Opportunism
In my experience with different jobs or organizations, the people who act opportunistically will mostly do so whenever they can. On the other hand, I find that people who do not will almost never act this way. It is hard to tell whether this has to do with their own ethics or their particular interest within the group.
One specific experience I have had with opportunistic behavior involves the same job I talked about in my last blog post. I touched a bit on the opportunistic behavior of some of my coworkers during my time working at a video rental store and on one of the managers I had for about have of the time I worked there. The manager did not have a sufficient procedure in place to know what the employees did during their shifts. There was a long list of tasks around the store to do during just one shift such as vacuuming, mopping, cleaning the bathroom, inventory, phone calls, etc. If someone were to do none of these or even just a couple, it would make it hard for the worker with the next shift. However, because there was a way that the manager would not find out about a certain worker slacking, it happened often.
One of my coworkers was often a culprit. I had the shift after her on many occasions, and every time I questioned the lack of tasks completed she gave me a half-hearted excuse and a chuckle. This showed to me how aware she was of the effects of her actions (or lack of).
I never really took advantage of this situation. I always came into work and completed as many tasks as I was able to. I was tempted to barely do any of the work and still get paid, but I every time I started to slack off I felt a little guilty. I knew that eventually someone would have to do the work that I was supposed to be doing during that time, and it was my responsibility to do what I can for the other employees. It would cross my mind, though, that if the other employees were not doing anything, then why should I? I eventually concluded that I would rather keep working as if they were and hope that they would either start working as they should or be fired.
I think I was working this way because I hoped that they would eventually be found out, and I would still be considered a responsible employee. I did not really care about whether the store was running properly or not. I was more worried about my reputation. I was not really invested in the store, but I hoped to gain skills and the approval of my bosses for future endeavors. If this had been a job in which I was more invested in the cause, I may have act this way because I would want the best outcome that the organization could produce. If that were the case, I would also have been more likely to care about the other employees because they would ideally be acting the same for me and the organization.
I think ethics has a part in this behavior, but it is hard to say exactly how. I started working as I should because that’s what I was supposed to be doing as an employee of that store, and it helped the other employees with their work. However, my deeper reasoning for doing those things is selfish. I want to be a good employee and coworker for my own gain in the future. My coworkers that were acting opportunistically were also acting selfishly, though, so maybe ethics alone does not have a part in whether one acts opportunistically or not. I think it comes down to the extent of one’s selfishness in conjunction with their investment in the cause that could determine how they would act in these situations.
Before commenting on the substance of your post, I wonder if you could change the default font size of posts and make that bigger. I can do that on my end but that makes the writing very wide on the screen. You can do it on your end and keep the width more reasonably sized.
ReplyDeleteOne question I had reading this is whether you ever had a conversation with your manager at your initiation. It might be very difficult to tell the manager about another employee who is shirking if that is the only such conversation you ever have the manager. It would be easier if you talked on occasion about other stuff and there was some back and forth between you. So it would have helped in your story to know which is which.
The purpose of the prompt, truthfully, was for you to think about how opportunism might be prevented, as if you were the manager of the store. Is there something manager might have done without you alerting him of what was going so he could have gotten the other employee to put in an honest effort?
You yourself said that the mission of the store was not something you embraced. Perhaps that was true of all employees, even the manager. So in responding to my comment you might want to consider the manager's perspective and try to work through whether the outcome happened in part because the manager let it happen. It is true that not all shirking is readily detected, but it sounds like what you were talking about some more monitoring, simply by walking around the store and looking at what was going on, would have revealed things. I got the impression that the manager didn't really want to look.
It is true that the manager was also not fully behind the mission of the store. She would often complain to me about the amount of work that she was expected to do, and she knew that people were not completing the tasks. However, because she was also not very invested in the work and was mostly there to get paid, she did not do much to help the situation.
DeleteWhen it comes to discussing the shirking of the other employees, I would mention it when it felt appropriate. Most of the shifts at the store only required one employee being there at a time, so I rarely saw her in person. Whenever she mentioned the lack of work being done, I would try to direct her to the people who were failing to complete the tasks in a respectful way. I was the newest employee at the store, so I tried to do this in a respectful way to not step on any toes.
She only ever spoke to the people that were not doing the work, though, instead of transforming the system to prevent this lack of activity. Since working there, the manager has been replaced with someone more willing to do the work necessary to run the store in a more effective way. He has since put procedures in place that hold the employees accountable for their work.
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ReplyDeleteYour statement in the first paragraph generalizes people's tendency toward opportunism well. I would agree that there seem to be two types of people who, when placed in the same role, will almost always choose to act consistently opportunistic, or who will choose to act with a stronger moral compass.
DeleteFrom your experience, I can tell that you have strong morals. What's interesting is that your coworkers likely knew that choosing to ignore work that needed to be done was not right, and yet they didn't feel the same guilt you did. It seems obvious that the tasks you described fit within your job description, and yet without an authority figure to monitor them, your coworkers were content to slack off because there was no fear of punishment. Sadly, there are many people who lack the intrinsic motivation to complete tasks wholly and correctly when the system is not rigidly structured with obvious rewards and punishments.
This make me wonder; is intrinsic motivation a learned trait, or is it something some people are just born with? What are some ways you could raise a child to be intrinsically motivated, or to choose the right thing even when there is no fear of punishment or promise of reward?
In reading a few posts now I've begun to notice a common theme about shirking on the job as an example of opportunistic behavior. I suppose that can be used to offer some solace in solidarity, everyone's coworkers are subpar.
DeleteWhat I found interesting in your response was your discussion of ethics, as I too had largely focused on internalized ethical systems for my response. I looked at it from a broad sense of objectivity vs. subjectivity, which I see played out here as well. Your co-worker from the previous shift was maximizing her benefit (getting paid the same for doing less work), which is a subjective line of thinking as the morality of the situation is held only with the individuals involved. An objective standard would be the efficient allocation of tasks and the smooth running of the store.
A question for you is one on the ethics of your own situation. You behaved the way the objectivist would: taking up extra tasks and not shirking your own, thus creating efficiency. However, you admit that this is not because you actually cared about the store or seeing things run smoothly, you did it largely to increase your satisfaction later on by putting on airs that you were a model employee in the hopes your bosses would take notice and reward you in kind. This is itself another subjectivist line of thinking, you're simply maximizing your own happiness much in the way your coworker was. I would ponder then the ethics of the situation: because you both are engaging in subjectivist behavior, is there a moral equivalence between the two of you? Or does the fact that your goals happen to line up with the objective standard mean that you can declare moral superiority?