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ADDITIONAL QUESTION 4: WHAT IS THE EXTENT OF LIES AND CHEATING IN
SOCIETY?
LIES AND CHEATING
Managers need honest information from other employees and stakeholders to achieve
optimal organizational performance. Yet, truthfulness is particularly challenging for many
people.
At what age do individuals begin to lie? Children lie and deceive others as soon as they
can formulate and articulate alternative strategies, which is soon after they can speak.
oA child will deny having eaten forbidden food if the consequence of truth telling
is punishment.
oIf a forbidden activity is fun, children try to experience the forbidden activity
beyond parental observation and then deny having done so if asked. This pattern
remains a challenge throughout life.
EXHIBIT 1.6 provides results of a nationwide adult telephone survey:
91% lied regularly
35% stole office supplies
33% lied on a job application
ALTRUISM
Moral imperfection, however, is just a small aspect of human activity. If adults lie once a
day, then they are honest and truthful hundreds or thousands of times every day. At any
given moment, hundreds of millions of acts of kindness take place around the world.
According to developmental psychologist Michael Tomasello, helping behaviors are also
innate because preverbal children exhibit them prior to being taught rules of polite
behavior by their parents.
DISCUSSION ACTIVITY
Have students review EXHIBIT 1.7 “WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF YOU LOST YOUR
WALLET.” How have they responded after finding a lost wallet or money that did not belong to
them, such as when a cashier returned too much change?
CHAPTER QUESTION 5: WHY DO GOOD PEOPLE BEHAVE UNETHICALLY?
Ethics would be easy to manage if it were simply a matter of detecting and dismissing
evil people. But that is not the nature of life in organizations.
DISCUSSION ACTIVITY
Ask students if they have ever lied to a boss, customer, or co-worker. How did they justify their
actions? Have them tell stories in small groups about these situations.
UNINTENDED UNETHICAL BEHAVIORS
Sometimes the unethical outcome was not intended. The person may have good motives,
but insufficient knowledge or awareness.
Sometimes the ethics of a situation are ambiguous or complex.
The unintended unethical behavioral outcome could result from a misaligned
management system rather than the fault of a particular employee.
CHOOSING BETWEEN COMPETING VALUES
Sometimes ethical dilemmas arise and the decision maker must choose between two
competing values, both of which are morally appropriate. But in choosing one set of
moral values over another, those not benefitted from the decision can claim the choice
was unethical.
Rushworth Kidder notes that “The really tough choices, then, don’t center upon right
versus wrong. They involve right versus right.”
Kidder identifies four classic ethical dilemmas based on competing values. All four of
these ethical dilemmas represent hard choices where an aggrieved party can claim the
decision maker has behaved unethically even though the decision maker thoughtfully
made what he or she considered to be a highly ethical decision:
Truth versus Loyalty
Individual versus Community
Short-Term versus Long-Term
Justice versus Mercy
INTENTIONAL UNETHICAL BEHAVIORS
The most basic justification for behaving unethically, as suggested by Kohlberg’s theory
of moral development, is to avoid punishment and receive praise.
On a broad contextual level, some good people attribute their occasional unethical
misbehaviors on an organizational culture that either encourages or tolerates them.
Some good people behave unethically as a result of feeling pressured to do so.
A survey conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management and the Ethics
Resource Center found that 24% of the respondents were pressured to compromise
ethical standards either periodically, fairly often, or all the time. Of those feeling
pressured, the top five organizational sources were:
1. Following the boss’s directives (experienced by 49%)
2. Meeting overly aggressive business or financial objectives (48%)
3. Helping the organization to survive (40%)
4. Meeting schedule pressures (35%)
5. Wanting to be a team player (27%)
Stanley Milgram, a professor of social psychology, conducted a series of troubling social
experiments demonstrating how good people are capable of physically harming others if
directed to do so by someone in authority willing to take responsibility for the act.
oThe results: 65% of the research subjects proceeded, at 15 volt increments of
increasing severity, to the maximum 450 volts of punishment despite the learner’s
agonizing pleas to stop.
oDuring the post-experiment debriefing, research subjects reported that they
continued to obey the experimenter’s commands even though their own
conscience urged them to stop physically harming the learner.
Behaving unethically to be a team player highlights the importance of an employee’s
sense of belongingness.
Lastly, a good person may behave unethically because the end goal is so essential that the
ends justify the means.
oExecutives may provide false financial statements to the public because they
believe this is the only way their companies can survive a difficult financial
situation.
oAn employee might provide a boss with false performance information so as to
protect his or her job status.
FAILURE TO REPORT UNETHICAL BEHAVIORS
Based on in-depth interviews with employees, researchers found that 85% had not raised
an important issue or concern to their bosses on at least one occasion. The top reasons for
not informing a manager about unethical behaviors were:
Fear of being labeled or viewed negatively by others, such as being considered a
troublemaker, tattletale, or complainer
Fear of damaging relationships with the person committing the unethical act
Fear of retaliation or punishment from the person committing the unethical act
Fear of negatively impacting the life of the person committing the unethical act
Fear of being blamed for the problem
Belief that management would not act on the issue if informed
The justifications provided earlier for unintended unethical behaviors and intentional
ethical behaviors also justify remaining silent.
These justifications for inaction are apparent in “Good Samaritan” research
studies that examine whether a person’s willingness to assist a stranger is based
on personality characteristics, issue sensitivity, or a contextual factor, such as
time.
Researchers examined what attributes best predicted which seminarians ignored
the person’s pleas for help.
Seminarians in a hurry were the least likely to help, even if they had scored highly
for serving others or had just practiced giving a sermon on the Good Samaritan.
Time pressures, and other situational factors, can blind good people to the ethical
ramifications of their decisions or influence them to behave unethically.
DISCUSSION ACTIVITY
Ask students if they have ever observed someone behaving unethically at work (or in school).
Then have them reflect on a situation where someone behaved unethically at work and they: (a)
took some positive action to correct the wrong behavior, and (b) did not take any action to
correct the wrong-doing. Why did they take action in one situation but not the other? List the
reasons for further discussion.
CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER AND ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS SUMMARY
Additional Question 1: What is ethics?
Ethics is the set of principles a person uses to determine whether an action is good or bad.
Interactions involving owners, customers, employees, lenders, suppliers, and government
officials have an ethical dimension.
An action sequence consists of the motivation behind the act, the act itself, and the
consequences of the act.
FOR DICUSSION: Describe a situation when someone said your action was ethical and one
situation when someone said your action was unethical. What reasons were given (or potentially
could be given) for these evaluations? Are these reasons appropriate reasons?
Additional Question 2: How often do employees experience ethical dilemmas?
People experience ethical dilemmas at work every day.
Just about every decision made during a day has ethical ramifications. The decision can be
FOR DISCUSSION: How long ago was the last time you faced an ethical dilemma?
Chapter Question 1: What are the most common types of unethical behaviors in
organizations?
Every organization is confronted with ethical and unethical behaviors.
The types of ethical misconduct observed most within the previous 12 months include:
company resource abuse, abusive or intimidating behavior towards employees, lying to
employees, and email or Internet abuse (18%)
FOR DISCUSSION: Describe an ethical dilemma you faced at work (full- or part-time job) or as
a member of an organization (church, nonprofit, sports, student group).
Chapter Question 2: In what ways do unethical behaviors increase organizational costs?
Managers often underestimate the costs associated with unethical behaviors. The most direct
cost is lost business.
Lawsuits are one of the most easily quantifiable costs associated with unethical behaviors.
Employee theft represents a cost directly incurred by the organization for hiring
untrustworthy employees. The biggest source of retail industry theft is employees, not
customers.
FOR DISCUSSION: Describe a situation when you observed an employee or customer stealing.
Did you do anything about it? Why?
Chapter Question 3: What are the competitive advantages of creating and sustaining an
ethical organization?
Attract and retain high quality employees.
Attract and retain high quality customers.
Attract and retain high quality suppliers.
FOR DISCUSSION: Describe a situation when you have chosen a job or purchased a product for
ethical considerations.
Additional Question 3: What are the different perspectives on human nature?
Human nature refers to the moral, psychological, and social characteristics of human beings.
Philosophers, theologians, anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists have explored and
debated for centuries the moral dimensions of human nature at birth. No consensus has been
achieved.
FOR DISCUSSION: Do you believe people are born morally good, bad, or neutral? Why?
Chapter Question 4: Describe the six stages of moral developments.
Harvard psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg (1927-1987), influenced by the writings of Jean
Piaget, analyzed how children and adults from many cultures formed moral judgments in
response to a series of ethical dilemmas and conceptualized six stages of moral development.
Stage 1: Obedience-and-punishment orientation. Right is determined by obeying rules from a
superior authority and avoiding punishment.
State 5: Social contract orientation. Right is determined by preserving mutually agreed upon
human rights and changing unjust laws for the sake of community welfare. Individual
freedom should be limited only when such freedom interferes with other people’s freedom.
FOR DISCUSSION: Was it right or wrong for Heinz to steal the drug for his dying wife? Why?
Additional Question 4: What is the extent of lies and cheating in society?
Children lie and deceive others as soon as they can formulate and articulate alternative
strategies, which is soon after they can speak.
Within the past year, 82% of high school students have lied to a parent about something
significant and 62% lied to a teacher.
52% of college business students surveyed cheated on a test or written assignment
FOR DISCUSSION: How have you responded after finding a lost wallet or money that did not
belong to you, such as when a cashier returns too much change?
Chapter Question 5: Why do good people occasionally behave unethically?
Sometimes the unethical behavior is unintended. The person may have good motives, but
insufficient knowledge or awareness.
FOR DISCUSSION: Have you ever lied to a boss, customer or co-worker? Have you ever not
reported someone at work or school who behaved unethically? How did you justify these
decisions?
CHAPTER 1 KEY WORDS
Action sequence (p. 5): consists of the motivation behind the act, the act itself, and the
consequences of the act.
Altruistic behaviors (p. 22): the deliberate pursuit of actions intended to benefit the interests or
welfare of others.
Cognitive dissonance (p 20.): when an individual holds inconsistent or contradictory attitudes
and beliefs, which creates an unpleasant state of mind.
Conscience (p 16.): the inner sense of pure goodness that guides people when deciding that
something is right or wrong; many religions attribute it to the voice of God within us.
Ethics (p 5.): set of principles a person uses to determine whether an action is good or bad.
Good Samaritan (p. 25): someone willing to assist a stranger.
Human nature (p. 16): the moral, psychological, and social characteristics of human beings.
Inherited sin (p. 16): religious belief that a morally damaged soul joins the body at birth, the
damage attributed to Adam and Eve or previous ancestors.
Kohlberg, Lawrence (p. 18): Harvard psychologist (lived 1927–1987), influenced by the
writings of Jean Piaget, who sought to answer how children and adults from many cultures
formed moral judgments in response to a series of ethical dilemmas.
Moral imperatives (p 20.): principles originating in a person’s mind that compel people to
action.
Piaget, Jean (p. 17): among the first psychologists (lived 1896-1980) to outline stages of
cognitive development based on patterns he observed in children, including his own.
Stages of moral development (p. 18): an individual’s moral reasoning can sequentially progress
through six distinct stages – obedience-and punishment orientation (stage 1), instrumental
orientation (stage 2), good boy—nice girl orientation (stage 3), law-and-order orientation (stage
4), social contract orientation (stage 5), and universal ethical principles orientation (stage 6).
Stakeholder (p. 4): any person or organization that is affected by, or could affect, an
organization’s goal accomplishment.
Tabula rasa (p. 17): the mind as a blank slate on which people store moral rules and knowledge
based on life experiences.
