Social Norms and Market Norms (*)

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Whether we realize it or not, we mentally live in two different worlds. In one of these worlds, social norms dominate, and in the other, market norms (1). Imagine a scenario in your mind, in which two young men, around thirty years old, work for the same company. The young man invites his colleague to dinner. The lady hesitates a little and accepts the invitation. They eat their meal in a nice restaurant, chatting to music, and both are pleased with the meeting. The young man drops his friend off at home and decides to meet again the following week. This cycle repeats for three weeks, and at the end of the fourth week, does the young man expect anything when he drops his friend off at home? If so, what does he expect?

When I pose this question to the group in my meetings, a smile spreads across the faces of the participants and answers like “he expects a kiss on the cheek” or “he expects a coffee invitation” start to come. “What happens if none of these things happen and he says to his friend, ‘Do you know how much this relationship is starting to cost me?’” When I ask, there is always laughter from the room and the whole group agrees that the young man’s material and spiritual investment in the relationship has been reduced to zero in the face of his girlfriend’s anger. This disrespectful statement has taken the “flirting” relationship between men and women, which is based on social norms, to another dimension where sexuality is exchanged for money.

 

The boundaries of social norms are blurred. Social norms are experienced in a world where the brain, which feels love, understanding, sacrifice, helping, neighborliness, and friendship, is dominant. In contrast, the world of market norms is drawn with extremely clear boundaries. Concepts such as wages, salary, bonuses, and profits determine the balance between what a person gives in a relationship and what they expect to receive. Western culture is a mosaic where every stone and piece fits into its place and completes the whole, while Turkish culture is a marbled paper where colors preserve their characteristics but transitivity completes the whole (2). Therefore, in a culture like Turkey where social norms dominate, trying to achieve results with market norms is doomed to failure.

In a study conducted, some subjects were asked to create meaningful sentences from meaningless words about climate change and weather, and some subjects were asked to create meaningful sentences from meaningless words about stock market and market movements for fifteen minutes. Later, while the subjects were going out to collect their wages, they were asked to come across someone (in reality, a research assistant) who needed help because he had spilled his pens on the ground, and the helping behavior of the subjects was observed. It was observed that those who were interested in market norms showed lower helping behavior than those who were interested in social norms. In a different arrangement of the study, the subjects were asked to solve a puzzle that was considered difficult. In this group, those who were preoccupied with market norms asked for help later and showed less cooperation and helping behavior (3).

 

Solving problems with logic

The results of these studies are as follows. If we start making people think about market norms, they will continue to position their own relationships based on the same norms in the following process. Knowing this provides great benefits in business life, intimate relationships, relationships with children within the family and social relationships, and saves the person from making important mistakes and getting themselves into a difficult situation.


A manager who thinks that he/she is making “logical” explanations such as “the gross amount of your salary is this amount…”, “you cost the company this much…”, “if you don’t like it, you can leave, there are many people who are eager to replace you…” to his/her employee who expresses his/her dissatisfaction with his/her salary or position in business life, has entered the world of market norms in the employee’s mind. When this world is entered, the employee makes a “receivable-payable” calculation. This calculation is made by weighing it on the scale of justice, and this scale is subjective. Therefore, a person always sees himself/herself as a creditor due to human nature. The feeling of being a creditor does not leave a person at peace.

 

In business life, especially those working in sales organizations expect a reward for every additional effort they will make outside of their routine services, and senior managers feel the pressure from their subordinates on this issue. This is an extremely dangerous situation. It is a more appropriate solution to meet such special reward-requiring situations with different reward and gift options instead of financial reward. If an employee is offered two options: a financial reward of 10,000 liras or a weekend vacation with their spouse, the vast majority will choose the financial reward. However, the amount in question is already spent in the mind before it arrives. In contrast, the memories of a long weekend vacation with their spouse are never forgotten.

 

“We are a family”(!)

Today, many companies emphasize “family”. However, there is a very dangerous threshold at this point. The fact that the manager, owner and employees are family imposes mutual responsibilities on the parties. In environments where family is emphasized, employees are not left alone when they encounter a significant problem in their lives, and when things go a little bad, their social rights are not paid and they are not kicked out. Relationships where social norms are emphasized include a long-term commitment. In cases where this is not realized, the hypocrisy experienced is known by the employees and the expression “family” has no value.

 

A similar relationship approach is also being tried to be implemented between companies and customers today. Some companies adopt a stance that states that they do not look at their customers as customers, but as “a family member” or “a special person”, promising personalized service. This special loving family and social norm emphasis, which is especially common in the banking sector; ends when your credit card debt is two days late, and you crash into the cold and hard realities of the world of market norms. All you have to do is get angry and disappointed with the bank you trusted by believing its loving promises.

 

Punishment can be a reward

I learned from a study conducted in Israel that a problem we experienced while raising my own children is universal. When some parents are late because of work after the kindergarten closes, and some of the staff have to wait for their children, it creates a problem for businesses. As a solution to this problem, a manager decides to impose a penalty on the parents who are late and puts it into practice. However, after a short while, it is seen that the families start to be late even more. Because the families who are late start to think that they do not need to feel the “embarrassment” they experience as an extension of social norms. What is interesting is that the situation has not changed even though the manager who noticed the situation gave up this practice (4).

 

Turkish culture is shaped within a relationship framework that lives predominantly with the feeling brain and is dominated by social norms. For this reason, those who try to manage and organize their relationships with the patterns of Western culture are constantly stuck in experiences they cannot make sense of. This is the reason why leadership trainings through Anglo-Saxon-based programs do not yield the expected results in Turkey. Because managing is closely related to culture. When Western culture realized this, it started to follow a personnel and management policy that emphasizes belonging to the institution and institutional identity. Since cigarette manufacturing companies have difficulty finding qualified employees, they try to involve their employees in social responsibility projects to make them feel proud of belonging to that company.

 

Consider the soldiers and security forces who have been serving in the Southeast for years under the conditions Turkey is in. How much salary do people risk their lives in a region they have never visited and will never visit again? Why do they do this? The answer to this question cannot be to deserve their salary. Those who serve in these regions have undergone a value education that defines serving their country and, if necessary, giving up their lives for this cause as their reason for existence. This situation, which is impossible for those who have not undergone such education to make sense of, shows the power of the importance of social norms.

 

Conclusion

Mixing social norms and market norms yields extremely dangerous results. As seen in the kindergarten study, if there are violations in these norms, it is not easy to turn back. Material rewards may be valid for short-term goals, but it is the social norms that will make a difference in the long term. In a relationship-oriented culture like the Turkish culture, employees should be aware of the power of their social norms and stay away from market norms in order to create synergy in the work environment.

 

(*) This article was modified and taken from the book “Akılsız Duyguların Cezasını Kararlar Çeker” published by Remzi Kitabevi.

 

Sources:
  1. Clarc, MS, Mills, J. Interpersonal attractions in exchange of communal relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1979; 37:12-24.
  2. Sevil, İ.: How Does the Mind of a Turk Work, Humanist
  3. Vohs KD, Mead NL, Goode MR. The psychological consequences of money. Science 2006; 314(5802): 1154-1156.
  4. Gneezy U, Rustichini A. A fine is a price. The Journal of Legal Studies 2000; 29(1): 1-17.

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