The solution

Orea develops products to provide a deep understanding of an organisation’s moral health so effective measures can be taken to improve the circumstances that invite pro-social behaviour. The knowledge we provide consists of two types:

  1. the general inclination or likelihood of the total body of employees to conduct degrees of pro-social behaviour, based on the state of factors that are known to contribute to such behaviour;

  2. the precise aspects of the organisation that would require change in order to remove obstacles to pro-social behaviour.

Our method

We peel off layer by layer the reasons people feel to behave pro-socially or not, and whether they are hindered to do so in any way. This yields a diagnosis of the moral health of the organisation. The deeper our probe the more we can pinpoint which changeable organisational factors stand most chance of improving the organization’s moral health.

By deepening an organisation’s understanding of root causes of pro-social behaviour and pointing out avenues for removing obstacles for it, Orea is a natural ally of the ‘Agile’-approach to management. It acknowledges the fact that the ability of managers to control and predict the behaviour of individuals is limited, and trying to do so entails the risks that resources are being used inefficiently, and that results are counterproductive.

 

Practical applications

One type of pro-social behaviour that we have given a great deal of thought is that towards customers. Commonly referred to as customer-oriented behaviour, this proceeds from the desire to conduct the sales process in a way that serves the customer's highest interests. According to Saxe and Weitz (1982), “highly customer-oriented salespeople avoid actions which sacrifice customer interest to increase the probability of making an immediate sale” (p. 344). To determine the inclination of employees to perform customer-oriented behaviour in the long run, we have developed the Customer Orientation Probe.