Timothy Fort: Let employees listen to their favorite tunes at work

I must admit, my business students have raised an eyebrow when I’ve given them the assignment: Pick a piece of music that puts you into different frames of mind that match moral-development categories.

To oversimplify Lawrence Kohlberg’s famous Theory of Moral Development, people are ethical because they are afraid of the consequences of being caught (e.g., by law enforcement, regulators or through a lawsuit) or because they want to sustain relationships (with employees, co-workers or customers) or simply because they aspire to do good things. I want the students to experience these cognitive frames of mind through music.

Over the past five years, I’ve assigned this reflection paper in part so students better understand the cognitive mindsets we have in making decisions. The bigger goal, however, is for them to have tools so that, when they have graduated and are at work and recognize they are not in the frame of mind they need to be, they can turn to their own musical choices—sort of their own playlist—to put them into that right frame of mind.

Music isn’t the only cultural artifact that could nudge them. Sports, movies, dance, cuisine—even our dogs—could have a similar impact.

It’s not the typical business-school assignment, even for an ethics class, which by its nature features topics different from those in most classes.

Music is a particularly useful way for an employee (or anyone else) to get to the frame of mind that nudges him or her to be ethical in business. Music has a physio-psychological impact on us. It gets into our bones. We don’t just listen to music. We tap our toes and our hands. We bob our head and maybe even sway our shoulders and hips. Music impacts all those hormones that are cool to talk about these days, releasing dopamine and endorphins and reducing cortisol (stress) levels.

I’m not talking about having a corporate anthem for everyone to sing. A 2021 version of “The Lego Movie” song “Everything is Awesome” is not what I have in mind. Nor is this a cynical ploy to control employees (or students) by selecting authority-approved tunes. I let the students choose the songs that put them into each frame of mind; the choice is theirs to pick the songs and to use them when the time comes. No loss of moral autonomy here.

So, what are these categories? Doing a bit of a riff on Kohlberg’s theory, I identify six: us vs. them (a competitive mindset), importance of structure (featuring discipline and following rules), valuing relationships (a Golden Rule sentiment), enthusiastic joy (relishing moments that seem to be as good as things can get), perspective (a step-back-and-think kind of view) and transcendence (a sense of things being much more profound than they initially seem to be).

Finally, because we might experience several of these frames of mind during a given day, a song that recognizes the movement among them (such as The Byrds’ 1965 interpretation in “Turn! Turn! Turn!” of King Solomon’s “to everything there is a season”).

Compliance has its place. Training programs have their place. But I want to suggest, based on the success I have had with my business students, that giving them a chance to select their own songs that put them in these six frames of mind can go a long way to creating an ethical organizational culture.•

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Timothy Fort is a professor of business law and ethics at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business.