A dynamic and cyclical model of bounded ethicality
Section snippets
What is bounded ethicality?
The original model of bounded ethicality challenged the notion that people can be fully ethical all the time, proposing instead that we are all prone to ethical failure (Chugh, Banaji, & Bazerman, 2005). Further, these ethical failures are the outcome of systematic and ordinary psychological processes (Chugh et al., 2005), and these processes are neither rare nor unpredictable (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995). Scholars using this model of bounded ethicality (e.g. Bazerman & Tenbrunsel, 2012) have
The field of behavioral ethics
Behavioral ethics research is thriving, revealing pattern after pattern of surprising and counter-intuitive evidence that we are not perfectly or consistently ethical all of the time. In this section, we will highlight two conceptual themes in the literature and describe three puzzles which persist, or even emerge, as this research grows. These puzzles persist despite the robust set of empirical findings and the impressive array of other integrative models in the field (Haidt, 2008, Jones, 1991
The bounded ethicality model
With these puzzles in mind, we present our model. It is worth noting that much of the scholarly narrative on ethical failures, particularly prior to the most recent decade, is dominated by the role of self-interest and its rational underpinnings (Miller, 1999), though this premise is typically unspoken (Epley and Caruso, 2004, Moore and Loewenstein, 2004, Tenbrunsel and Smith-Crowe, 2008, Welsh and Ordóñez, 2014). We can infer this premise because this type of ethics research often describes
An agenda for future research
We offer an overarching model of ethical decision-making in which we specify the ways in which ethicality is systematically bounded, or “bounded ethicality”. Our model describes “the systematic and ordinary psychological processes of enhancing and protecting our ethical self-view which automatically, dynamically, and cyclically influence the ethicality of decision-making”. Our model does not explain all ethical decision-making, but brings important insights to everyday behaviors in which
Conclusion
In closing, our model of bounded ethicality integrates much of the recent research in the active and thriving study of behavioral ethics. Our hope is that it provides scholars and practitioners alike a cohesive platform for understanding ethical failures and designing ethical interventions. In particular, we seize the opportunity to leverage the insights about the self and automaticity in order to deepen our knowledge of bounded ethicality and look forward to the future research building on
References (113)
- et al.
When misconduct goes unnoticed: The acceptability of gradual erosion in others’ unethical behavior
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
(2009) - et al.
Bringing ethics into focus: How regulatory focus and risk preferences influence (un)ethical behavior
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes
(2011) - et al.
Unable to resist temptation: How self-control depletion promotes unethical behavior
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes
(2011) Promotion and prevention: Regulatory focus as a motivational principle
Advances in Experimental Social Psychology
(1998)- et al.
Doing well by doing good? Ambivalent moral framing in organizations
Research in Organizational Behavior
(2011) - et al.
Too tired to tell the truth: Self-control resource depletion and dishonesty
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
(2009) - et al.
Psychological license: When it is needed and how it functions
Advances in Experimental Social Psychology
(2010) - et al.
A model for diagnosing organizational behavior
Organizational Dynamics
(1980) - et al.
The essential moral self
Cognition
(2014) - et al.
Self-verification processes: How we sustain our self-conceptions
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
(1981)
The ethical mirage: A temporal explanation as to why we are not as ethical as we think we are
Research in Organizational Behavior
Self-enhancement and self-protection: What they are and what they do
European Review of Social Psychology
Social decision heuristics in the use of shared resources
Journal of Behavioral Decision Making
The self-importance of moral identity
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Explaining bargaining impasse: The role of self-serving biases
Journal of Economic Perspectives
Implicit stereotypes and memory: The bounded rationality of social beliefs
Memory, Brain, and Belief
Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory
Moral hypocrisy: A self-enhancement/self-protection motive in the moral domain
Handbook of self-enhancement and self-protection
Relation of threatened egotism to violence and aggression: The dark side of high self-esteem
Psychological Review
The strength model of self-control
Current Directions in Psychological Science
Ethics in business
Bounded awareness: Focusing problems in negotiation
Blind spots: Why we fail to do what's right and what to do about it
Moral functioning: Moral understanding and personality
Why organizations matter
Self-as-subject and self-as-object in the workplace
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes
When cheating would make you a cheater: Implicating the self prevents unethical behavior
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
Sweets, sex, or self-esteem? Comparing the value of self-esteem boosts with other pleasant rewards
Journal of Personality
Moral awareness in business organizations: Influences of issue-related and social context factors
Human Relations
Self-threat magnifies the self-serving bias: A meta-analytic integration
Review of General Psychology
The costs and benefits of undoing egocentric responsibility assessments in groups
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Temporal view of the costs and benefits of self-deception
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Bounded ethicality as a psychological barrier to recognizing conflicts of interest
Becoming as ethical as we think we are: The ethical learner at work
Moral disengagement in ethical decision making: A study of antecedents and outcomes
Journal of Applied Psychology
Toward a unified conception of business ethics: Integrative social contracts theory
Academy of Management Review
Letting people off the hook: When do good deeds excuse transgressions?
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
Confidence in judgment: Persistence of the illusion of validity
Psychological Review
Egocentric ethics
Social Justice Research
The nature of human altruism
Nature
A contingency framework for understanding ethical decision making in marketing
Journal of Marketing
Self-deception: With a new chapter
The trouble of thinking: Activation and application of stereotypic beliefs
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
See no evil: When we overlook other people's unethical behavior
Conscience accounting: Emotion dynamics and social behavior
Management Science
Relational job design and the motivation to make a prosocial difference
Academy of Management Review
The totalitarian ego: Fabrication and revision of personal history
American Psychologist
Implicit social cognition: Attitudes, self-esteem, and stereotypes
Psychological Review
The emotional dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgment
Psychological Review
Dialogue between my head and my heart: Affective influences on moral judgment
Psychological Inquiry
Cited by (34)
Moral inconsistency
2023, Advances in Experimental Social PsychologyDisclosing interpersonal conflicts of interest: Revealing whom we like, but not whom we dislike
2021, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision ProcessesCitation Excerpt :Conflicts of interest are ethically fraught situations because, by definition, they involve an incentive to violate a professional obligation to be objective (Sah et al., 2013). According to the theory of bounded ethicality, people care about being ethical, but cognitive biases can prevent them from recognizing when they are violating ethical principles (Bazerman & Tenbrunsel, 2012; Chugh et al., 2005; Chugh & Kern, 2016; see also Tenbrunsel & Messick, 2004). One such bias is overconfidence in one’s own objectivity, known as the bias blind spot (Pronin, 2007; Pronin, Gilovich, & Ross, 2004; Pronin, Lin, & Ross, 2002).
High stakes: A little more cheating, a lot less charity
2018, Journal of Economic Behavior and OrganizationCitation Excerpt :But what happens after the ‘heat’ of the cheating moment has passed? Empirical research on the management of a positive self-view after unethical behaviour (Chugh and Kern, 2016), and in particular reflections on unethical behaviour to manage a positive self-view, has received little scholarly attention. Only recently, Kouchaki and Gino (2016) proposed a pathway through which people might deal with their unethical past.
Public Agents’ Empowerment and Rule-Breaking Behaviors: Evidence from Panel Analysis of U.S. Federal Agencies
2024, Public Organization Review