Research You Can Use

Major league baseball
and business ethics

Major league baseball is a lot like any other business. “Employees” take their cues from the culture created by leaders, and sometimes that means circumventing normal rules of fair play and ethics. Faculty members Rick Ringer (MQM) and Joe Solberg (FIL) conducted research into the ethics, leadership, and organizational culture of professional baseball and possible links to steroid use by players. Ringer summarizes the practical implications of their investigation.

Business implications

Probably the biggest take-away from this is the reminder that “rank-and-file” members of an organization really do take their behavioral cues from leaders. Leadership just doesn’t set strategy and direction—leadership also sets the boundaries of acceptable and appropriate behaviors and tells people: “This is what we care about and this is how we want you to behave.”

Employees are sensitive to what leadership pays attention to, notices, talks about, worries about, rewards, and so forth. Over time, those collective behaviors send unambiguous messages about behavioral expectations in any organization. So in the day-to-day world of work, it can lead to questions like these:

Is it okay to overpromise to a customer in order to close the sale?

Is it okay to underbid on a contract in order to win the order?

Is it okay to backdate a contract in order to push the sale into the previous quarter and earn a bonus?

Teaching implications

As faculty we need to continue reinforcing the idea that leaders are “always on stage” and that even “mundane” behaviors can have very significant impacts on how members of the organization understand what is valued, what is expected, what they should care about, and how they should behave. Given the legitimate concern over ethics, we should emphasize that unethical behaviors generally are to some extent “learned.” Employees “learn” from the culture how to behave/what is right and wrong. Students need to be reminded that, as they progress in their careers, their behaviors will become increasingly important as a form of cultural communication.

Listen to Ringer and Solberg’s recent interview on the
topic with WJBC at wjbc.com/illinois-state-university-professors-say-steroids-part-of-baseball-culture.

Performance appraisals do influence future performance

Performance appraisal is an important managerial tool to enhance effectiveness of employees. Yet most managers detest conducting them and providing feedback to workers.

Research by Jim Jawahar, chair of the Department of Management and Quantitative Methods, suggests incorporating the principles of fairness and due process impact employees’ satisfaction with the accuracy and usefulness of the feedback. That, in turn, influences their future performance.

Business implications

If organizations are to fully benefit from the appraisal process, they’ve got to be sure managers are knowledgeable about their subordinates’ jobs. They must also be skilled in conducting effective feedback discussions. Specifically, managers should be trained to evaluate employees on established performance criteria. They need to help the employee engage in goal setting and provide specific insights to help each individual further improve his or her performance. These behaviors influence how employees react to the feedback they receive. That’s important, because unless employees’ reactions to feedback are favorable, it is unlikely to enhance their future performance.

Teaching implications

Faculty teaching future HR professionals will need to emphasize the importance of accurate and fair performance evaluations that result in useful feedback. Students need to understand that as future managers they will have to provide feedback to good as well as poor performers. Since conducting effective performance appraisals enhances employees’ future performance, they need to learn how to do this while still in school rather than learning it after they’re on the job.

To learn more about Jawahar’s research on how to effectively conduct and provide performance feedback, read the full article in Group and Organization Management, Volume 35, Pages 494–526 at http://gom.sagepub.com/content/35/4/494.full.pdf+html.

Six cultural pillars of
successful internal auditing departments

Joyce Ostrosky, left, and Linda Leinicke, right, recipients of the John B. Thurston Award.

Joyce Ostrosky (ACC) and Linda Leinicke (ACC) were recipients of the Institute of Internal Auditors’ 2010 John B. Thurston Award for advancing the practical and theoretical knowledge of internal auditing based on writing the journal’s most outstanding feature article.

The cultural environment of the internal auditing department is the manner in which the department does business. This culture establishes how courageous, successful, and influential internal auditors will be in applying their skills and upholding the profession’s foundation values of integrity, objectivity, confidentiality, and competency. Six cultural pillars seem to differentiate truly influential internal auditing departments from those that do not possess enterprise-wide influence. The six pillars are trust, emotional intelligence, performance focus, courage, support, and shared learning.

Business implications

The six cultural pillars are generalizable to other business units that wish to elevate their stature within the organization. It takes a passionate unit leader and supportive managers and staff to ignite a unit’s desire to improve. However, a robust culture based on strong, shared foundational values can aid the unit in sustaining superior performance.

Teaching implications  

Accounting students need to understand that they will not be staff accountants forever. At some point in their careers, they will move into managerial positions. Whether that position is in public accounting or industry, they must be able to manage their sphere of responsibility. Knowledge of the six cultural pillars can help them be a successful manager and lead their unit to distinguished performance.

For more information, read “6 Cultural Pillars of Successful Audit Departments,” by Bruce Adamec, Linda M. Leinicke, and Joyce A. Ostrosky, published in Internal Auditor, Volume LXVI:II, April 2011, pp. 46-51 at www.cob.ilstu.edu/faculty_staff/
downloads/leinicke-ostrosky-cultural-pillars.pdf.

For a complete listing of 2010 publications, visit www.cob.ilstu.edu/faculty_staff/scholarly-productivity/index.shtml.