What is motivation? Mitchell and Daniels (2003) stated, “Motivation is a core construct. To understand why people, behave the way they do in organizations, one must know something about motivation” (p 225). Motivation appears to be the driving force behind several areas of our lives. Specifically, what motivates us in our work? In psychology applied to work Muchinksy and Howes (2019) review several theories about motivation. What I am more curious about though is how does one stay motivated in the wake of something that fundamentally changes the name of the game?

Here is a little back story. Just over a year ago my husband’s company was purchased by by an organization based out of the UK. They had made several purchases and were consolidating resources. In the midst of this he was offered a job with a relocation package to move to what was to be their central offices in the US. He had to agree to the stipulations of the relocation package, I gave up my position of 11 years in a job I enjoyed, and we moved to OH. Back in present day, his company now has continued to acquire smaller organizations to expand their offerings and overall store count. This past week his entire office was informed that their last day would be 12/31/19 and that the transition of work and information would begin to the office of their most recent acquisition.  Emails have been sent out asking employees to please gather a list of duties and explanations that can be passed on to this new office personnel. I can hear him on the phone with colleagues and their building resentment. So, I ask you, how do you stay motivated to do the right thing after you have been so incredibly wronged?

The truth is, I don’t know. I am sure many of us have faced situations where we were given notice for one thing or another, or perhaps we ourselves have given notice. Many companies will terminate an arrangement after an employee of a certain position has given their notice. They are typically paid through the remaining two weeks before they officially part ways. Fastcompany.com suggests that you get in touch with intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivators. Their article is based more on companies is crisis rather than with my specific example, but does it still hold true? Extrinsic motivators are things that are outside the individual such as a title change, a raise, or some other form of compensation. Intrinsic motivation is within the individual, we are motivated due to the joy of the work. The satisfaction of a job well done and achieving goals.

It is my belief that we should have integrity and honor in what we do. Muchinsky and Howes (2019) refer to a theory known as the “Biological based theory”, this theory ascribes that motivation is genetically predisposed. Based on this theory motivation simply exists within oneself based on neurochemical responses to events.  In the example I have given it would be easy to be spiteful and vindictive. What is truly accomplished then? The work groups you are in suffer, you will also suffer from the negative emotions you are carrying around and your reputation will suffer. It is better to be remembered as a person who did their best even in the face of this disturbing truths than to succumb to our darker machinations which could haunt us in business.

 

Reference:

Muchinsky, P.M. & Howes, S.S. (2019). Psychology applied to work: An introduction to industrial and organizational psychology. Twelfth Edition. Summerfield, NC: Hypergraphic Press.

Purbasari Horton, A. (2018), How to stay motivated while your company is going through a crisis. Retrieved from https://www.fastcompany.com/40540335/how-to-stay-motivated-when-your-company-is-going-through-a-crisis

Mitchell, T. R., Daniel, D. (2003). Motivation. In W.C. Borman, D.R. Ilgen, & R.J. Klimoski (Eds.), Work motivation: Past, present, and future (pp. 197-231). New York: Routledge/Taylor Francis.

As Americans we are accustomed to a level of separation between church and state. It is a fundamental part of the foundation of our country. This is large contrast to Middle Eastern countries and how they integrate their church not only into their political structure but also their business models, economics, and laws. Perhaps one of the largest differences we have in America to the Middle East is that we have a larger diversity of population. Though the most common religion in America is the umbrella of Christianity, accounting for nearly 71% of practiced religions according to the Pew research center (2019). Perhaps this is also why we do not practice religious beliefs in our workplace. This is not to say that there is no business that openly acknowledge their faith in business. Several years ago, when the Supreme Court ruled that is was unconstitutional to not allow members of the same sex get married there were several establishments that used their religious beliefs as a reason to deny services. Additionally, there are several larger companies that do utilize their faith in their business practices, such as Chick-fil-a and Hobby lobby. Both of whom close on Sundays in observance of the Lords day of rest. Is what Moran et al. (2014) discusses true, do the majority westerners work without faith?

Many of us enjoy what is referred to as the holiday season, as the majority of Americans fall within the Christian faith many organizations close in observance of these holidays. Though more and more we see larger companies keeping their doors open, especially in retail. An experience I had at my previous employer comes to mind. The company was founded by a Jewish man and his wife and had now been passed on to his son. We, like many other organizations had Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, Easter, and the 4^th of July off. However, in his second year of being the President of the organization he decided to change one of our days. Rather than having off Good Friday, he gave us off Presidents day. Personally, I did not mind a day off is still better than none. What happened next had astounded me. Our VP of General management came to me and asked me how this made me feel. As it was not something that bothered me, I basically shared my indifference to it. She was a devout a Christian and it bothered her that she was going to lose a say she felt was of religious importance. After all, “he gets to be off on his religious days without having to use PTO”. This began to circulate throughout the building and before you knew it at least 40 people had requested to take good Friday off citing religious reasons. Needless to say, that VP was reprimanded for her actions and we ended up with a bonus day off that year. Was her reaction justified? Did the fact that the President of the company not celebrate the same holidays as the bulk of the staff mean that he did not need to respect them? Is religion and spirituality something that we keep out of our working lives as westerners and how as leaders hope to lead this level of diversity amongst our staff if we ourselves to not ascribe to any of those theologies?

Early in the course we discussed how we, people, tend to seek out those of us who are similar. When doing business, rather than looking that the things that make us different and divide us, if we were to see those differences as similarities, they could perhaps bring a greater understanding in our communication. That is certainly not to say that we should not study the cultural differences between counterparts from other groups. In order to do our best work, we need to better know who we are working with. Only that if we try to see parts of ourselves in others, we may have a better understanding and assimilation of that data.

“During the Industrial Revolution, Protestants developed a work ethic that aimed to spiritualize the workplace. Through the concept of a “calling,” the Protestant Work Ethic held people responsible for doing their best in their worldly stations rather than disengaging from the world in a quest for perfection” (Buchholz & Rosenthal, 2003). Here we can see how faith shaped the standards to which those at the time worked. “The Protestant Work Ethic restricted consumption, suggesting that one should not lavishly consume wealth but, rather, invest it for greater individual and societal well-being” (Buchholz & Rosenthal, 2003; Fry, 2005b). Buchholz & Rosenthal also acknowledge that over time we have lost this ideology in our work environments. The importance of these passages were meaningful to me as in our latest reading in Moran et al. (2014) the authors compare how the Islamic couture focuses on the collective while American culture focuses on the individual but also how Western civilizations do not conduct business with any level of faith. In the above we can see that there were times in our history that we were not too far a part in our business practices. These similarities are important in understanding our counterparts in business and those persons who may one day work for us within our own organizations.

Spiritualuty in the workplace is examined as a study in Psychology of Religion and Spirituality Vol. 6, Iss. 3 by Benefiel, Margaret; Fry, Louis W; Geigle, David. In the journal the authors discuss how employees are seeking a more meaningful work environment, looking for connections that do not just enrich them through their work but nourish their souls as well. The authors are clear on how this is not an examination into religion in the workplace as there appears to be more conflict surrounding religion than spirituality. Popular or not Organizations have a lot to consider when dealing with persons who are trying to express themselves spiritually or religiously.  Since our Middle Eastern counterparts, in large part, share many of the same religious values there is less threat for potential litigation that many American organizations face. “A Christian woman who came to work wearing a sizable button with a color photo of a fetus, claiming that her religion required her to witness against abortion. Her coworkers complained and, when she refused the accommodations management offered, she was fired. Although she sued the company, she lost the case when the court ruled that, by offering other reasonable options, the firm met the standard of employer responsibility to accommodate the employee’s religious beliefs” (Wilson v. U.S. West Communications, 1995). Threats like these create a more complex working environment for western organizations which may be a reason many of them do their best to remove as much religion from their business as possible. I have to wonder how would the Middle East fair if there were a larger diversity it had to cater to, would they still be able to their religious beliefs?

 

References:

Benefiel, M., Fry, L. W., & Geigle, D. (2014). Spirituality and religion in the workplace: History, theory, and research. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 6(3), 175-187.

Buchholz, R. A.,  Rosenthal, S. B.,  Giacalone, R. A., &  Jurkiewicz, C. L.  (Eds.) (2003). Handbook of workplace spirituality and organizational performance. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.

Moran R.T., Abramson N. R., Moran S.V. (2014) Managing Cultural Differences. Ninth Edition. New York, NY: Routledge

Pew Research Center (2019) Explore religious groups in the U.S. by tradition, family and denomination. Retrieved from https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/

Wilson v. U.S. West Communications, 58 F. 3d 1337, 68 FEF CASES (BNA) 341 (10th Cir. 1995).

 

 

 

 

 

 

When we think about global communication, we think about large companies doing business on a global scale. My experiences have taught me that this type of communication is much closer to home than I had even realized. My last engagement afforded me the opportunity to work with diverse group of individuals. What I did not realize until more recently however is that the communication issues that existed were rooted in something deeper than a person being shy or not wanting to rock the boat. Rather it has more to do with their cultural background. According to Business Insider.com (2015) my field was predominantly female with a 61.10% of workers being female. Additionally, the organization employed several different minorities in varying departments. “McKinsey Global institute estimates that gender parity could add $12 trillion to the global economy, and suggests gender diverse companies are 15% more likely to outperform their peers. Similarly, ethnically diverse companies are 35% more likely to do the same” (Salesforce Essentials, 2018). As a smaller organization we tried to work with other companies who were smaller to promote growth in our sector though as we grew, we needed to expand our vendor pool. Dealing even locally with vendors this day and age you run into a lot of diversity. Two of our vendors that we retained were domestically sourced but ended up having employees that worked remotely from both India and Canada. Needless to say, my working world was littered with cultural communications, and I didn’t even realize it. It is only now looking back I realize some pretty large errors on my part. Being aware of cross-cultural communication could have helped me better understand my staff and my business partners.

Several of my staff were from Columbia, approximately 1/3 in fact. Some were immigrants and some were first generation Columbians. In our most recent lesson Moran et al. (2014) discuss the concepts of high and low-context communication. Columbians are a high-context culture, and this made for some incredibly interesting conversations that only now do I completely understand. You see, as a low-context communicator I gave instructions as such. This would lead to some issues, one of them being I would frequently walk away wondering if I was simply going to be ignored as the level of engagement did not seem high to me. Frequently though, the work was not only completed properly but more efficiently than I had laid out. This was fantastic and, in the beginning, I thought I had finally inherited a great staff. I assumed my predecessor had simply done an amazing job at training the employees, so I corrected my behavior and did not give as much detail in my instructions. What I would realize later was that my team members who were native to America would begin to underperform. That was because I was no longer communicating with them the way they expected.

Unbeknownst to me at the time I had an incredibly polarized staff. The staff had grouped themselves by culture and interacted with other members as little as possible. At first, I thought perhaps it was a language barrier issue. This was not the environment that I was looking for, I needed my people to work together, be supportive and learn ways to get along.  “The benefits of diversity in terms of greater collective access to relevant information, more creative solutions, and reduced conflict, can only be achieved when problem solving and decision-making groups are tightly integrated” (Moran, Abramson, Moran, 2014 p.183). My teams’ integration impacted productivity by 10%. The environment itself became more pleasant and the workers seemed to enjoy coming to work more. If only dealing with outside organizations was as easy.

As we grew and began to expand our business it was necessary to implement new systems and technology. We looked through many organizations that could fit our needs and settled on two, one was local and the other was based in Delaware. This being our first foray into this type of an engagement we did not realize that much of the work would be done on foreign soil. We would soon be negotiating contracts with Indians, no one had ever had to perform this function before, so the learning curve was steep. Moran et al. (2014) discuss the framework applied to Indian negotiators. Up to this point all negotiating had been done domestically. What I found interesting is that many of the items discussed in the framework model hold true to conference calls and daily interactions. Such items as “when Indians say “no problem” this is not to be taken literally” and “highly centralized with only modest responsibility delegated to lower levels” (Moran et al. 2014). I can tell you when you do not factor in the cultural differences in business the outcomes can make for some bumpy relationships.

In conclusion, I felt it was important to show that though we are focused on a global and seemingly large scale of business models within the scope of this coursework. Cross-cultural communication can exist both within and without of even the smallest organizations. Leaders need to embrace these other cultures to enhance the existing body of work and work to understand the difference in communicating with business partners to negotiate the work that needs to be done as well as the day to day interactions.

Works Cited:

Moran R.T., Abramson N. R., Moran S.V. (2014) Managing Cultural Differences. Ninth Edition. New York, NY: Routledge

Small Business Trends.com (2018). Why Equality and Diversity need to be SMB Priorities. Retrieved from. https://smallbiztrends.com/2018/03/small-business-equality-and-diversity.html

Hello, my name is Daniel Murphy, I will answer to any variation of my name as is fairly common and most people  know someone named Dan, Danny or Daniel.

I am returning to school after a seven year break, getting your education is expensive! have been taking classes as I can off and on since 2004 and will need 24 more credits after this semester to complete my BA in Organization Leadership.

This past spring I moved, with my husband to Cincinnati Ohio and left my entire world behind. Prior to that I had spent the previous eleven years working for a small marketing company in the middle of nowhere NJ as the Director of Fulfillment Operations. I love my job and the people I worked with, it was hard to say goodbye but we make sacrifices for the ones we love. The opportunity to relocate was a great one for my husbands career so here we are. Try ing to find work without my degree is proving a lot more challenging that I thought it would with m y nearly twenty years of leadership experience. In this digital age where you are whatever boxes you check it simply is just what it is. In my free time I am a nerd and play table top games, trading card games and work part time for a local vendor at events which take me out of town once or twice a month.

I am excited to be in this course as I have lead many people from many different backgrounds in my career and though my experience has value and thought me a great deal I feel a formal understanding of many of these concepts will help pull everything together.  I wish you all a wonderful semester!

 

-Dan