A Good Day's Work: Sustaining Ethical Behavior and Business Success (MGMT & LEADERSHIP) - Hardcover

Lattal, Alice Darnell; Clark, Ralph W.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0071482652 ISBN 13: 9780071482653

Publisher: McGraw Hill, 2007

Synopsis

Actionable tools and processes to ensure the ethical behavior that feeds profitable business growth

The path to business success begins with behavior. This book provides tools from the study of ethics, scientific management practices, and behavioral psychology to ensure that ethical behavior is the foundation for workplace practices.

A Good Day's Work delivers strategies to improve the ethical climate for its own sake and achieve business success that supports critically important values necessary for the survival of the broader culture. Everyone, from the mailroom to the boardroom, will benefit.

• Delivers a comprehensive blueprint for making ethical behavior integral to business processes and performance management
• Goes beyond posted codes of conduct to illustrate how daily business practice maintains or impedes doing the right thing in the right way
• Provides a decision-making tool to assess business activity against a pragmatic and sound ethical standard
• Illustrates how ethical breaches often stem from small missteps and offers techniques for preventing them

About this title

About the Author

Alice Darnell Lattal, Ph.D., has a doctorate in clinical psychology and is President and CEO of Aubrey Daniels International (ADI) an international management consulting firm headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. She is an adjunct professor of psychology at West Virginia University, a member of the Board of Directors of the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies, listed in Whos Who of American Women, and is a Diplomate in Forensic Psychology. She has served as president of her state psychological association and has been a part of or an owner of several companies using behavior analysis to produce fluency with populations as diverse as elementary school age children and adults learning to read to companies working to increase discretionary effort by arranging positive management strategies. She has previously published, along with Dr. Clark, Workplace Ethics: Winning the Integrity Revolution (Rowman & Littlefield, 1993), as well as written articles in refereed journals.

From the Back Cover

Why be moral?

What's good for the soul is also good for the bottom line.

The path to business achievement begins with behavior. Behavior alone is
what drives and sustains ethical choices and actions-as well as profit.

A Good Day's Work provides essential tools from the study of ethics,
scientific management practices, and behavioral psychology to ensure that
ethical behavior is the foundation for your workplace practices, outlining
specific steps for ensuring the pursuit of profit with principle. Alice
Darnell Lattal and Ralph Clark explain the philosophical background of
ethical decision-making, revealing how a loss of ethical direction can
happen in an organization and providing a framework for sustainable ethical
change that drives business success. Applicable for everyone from the
mailroom to the boardroom, this scientifically proven process is guaranteed
to help you aim your moral compass in the right direction.

Goes beyond posted codes of conduct to illustrate how daily business
practice maintains or impedes doing the right thing in the right way
Identifies the important ethical imperatives that lie behind essential
practices
Illustrates how ethical breaches often stem from small missteps and offers
techniques for preventing those breaches
Explains how to establish a culture of ethical habits as the foundation to
success
Provides a decision-making tool to assess business activity against a
pragmatic and sound ethical standard
Features a comprehensive blueprint for making ethical behavior integral to
business processes and performance management

From the Inside Flap

Is it possible for a company to become more ethical while also being more
profitable?

The answer is a resounding yes. In A Good Day's Work, Alice Darnell Lattal
and Ralph Clark combine their expertise in moral philosophy, business
management, and behavioral psychology to present scientifically proven
behavior-based strategies for improving the ethical climate in the
workplace.

Lattal and Clark assert that unethical corporate behavior most often
results from the cumulative missteps of otherwise well-meaning people.
While we may know what it means to be ethical, most professionals are not
taught how to actually become ethical. The authors give tips for managing
that change, and ways to create effective habits that allow for ethics- and
profit-oriented decisions to coexist. They also reveal practical ways to
create and sustain an organization-wide commitment to core ethical
principles while simultaneously generating lasting profits and growth.

Featuring detailed, real-world examples that illustrate how the same moral
values we apply in other areas of life are applicable in the world of
business, A Good Day's Work provides:

Tools to weigh the choices you make and the potential consequences to you
and others, as well as to your organization
Strategies for banishing fear from the workplace, using goals wisely, and
improving workplace physical and psychological environments
Solutions for proactively preventing ethical breaches that emanate from
well-meaning missteps
Techniques for harnessing the power of positive reinforcement
The authors describe ways that motivational strategies can encourage more
candid talk about ethical actions, as well as initiative, cooperation, and
innovation. They also address the all-important balancing act of making
ethical sales and achieving financial success-and what price is too high to
pay.

Edition details

• Publisher: McGraw Hill
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0071482652
• ISBN 13: 9780071482653
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 312