Do Competitive Environments Lead to the Rise and Spread of Unethical Behavior? Parallels from Enron

Kulik, Brian W.; O’Fallon, Michael J.; Salimath, Manjula S.

doi:10.1007/s10551-007-9659-y

Cited by 83 publications

(73 citation statements)

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“…Just as some job perceptions create climates within a team or business unit (Liao and Rupp 2005), the implicit acceptance and enactment of unethical pro-organizational behavior at the individual level or team level may reasonably evolve into an organization-level climate for unethical pro-organizational behavior and the broader enactment of unethical behavior. A progression of unethical practices may be particularly pronounced where the emergence of grassroots-level processes (e.g., pervasive unethical pro-organizational behavior at the individual level) complements the organization's amoral culture (Kulik et al 2008). In this case, the organization's unethical actions may then validate or normalize questionable behaviors throughout the organization such that organizational corruption becomes ubiquitous (Ashforth and Anand 2003).…”

Section: Methodological Considerations and Future Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…621-640, © 2011 INFORMS Because the model of unethical pro-organizational behavior we have proposed in this paper is not meant to be exhaustive or inclusive of all levels within the organization, future research is likely to benefit by extrapolating our treatment of unethical pro-organizational behavior to broader levels of analysis, particularly at the team and organization levels. Such attempts to broaden the scope of unethical pro-organizational behavior are likely to be particularly fruitful given that models in which the influence of individual unethical behaviors becomes more organizationally widespread are less well developed or understood in extant business ethics research (see Kulik et al 2008). Furthermore, elaborating the role of unethical pro-organizational behavior in a multilevel context is likely to address the Brass et al (1998) call for a better understanding of the emergence of unethical behavior in organizationally embedded social networks.…”

Section: Methodological Considerations and Future Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

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When Employees Do Bad Things for Good Reasons: Examining Unethical Pro-Organizational Behaviors

Umphress

Bingham

2011

Organization Science

534

693

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W e propose that employees sometimes engage in unethical acts with the intent to benefit their organization, its members, or both-a construct we term unethical pro-organizational behavior. We suggest that positive social exchange relationships and organizational identification may lead to unethical pro-organizational behavior indirectly via neutralization, the process by which the moral content of unethical actions is overlooked. We incorporate situational and individual-level constructs as moderators of these relationships and consider managerial implications and future research.Key words: unethical behavior; social exchange; organizational identification; ethics; moral disengagement; neutralization; guilt; shame; amoral culture; severity History: Published online in Articles in Advance September 15, 2010.When there's a slow-down I may lie to protect the company image by telling the passengers that we're waiting on bags rather than that the mechanic is taking his own sweet time.I would make excuses to protect the company, like if the cabin was filthy, I'd say, "I'm sorry it's dirty. We contracted out our services." I did that more times than I can remember, to protect the company's image (Scott 2003, p. 332, anonymous accounts from two flight attendants)In a survey of more than 2,000 executive assistants and secretaries in Canada and the United States, researchers found that 10% destroyed or removed damaging information, 6.5% wrote documents with misleading or false information, and 5.1% falsified vouchers or expense accounts. All of this unethical activity was performed by employees to benefit their bosses, their organizations, or both (Kleiman 1996). A more recent study on organizational ethics found that more than onethird of U.S. adults surveyed had witnessed unethical activities at their workplace. Of those questioned, 19% observed lying to employees, customers, vendors, or the public (Gurchiek 2006).Clearly, unethical activity is present within organizations. As illustrated by the opening examples of the flight attendants, employees may engage in unethical actions, such as lying, to benefit the organization. In this work, we consider the potential motivations for unethical behaviors conducted to benefit the organization or its agents, a construct we call "unethical pro-organizational behavior." Existing research acknowledges that employees may conduct unethical behaviors on behalf of the organization (Ashforth and Anand 2003, Brief et al. 2001, Pinto et al. 2008), but a construct and theoretically grounded framework for understanding the underlying mechanisms of such behavior has not been thoroughly developed.Our work contributes to the organizational literature in four ways. First, our work is unique in its focus on how positive social exchange and organizational identification can encourage unethical behavior intended to benefit the organization. Although generally thought to elicit favorable and ethical behavior for the organization (Ashforth and Mael 1989, Blau 1964, Gouldner 1960, Tajfel and Turner 1...

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Section: Methodological Considerations and Future Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodological Considerations and Future Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

When Employees Do Bad Things for Good Reasons: Examining Unethical Pro-Organizational Behaviors

Umphress

Bingham

2011

Organization Science

534

693

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…There have been limited efforts to study the social diffusion of unethical behavior within (MacLean, 2001;Mars, 1982) and across (Mohliver, 2012) organizations. However, the obvious importance of diffusion processes in social learning and the spread of corruption (Ashforth & Anand, 2003;Brief et al, 2001;Kulik, O"Fallon, & Salimath, 2008) heighten the importance of understanding how social networks facilitate ethical violations.…”

Section: Socializationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ethically adrift: How others pull our moral compass from true North, and how we can fix it

Moore

Gino

2013

Research in Organizational Behavior

219

174

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“…Studies following the ''bad apples approach'' generally ascribe the locus of explanation to individual agents and their egoistic motives and/or limited capacities to comprehend the moral dimension of corrupt practices in certain situations (e.g., Butterfield et al 2000;Weber and Wasieleski 2001). Research following the ''bad barrel'' approach tends to place the locus of explanation on the structural or systemic level instead, for instance, by investigating institutionalized structures in certain organizational or national contexts that make the occurrence of corrupt practices more likely (e.g., Kulik et al 2008;Toffler 2003). Ashforth et al (2008, p. 679), however, go on to argue that extant corruption research simultaneously neglects other forms of explanation.…”

Section: Conceptual Shortcomings Of Corruption Research: Neglecting Tmentioning

confidence: 99%

Goffman’s Return to Las Vegas: Studying Corruption as Social Interaction

Schoeneborn

Homberg²

2016

J Bus Ethics

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In this paper, we argue that corruption research can benefit from studying corrupt transactions as a particular form of social interaction. We showcase the usefulness of a theoretical focus on social interaction by investigating online user reports on the website Frontdesktip.com. Through this focus, we can observe users sharing experiences and tips on the best ways of bribing hotel clerks in Las Vegas for attaining room upgrades and other complimentary extras. We employ a logistic regression analysis to examine what factors influence the ''successful'' performance of this bribery practice. Our study makes a twofold contribution to existing research on corruption. First, on the theoretical level, we show that the typified and scripted character of social interactions can help explain the occurrence of corrupt transactions. Second, on a methodological level, our study showcases online self-reports as a useful data source to study corrupt transactions in an unobtrusive way.

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Do Competitive Environments Lead to the Rise and Spread of Unethical Behavior? Parallels from Enron

Abstract: social network, Enron, theory of planned behavior, grassroots model, spread of unethical behavior, diffusion, corruption,

Cited by 83 publications

References 50 publications

When Employees Do Bad Things for Good Reasons: Examining Unethical Pro-Organizational Behaviors

When Employees Do Bad Things for Good Reasons: Examining Unethical Pro-Organizational Behaviors

Ethically adrift: How others pull our moral compass from true North, and how we can fix it

Goffman’s Return to Las Vegas: Studying Corruption as Social Interaction

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