#publicinfluence

My initial thought process was to utilize the idea dump technique to bring up my own past experiences involving business ethics to light. I jotted down a few of my memories in my notes app and realized that my perception of business ethics from past jobs I’ve had were rarely positive. Another realization I had was that my experience with business ethics from my time at one particular company influenced my view on the topic in jobs I held after the fact. Knowing that I had to expand my view, I utilized the micro and macro techniques to conduct further research and honed in on the idea of fluctuating my perspective to gauge different qualities of the problem. Looking more specifically on how public influence has an effect on business ethics, I found an article from the Harvard Business Review that broke down the creation of an ethical culture into four pillars: explicit values, thoughts during judgment, incentives, and cultural norms. An additional technique I used was lateral thinking, a way to search outside of my expected disciplinary boundary to reveal more information through tangential exploration. In doing so, I found a Dartmouth article that discussed Supreme Court Policy decisions as well as the war in Iraq, as a way of summarizing how business leaders are more desirous of social approval than others think. Through my lateral thinking, I better understood how companies positively and negatively respond to public influence in relation to their actions/decision-making.

Main Learnings from Research (so far):

Public influence is the likeliness of businesses to listen and consider, when dealing with subtle pressures stemming from public unified voices (in other words: public opinion as a factor influencing companies).

Companies can respond to public opinion positively or negatively: with accountability and honesty (+) (inherent desire for businesses to justify their actions to those whose support they seek) or with defensiveness and reluctance (-) (instead of acknowledging their past mistakes, businesses will form defensive views) (Dartmouth).

Having explicit values such as a well-crafted mission statement can reinforce a broader ethical system that more employees will strive to follow (HBR).

“Ethical lapses can be reduced in a culture where ethics are at the center of attention (HBR).”

An ethical culture not only does good, but it feels good — employers often underestimate how their employees will feel when connecting with others in an impactful way. Moreover, companies that involve more than just financial incentives are likely to produce loyal employees (HBR).