The majority of organisations have some level of awareness regarding the importance of cultivating sustainable ethical cultures over time. An ethical culture is the collective ethics mindset of the organisation. It develops over many years, incident by incident. The levels of awareness determine the maturity of the ethical culture. The categories of ethical culture maturity vary from being fragile or weak, to underdeveloped, developing and finally, a relatively rare state referred to as a mature ethical culture. The maturity, or strength, of an ethical culture determines ethical thinking, behaviour, and decision-making.

Longitudinal research by The Ethics Institute (TEI) has culminated in a number of determinants of ethical culture maturity. Among others, it was found that the most significant determinant is the perceived ethical treatment of people, that is, of employees and other stakeholders. Should ethical treatment be disturbed or violated in any way, it undermines the further development of an ethical culture. Should perceived unethical treatment persist or escalate, it may lead to the slow death of the organisation. A particularly prominent outcome of perceived unethical treatment is employee cynicism.

Employee cynicism is an attitude characterised by frustration, hopelessness, disillusionment, and a sense of contempt towards and distrust of business organisations, executives, and/or other objects in the workplace. Cynicism is also pigeonholed by a belief that the organisation lacks integrity and therefore cannot be trusted. More often than not, perceptions of unfairness and perceived betrayal become endemic. Cynical employees are often sceptical of organisational motives and may become emotionally disengaged.

Such disengagement manifests in various forms – reduced productivity, increased absenteeism, and a higher turnover rate. Disengaged employees often feel disconnected from their work and the organisation’s goals. They lack enthusiasm and motivation, merely going through the motions to get the job done without genuine interest or commitment. The fallout is obvious – the organisation becomes less effective, and its financial viability is diluted.

A further prominent outcome is the embracement of mediocrity – the unquestioned acceptance of merely being “good enough”. Innovation and excellence become a pipedream. Employees, individually or collectively, whether covertly or overtly, adopt deviant coping strategies, such as just doing the minimum that is required to stay out of trouble and engaging in presenteeism: being physically present at work but contributing very little. Attitudes towards clients and customers become marked by indifference. Employees start to function as automatons, working only for the sake of the next payday. Under such conditions, sustainable development becomes impossible, and the organisation begins a slow but inevitable decline.

Cynicism is also caused by major incidents, such as large-scale retrenchments, mergers and scandals resulting from ethical failure. Less invasive yet persistent dysfunctionality may equally contribute to cynicism – cultures of fear created by the continuous presence of authoritarian management styles, lack of incentives, the setting of unrealistic targets, rumour-mongering and gossip, and unethical behaviour, particularly by management. At an individual employee level, a lack of motivation, despondency and burnout can occur in the face of cynicism.

The worst outcome of cynicism, however, is counter-productive workplace behaviour, defined as voluntary acts that harm organisations or their members, such as theft, toxic interpersonal behaviour, workplace violence, vandalism or sabotage. Occupational health and safety is compromised, often with irreversibly devastating outcomes.

But what can organisations do to address cynicism? Firstly, by understanding that broken environments cannot be fixed overnight. Short-term knee-jerk gestures –  for example, salary increases – will have short-lived effects. Trust has to be regained over time.

Organisations need to understand the power of the psychological contract that exists between the entity and its employees, and then restore the contract. The psychological contract is a subsconscious perception that exists between employer and employee. When in equilibrium, it exists in the form of a reciprocal relation between what the organisation expects from its employees and what it is willing to give, and what the employees expect and are willing to give in return. Should the contract be disturbed, equilibrium should be restored.

Restoring the psychological contract requires multiple sustained interventions, mainly to restore trust. A major catalyst for restoring trust is enhancing the strength of the organisation’s ethical culture.

A reactive but effective approach, at a basic level, is to apply effective consequence management. Besides proactive interventions that assist people to internalise and apply ethical values, it is also a fact that people learn about right and wrong by observing what happens to others who do the right things or engage in wrongdoing. Applying consequence management, and thus discipline, in a transparent and fair, but consistent and decisive way, does deter unethical behaviour. When employees observe effective consequence management, or discipline, the knowledge gained may contribute to diluting cynicism’s inevitable fallout.

TEI receives many requests from organisations to “train all their employees” on ethics. Ethics training is totally ineffective for cynical employees for obvious reasons – distrust cannot be eliminated through training sessions. Moreover, toxic leaders and employees cannot “be made ethical”. Merely encouraging whistleblowing is also not the answer, as it can create further erosion of trust and exacerbate cultures of fear.

What could be effective though, is to establish pockets of ethical excellence and role modelling in the organisation over time. This starts at the governing body (board) and executive management levels. Such leadership cadres need to be made aware of the effect of their attitudes, decisions and actions on the organisation. Even in highly unethical environments, there simply must be a few leaders who have integrity and do not sleep well at night when ethical wrongdoing occurs. Such leaders need to be identified, and subsequently given opportunities, to acquire an ethics competence. This, in turn, could facilitate taking the ethics conversation to the highest level in the organisation. Employees look upwards, and when they observe the intentions, behaviour, and ethical role modelling of executives who may be considered to fulfil roles as ethics champions, trust may be slowly regained.

Support for the ethics cause that exists in the ranks of other managers and employees, that is, those that are respected opinion leaders, should be harnessed and utilised to slowly but surely spread the ethics message across the organisation. Ethics ambassadors can be identified and thereafter empowered and enabled to carry the flag for ethics in their respective divisions, sections, and regions.

The fact is that most people are inherently good. They may just be waiting for beacons of light to adopt a more ethical approach devoid of distrust and suspicion. Ambassadors could take a simplified ethics message to their colleagues, lend an ear to those with have doubts about ethics and trust, and provide basic encouragement for ethical behaviour and offer ethics advice to others, even to those that are cynical.

Organisations that do not recognise and deal with cynicism do so at their peril. Slow punctures in tyres can be plugged to ensure better vehicle roadworthiness. In the same way, the slow death caused by cynicism in organisations can be delayed and even be eliminated over time. However, a pre-condition is a system of planned and structured ethics interventions that commence with the reach-out by those who have integrity and enjoy the respect of others. In this way, the movement towards being good could progress from the vague to the visible and lived, helping to transform ethical intentions from abstract concepts into practical, observable outcomes.

Prof. Leon van Vuuren is Executive: Organisational Ethics at The Ethics Institute.