Research Skills Report: Code of Conduct at The Guardian Newspaper

This report examines the factors influencing the code of conduct of staff members at The Guardian Newspaper, focusing on the impact of organizational changes and the application of Social Cognitive Theory. The report begins with an introduction outlining the importance of a code of conduct and the role of various factors in shaping employee behavior. The main body of the report provides an overview of a case study involving restructuring at The Guardian, which led to job losses and changes in employee behavior. It then delves into the factors impacting staff conduct, including personal, environmental, and behavioral factors, as described by the Social Cognitive Theory. The analysis includes how cognitive factors, environmental shifts, and behavioral adaptations influenced employees. The conclusion summarizes the findings, emphasizing the role of various factors in shaping employee behavior and the applicability of Social Cognitive Theory in understanding these dynamics. The report references several academic sources, including journals and books, to support its analysis. The report highlights the importance of understanding the impact of organizational changes on employee behavior and the application of Social Cognitive Theory in addressing workplace challenges.

RESEARCH SKILLS

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................1
Overview of the case study..........................................................................................................1
Factors that impact code of conduct of staff members at The Guardian Newspaper..................1
Social Cognitive Theory and its factors.......................................................................................2
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................4
REREFENCES................................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
There are various factors that can impact overall code of conduct of employees of an
organization such as business values, principles, rules, values etc. It is extremely important for
organizations to focus upon explaining code of conduct to employees so that they can understand
standards, expectations, acceptable behaviour and many more that are required to be fulfilled by
them in an appropriate manner (Collins and et. al., 2019). Code of conduct also helps employees
to understand what kind of behaviour cannot be accepted within an organization. There are
various kinds of theories that can be used for explaining factors that impact overall code of
conduct of employees. One of those theories is social cognitive theory. It is a kind of theory that
focuses which is based upon social learning theory. This theory was stated by Albert Bandura
and has four processes, such as: self-efficacy, self-evaluation, self-reaction and self-observation.
This essay will focus upon actors that impact the individual conduct of staff in The Guardian
Newspaper.
MAIN BODY
Overview of the case study
Case study chosen for this essay is Restructure at Guardian Newspaper. It is British
newspaper who is facing various kinds of issues in maintaining overall newspaper quality. It is
seen as a quality national newspaper bur due to changes within the market it is becoming for
them to achieve this goal (Persson and et. al., 2014). In order to achieve this goal, they had to
make various kinds of changes within the organization and there is a need of restructuring. Due
to these chances various employees of the organization have lost their jobs. Not only this, when
they faced loss, they made approximately 70 jobs redundant.
Factors that impact code of conduct of staff members at The Guardian Newspaper
Due to the changes made within The Guardian newspaper various kinds of changes
within overall behaviour of employees were observed. Due to the changes brought within the
organizations most of the employees were getting demotivated, in fact some of them even
changed overall behaviour of the employees, some of them were hesitant to retain their jobs and
some of them resigned from started looking for other jobs. The Guardian newspaper need to
focus upon updating their code of conduct so that they can increase employee retainment within
the organization, overcome all the losses faced by them or it can also be said that all the
1

restructuring should be done within the organization in such a manner that it redundancy of jobs
within the organization can be reduced and overall morale of the employees can be increased.
Social Cognitive Theory and its factors
Social cognitive theory is a kind of psychological theory that can be used in education,
psychology and communication and focuses upon a fact that an individual’s knowledge
acquisition can be directly related to observing others within experience, social interactions,
outside influence and others. This theory majorly lay emphasis upon social influence and its
emphasis upon internal and external social reinforcement. This theory can be used within
organizations in order to understand undesirable behaviour of people and reason because of
which this change within their behaviour occurs (Jenkins, Hall and Raeside, 2018).
Understanding within changes within people’s behaviour can help organization to increase their
productivity, achieve pre-defined goals and maximize output results.it is one of the most
effective theory that can be used by organization for understand changes within their employees
behaviour because this theory can be applied to any kind of social setting. This theory clearly
explains that there are three main types of factors that can influence an individual’s behaviour
such as: environmental, social and personal or cognitive factors. These factors can impact overall
code of conduct of employees and can influence their behaviour in both positive and negative
manner. This theory can help organization to understand their employee’s behaviour, reason
behind change within their behaviour and according bring changes within the organizations or do
restructuring of the organization accordingly. Impact of these factors upon code of conduct of
employees of The Guardian newspaper have been examined below:
Personal factors
One of the main factors that can influence an employee’s behaviour and impact code of
conduct is personal factors. These factors are also known as cognitive factors. In the case study
of The Guardian newspaper as well various kinds of cognitive or personal factors have been
explained. In this as well when top management of the Guardian newspaper explains that future
planning to their staff members with an assurance that no forceful redundancies will be done and
explained that future planning to their employees, impact their behaviour in many ways as.
Management of the company thought that factors such as changing newspaper font, printing by
outsourced company, job cut from editorial, commercial and support departments and
supplements wrapped in compostable packaging would work as an aspiration among the
2

employees, their self- belief within their plan made them thought that this would help them to
achieve expected outcomes but on the contrary it impacted overall behaviour of the employees
negatively as most of them either opted for voluntary retirement or some of them were hesitant
about retaining their jobs. However, this did help the organization to encourage their employees
so that thy can agree for negotiation. Personal factors impact behaviour of employees because it
expectations from the employees changes, attitude of senior management changes towards the
employees. From this it can be said that cognitive or personal factors impacted observational
learning of employees i.e. they were expected to behave in desired manner for positive rewards,
increased outcome expectations i.e. in order to keep up with their jobs they had to work their
overall performance in order to achieve expected outcome and for this they were required to
increase their self- efficiency (Ng and Lucianetti, 2016).
Environmental factors
Environmental factors are also one of those factors that can impact upon individual’s
overall behaviour and can also impact overall code of conduct of the employees as this factor
helps in explaining the environment in which employees perform their behaviour. This factor
takes into account experience of the an individual and the way in which they behave within that
environment. There are various kinds of factors within the case study that impact conduct of
employees and their behaviour. One of the changes that organization brought within their
strategy was adopting digital technology because of which staff members were influenced at
large scale. Journalist were also impact because of their reports or article’s popularity can be
easily measured and judgement and opinion of senior management would impact their work
because of which behaviour of journalist was impacted at large scale. This online popularity
measurement also impacted editors as they were required to prioritize the news or events on the
basis of the popularity of the articles. Looses the were faced by the organization and in order to
overcome those loses they had to made some redundancy within the jobs because of which
overall environment of the organization was getting impacted, employees who had to focus upon
keeping their jobs were having a negative experience because of which code of conduct of the
employees was getting impacted many of them started searching for new jobs, some of them had
to compromise with their jobs in order to keep their jobs. Some of the staff members were even
anxious about keeping their jobs (Ozyilmaz, Erdogan and Karaeminogullari, 2018).
Behavioural factors
3

These are the factors that focuses upon code of conduct of employees as well because of
various reasons. As printing department of the organization was closed so all of those staff
members were offered retraining in order to increase their ability and skills so that they can fulfil
new roles and responsibilities offered to them and engage within a desired behaviour. Adaptation
of new technology also increased the need and requirement of providing of IT training, some of
the staff members also pointed out risk of adaptation of new system. Not only this, adaptation of
digital technology overburdened the staff members with work because of which staff members
were expected to increase their self- efficiency so that they can behave in a desired behaviour
(Ozyilmaz, Erdogan and Karaeminogullari, 2018). These are the main factors because of which
code of the conduct of staff members can be impacted and their overall behaviour is also
influenced.
CONCLUSION
From the above essay it can be concluded that there are many kinds of factors that can
impact or affect code of conduct of employees. If these factors are not focused upon then it can
impact overall employees’ behaviour. These chances within overall behaviour of employees an
be both positive and negative. It has been analysed that there are various kinds of theories that
can help organization to understand impact of factors upon overall behaviour of employees.
Social cognitive theory is one of those theories that can help organizations in understanding
impact of different kinds of factors upon overall behaviour of the staff members or impact those
factors can have upon overall code of conduct of employees of an organization.
4

REREFENCES
Books and Journals
Collins, E.I., and et. al., 2019. Two observational studies examining the effect of a social norm
and a health message on the purchase of vegetables in student canteen
settings. Appetite. 132. pp.122-130.
Jenkins, L., Hall, H. and Raeside, R., 2018. Applications and applicability of social cognitive
theory in information science research. Manuscript of paper submitted to Journal
Librarianship and Information Science.
Ng, T.W. and Lucianetti, L., 2016. Within-individual increases in innovative behavior and
creative, persuasion, and change self-efficacy over time: A social–cognitive theory
perspective. Journal of Applied Psychology. 101(1). p.14.
Ozyilmaz, A., Erdogan, B. and Karaeminogullari, A., 2018. Trust in organization as a moderator
of the relationship between self‐efficacy and workplace outcomes: A social cognitive
theory‐based examination. Journal of Occupational and Organizational
Psychology. 91(1). pp.181-204.
Persson, R., and et. al., 2014. The relationship between self-efficacy and help evasion. Health
education & behavior. 41(1). pp.7-11.
5