Compliments of bootload via Flickr

When we think of ethical decision making, we tend to think of this dimension on a macro level; e.g., ‘going green,’ ‘social responsibility,’ and ‘stockholder interests.’ Behaving in an ethical fashion however involves diligence in your daily interactions with each and every person you encounter.

I’m currently reading a terrific book entitled The Cost of Bad Behavior: How Incivility is Damaging Your Business and What you Can do about it. In their book the authors quantify how an uncivil interaction can impact business in terms of lost time worrying about the incident, talking about it to other people, and possible health manifestations which can increase insurance costs. They explain that incivility is an epidemic in that we as a society seem to have become ruder in our daily interactions, with these occurrences carrying a ripple effect throughout the organization. Pearson and Porath (2009) define workplace incivility as the following: “the exchange of seemingly inconsequential inconsiderate words and deeds that violate conventional norms of workplace conduct.” Turn the page…