If you had asked me how much I think corporate codes of conduct affect the behaviour of their employees before this week, I’d have guessed very little. I’d have hazarded that codes of conduct are so universal and uncontroversial that they’d have a weak affect on how those exposed to them behave.
I’d be wrong. I’ve come across this fantastic paper by Maryam Kouchaki, Francesca Gino, and Yuval Feldman[1] that says the language in codes of conduct can have a large effect how employees subsequently go on to behave.
Their research shows that whether codes refer to employees in impersonal or personal terms matters. Using impersonal language e.g. “employees” leads to less cheating and unethical behaviour in their roles. In contrast, using personal language e.g. “we” leads to more cheating and unethical behaviour. The authors posit that using personal language gives the impression that the company is more communally-minded, more forgiving of transgressors, and more warm towards insiders. Whereas using impersonal language gives the impression of a transactional, exchange relationship between the company and its employees which is less forgiving.
Key research findings:
Participants exposed to “we” codes of conduct were less likely to expect severe punishment if they violated organisational rules.
Participants exposed to “we” codes of conduct were more likely to lie and cheat for their own financial benefit.
Furthermore – and this is the bombshell moment - the researchers found that companies in the S&P 500 were more likely to have engaged in illegal activity if their codes of conduct used personal, communal, “we” language, compared to impersonal, transactional, “employees” language.
“Researchers found that S&P 500 companies were more likely to have engaged in illegal activity if their codes of conduct used personal, communal, “we” language.”
This is fascinating because it shows that subtle changes and differences to language can have an outsized impact. Currently, few organisations approach this in scientific, evidence-based ways. Instead, we rely on intuition and instinct to guide decisions, about code of conduct language for example, which may have the opposite effect from what we intended.
So, we should all be using impersonal language to encourage ethical behaviour in organisations, right? Well, the research comes with a twist. The researchers found that “warmth” – being told that colleagues are agreeable, easy-going, kind, playful and forgiving – leads to a greater likelihood of unethical behaviour. This isn’t an argument for more unkind, less forgiving work environments. As the authors say there is “an important challenge that groups face: being perceived as warm and accepting while still signaling to members that any misbehavior will have consequences”. We need to find ways to make peoples’ experiences at work positive, whilst also protecting against unethical behaviour. It shows precisely why we need to experiment, iterate, and get more data on what effect our interventions have on behaviours within organisations.
If you are interested in exploring how language and codes of conduct affects behaviour within your organisation, please get in touch!
[1] Kouchaki, M., Gino, F., & Feldman, Y. (2019). The Ethical Perils of Personal, Communal Relations: A Language Perspective. Psychological Science, 30(12), 1745–1766. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797619882917