Q-1) Why organizational cynicism prevails in most of the organization?
Cynicism Is On the Rise Research over indicates that cynicism is on the rise which affects society as well as business. As one research depicts that Cynicism not only affects society at large, but also is widespread among organizations in the United States (Dean, Brandes, & Dharwadkar, 1998; Kanter & Mirvis, 1989), Europe, and Asia (Kouzes & Posner, 1993). Research reports that cynicism in organisation hurts the competitiveness and ability to accommodate today's needed organizational change. Paul J. Rosen (Hendrick, 1993, p. E1:2), President of the American Institute of Stress, indicates that recent, dizzying changes in technology and the economy are causing unprecedented burnout, cynicism, sickness and absenteeism. About Cynicism Cynicism is an attitude characterized by hopelessness, frustration and disillusionment. It is also related to contempt, disgust, and distrust (Andersson, 1996; Andersson & Bateman, 1997). The central belief associated with cynicism is that principles of honesty, fairness, and sincerity are sacrificed to further the individual's self-interest. This underlying self-centered purpose is believed to lead to actions based on hidden agendas and deception (Abraham, 2000). This strong negative attitude permeates Americas corporations and is currently blamed for a multitude of unfavourable organizational outcomes. Thus, cynicism is recognized as a growing problem in the workplace that calls for immediate and detailed attention. Cynicism is described as a mind-set characterized by hopelessness, disappointment, and disillusionment, and is also associated with scorn, disgust, and suspicion (Andersson, 1996). This strong negative attitude has infiltrated Americas corporations, and is believed to be responsible for a host of unfavourable organizational consequences. Thus, cynicism is acknowledged as a increasing problem in the workplace that merits immediate and detailed research attention. Organizational psychologist and consultant, Philip H. Mirvis, and Professor Donald L. Kanter (1989, p. 377) found, in their national survey of 649 workers, that one bold theme prevailed: "self-interest and opportunism mark today's wised-up employee." They classified 43% of these workers as being cynical (p. 379), and 40% of the managers and supervisors as being cynical, as well (p. 381). In a later study (Mirvis and Kanter, 1991), they concluded that more workers were cynical, rising from 43% to 48% (p. 50). Cynicism has been described in a number of ways. Much of the past research has defined cynicism as a personality trait (Smith, Pope, Sanders, Allred, & OKeefe, 1988), or has identified industry-level environmental causes of cynicism (i.e., workforce reduction and cutbacks, firm performance) (Andersson & Bateman, 1997). Other studies have examined antecedents or causes that are under the direct control of individual organizations (Andersson, 1996; Reichers et al., 1997). Further, it has been theorized that organizational cynicism includes both a stable personal component as well as situational components (Abraham, 2000; Dean et al., 1998).
Ingredients of Cynicism Mirvis and Kanter (1991) explain there are three key ingredients to cynicism, 1) unrealistically high expectations of oneself and others, 2) the experience of disappointment in oneself and others (and the resulting feelings of frustration and defeat), and 3) disillusionment, and being deceived by others. Mirvis and Kanter (1989) describe four aspects of company life that most often disillusion people, including perceptions that the 1) pay system is rigged, 2) management can't be trusted, 3) company doesn't care and 4) the organization's time is at a premium. Effective responses to these concerns, respectively, include widely communicating the rationale and structure of the pay system, making hard truths testable and verifiable, bringing community into the workplace, and giving organization members more control over their time. Cynics don't trust management, find the pay system to be fair, think they have fair chance for advancement, don't believe management listens to them or value their jobs (Mirvis and Kanter, 1989). Cynical managers "are skilled in controlling information and exercising power through operatives" (Mirvis and Kanter, 1989, p. 381) In their mind, they 'made it the hard way,' and anyone who has not is weak, naive, inept, or just plain stupid" (Mirvis and Kanter, 1989, p. 381).Mirvis and Kanter (1989) go on to convey that cynics appear aloof and unfeeling, and treat people as if they were machines. Cynics are open and vocal about how the game is played; they see through company politics and thrive on inside dope. They yield cynicism like a sword.
Q.2. Assess the impact of cynicism on organizational performance. Cynicism impacts management which becomes more driven by personal relationships in giving rewards rather than actual performance. This can be attributed to the fact that cynical knowledge is denial of the goodness or sincerity of altruism in organizational actions, decisions, or procedures, seeing that the management always do not believe in what they say. This is actually a result of organizational hypocrisy which further results in less organizational commitment, threat to authority relationships and organizational legitimacy (Goldner, Ritti and Ference, 1977). Due to cynicism people are ready to lie if they can gain something out of it. Most of the time, they show that they care for one another, though actually they do not. It can be attributed to the observation that cynicism is a personality trait, which reflects the general belief that selfishness and fakery is at the core of human nature. Unrealistically high expectations, disappointment, and disillusionment play a vital role in this and it further creates distrust and contempt of management. It lowers trust in co-workers. Employees perceived injustice and inequity everywhere and feel that management is not taking them seriously (Kanter and Mirvis, 1989; 1991). Cynicism creates a negative, distrustful attitude toward authority and institutions (Kanter & Mirvis, 1989). It can be evoked in a person even by showing him a movie in which management is being unfair with employees (Bateman, Sakano and Fujita, 1992). Cynicism impacts the organization and it is reflected in the work ethics. Work ethics strongly predict cynicism, not the personality characteristic. It usually results in depersonalization and estrangement. People have low regard for authority and experience low self-esteem Guastello, Rieke, Guastello and Billings, 1992). Cynicism creates pessimism about the success of future organizational changes, and people believe that change agents are incompetent, lazy, or both. It is actually derived from the history of failed change attempts. This has negative effect on job satisfaction and organizational commitment. However, it has a very weak relationship with negative affectivity (Wanous, Reichers and Austin, 1994). Cynicism causes frustration and disillusionment and negative feelings toward and distrust of a person, group, ideology, social convention or institution. It usually results from Workplace characteristics which includes but is not limited to high executive compensation, layoffs, limited voice expression, role ambiguity and role conflict. As a result, people feel detached from all the malpractices like misuse of power and manipulation by management. They undermine leaders and institutions and the practices they support (Andersson, 1996). The above scenario also discourages people to perform OCB and they do not comply with unethical requests from management (Andersson and Bateman, 1997). People lose faith in the leaders of change, characterizing them as lazy and incompetent, and pessimism about the likelihood of the success of future change efforts. It can analysed by the incompetence of those who are responsible for improvement of the system. Their lack of knowledge of what they are doing is a clear indicator. It emerges from continuously witnessing failures while bringing about changes and lack of knowledge. They also lose the reliability. As a result, people lose commitment, satisfaction, and motivation and strongly disbelieve what top management says (Reichers, Wanous and Austin, 1997). Organizational cynicism modifies the attitude of the employees and they start believing that the organization lacks integrity. They display disparaging attitude and critical behaviour (Dean, Brandes and Dharwadkar, 1998). Cynicism creates large perceptions of contradictory forces, where people believe that there is increased outsourcing but middle managers do not contribute any discernible value. It causes a shift in paradigm of employment relations, and encourages short- term rather than long-term attachment between organizations and employees (Feldman, 2000). It has been noticed that weak support for negative affectivity and stronger support for amount of previous change, less participation in decision making and ineffectiveness of supervisors results in relationships with decreased organizational commitment and grievance filing. It has an overall negative effect on instrumentality of pay for- performance systems (Wanous, Reichers & Austin, 2000). As cynicism impacts the moral decision making, involving strong levels of distrust and hostile impugning and vilification of another person's motives, people only believe in the negative aspects of anything and hardly consider that the positive aspects can actually be valid and true. This increases with the decrease in trust and increases with the increase in role conflict. Ultimately, it results in the decrease in organizational commitment (Turner and Valentine, 2001). As a result of cynicism, people do not find connected to the organization and feel that organization is not efficient in dealing with stress in the workplace. Usually due to lack of choice, lack of trust, sense of unequal status and power, and lack of genuine institutional support creates a sense of being devalued. This has worse consequences where organization cannot fully realize its latent social capital. It hampers the development of isolated subcultures who perceive themselves as devalued groups and gradually they become immune to organizational goals (O'Brien et al., 2004). Cynicism induces disbelief of another's stated or implied motives for a decision or action. People are highly suspicious and sceptical about motives of management in the organization. It is caused due to inefficient managerial communication, overall management incompetence and management incompetence to implement change. It results in intention to resist change (Stanley, Meyer and Topolnytsky, 2005). A cynic makes negative comments and with exhibiting low sentiments about positives, specifically the denial of the positive impact of the firm's values statements on actual decision-making. People so not believe in the company's real intention to live up to values statements. Leadership acts in a manner inconsistent with the values proclaimed, i.e. it is an organizational hypocrisy. This causes employees to have significantly less commitment towards the organization and its goals (Urbany, 2005).
Q3) How does an organisation deal with the problems? Cynicism grows or ebbs depending on the atmosphere that it feeds on. There is a need for less bureaucracy and more management, more and more organisations are realising this. There is a common platform in most companies where employees can voice their grievances thus reducing possible cynicism. Many corporate excellence programs are designed for the specific purpose of management interacting more with employees. The ways in which an organisation deals with problems related to cynics are varied and a few are explained further. People oriented work culture: A people oriented work culture carries a message such that the company gets de- bureaucratized and makes people centric to the companys success. Cynics are focused on signs and symbols and feel that those in authority are out for themselves only. If the work culture is people oriented then bosses are put in touch with workers de-bureaucratizing the company and so people feel central to the success of the enterprise. One of the companies which follow this is Accenture, one of its key core values in respect for the individual, fostering a trusting, open and inclusive environment. Better Management of the Basics: The basics are pay, benefits, reviews, promotions and so on. Human resource systems must be truly fair to people and responsive to their needs. Moreover, management must provide information about these systems, ensure that they are competently and fairly administered and assess their impact through periodic reviews with the people whose lives they affect. One approach can be to make pay systems open where all the rates, grades are made public so employees can be assured that the system is fair. The management needs to convince cynics by substance. Employees at SumAll, a Manhattan data-analytics company, can click on a shared drive to peruse investor agreements, company financials, performance appraisals, hiring decisions and employee pay, along with each worker's equity and bonuses. As per the management this way employees work better as they are freed of doubts regarding the same.
Participative Management: This is perhaps the most important factor in dealing with cynicism. Employees must feel that their opinions have been heard and that they are given respectful consideration (Reichers, Wanou and Austin, 1997). Participative management can be helpful in the design of compensation and career development systems, and in shop floor and office decision-making. This brings people inside the mechanics of running a business and makes them responsible for their own careers. It also counters cynics' claims that decisions in a company are always rigged and manipulated. Employees should be involved in business decision-making processes wherever it is appropriate to give them a sense of ownership and pride in the company. Employees must be given some degree of power over the way they perform their job and make decisions related to their positions. These empowered employees are more likely to have a positive outlook about their employer and are more invested in the outcome of their performance. Their feedbacks should be taken and implemented, they can thus know that their ideas are listened to and valued. If employees are encouraged to invest themselves in all stages of business planning they will see themselves as integral parts of the company. Participative management that incorporates supervisory communications can improve employee job satisfaction (Soonhee Kim, 2002). Enhancing Credibility: Cynicism cannot be moderated or changed by timely information unless that information is believed. A message is more likely to be made believable by using credible spokespersons. Cynics can be more easily persuaded if they see the spokesperson as knowledgeable about the subject matter, possessed of high power and status in the organization and trustworthy. The manager should base his techniques of communication on the kind of audience and most importantly should present the message seriously and sincerely. He should use a positive logical approach as it emphasizes benefits compared to a negative approach that emphasizes dire consequences. In case of organisations a manager should try and appeal to the logical side of the employee and not the emotional side. There should be congruence between behaviour and words of the organisations spokespersons. Besides spokespersons, a number of other channels of conveying information should be used to ensure that everyone has a chance to receive the information. CEOs should encourage employees to have realistic yet optimistic expectations. To regain credibility after failure managers must accept responsibility and accept that they made mistakes. Those who dont accept responsibility are likely to be viewed as dishonest (Reichers, Wanou and Austin, 1997). Accepting mistakes and quickly rectifying them will help the management gain credibility otherwise employees may find it difficult to let go of cynicism. This approach works well even in face of repeated failures (Kouzes and Posner, 2006). The above methods of tackling cynicism however would fall short if employees are not given the opportunities of airing their issues and receive validation that those issues would be redressed. For this reason two way communication is critical (Reichers, Wanou and Austin,1997).This way managers get to learn about employee concerns and employees learn about management constraints, and the two can work together to achieve a solution to the issues leading to enhanced productivity in the organisation.
Conclusion:
There have been many researches over the years to access the impact of cynicism in the organizations. Various findings propose that cynicism in the organization is indeed stimulated by the employees apprehensions. Many studies explained cynicism a mechanism that diminished trust and caused individuals to develop a generalized dislike and suspicion toward executives and big business (Kanter & Mirvis, 1989). Organizational cynicism has been identified as an impediment to organizational development (Wanous et al., 2000), and a major cause of negative employee outcomes (Abraham 2000; Andersson & Bateman, 1997). Significant changes in the workplace may not yield fruitful results, if employees are characterized by negative cynicism. Most of these studies confer cynicism as an attitude. But its various positive outcomes have not been taken into consideration and little research has been done in this area to analyse as to what extent positive cynicism may impact outcomes in the organization. Cynicism may help employee to effectively confront the rapidly changing complex work environment. In some cases, cynicism may help employee adjustment to the environment, and serve as an influence on future behaviour. Due to the rise of cynicism in the business environment and its severe repercussions, organizations are realizing the importance of handling cynicism at workplace. It depends on the organizations ability to identify the causes of cynicism relevant to their structure and to tackle it. Further research is required to comment of the detailed effect of cynicism in the organizational context.
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