Publications

October 2011
Case

Chris and Alison Weston (A)

By: Sandra J. Sucher and Celia Moore

Chris and Alison Weston describe how they, a well-educated middle class couple, ended up committing mail fraud, for which they each served a year and a half in federal prison. The case highlights for students how otherwise upstanding individuals much like themselves... View Details

Keywords: Crime and Corruption; Moral Sensibility; Values and Beliefs; Conflict of Interests; Value

October 2011
Supplement

Chris and Alison Weston (B)

By: Sandra J. Sucher and Celia Moore

Chris and Alison Weston describe their trial process and time in prison. View Details

Keywords: Crime and Corruption; Decisions; Moral Sensibility; Courts and Trials; Behavior

October 2011 (Revised December 2022)
Background Note

Ethical Analysis: Moral Disengagement

By: Sandra J. Sucher and Celia Moore

Moral disengagement is a process that enables people to engage in negative behaviors, from small misdeeds to great atrocities, without believing that they are causing harm or doing wrong. When Conrad Black, the fallen Canadian mogul convicted of multiple counts of... View Details

Keywords: Moral Sensibility; Social Psychology; Values and Beliefs

2011
Chapter

Ethical Discrepancy: Changing Our Attitudes to Resolve Moral Dissonance

By: L. L. Shu, F. Gino and M. H. Bazerman

Keywords: Ethics; Attitudes; Change

2011
Working Paper

Free to Punish? The American Dream and the Harsh Treatment of Criminals

By: Rafael Di Tella and Juan Dubra

We describe the evolution of selective aspects of punishment in the U.S. over the period 1980-2004. We note that imprisonment increased around 1980, a period that coincides with the "Reagan revolution" in economic matters. We build an economic model where beliefs about... View Details

Keywords: Crime and Corruption; Economy; Moral Sensibility; Mathematical Methods; Opportunities; Behavior; United States

June 2011 (Revised October 2012)
Case

Patagonia Sur: For-Profit Land Conservation in Chile

By: Arthur I Segel, Nicolas Ibanez and Jay Verjee

Warren Adams founded Patagonia Sur in 2007 as one of the world's first for-profit land conservation businesses. His goal was to purchase over 100,000 acres of land in southern Chile and to run a variety of sustainable businesses to generate annual returns for... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Environmental Sustainability; Profit; Investment; For-Profit Firms; Entrepreneurship; Investment Return; Revenue; Risk and Uncertainty; Capital; SWOT Analysis; Real Estate Industry; Chile

April 2011
Article

Ethical Breakdowns: Good People often Let Bad Things Happen. Why?

By: Max H. Bazerman and Ann E. Tenbrunsel

Companies are spending a great deal of time and money to install codes of ethics, ethics training, compliance programs, and in-house watchdogs. If these efforts worked, the money would be well spent. But unethical behavior appears to be on the rise. The authors observe... View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Moral Sensibility; Corporate Accountability; Corporate Governance; Leadership; Behavior; Conflict of Interests

2011
Book

Blind Spots: Why We Fail to Do What's Right and What to Do about It

By: Max H. Bazerman and Ann E. Tenbrunsel

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... View Details

Keywords: Crime and Corruption; Moral Sensibility; Values and Beliefs; Failure; Performance Evaluation; Sales; Consumer Products Industry

March 2011
Article

Dishonest Deed, Clear Conscience: When Cheating Leads to Moral Disengagement and Motivated Forgetting

By: L. L. Shu, F. Gino and M. H. Bazerman

Keywords: Ethics

February 2011
Article

Blind Ethics: Closing One's Eyes Polarizes Moral Judgments and Discourages Dishonest Behavior

By: E. M. Caruso and F. Gino

Keywords: Moral Sensibility; Ethics; Judgments

February 2011
Article

Bounded Ethicality in Negotiations

By: Max Bazerman

Routine and persistent acts of dishonesty prevail in everyday life, yet most people resist shining a critical moral light on their own behavior, thereby maintaining and oftentimes inflating images of themselves as moral individuals. We overview the psychology that... View Details

Keywords: Behavior; Values and Beliefs; Strategy; Goals and Objectives; Reputation; Negotiation; Moral Sensibility

2011
Working Paper

Memory Lane and Morality: How Childhood Memories Promote Prosocial Behavior

By: Francesca Gino and Sreedhari D. Desai

Four experiments demonstrated that recalling memories from one's own childhood lead people to experience feelings of moral purity and to behave prosocially. In Experiment 1, participants instructed to recall memories from their childhood were more likely to help the... View Details

Keywords: Judgments; Moral Sensibility; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Organizational Culture; Behavior; Emotions; Personal Characteristics; Welfare

January 2011 (Revised March 2011)
Case

Development and Promotion at North Atlantic Hospital

By: Boris Groysberg, Lisa Leffert, Kerry Herman and Libby Williams

Dr. Elizabeth Harris, Chair of the Department of Anesthesiology (DA) at North Atlantic Hospital (NAH), faces several significant challenges. Staff satisfaction surveys confirmed her assessment that department faculty morale was low, the tenure and promotion system was... View Details

Keywords: Training; Employees; Retention; Performance Evaluation; Personal Development and Career; Motivation and Incentives; Health Industry

January 2011 (Revised June 2012)
Case

Joe Gifford in Tal Afar, Iraq (A)

By: Joseph Badaracco, Richard Burgess Jr., Robert Carpio III and William Wheeler

A Lieutenant leading a platoon in Iraq must make a complex ethical, military, and leadership decision: whether to risk his life and that of other soldiers to reenter a home rigged with an explosive and save three Iraqis. View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Moral Sensibility; Leadership; Management; Problems and Challenges; Iraq

2011
Working Paper

From Social Control to Financial Economics: The Linked Ecologies of Economics and Business in Twentieth Century America

By: Marion Fourcade and Rakesh Khurana

As the main producers of managerial elites, business schools represent strategic research sites for understanding the formation of economic practices and representations. This article draws on historical material to analyze the changing place of economics in American... View Details

Keywords: Economics; Practice; Business Education; Labor and Management Relations; Decision Making; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Change; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Finance; Knowledge; Production; Business Conglomerates; Education Industry; United States

Article

Joint Evaluation as a Real World Tool for Managing Emotional Assessment of Morality

By: M. H. Bazerman, F. Gino, Lisa L. Shu and Chia-Jung Tsay

Keywords: Moral Sensibility; Management; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques

2011
Working Paper

The Dark Side of Creativity: Original Thinkers Can Be More Dishonest

By: Francesca Gino and Dan Ariely

Creativity is a common aspiration for individuals, organizations, and societies. Here, however, we test whether creativity increases dishonesty. We propose that a creative personality and creativity primes promote individuals' motivation to think outside the box and... View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Behavior; Creativity; Motivation and Incentives; Personal Characteristics