BUS603: Managing People

The findings of this study reveal some practical ideas for managing organizational change. First, organizations interested in succeeding when coping with change should put ethical leaders in management positions. The more ethical leaders there are in such positions, the easier it is for employees to participate in decisions about the organization's future. Therefore, feelings of insecurity can be reduced, and trust/control over the situation can be increased, which should help employees be more self-confident, and thus more ready to change. In trying to standardize ethical leadership across the organization, hiring processes should emphasize ethical leadership traits. These processes, in combination with other useful practices to shape ethical leadership at management levels (e.g., performance assessments, training, role modeling, rewards systems), should help managers to develop ethical leadership behaviors (e.g., fair decisions or behaviors, empowering behavior, people-oriented behavior, ethical-guidance behavior, role clarification, concern for sustainability, and integrity) in their daily activities.

However, because only one bad, specific behavior is enough to damage the reputation of ethical leadership, human resource managers should make great efforts to design training programs oriented to managers developing these ethical leadership behaviors in an automatic and natural way. According to Ajzen and Fishbein's theory of reasoned action, the desirability of the behavior and the subjective norms (social pressure to develop such behavior) are critical antecedents of behavioral intentions. As such, training initiatives should first aim for managers to internally desire such behavior and become aware of how important doing so is for organizational members, especially when the organization is undergoing changes. In addition, such training programs should serve to enhance the cognitive-autonomous reasoning of managers to connect them to their sense of self, with which to incorporate such ethical behaviors cognitively, and make it easier for managers to develop these behaviors in an automatic and natural way.

Second, if it is not possible to develop ethical leadership, managers have other means to motivate employees' readiness to change. For example, they might shape an organizational culture of effectiveness that emphasizes aspects which, when strongly shared by employees, may facilitate readiness to change in the workplace. In particular, managers can emphasize aspects such as: "we are able to affect the environment and manage the change," "we need to achieve goals and improve, constantly," "we need to work as a coordinated team," and "we need to meet our customers' needs". These aspects are critical to gain organizational effectiveness, as they all help build a workforce that is eager to improve, and confident enough about their resources (i.e., team colleagues) and abilities to face new challenges. It makes these people more open to change, and thus more likely to give support to change and engage in change efforts. However, managers should realize that the best way to shape such an organizational culture of effectiveness is by endeavoring to develop ethical leadership behaviors on a daily basis, and to make these behaviors emerge in an automatic, natural way, thus becoming habits.