Blind spots Bazerman, Max H; Tenbrunsel, Ann E
2011., 20110301, 2011, 2011-03-01, 20110101
eBook
When confronted with an ethical dilemma, most of us like to think we would stand up for our principles. But we are not as ethical as we think we are. In Blind Spots, leading business ethicists Max ...Bazerman and Ann Tenbrunsel examine the ways we overestimate our ability to do what is right and how we act unethically without meaning to. From the collapse of Enron and corruption in the tobacco industry, to sales of the defective Ford Pinto and the downfall of Bernard Madoff, the authors investigate the nature of ethical failures in the business world and beyond, and illustrate how we can become more ethical, bridging the gap between who we are and who we want to be.
In many of the business scandals of the new millennium, the perpetrators were surrounded by people who could have recognized the misbehavior, yet failed to notice it. To explain such inaction, ...management scholars have been developing the area of behavioral ethics and the more specific topic of bounded ethicality—the systematic and predictable ways in which even good people engage in unethical conduct without their own awareness. In this paper, we review research on both bounded ethicality and bounded awareness, and connect the two areas to highlight the challenges of encouraging managers and leaders to notice and act to stop unethical conduct. We close with directions for future research and suggest that noticing unethical behavior should be considered a critical leadership skill.
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Many written forms required by businesses and governments rely on honest reporting. Proof of honest intent is typically provided through signature at the end of, e.g., tax returns or insurance policy ...forms. Still, people sometimes cheat to advance their financial self-interests—at great costs to society. We test an easy-to-implement method to discourage dishonesty: signing at the beginning rather than at the end of a self-report, thereby reversing the order of the current practice. Using laboratory and field experiments, we find that signing beforerather than afterthe opportunity to cheat makes ethics salient when they are needed most and significantly reduces dishonesty.
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People routinely engage in dishonest acts without feeling guilty about their behavior. When and why does this occur? Across four studies, people justified their dishonest deeds through moral ...disengagement and exhibited motivated forgetting of information that might otherwise limit their dishonesty. Using hypothetical scenarios (Studies 1 and 2) and real tasks involving the opportunity to cheat (Studies 3 and 4), the authors find that one’s own dishonest behavior increased moral disengagement and motivated forgetting of moral rules. Such changes did not occur in the case of honest behavior or consideration of the dishonest behavior of others. In addition, increasing moral saliency by having participants read or sign an honor code significantly reduced unethical behavior and prevented subsequent moral disengagement. Although dishonest behavior motivated moral leniency and led to forgetting of moral rules, honest behavior motivated moral stringency and diligent recollection of moral rules.
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Early research and teaching on ethics focused either on a moral development perspective or on philosophical approaches and used a normative approach by focusing on the question of how people should ...act when resolving ethical dilemmas. In this article, we briefly describe the traditional approach to ethics and then present a (biased) review of the behavioral approach to ethics. We define behavioral ethics as the study of systematic and predictable ways in which individuals make ethical decisions and judge the ethical decisions of others when these decisions are at odds with intuition and the benefits of the broader society. By focusing on a descriptive rather than a normative approach to ethics, behavioral ethics is better suited than traditional approaches to addressing the increasing demand from society for a deeper understanding of what causes even good people to cross ethical boundaries. Adapted from the source document.
Four laboratory studies show that people are more likely to accept others’ unethical behavior when ethical degradation occurs slowly rather than in one abrupt shift. Participants served in the role ...of watchdogs charged with catching instances of cheating. The watchdogs in our studies were less likely to criticize the actions of others when their behavior eroded gradually, over time, rather than in one abrupt shift. We refer to this phenomenon as the slippery-slope effect. Our studies also demonstrate that at least part of this effect can be attributed to implicit biases that result in a failure to notice ethical erosion when it occurs slowly. Broadly, our studies provide evidence as to when and why people accept cheating by others and examine the conditions under which the slippery-slope effect occurs.
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7.
When Perspective Taking Increases Taking Epley, Nicholas; Caruso, Eugene M; Bazerman, Max H
Journal of personality and social psychology,
11/2006, Volume:
91, Issue:
5
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Group members often reason egocentrically, believing that they deserve more than their fair share of group resources. Leading people to consider other members' thoughts and perspectives can reduce ...these egocentric (self-centered) judgments such that people claim that it is fair for them to take less; however, the consideration of others' thoughts and perspectives actually increases egoistic (selfish) behavior such that people actually take more of available resources. A series of experiments demonstrates this pattern in competitive contexts in which considering others' perspectives activates egoistic theories of their likely behavior, leading people to counter by behaving more egoistically themselves. This reactive egoism is attenuated in cooperative contexts. Discussion focuses on the implications of reactive egoism in social interaction and on strategies for alleviating its potentially deleterious effects.
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A series of financial scandals revealed a key weakness in the American business model: the failure of the U.S. auditing system to deliver true independence. We offer a two-tiered analysis of what ...went wrong. At the more micro tier, we advance moral seduction theory, explaining why professionals are often unaware of how morally compromised they have become by conflicts of interest. At the more macro tier, we offer issue-cycle theory, explaining why conflicts of interest of the sort that compromise major accounting firms are so pervasive.
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Should a Catholic hospital abort a life-threatening pregnancy or let a pregnant woman die? Should a religious employer allow his employees access to contraceptives or break with healthcare ...legislation? People and organizations of faith often face moral decisions that have significant consequences. Research in psychology found that religion is typically associated with deontological judgment. Yet deontology consists of many principles, which may, at times, conflict. In three studies, we design a conflict between moral principles and find that the relationship between moral judgment and religiosity is more nuanced than currently assumed. Studies 1 and 2 show that, while religious U.S. Christians and Israeli Jews are more likely to form deontological judgments, they divide between the deontological principles of inaction and indirectness. Using textual analysis, we reveal that specific beliefs regarding divine responsibility and human responsibility distinguish inaction from indirectness deontologists. Study 3 exploits natural differences in religious saliency across days of the week to provide causal evidence that religion raises deontological tendencies on Sundays and selectively increases the appeal of inaction deontology for those who believe in an interventionist and responsible God.
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Experimental mindset has permeated much of the tech sector and is spreading beyond that. These days, most major tech companies, such as Amazon, Facebook, Uber, and Yelp, wouldn't make an important ...change to its platforms without running experiments to understand how it might influence user behavior. Some traditional businesses have been dipping their toes into experiments for decades. And many more are ramping up their efforts in experimentation as they undergo digital transformations. In a dramatic departure from its historic role as an esoteric tool for academic research, the randomized controlled experiment has gone mainstream. Startups, international conglomerates, and government agencies alike have a new tool to test ideas and understand the impact of the products and services they are providing. Here, Luca and Bazerman discuss how to effectively incorporate experimental results into decisions and to determine when and how to experiment.
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