Unfortunately, business is often associated with unethical behavior. While research has offered a number of explanations for why business might encourage unethical behavior, we argue that how a person frames a situation may provide important insight. Drawing on the decision frame literature, the goal of the current research is to identify the differences in cognitive processing associated with two decision frames dominant in the business ethics literature—business and ethical—and, with that knowledge, examine ways to mitigate the detrimental influence of frame (...) on unethical behavior. We first demonstrate the causal link between frame and misrepresentation, and then identify several differences in cognitive processing—cost–benefit analyses, concern for others, and construal level—that distinguish business and ethical frames, and investigate their effects on misrepresentation. In our final set of studies, we demonstrate that the influence of these frames on misrepresentation can be altered by manipulating these cognitive processes, both mitigating and exacerbating a decision maker’s engagement in misrepresentation. We conclude by summarizing our findings and their potential impact on unethical behavior more broadly. (shrink)

When confronted with an ethical dilemma, most of us like to think we would stand up for our principles. But we are not as ethical as we think we are. In Blind Spots, leading business ethicists Max Bazerman and Ann Tenbrunsel examine the ways we overestimate our ability to do what is right and how we act unethically without meaning to. From the collapse of Enron and corruption in the tobacco industry, to sales of the defective Ford Pinto, the (...) downfall of Bernard Madoff, and the Challenger space shuttle disaster, the authors investigate the nature of ethical failures in the business world and beyond, and illustrate how we can become more ethical, bridging the gap between who we are and who we want to be. Explaining why traditional approaches to ethics don't work, the book considers how blind spots like ethical fading--the removal of ethics from the decision--making process--have led to tragedies and scandals such as the Challenger space shuttle disaster, steroid use in Major League Baseball, the crash in the financial markets, and the energy crisis. The authors demonstrate how ethical standards shift, how we neglect to notice and act on the unethical behavior of others, and how compliance initiatives can actually promote unethical behavior. They argue that scandals will continue to emerge unless such approaches take into account the psychology of individuals faced with ethical dilemmas. Distinguishing our "should self" from our "want self", the authors point out ethical sinkholes that create questionable actions. Suggesting innovative individual and group tactics for improving human judgment, Blind Spots shows us how to secure a place for ethics in our workplaces, institutions, and daily lives. (shrink)

This paper investigates the effect of the countervailing forces within organizations of formal systems that direct employees toward ethical acts and informal systems that direct employees toward fraudulent behavior. We study the effect of these forces on deception, a key component of fraud. The results provide support for an interactive effect of these formal and informal systems. The effectiveness of formal systems is greater when there is a strong informal “push” to do wrong; conversely, in the absence of a strong (...) push to do wrong, the strength of formal systems has little impact on fraudulent behavior. These results help to explain why the implementation of formal systems within organizations has been met with mixed results and identifies when formal systems designed to promote ethical behavior will be most efficacious. (shrink)

"This book presents a collection of chapters that contribute significantly to the field of business ethics by promoting much needed insights into the motives that drive people to act ethically or unethically. It acknowledges that business ethics plays a pivotal role in the way business is conducted and adds insights derived from a behavioral view that will make us more aware of morality and provide recommendations into how we can improve our actions"--Provided by publisher.

Ethical failures are all around. Despite their pervasiveness, we know little how to manage and even survive the aftermath of such failures. In this paper, we develop the argument that as business ethics researchers we need to zoom in more closely on why ethical failures emerge, and how these insights can help us to be effective ethical leaders that can increase moral awareness and manage distrust. To succeed in this scientific enterprise, we advocate the use of a behavioral business ethics (...) approach that relies on insights from psychology. (shrink)

Physicians’ fear of criminal prosecution for prescribing opioid analgesics is a major reason why many chronic pain patients are having an increasingly difficult time obtaining medically appropriate pain relief. In Ruan v. United States, 142 S. Ct. 2370 (2022), the Supreme Court unanimously vacated two federal convictions under the Controlled Substances Act. The Court held that the government must prove that the defendant knowingly or intentionally acted in an unauthorized manner.

This study identified the influences of maternal socio-demographic and antenatal factors on stillbirths and neonatal deaths in New South Wales, Australia. Bivariate and multivariate analyses were used to explore the association of selected antenatal and maternal characteristics with stillbirths and neonatal deaths. The findings of this study showed that stillbirths and neonatal deaths significantly varied by infant sex, maternal age, Aboriginality, maternal country of birth, socioeconomic status, parity, maternal smoking behaviour during pregnancy, maternal diabetes mellitus, maternal hypertension, antenatal care, plurality (...) of birth, low birth weight, place of birth, delivery type, maternal deaths and small gestational age. First-born infants, twins and infants born to teenage mothers, Aboriginal mothers, those who smoked during the pregnancy and those of lower socioeconomic status were at increased risk of stillbirths and neonatal deaths. The most common causes of stillbirths were conditions originating in the perinatal period: intrauterine hypoxia and asphyxia. Congenital malformations, including deformities and chromosomal abnormalities, and disorders related to slow fetal growth, short gestation and low birth weight were the most common causes of neonatal deaths. The findings indicate that very low birth weight (less than 2000 g) contributed 75·6% of the population-attributable risks to stillbirths and 59·4% to neonatal deaths. Low gestational age (less than 32 weeks) accounted for 77·7% of stillbirths and 87·9% of neonatal deaths. The findings of this study suggest that in order to reduce stillbirths and neonatal deaths, it is essential to include strategies to predict and prevent prematurity and low birth weight, and that there is a need to focus on anti-smoking campaigns during pregnancy, optimizing antenatal care and other healthcare programmes targeted at the socially disadvantaged populations identified in this study. (shrink)

AT the conclusion of his recently published paper on Corinna1 Professor Page leaves open the question whether the poetess was a contemporary of Pindar or of Moschus-whether she belongs to the middle of the fifth century or the end of the third. He gives excellent reasons for believing that these two dates exhaust the possibilities: they are far more probable than a date either outside or between them; but there seems to be no sure criterion by which we can decide (...) between the two, and Professor Page has to end his researches with a suspension of judgement. (shrink)

Patrick Lancaster Gardiner is best known and most widely esteemed for his work on the nature of historical explanation. By addressing the problem of the limits of objectivity in relation to a variety of philosophical issues, he presciently identified the source of a number of philosophical disputes well before they had properly developed. This was certainly the case in Gardiner's treatment of historical explanation, and it is true also of his later treatment of the claims of the personal versus the (...) impersonal in ethical life. (shrink)

One day towards the end of the eighth century the scribe of cod. Paris. Lat. 7530, a miscellany to which we owe the carmen de figuris , began to copy out for us, on the 28th leaf of the MS, the Thyestes of Varius. He transcribed the title and the prefatory note, which run thus: INCIPIT THVESTA VARII. Lucius Varius cognomento Rufus Thyesten tragoediam magna cura absolutam post Actiacam uictoriam Augusti ludis eius in scaena edidit, pro qua fabula sestertium deciens (...) accepit. Then he changed his mind: he proceeded with a list of the notae employed by Probus and Aristarchus, and the masterpiece of Roman tragedy has rejoined its author in the shades. (shrink)