As part of Hofstra’s Masters Program in Industrial Organizational psychology we are required to either write a masters thesis or work at an internship site. As I felt work experience is essential to achieve my future goals I opted for the internship. The internship site is paid and in fact I’ve received a promotion from intern to part time employee. My point is to illustrate that although it is an “internship site,” I am hardly treated as an intern. I’ve been given responsibilities that reflect the importance of my position within the team. It’s great to work within a team that is responsible, intelligent and reliable. However, my feelings towards the humanistic aspect of the corporation changed after a ‘kickoff’ meeting at the end of the fiscal year. In the end I realized perhaps the positive aspects I found pleasing were in fact not motivated by internal mechanisms but because they had forgotten one thing… Themselves.
At the end of every fiscal year the CEO, CFO, CIO, presidents and VP’s come together to talk about the progress made and the progress they wish to see in the future. They implemented a Management By Objectives (MBO) approach in which goals are formulated for the entire organization and every department aligns their goals with the global organizational goals. It’s a system in organizational development that has been shown to work. It is mainly driven by its grounding in goal setting theory. I realized something interesting about their MBO’s; they were mostly profit/revenue related. I found this interesting and quickly jotted down the number of MBO’s. For fiscal year 2008, I counted 7 and for the New Year I counted 8. Both of these had 1 objective that focused on employees. In other words in 2008 85% of goals were not employee related. For 2009 87.5% of the goals were not employee related. As an employee, this sent shivers down my spine. How can a company that operates 100% on people only have 12.5% of their goals related to them!
I searched for more evidence to support the claim that perhaps the company forgot about the employees. During the Q&A section employees were allowed to select from 25 topics and ask the CEO, CIO, and CFO questions pertaining to that topic. 75% of the topics were unrelated to employees’ well being and/or development. Even more startling was that 70% of the topics employee’s asked were unrelated to their own development and/or well being. I was beginning to realize that perhaps the people, as well as the company, were stuck in an auto-catalytic cycle of focusing solely on development of the business but forgetting they (the people) run the business and forgetting that developing themselves in turn will achieve company goals.
The last and final observation I witnessed was the time specifically dedicated to employees for Q&A and recognition of achievements. 77% of the meeting time of 4 hours was dedicated to profit/revenue related talks and speeches.
I called it the magic number greater than 70% but less than 87.5% (It’s not as catchy as plus or minus 7 but hey, I’m new here). This is the percentage range in which the company places the majority of its goals and actions toward profit/revenue related topics. As I said before companies are 100% run by people and ignoring their development, in my opinion, is to ignore the development of your company. In the short term you will reap the benefits of increased growth and profit margins, but in the long run you will have an undereducated, burnt out staff, lacking the morale needed to emotionally attach themselves to the objectives of the organization. It’s not surprising that when several of my co-workers confided in me, they all mentioned “burning out on this job” as either a warning or an occurrence. I believe that if a company does not care about its workers they do not care about their company and that is not a company one should work for.
Thinking about the pathologies of relationships, the phrase, “You can’t love someone else until you love yourself” rings a bell. This is exactly the case. You can’t develop your company unless you develop your employees. It is not beyond us to understand that pathological relationships can develop between people, animals, or entities. We’ve all encountered the woman who stays with a husband who is abusive or seen a friend be used by a pseudo-friend, yet continue their relationship with them. But we are less often told that the relationship with our company is similar in nature. We justify it, as we do with human relationships, “I have to go to work,” contrast that with “I have to see him/her.” These are “guilt” obligations. Ever hear about a friend who was dragged to some activity that they hated by their significant other? What do you think people do every day at work? Similarly to the woman who gets abused and is afraid to leave, I often hear fear in employee voices’ about leaving jobs they dislike. These relationships are in some way satisfying, pathologically of course, and are the hardest to break out of. These pathological relationships are proposed to develop because on some level the employee knows the company does not care, for the company does not care about itself because they do not care about their employees. In short, it is not beyond us to form pathological relationships with people nor is it beyond us to form them with the organizations we work with. Some organizations foster this pathological relationship more and others less.
Research should focus on the pathological relationships humans develop with one another and contrast them with the ones we develop with the organizations we work for. The results should be the same: lose of efficacy, self esteem, and ego depletion. In short, the lose of self. This leads us to hypothesis 1.
Hypothesis 1: Will the percentage of company’s MBOs related to employee development predict psychological variables related to efficacy, self esteem and ego depletion?
The empirical test is this: The percentage of company’s MBOs related to employee development should predict psychological variables related to efficacy, self esteem and ego depletion positively. (eg: The less MBOs related to employee development the lower the employee self esteem)
It may also be that if the employee is unable to adapt fully to the pathological relationships a “break up” would eventuality occur. This could be represented as a firing or the employee quitting. This leads us to hypothesis two.
Hypothesis 2: If one is unable to adapt to the pathological relationship with the company will the employee revert back to their primitive relationship understanding? For example if they were taught to be passive aggressive they will now act passive aggressive towards their superiors.
The empirical test is this: Conflict in the work place mediated by length of employment will predict percentage of MBOs unrelated to employee development. Individuals employed for shorter periods of time will believe more MBOs are related to employee development while senior employees know “the truth.” The senior employee predicted MBO scores will be closer to the actual percentage of MBOs unrelated to employee development.
There are many other implications this theory takes on including what happens if an employee submits to the pathological relationship? What happens if they resist it? Does this affect the organization? How do these relationships mediate goal attainment, for the organization or the employee? Do these outcomes reflect societal values? It all depends on how far we want to go down the rabbit hole. More importantly, it all depends on whether or not we choose to create light within that rabbit hole to find ourselves and where we stand in it. Whether we choose to remain in a pathological relationship or remove ourselves from it. In the end, at my internship site, I felt the employees have forgotten about themselves. This led me to the hypothesis I’ve drawn and through organizational development we can rectify these issues, to not only build a strong company but build strong people.
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