had by far
the biggest e"ect on reducing energy use.
Leaders can encourage an ethical culture by highlighting
the good things employees are doing. Although the natural
tendency is to focus on cautionary tales or “ethical black
holes,” doing so can make undesirable actions seem more
Harvard Business Review
May–June 2019 149
common than they really are, potentially increasing uneth-
ical behavior. To create more ethical norms, focus instead
on “ethical beacons” in your organization: people who are
putting the mission statement into practice or behaving in
an exemplary fashion.
Putting Ethical Design into Practice
A LE AD E R D E S I G NI NG an ethical culture should try to create
contexts that keep ethical principles top of mind, reward
ethics through formal and informal incentives and opportu-
nities, and weave ethics into day-to-day behavior. Precisely
how this is achieved will vary among organizations, but here
are a few examples.
HIRING > First impressions are inordinately powerful. For
many employees, an organization’s values were revealed
during the hiring process. Although interviews are typically
treated as opportunities for identifying the best candidate,
they also begin the acculturation process. At one Fortune 100
!rm, for instance, interview questions are designed around a
core value, such as putting customer needs !rst. In one inter-
view script, candidates are told of this value and then asked,
“Tell me about a time when you uncovered an unmet need
of a customer that you were able to address.” We don’t know
if this question identi!ed people who are good at treating
customers respectfully, but that’s not necessarily the point.
Highlighting values in the interview reveals their importance
to the organization. It is one piece of a broader system that
draws attention to ethics.
EVALUATION > Ethics can also be woven into the design of
performance evaluations to highlight their importance to an
organization as well as to reward and encourage good behav-
ior. At Johnson & Johnson, for instance, each executive’s
360-degree evaluation is built on the four components of
the company’s famous credo, which expresses commitment
to customers, employees, communities, and stakeholders.
In one version of the evaluation we saw, each executive was
rated on items such as “nurtures commitment to our Credo,”
“confronts actions that are, or border on, the unethical,”
and “establishes an environment in which uncompromising
integrity is the norm.”
COMPENSATION > Aligning !nancial incentives with eth-
ical outcomes may sound easy in principle, but it is tricky in
practice. This is where a mission statement can help. South-
west Airlines has used an executive scorecard to tie compen-
sation to its four core values: every employee matters, every
"ight matters, every customer matters, and every share-
holder matters. Each value is demonstrated by an objective
measurement—“every employee matters” by voluntary
turnover; “every "ight matters” by ontime performance. This
scorecard highlights how well core ethical values align with
business success, helps keep employees’ attention on them,
and suggests the behaviors needed to realize them.
Leaders can reward ethical actions by showing employees
the positive impact of their work on others and recognizing
their actions in presentations and publications. They can also
create opportunities within the organization to behave ethi-
cally toward colleagues. In one recent !eld experiment, man-
agers were randomly assigned to perform !ve acts of kindness
for certain fellow employees over a four-week period. Not only
did this increase the number of kind acts observed within the
organization, but recipients were more likely than controls
to subsequently do kind things for other employees, demon-
strating that ethical behavior can be contagious. These acts
of kindness improved well-being for those performing them
as well as for recipients. Perhaps most important, depressive
symptoms dropped dramatically among both groups com-
pared with the control condition, a result that continued for at
least three months beyond the initial one-month intervention.
Ethics, by Design
NO COMPAN Y WILL ever be perfect, because no human
being is perfect. Indeed, some companies we’ve used as
examples have had serious ethical lapses. Real people are not
purely good or purely evil but are capable of doing both good
and evil. Organizations should aim to design a system that
makes being good as easy as possible. That means attending
carefully to the contexts people are actually in, making ethi-
cal principles foundational in strategies and policies, keeping
ethics top of mind, rewarding ethical behavior through a
variety of incentives, and encouraging ethical norms in day-
to-day practices. Doing so will never turn an organization full
of humans into a host of angels, but it can help them be as
ethical as they are capable of being. HBR Reprint R1903K
NICHOLAS EPLEY is the John Templeton Keller Professor of
Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago Booth School of
Business and the author of Mindwise: How We Understand What
Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want (Knopf, 2014). AMIT KUMAR is
an assistant professor of marketing and psychology at the University
of Texas at Austin.
ETHICS
150 Harvard Business Review
May–June 2019
Copyright © Harvard Business Publishing. All Rights Reserved. This content is intended for
individual research use only, subject to the following:
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