Workplace Conflict in a Hiring Decision

I was recently watching The Good Wife, which is a legal and political TV series mainly about Alicia Florrick’s career in law, after a public sex and political corruption scandal that have put her husband in prison. Lockhart, Agos & Lee is the law firm Alicia used to work for, and it is the main law firm involved in the entire series. In Season 7, there was a conflict when Diane Lockhart, David Lee, and Cary Agos came to a contentious hiring decision.

They were planning to hire three new associates and disagreements arouse among the three name partners after interviewing the candidates. There were 5 candidates being interviewed, 4 white males and 1 black female. Diane favors the black girl Monica, Cary advocates for the three guy from top law schools, while Davis votes for the one with the highest LSAT score. They each had their own reasons and disagreed with each other’s opinion. Diane believed that their firm needs diversity and some new talents, she feels that they are always hiring the same kind of people. Monica is the kind of attorney that she sees in their future. Cary believed their future is in new law, so he values candidates with experiences in the tech industry. The candidates he preferred also the ones in top of their classes. While, David, always practical and rational, wanted to hire the 3 most qualified candidates based on their scores/school rank.

Diane blamed Cary that he is just looking for candidates that is similar with himself, accused David that he is holding bias towards Monica, and concluded they were hiring 3 white males again (actually they were sued and experienced discriminatory hiring investigation later in the show). Cary and David see Monica as an easy pass because she didn’t have a very high LSAT score and was not from a top tier law school. David disagreed putting their future in new laws related to technology and despised Cary’s opinion. No one agreed with each other. Diane actually tried to act as the conflict resolver and offered to make a concession that could satisfy everyone. Many guidelines discussed in B&D Chap8 when facing interpersonal conflict in groups, and also the guidelines in Model II was applied by Diane. She communicated her thoughts, expressed her understanding of Cary and David’s perspective, conceded by picking one candidate from both Cary and David’s list, but asked them to support Monica. However, Model I discussed in the B&D book was exactly the way how Cary and David acted. They believed their decisions by themselves are the right one, and assumed others are the wrong ones that should change. David despised other people’s voices and refused to listen, always being in a defense mode.

In the end, they ended up hiring two candidates from Cary’s list and one from David’s list. But the conflict did not end, they soon faced troubles. The new associates betrayed the firm and went to their competitor’s firm in the middle of an important technical case right before a filing deadline, because they were unsatisfied with the culture of the firm and the lack of upward mobility. When problems emerged, the name partners did not see the hiring decision as a team decision, they blamed each other instead of taking the responsibility together. I think it is because they did not really agree with each other when they were making the final decision, if they could be more open, they might have taken it as a group responsibility when problems appear. They blamed Cary because the two candidates favored by Cary was among the associates who betrayed them, but Cary argued this was a team decision and also blamed Diane and David for the culture of the firm, which caused the associates to leave. Cary was asked to solve the problem. In the end, fortunately, Cary used a strategy to bring the new associates back, fired them, and solved all the problems. Seeing Cary solving all the problems, Diane and David was satisfied and the tension eased off.

However, even if this hiring problem was well solved in the end, they faced all kinds of other issues throughout the seasons. Issues have not been solved at root. The values of the three name partners are quite different, and I think the most fundamental problem is that they are not open to each other’s thoughts and feelings. According to Argyris and Schon’s Model II, they are having high advocacy and low inquiry, therefore leading to passive decisions. Diane as the only female partner, was the one who puts most effort in balancing everyone’s opinions, and she was also the one who compromised most of the times, David was the most stubborn one who alnost never make a concession, while Carry being somewhere in the middle. I think teams works the best when everyone has a good incentive in mind with the willingness to collaborate with diverse individuals, being aware of one’s fallibility, and respecting the judgment of others. But how to deal with members like David that do not have these awareness in mind? It’s just too difficult for me to provide a good answer. I think this kind of problem is where a good leader could be identified.

Gift Exchange & Motivation

Then I'd like you to come up with you own example of team production with gift exchange, if you can, and try to determine which elements from these readings penetrates your example.

I find these articles very interesting, and particularly the third one, because I can connect my own experience with it.  

The Altruism article argued that expecting people to be selfish triggers people’s economic motivation, restrains people’s moral motivation and crushes people’s tendency to be good. I’ve read similar findings in Psychology before called the “over-justification effect”.  It states that external incentive such as money or rewards will decrease a person’s intrinsic motivation on a certain task or interest. For example, if a child has a strong interest in drawing, rewarding him/her candies every time he/she draw a picture will actually decrease his/her interest and intrinsic motivation in drawing.

I think these theories indicate that external tangible rewards, including financial and material rewards, counterintuitively, may not be that effective in motivating people to perform well. Thinking about my internship experience in Dow Chemical, I found that they managed this very well and made use of these theories in their workplace very successfully. I didn’t really realize this until I read about this blog prompt and thought about what I saw at Dow carefully, and then I started to tie everything together.

As I mentioned in my previous posts, Dow promotes the “appreciation culture” among their employees. Human Resources launch campaigns to promote “appreciation culture”, and encourages their employees to acknowledge each other, appreciate each other, help each other, and collaborate with each other. They designed simple activities to promote preferred behaviors. During the “appreciation week”, they provided well-designed thank you cards and encouraged their employees to write words of thanks to their colleagues, and also helped to deliver these cards to the designated receiver. These thank you cards make employees feel being appreciated and being valued, therefore triggers their moral motivation to be a good worker, just as what the NY Times article wrote “following their natural bias toward reciprocity, service and cooperation”, which ultimately increases employee performance level in a very subtle way. It’s very effective in increasing employee satisfaction, which leads to higher motivation and performance, meanwhile being cost-effective.

Furthermore, Dow shows care for their employees, which again induces their employees to see their work through a moral lens. This is reflected everywhere: flexible working hours; home office policies that allowing employees work from home once each week; free shuttle bus; employee benefits, including free fitness facilities in the office building, free medical service, and free counseling service, showing their care for employee health; and even simple things as ergonomic furniture and adjustable tables. These forms a moral implicit contract between Dow and their employees. Dow as an employer provides all these benefits with an incentive to reward their employees in a way different than directly using money, and expects their employees are motivated to provide better performance. From the employee’s perspective, receiving all these benefits will trigger their moral motivation, and will feel more obligated to give back by working harder. If all these benefits are transformed into financial awards, it might be much less effective than it is now. I think this is an exact example of organization production with gift exchange, and the valuables here exchanged are labor and rewards.

However, I do have a remaining confusion here. It seems that this theory in the Altruism article, and also the “over-justification effect”, are inconsistent with the performance pay model we talked in class. If people are payed based on performance, then in the Altruism article’s perspective, it is making the person to see his/her work through an economic lens, leading them to act selfishly, rather than acting altruistically for the organization. From the psychology perspective, rewards for sure can control and promote people’s behavior, but rewards have a long-term negative effect of undermining people’s taking responsibility for motivating themselves (Deci, Koestner & Ryan, 1999). Thus, for the long term benefit of an organization, instead of pure extrinsic rewards and performance pay, I think it would be wise to adopt strategies to promote intrinsic motivation, which motivate preferred behaviors, and ameliorates detachment and disengagement problems.

Reference:

1. Deci, E. L., Koestner, R., & Ryan, R. M. (1999). A meta-analytic review of experiments examining the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation. Psychological bulletin, 125(6), 627.

2. Gagné, M., & Deci, E. L. (2005). Self‐determination theory and work motivation. Journal of Organizational behavior, 26(4), 331-362.

Decisions Managing Future Income Risk

It took me awhile to figure out my major. I am now doing a double major in Psychology and Economics, plus a minor in Statistics. I am pretty satisfied with my choice, and I think it prepares me well for a career in business, which I am interested in after graduation. I’ll talk about how I ended up in this combination, and the decisions I’ve made along the way.

I entered college in Hong Kong with a major in Media, which was an entire different path compared with what I am doing now. The time in Media was full of fun, but soon I found that wasn’t something I wanted, I just don’t have the passion to start a career in the media industry. Besides, the pay for jobs in the media industry is pretty low, which further confirmed my decision to change major. Switching major was possible, but it wasn’t that flexible as it is here in the US, and I didn’t really have the chance to explore different majors. I knew I didn’t want Media, but what major I want to get in? I don’t know. So at the end of my freshman year, I decided to transfer to the US.

I was accepted by U of I as a sophomore, and soon I found my interest in Psychology. I love studying the mind and behavior of people and fell in love with it immediately. Psychology is also a subject that could be applied to various different fields. I was glad I figured out something I’m interested in, but on the other hand I also need to plan for my future and land myself a job with a relative good income. At first, being a counselling psychologist was the job I wanted the most. I found myself enjoy helping people and I gain true happiness through it, and I believe it’s a job that could help me realize self-worth. But I didn’t choose that path because I knew I won’t be able to afford myself for a long time after entering counselling. Language and cultural background are critical for counselling psychologists, so as an international student I will definitely choose to go back to my home country for a counselling career. I am from mainland China, and unfortunately the psychology counselling industry in China isn’t as mature as the US. Psychology is still only in the beginning stages in China, and counselling is a career that requires a significant amount of time and money input in the beginning years. The income isn’t that rewarding in the beginning, and you will be able to only afford yourself after 3-5 years in the industry. Meanwhile, others might have already accumulated some wealth. Not to mention whether I will be good at it or not, it’s just too risky for me. I’m sure my parents will be willing to support me, but I feel bad relying on them for such a long time.

So I thought of other fields that psychology could be applied, and business came to my mind. I’ve always been interested in business, and it’s a career with pretty good reward. For me, while a counseling career means high interest, high risk, and low income (at least in the short-term), a business career means relative high interest, although not as high as counseling, but low risk, and relative high income. So it’s a good balance for me. HR and HR Consulting are safe choices for me. There is an area in Psyc that specifically studies how Psyc is applied to the workplace, and HR Consulting is very similar with what Industrial/Organizational Psychologists do in their research. I prepared myself by doing two internships in HR and research in I/O labs. My second choice in business would be Marketing Research and Consumer Behavior Research, which is also in business, and where I could utilize my psychology knowledge to study and predict consumer behaviors. I did a marketing internship in my sophomore year and also gained a closer look to the field by working as a research assistant in the Cultural Psychology and Marketing Lab in the business school. Even if I’m not able to do counselling right now, I’m glad that I love my second choices, business seem to be an exciting area for me. Besides all these, I declared my second major in Economics, a major that could be well applied to business. And also a minor in Statistics, to gain analytical and quantitative skills that are necessary for a business career. I believe a liberal arts degree will benefit me more than a specified degree in business, because I believe everything will be connected in the end and contribute to one’s career and life. And I will still be able to do graduate school in business to gain the essential business skills.

If possible, I still plan to go into psychology counselling maybe in my 40s, when I have enough economic strength to afford and pay for staring a counseling career. There are people succeeded this way, but I’m not sure if that’s realistic for me at that time. But for now, I would pursue a career in business, which I have a passion in, and exposes me to lower risk.

I don’t have siblings, and I’m the only one in my family studying abroad, so their experiences are not very applicable for me. But I did learn something from friends who studied in the US. International students face the choice of going back to their home country or looking for a job in the US right after graduation. Many people have said that, either is fine, but as soon as you’ve made your choice you should stick and work hard for it, and do not be halfhearted. The ones who thinks about the two paths at same time and wants both are always the ones who fail. One’s time and energy is limited, so to gain something, you have to focus and give up something else.