Purpose The purpose of this paper is to answer the question, “Can particular types of altruism influence people to make unethical decisions?” The purpose of seeking to answer this question is to better understand those cases in personal, public and commercial life whereby a decision-maker is influenced by what is widely perceived to be a positive thing – altruism – to make unethical choices. Design/methodology/approach An experiment was designed to test the influence of different categories of altruism on decision-making about whether to find another guilty for a regulatory transgression. This involved the establishment and running of a student panel at a UK university, which was given the task of determining the guilt or otherwise of two students accused of plagiarism – one from a poor background; one from a rich background. Through a survey of both the decision-makers and their judgments, and by analyzing the data using t-tests and Mann–Whitney tests, the associations between different categories of altruism and the decisions made could be ascertained. Findings A total of 70.7% of the participants voted “not-guilty” for the poor student, whereas 68.3% voted “guilty” for the wealthy student. This indicated that self-interested, namely, egoistic altruism complemented by social and self-esteem needs gratification was significantly associated with violating foundational ethical principles. Originality/value This is the first study to be done that attempts to evaluate the relationships between different categories of altruism and ethical decision-making. The findings here challenge aggregating all forms of empathy together when exploring the antecedents of unethical behavior.

Purpose-The purpose of this paper is to adopt the principles of labour economics, behavioural economics and social influence to identify constraints and enablers that influence people's choices in relation to the labour market decisions. Design/methodology/approach-a sequential empirical methodology has been adopted, where data from the British Household Panel Survey (2009) has been collected to explain various statuses of labour market activity, with a focus on workless-ness, across the categories of unemployment, being a student, disability, retirement and being a carer-differentiating for gender and age. The paper develops and substantiates the hypothesis theoretically and gives some indications using a multidisciplinary approach. Findings-we found that labour market opportunities, choices and achievements are affected by the interrelations and interactions of an individual's demographic and psychological characteristics (such as age, gender, heuristics, perceptions, beliefs, attitude's goals and ambitions) along with external factors (such as geographical, socio-cultural and economic conditions). Originality/value-this study makes a unique contribution to labour economics as we abandon the traditional welfare approach and use a more general framework of capabilities and refined functioning to interpret how different types of constraints-ranging from socioeconomic conditions and environmental background to specific features of individual processes of choices and decision making-affect preferences and functioning's. The study also identifies how "under-employment" complements the use of BE/social influence in explaining labour market inactivity, and highlights how the findings of this study have important implications for policy. 1. Extending the Homo Economicus: horizontal and vertical dimensions Working and non-working decisions are the resultant of many interdependent forces at work. Sociality is one of those forces which interfaces with our sense of identity, affecting the emotional costs and benefits of nonemployment and employment beyond the factual monetary gains and losses.

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