Punishment in Organizations: A Review, Propositions, and Research Suggestions

Abstract

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Does Gender Raise the Ethical Bar? Exploring the Punishment of Ethical Violations at Work

“…Punishment has significant implications for professionals' career outcomes (Butterfield, Trevino, Wade & Ball, 2005;Trevino, 1992). It reduces professionals' status in their field and has long-lasting effects, both psychologically (Arvey & Ivancevich, 1980) and professionally. When punished unfairly, people's job performance, commitment, and organizational citizenship behavior decline, while counterproductive behaviors increase (Cohen-Charash & Spector, 2001).…”

“…Finally, we extend knowledge of factors affecting punishment severity (cf. Arvey & Ivancevich, 1980;Butterfield et al, 2005;Tetlock et al, 2007;Trevino, 1992;Wiltermuth & Flynn, 2013), an important issue at work. Our research is the first to document that gender predicts punishment severity.…”

Punishment in practice

“…Furthermore, in the professions, great harm can be done by ethical breaches to clients, colleagues, and the profession as a whole. Punishment is appropriate to prevent or deter future breaches (Arvey & Ivancevich, 1980;Carlsmith et al, 2002), to signal to outsiders that the breach is not representative of the profession (Abbott, 1983;Trevino, 1992) or to rehabilitate the offender. For a variety of reasons (which might include the confidentiality of employee records, or difficulty in gaining institutional review board approval for punishment interventions), we do not have a good picture of whether those who engage in unethical behavior at work are punished.…”

“…Many sources state that punishment may produce negative side effects such as resentment and weakened motivation (Trevino & Weaver, 1998;Wheeler, 1976). Punishment may possibly produce undesirable behaviors on the part of the employee, such as absenteeism, or aggression against the punisher (Arvey & Ivancevich, 1980). While many managers find punishing employees unpleasant, disturbingly, some enjoy it (Butterfield et al, 1996).…”

“…There are various theories as to why behavioral breaches should be punished, ranging from the criminal justice literature (Bibas, 2006;Kadish, 1999) to social psychology (Carlsmith, Darley, & Robinson, 2002) to management (Arvey & Ivancevich, 1980;Trevino & Weaver, 1998). However, very little attention has been given in the management literature as to how we should punish ethical breaches.…”