The office as a reflection of the inner self: interior decoration and architecture

personal spaces, at home and at work. The participants in their research were able to draw

conclusions about a stranger’s character based on their office or bedroom.

Research by Andrew Lohman and colleagues shows that the interior decoration of couples’

living rooms speaks volumes about the quality of their relationship. In their research the

participants were required to sit in the room where they would normally welcome guests

at home. They were then required to point out their favorite objects in the room, and asked

which objects they most wanted guests to notice. Finally the couples noted which objects

were acquired individually and which together. The research showed that the better the

bond between the couples, the more they wanted guests to notice objects which they had

acquired together. Furthermore the better the relationship the more the favorite objects had

been acquired together. So if you are interested in the strength of your relationship, you could

sit down on your couch at home and examine the extent to which you both want the same

objects to be seen by guests and whether you acquired these objects together.

What applies in private also applies at work. The manager who plasters an image of the sales

figures of the past five years over the entire wall of his office shows that he values sales. The

employee who displays all kinds of prizes clearly sees success and scores as important. Anyone

with multiple family photos probably has good family relationships. A cluttered workplace or

office suggests that the person who works there is cluttered too. A tidy workspace, on the

other hand, says that the person is a perfectionist and has his work under control.

Inspecting the offices of an organization can yield a great deal of information about its culture.

The CEO’s office alone says a great deal about values and norms. What are the dimensions,

colors, layout, objects? Is the room on the top floor or on the ground floor? Is it decorated with

personal items? In carrying out such an inspection you must, of course, be prepared to dig

below the surface; a tidy room says nothing if there is chaos behind closed cabinet doors. If

this is the case across much of the rest of the organization, then that is a red flag, because it

increases the likelihood that people think this way about the products they sell and the figures

they publish. The next time you walk into your office, it might be interesting to look around

with a visitor’s eye and ask yourself what the room says about you and your relationship with

the organization.



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The same goes for the architecture and general state of repair of office buildings. In buildings

where the paint is peeling, outward appearance apparently is not the highest priority. Buildings

which rise high above the surrounding properties imply pride. Buildings with lots of glass

clearly suggest that the banner of transparency flies high, unless it is reflective glass, in which

case there is nothing to be seen of what goes on inside. Many organizations recently toppled

by malpractice had head offices with only reflective glass. Coincidence?



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Factor 2: role-modeling

In the previous section we saw that it is important for an organization both to establish the

desired norms, values and responsibilities and to effectively communicate these so that

directors, managers and employees know what is expected. This communication not only

occurs in writing, but also in action and in the set-up of the work environment.

People read the norms applicable to them from the behavior of others, especially their role

models. Within organizations these are line managers, higher management and directors.

Role-modeling is therefore the second factor which affects behavior in organizations. This was

touched on in chapter 14.

The following six chapters discuss experiments which illustrate the meaning of role-modeling.

Chapter 17 shows what ethical leadership involves and how powerful role-modeling can

be. It is not only down to the behavior employees see in their leaders, but also to what the

management task them to do. Chapter 18 examines obedience and the risks attached to it.

Having shown that role-modeling depends on how the management see themselves, chapter

19 then examines the effect of this on those being managed. On the one hand managers

should give a good example; on the other hand they are in a position in which they are more

likely to abuse their authority. In chapters 20 and 21 we see where this can lead. The final

chapter of this section shows that model behavior can also lead to the opposite behavior in

others.



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17. The need for ethical leadership:

moral compass and courage

Like radars, people search their surroundings for signals which indicate how they should

behave. Research shows that seeing someone in the street give something to a collector

increases the chance that we too will give, and if someone throws rubbish into the street,

the chance increases that we will do the same. Both good and bad examples apparently have

followers. Will we follow just anyone’s behavior, or do we pick and choose our models?

Social learning theory states that we learn what we should do from the behavior of others,

and are particularly inclined to learn from others who have some significance to us, who we

see as our role models and who we wish to reflect in our behavior. We give more weight to the

behavior of role models, following it more closely, storing it better in our brains and recalling it

more easily. Role models therefore make more of a mark on our behavior than others within

or outside our group. Kees Keizer (see also chapters 14 and 15) shows the effect of this in a

simple experiment. This is the final flyer experiment to be discussed in this book.

Keizer fixed a flyer advertizing the latest issue of the magazine Knowledge to the handlebars

of a number of bicycles in the bike shed of a university. On the flyer was the text: ‘The majority

of …, 80 percent, commit plagiarism. Read all about it in Knowledge.’ One set of flyers

stated that 80 percent of professors committed plagiarism. Next to the text was a photo of a

professor in a toga. On the other flyers the text stated that 80 percent of students committed

plagiarism, with a photo of a student. In both photos a black strip was printed across the eyes,

to emphasize that plagiarism was a transgression of the norm. Once again there was no trash

can to be seen in the area. What did they discover? Of the cyclists who found the flyer with

the student, 39 percent threw it on the ground. The flyer with the professor was thrown away

a third more, at 52 percent.

Those who symbolize group norms are more influential in determining the behavior of people

in that group than are other group members. In Keizer’s experiment the professors were the

role models for the students, so that the reprehensible behavior of the professors had more

influence on the behavior of students throwing away flyers than that of their fellow students.



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In organizations, directors, managers and leaders are important role models for the behavior

of others within and around the organization. They are expected to represent the norms of the

organization. The higher they are in the organization the more this applies.

My own research shows that in organizations where the management sets a good example,

significantly less unethical behavior is seen in the rest of the organization than when the

management sets a bad example. 32 aspects of unethical behavior were measured, including

actions such as cheating consumers, squeezing out suppliers, deceiving shareholders,

competing unfairly and violating human rights. At the same time employees and outsiders are

often critical of the lack of role-modeling at the top. The positive side of this criticism is that

it conceals an expectation: employees and outsiders expect top management to give a good

example. That means that there is a need for ethical leadership. But what exactly is ethical

leadership?

First of all, ethical leaders have a moral compass. They explore their environment, with a welldeveloped vision of right and wrong. They have a clear sense of direction when it comes to

deciding what can and must be done better. They see and hear what others do not see or hear.

They not only draw a clear line between what is and what is not permissible, but at the same

time push the boundaries, and raise the bar, for others as well as themselves to become more

ethical.

Ethical leaders have courage. They not only know that things must and can be different, but

they do things differently themselves. They don’t flow downstream like dead fish, they swim

against the current. A head wind makes them strong, causing them to rise like a kite. They have

the drive and the guts to persist where others give up. Where others are silent, they speak.

They demand responsibility. As American president Obama said, in response to criticism of

greed in the financial sector, ‘Ultimately, I’m responsible. The buck stops with me. And my

goal is to make sure that we never put ourselves in this kind of position again.’

The director of a consultancy in Florida gave an unusual example of courage. Due to the

recession 51-year-old Lol Gonzalez was forced to make one of her employees redundant.

Instead she herself decided to leave. ‘How can you sack someone who trusted you and who

you trusted too?’ she said when the news came out. The staff were astonished when she



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