THE GOOD AND BAD ABOUT GREED: HOW THE MANIFESTATIONS OF GREED CAN BE USED TO IMPROVE ORGANIZATIONAL AND INDIVIDUAL BEHAVIOR AND PERFORMANCE

Greed is a continuing part of human history because it serves powerful ego wants and needs that are espoused, modeled, reinforced and rewarded at all levels of society, especially in organizational cultures characterized by a high degree of individualism, a low degree of social cohesion, and either an absence or excess of boundaries. Greed is not all bad; sometimes it is the result of overzealousness in organizations in which the rules about ambition and competition are unclear and excess is encouraged. Greed behavior becomes problematic for organizations and for individuals when it results in illegal or criminal actions, such as the abuse of the public trust, fraud, theft, and damages the well-being of others for personal gain. A cultural typology is presented for assessing the positive and negative manifestations of greed as these relate to social organization, social cohesion, and boundary behavior in organizations. The authors propose that although greed cannot be eliminated from human social systems, its positive manifestations can be used to improve organizational and individual behavior and performance.