Rlchard Pettlnger

Toxicity

Organizational toxicity and toxic communications exist in organizations that have acquired the equivalent of malady or disease. The concept is akin to the presence of toxins in the human body, or to toxic or poisonous substances in the atmosphere.

Toxic communications demotivate and demoralize staff and dissipate the volume and quality of organizational effort and effectiveness. They arise overwhelmingly from negative views held and perpetrated by the organization and its managers about the staff; and the staff and their representative bodies about the organization.

Symptoms of this include the following.

» Blame and scapegoats: in which organizations find individuals to carry the can for corporate failings.

» Accusation and back-stabbing: in which individuals are encour- aged to make claims and counter-claims (overwhelmingly negative) about colleagues.

» Departmental feuding: that normally is the result of lobbying for status, power, influence, and resources.

» Meddling: where individuals and groups try to operate outside their legitimate areas of concern and activity.

96 STRESS MANAGEMENT
» Secrets: in which information becomes a commodity to be used as a source of influence and as a bargaining chip; toxicity is compounded when this is controlled, edited, filtered, skewed or otherwise corrupted in the interests of one party.

» Corporate self-deception: where organizations and their senior managers create their own view of the world and their place within it. This may arise either as the result of the creation of an elite, which quickly comes to believe in its own infallibility, and the organization therefore follows its path whatever it recommends; or where the organization is in decline and, rather than addressing this, it continues to live on its past glories.

Toxicity is extremely stressful and harmful to all those concerned. It compromises absolute standards of behavior and performance. It becomes a negative form of ‘‘people culture’’ in which the key priority of those present is to ensure their own position by constantly deni- grating others.

Source: Hall, L. (1996) Toxic Communications. McGraw Hill.

Ethics

A key feature of stress management is attention to the ethical standards present and required. It is concerned with human character and conduct, the distinction between right and wrong, and absolute duties, responsibilities, and obligations that exist in all situations. It is based on a combination of distributive justice – the issuing of rewards for contribution to organization goals and values – and ordinary common decency, an absolute judgment on all activities.

At the macro level, there are issues about the role of the organization in society at large. These are largely concerned with addressing the rela- tive virtues and expectations of different parts of society. There are also important issues of international relationships for many organizations. At the corporate level, ethics is often referred to in terms of corporate social responsibility and corporate citizenship. This requires concen- tration on the ethical issues facing individual and corporate activities

when formulating and implementing strategies.

At the individual level, issues concern behavior, conduct, and actions of individuals and groups within organizations.

KEY CONCEPTS AND THINKERS 97
The more successfully managers carry out the work, the greater the integrity required. While it is possible to generate short-term results as matters of expediency, long-term survival is assured only through fundamentally acceptable levels of integrity and conduct. Attention therefore is required to the following.

» Common standards of equity, equality, and honesty.

» Relationships between organization standards, the carrying out of performance, and the distribution of rewards.

» Relationships between means and ends.

» Relationships between actions and motives.

» Reconciliation of conflicts of interest.

The first duty is therefore to staff and customers in order to ensure long- term permanence. This occurs only where there exists a fundamental quality of relationships and activities, and where this extends to all dealings with everyone who comes into contact with the organization. From this arises the confidence and ability to conduct activities over extended periods of time. Ethics therefore pervades all aspects of organization activity and performance. The absence of these absolute standards is stressful to both individuals and groups. In some cases, those with technical or professional qualifications may be able to retreat from organizational into professional comfort. In the long term, however, the inability to carry out activities on the basis of honesty and integrity is damaging to those involved.

Source: Sternberg, E. (1995) Just Business. Warner.