After years of business scandals and no end in site, ethics are a hot topic. Are ethical values set or fluid? explored the idea that ethics are situational and changing with the times.A new paper from Ann E. Tenbrunsel, University of Notre Dame; Kristina A. Diekmann, University of Utah; Kimberly A. Wade-Benzoni, Duke University and Max Bazerman, Harvard Business School, explores another question, does ethical behavior come naturally or do we need to work at walking our ethical talk?

The executive summary of Why We Aren’t as Ethical as We Think We Are: A Temporal Explanation says, “People commonly predict that they will behave more ethically in the future than they actually do. When evaluating past (un)ethical behavior, they also believe they behaved more ethically than they actually did. These misperceptions, both of prediction and of recollection, have important ramifications for the distinction between how ethical we think we are and how ethical we really are, as well as understanding how such misperceptions are perpetuated over time. This paper draws on recent research in psychology and decision-making to gain insight into these forces. It also provides recommendations for reducing them. Key concepts include:

• All individuals have an innate tendency to engage in self-deception around their own ethical behavior.
• Organizations worried about ethics violations should pay attention to understanding these psychological processes at the individual level rather than focus solely on the creation of formal training programs and education around ethics codes.”

Are you really surprised? How often have you accused someone, or been accused yourself, of having “selective memory” when discussing a past event or conversation?

“The main significance of selective memory is its potential to sustain positive self-perceptions in the face of frequent disconfirmation of such perceptions. Notably, this phenomenon appears to be quite adaptive: Greater memory selectivity is related to higher self-esteem, lower social anxiety, and less depression (O’Banion & Arkowitz, 1977; Zuroff, Colussy, & Wielgus, 1983). It seems clear that selective memory can help us to maintain higher self-esteem, and enable us to believe we generally behave in ethical ways over time despite our past behavior that contradicts this self-perception. While convenient for our self-esteem (and even our happiness), the selective memory mechanism represents a barrier to an accurate understanding of our ethical selves and thus impedes our ability to strive for higher levels of ethics in our everyday lives.”

Yup, Jeff Skilling still maintains he did nothing wrong.

But it is their conclusion that should be a waked-up call to all those charged with improving ethics and compliance within a company.

“The current effort to curb unethical behavior “ignores the innate tendency for the individual to engage in self-deception” (p. 224), an error which substantially negates any systematic efforts at the organization level.

This paper was intended to bring the psychological processes of the individual decision-maker to the forefront by examining the self-deception that is inherent in the beliefs about one’s own (un)ethical behavior. Individuals deceive themselves that they are ethical people and the continuation of this belief allows for the perpetuity of unethical behavior. We hope that by examining the interplay of the want/should selves through a temporal lens, we shed light on these false beliefs and break their defeating cycle.”

In other words, it’s not the company-as-an-entity that suffers from ethical problems, it’s the individuals that make up the company and who, as human beings, may be ethics-challenged and that’s what needs to be addressed—now.

Download the PDF, registration is free and it’s worth the effort.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 11th, 2007 at 12:57 pm and is filed under Ethics, management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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