Cheating bosses stain the reputation of their organisations and their junior staff

Former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling (left) and his attorney leave the courthouse in 2006When high-ranking members of an organisation break the rules, it's not just their own reputation on the line. New research from Stanford University shows that the stain of transgression sends its fingers out to every organisational member.In a series of online studies, Takuya Sawaoka and Benoît Monin presented participants with information about a hypothetical company employee involved in unethical activity such as deceptive marketing. When the culprit's position in the company was senior rather than low-ranking, participants were more likely to see his behaviour as representative and go on to make assumptions about other dodgy company practices.It’s probably not hard for people to believe that ripping off clients is a company-wide policy, especially if they hear that their boss is doing it. But what about less likely policies that directly harm the company? In fact, when bosses were presented as rigging performance data to maximise their bonuses, participants continued to suspect the wider organisation – and not just in a linear, cause-and-effect fashion. A bonus-fiddling boss made people suspicious of mid-ranker's motives for giving investment advice that turned out to be poor. The assessment seems a more fundamental one: people assume a dishonest leader means a dishonest organisation.The effect generalises from these more corporate contexts, with a 300-participant experiment replicating...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: Source Type: blogs