Motivating Ethical Decisions

SHRM has come out with their 4th-quarter research paper, on business ethics. Of course there are many excellent solutions to be gleaned, but one paragraph sparked an interesting discussion here this morning.

On page three of the report, it is stated,

“Two broad incentive categories encourage ethical behavior: reward and recognition systems, and performance evaluation systems.”

It is then elaborated that "reward and recognition" is to be publicly done, and evaluations simply refers to the H.R. vehicles familiar to all of us. What about private, conversational, and mundane recognition of ethical decisions?

In his book, Drive, David Pink argues strongly that extrinsic motivators such as public rewards or bonuses are overemphasized in modern business, and can easily become counterproductive and demotivate creativity. Instead of extrinsic motivation, he suggests intrinsic motivation, which is admittedly harder to build.

But intrinsic motivation is built by daily interactions rather than scheduled rewards. I realize that Character First's own recognition program can fall prey to this extrinsic overemphasis. We need to keep emphasizing that the whole underpinning of CF as a vocabulary tool should encourage managers to build intrinsic motivation through daily conversations more than through periodic scheduled events.