Business culture and dishonesty in the banking industry

Cohn, Alain; Fehr, Ernst; Maréchal, Michel André

doi:10.1038/nature13977

Cited by 602 publications

(431 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…For example, research in finance has focused on the importance of 'fit' between the values of employees and their organisations for shaping ethical practices (Van Hoorn 2015), on tendencies for dishonesty with banking (Cohn et al 2014), stigmatisation of industry practices (Roulet 2014) and the need for professionals and regulators to monitor and improve the culture of financial organisations (IIF 2009;Sants 2010;Wheatley 2012). …”

Section: Financial Trading and Safety Culturementioning

confidence: 99%

Safety Culture in Financial Trading: An Analysis of Trading Misconduct Investigations

Leaver

Reader

2017

J Bus Ethics

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High-profile failures in financial trading have led to interest in how the culture of the industry produces risky and unethical behaviours among traders. Yet, there is no established theoretical framework for studying this: we apply safety culture theory to examine ten recent highprofile trading mishaps investigated by the UK financial regulator. The results show that the dimensions of safety culture (e.g. Management Commitment to Safety, Systems and procedures) used to understand organisational accidents in domains such as aviation also explain failures in Risk Management within financial trading organisations. This counters narratives focusing on traders who are unethical 'rule breakers', and emphasises the value of a systemic approach, whereby safety culture theory is used to explain why risky behaviours in financial trading occur. Safety culture therefore provides a conceptual basis for further research on risky and unethical behaviours in financial trading, alongside providing insights for possible intervention.

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Section: Financial Trading and Safety Culturementioning

confidence: 99%

Safety Culture in Financial Trading: An Analysis of Trading Misconduct Investigations

Leaver

Reader

2017

J Bus Ethics

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“…To measure favouritism towards oneself and local community under maximally anonymous conditions, we modified the random allocation game 9,28,29 . In this game (Fig.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Moralistic gods, supernatural punishment and the expansion of human sociality

Purzycki

Apicella

Atkinson

et al. 2016

Nature

392

275

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Moralistic gods, supernatural punishment and the expansion of human sociality Benjamin Grant Purzycki 1 , Coren Apicella 2 , Quentin D. Atkinson 3,4 , Emma Cohen 5,6 , Rita Anne Mcnamara 7 , Aiyana K. Willard 8 , Dimitris Xygalatas 9,10,11 , Ara norenzayan 7 & Joseph henrich 7,12,13 Since the origins of agriculture, the scale of human cooperation and societal complexity has dramatically expanded 1,2 . This fact challenges standard evolutionary explanations of prosociality because well-studied mechanisms of cooperation based on genetic relatedness, reciprocity and partner choice falter as people increasingly engage in fleeting transactions with genetically unrelated strangers in large anonymous groups. To explain this rapid expansion of prosociality, researchers have proposed several mechanisms 3,4 . Here we focus on one key hypothesis: cognitive representations of gods as increasingly knowledgeable and punitive, and who sanction violators of interpersonal social norms, foster and sustain the expansion of cooperation, trust and fairness towards co-religionist strangers 5-8 . We tested this hypothesis using extensive ethnographic interviews and two behavioural games designed to measure impartial rule-following among people (n = 591, observations = 35,400) from eight diverse communities from around the world: (1) inland Tanna, Vanuatu; (2) coastal Tanna, Vanuatu; (3) Yasawa, Fiji; (4) Lovu, Fiji; (5) Pesqueiro, Brazil; (6) Pointe aux Piments, Mauritius; (7) the Tyva Republic (Siberia), Russia; and (8) Hadzaland, Tanzania. Participants reported adherence to a wide array of world religious traditions including Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism, as well as notably diverse local traditions, including animism and ancestor worship. Holding a range of relevant variables constant, the higher participants rated their moralistic gods as punitive and knowledgeable about human thoughts and actions, the more coins they allocated to geographically distant co-religionist strangers relative to both themselves and local co-religionists. Our results support the hypothesis that beliefs in moralistic, punitive and knowing gods increase impartial behaviour towards distant co-religionists, and therefore can contribute to the expansion of prosociality.Among the other factors 2-4,7 that influence the emergence of human ultrasociality and complex societies, the diffusion of explicit beliefs in increasingly moralistic, punitive and knowledgeable gods may have played a crucial role 6,7 . People may trust in, cooperate with and interact fairly within wider social circles, partly because they believe that knowing gods will punish them if they do not. Additionally, through increased frequency and consistency in belief and behaviour sets, commitments to the same gods coordinate people's expectations about social interactions [5][6][7][8][9] . Moreover, the social radius within which people are willing to engage in behaviours that benefit others at a cost to themselves may enlarge as gods' powers to monitor and punish increase 10 . To account f...

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“…honesty | cheating | social decision making | brain stimulation | dorsolateral prefrontal cortex D ishonest behavior is pervasive and carries important economic and societal consequences (1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6). For example, illegal tax evasion is thought to account for over 5% of the world's gross domestic product (7), and total bribes to public officials are estimated at over US $1 trillion annually (8).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Increasing honesty in humans with noninvasive brain stimulation

Maréchal

Cohn

Ugazio

et al. 2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Honesty plays a key role in social and economic interactions and is crucial for societal functioning. However, breaches of honesty are pervasive and cause significant societal and economic problems that can affect entire nations. Despite its importance, remarkably little is known about the neurobiological mechanisms supporting honest behavior. We demonstrate that honesty can be increased in humans with transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Participants (n = 145) completed a die-rolling task where they could misreport their outcomes to increase their earnings, thereby pitting honest behavior against personal financial gain. Cheating was substantial in a control condition but decreased dramatically when neural excitability was enhanced with tDCS. This increase in honesty could not be explained by changes in material self-interest or moral beliefs and was dissociated from participants' impulsivity, willingness to take risks, and mood. A follow-up experiment (n = 156) showed that tDCS only reduced cheating when dishonest behavior benefited the participants themselves rather than another person, suggesting that the stimulated neural process specifically resolves conflicts between honesty and material self-interest. Our results demonstrate that honesty can be strengthened by noninvasive interventions and concur with theories proposing that the human brain has evolved mechanisms dedicated to control complex social behaviors.honesty | cheating | social decision making | brain stimulation | dorsolateral prefrontal cortex

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Business culture and dishonesty in the banking industry

Cited by 602 publications

References 21 publications

Safety Culture in Financial Trading: An Analysis of Trading Misconduct Investigations

Safety Culture in Financial Trading: An Analysis of Trading Misconduct Investigations

Moralistic gods, supernatural punishment and the expansion of human sociality

Increasing honesty in humans with noninvasive brain stimulation

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