Publications

01 May 2018
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, May 1, 2018

addressed for a complete understanding of the moral mind. Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=52263 in press Academy of Management Perspectives Bounded Ethicality and Ethical Fading in Negotiations: Understanding Unintended View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

September 1986 (Revised March 1987)
Case

Graves Industries, Inc. (B): Lohnes Marine Hardware Division

Describes events occurring over a four-year period in one division of Graves Industries. The division goes through a business cycle and uses several methods of managing earnings to meet its budget targets. The purpose of the case is to allow the exploration of the... View Details

Keywords: Earnings Management; Crime and Corruption; Ethics

Educators

Purchase

2009
Working Paper

Dishonest Deed, Clear Conscience: Self-Preservation through Moral Disengagement and Motivated Forgetting

By: Lisa L. Shu, Francesca Gino and Max H. Bazerman

People routinely engage in dishonest acts without feeling guilty about their behavior. When and why does this occur? Across four studies, people justified their dishonest deeds through moral disengagement and exhibited motivated forgetting of information that might... View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Moral Sensibility; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Behavior

24 Feb 2015
First Look

First Look: February 24

definition of profit by changing accounting rules. On one level, this corporate behavior embodies the capitalist spirit articulated by Milton Friedman: "The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits." But the... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

September 2012
Article

Vicarious Dishonesty: When Psychological Closeness Creates Distance from One's Moral Compass

By: F. Gino and A. Galinsky

In four studies employing multiple manipulations of psychological closeness, we found that feeling connected to another individual who engages in selfish or dishonest behavior leads people to vicariously justify the actions of this individual and to behave more... View Details

Keywords: Behavior; Relationships; Ethics; Research

20 Apr 2011
Research & Ideas

Blind Spots: We’re Not as Ethical as We Think

Think back to recent events when people making unethical decisions grabbed the headlines. How did auditors approve the books of Enron and Lehman Brothers? How did feeder funds sell Bernard Madoff's invesments? We would never act as they... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

2009
Working Paper

Goals Gone Wild: The Systematic Side Effects of Over-Prescribing Goal Setting

By: Lisa D. Ordonez, Maurice E. Schweitzer, Adam D. Galinsky and Max H. Bazerman

Goal setting is one of the most replicated and influential paradigms in the management literature. Hundreds of studies conducted in numerous countries and contexts have consistently demonstrated that setting specific, challenging goals can powerfully drive behavior and... View Details

Keywords: Goals and Objectives; Management Practices and Processes; Organizational Culture; Performance Improvement; Behavior; Motivation and Incentives

Article

The Counterfeit Self: The Deceptive Costs of Faking It

By: Francesca Gino, Michael I. Norton and Dan Ariely

Although people buy counterfeit products to signal positive traits, we show that wearing counterfeit products makes individuals feel less authentic and increases their likelihood of both behaving dishonestly and judging others as unethical. In four experiments,... View Details

Keywords: Judgments; Ethics; Brands and Branding; Product; Behavior; Personal Characteristics

October 2012
Article

Honesty Requires Time (and Lack of Justifications)

By: Shaul Shalvi, Ori Eldar and Yoella Bereby-Meyer

Recent research suggests that refraining from cheating in tempting situations requires self-control, which indicates that serving self-interest is an automatic tendency. However, evidence also suggests that people cheat to the extent that they can justify their... View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Cognition and Thinking

05 Sep 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, September 5, 2017

and rural landlessness. Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=53164 in press Psychological Science Polluted Morality: Air Pollution Predicts Criminal Activity and Unethical View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

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

Purchase

2014
Article

Time, Money, and Morality

By: F. Gino and C. Mogilner

Money, a resource that absorbs much daily attention, seems to be present in much unethical behavior thereby suggesting that money itself may corrupt. This research examines a way to offset such potentially deleterious effects—by focusing on time, a resource that tends... View Details

Keywords: Money; Ethics

25 Jan 2011
First Look

First Look: Jan. 25

on a test measuring divergent thinking tended to cheat more (Study 1); that dispositional creativity is a better predictor of unethical behavior than intelligence (Study 2); and that participants who were... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

September 2016
Article

Monitoring Global Supply Chains

By: Jodi L. Short, Michael W. Toffel and Andrea R. Hugill

Firms seeking to avoid reputational spillovers that can arise from dangerous, illegal, and unethical behavior at supply chain factories are increasingly relying on private social auditors to provide strategic information about suppliers' conduct. But little is known... View Details

Keywords: Monitoring; Transaction Cost Economics; Industry Self-regulation; Auditing; Codes Of Conduct; Supply Chains; Corporate Social Responsibility; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Supply Chain; Globalization

15 Jan 2008
First Look

First Look: January 15, 2008

the paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/08-044.pdf See No Evil: When We Overlook Other People's Unethical Behavior Authors:Francesca Gino, Don A. Moore, and Max H. Bazerman Abstract It is common for... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

2010
Article

The Ethical Mirage: A Temporal Explanation as to Why We Are Not as Ethical as We Think We Are

By: A. E. Tenbrunsel, K. Diekmann, K A. Wade-Benzoni and Max Bazerman

This paper explores the biased perceptions that people hold of their own ethicality. We argue that the temporal trichotomy of prediction, action and recollection is central to these misperceptions: People predict that they will behave more ethically than they actually... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting and Prediction; Values and Beliefs; Framework; Research; Behavior; Cognition and Thinking; Perception; Prejudice and Bias

2013
Article

Ethically Adrift: How Others Pull Our Moral Compass from True North, and How we Can Fix It

By: C. Moore and F. Gino

This chapter is about the social nature of morality. Using the metaphor of the moral compass to describe individuals' inner sense of right and wrong, we offer a framework to help us understand social reasons why our moral compass can come under others' control, leading... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Moral Sensibility; Behavior