How do you know if the trust you put in a team, is justified?
Posted on February 21, 2020 by Pantaleon Fassbender, One of Thousands of Business Coaches on Noomii.
This article discusses the "mechanics" of trust in organizations.
Do you trust different teams in your organization differently?
How do you measure the level of integrity that is reflected in a team’s outcomes, i.e. the way they treat company belongings or excel in a customer-focused mindset?
The results of recent studies show that there are indeed significant differences between the ethical cultures of teams!
These differences are relevant given the different empirical relationships that can be established between high and low clusters of team ethical culture and two outcome variables:
the frequency of unethical behavior,
and employee responses to unethical behavior.
“Ethical” culture consists of eight dimensions that provide you with a reliable as well as a practically useful set of questionnaire items related to these key dimensions:
1. Clarity (of rules and regulations): (How) Does everybody know what she or he should do?
2. Congruency of supervisors: Do supervisors act coherently or do observe a large range of reactions towards comparable behaviors?
3. Congruency of management: Are you coherent in your advice and guidance?
4. Feasibility of “good” behavior: Is the “target-behavior” something that can be done reasonably? Underapreciating your team leads to “bore-out”. Overwhelming their capacities might result in non-compliance or “burn-out”!
5. Supportability: What kind of support-processes are at work for a given team?
6. Transparency: Does everybody know what went wrong in the past? Have lessons learned been published (for the team)?
7. Discussability of “right” or “wrong”: Am I to speak out if I feel there is a questionable or “difficult” task to be done? Or would I feel silenced in your area of responsibility? Why could this be?
8. Sanctionability, if ethical breaches have occurred: Is everybody treated equally if he or she does something wrong?
Source: Cabana, G.C. & Kaptein, M. (2019). Team Ethical Cultures Within an Organization: A Differentiation Perspective on Their Existence and Relevance. Journal of Business Ethics.
