Confessional Reluctance and Ethics Enforcement: The Paradoxical Cost of Zero Tolerance

非技术描述为了应对最近备受瞩目的道德灾难，许多组织采取了更强硬的道德立场，其中最极端的是“零容忍”政策，在这种政策中，小的违规行为将受到严厉的惩罚。尽管惩罚性政策可能会降低违反道德的基本比率，但它们可能会通过抑制员工举报违规行为的意愿而矛盾地增加重大违反道德的行为。这种现象被称为忏悔不情愿，定义为拒绝向同事和主管披露违反道德的行为。由于组织成员试图通过欺骗、伪造记录和其他手段来掩盖自己的错误，忏悔的不情愿可能会把轻微的道德违规变成重大的道德灾难。本研究项目将通过多种方法，包括档案、实验和现实世界的实地研究，来研究忏悔不情愿。这项研究很重要，因为理解和预防组织伦理灾难对一个正常运转的社会至关重要。违反道德规范会给公众、企业和政府带来经济和社会损失。通过确定一种理解重大道德违规行为的新方法，我们的研究将提出减少这些行为的可行策略，包括员工选择、改善工作团队功能以及实施更积极的组织道德氛围。最终，这项研究将提供一个直接的和经验支持的方法，使组织更道德。本项目提出了一个多层次的模型，将惩罚性的道德氛围、忏悔的不情愿和不道德的升级联系起来，并通过档案、实地和实验研究对其进行测试。为了更好地理解忏悔不情愿，并使干预措施能够减少它，本研究还确定了学习氛围、团队/领导-成员交换和亲社会动机是惩罚-忏悔不情愿关系的关键调节因素。研究1通过在线调查提供了认罪不情愿及其与惩罚性道德氛围的联系的初步证据。研究2、3和4通过实验研究考察了忏悔不情愿、惩罚性道德氛围和不道德行为升级之间的联系。研究4使用公司年度报告来检查惩罚政策与重大道德违规之间的联系，研究5提供了该领域模型的纵向测试。本研究将组织变量（如气候）和个体变量（如亲社会动机）结合成一个多层次的框架，对文献进行了扩展。我们的方法利用了不同方法的互补优势，包括实验室控制、档案研究的现实性和现场样本的普遍性。实验室研究通过对组织行为的真实模拟，以及对道德违规和忏悔不情愿的行为测量，提供了严格的惩罚性气候操纵。档案研究将我们的模型扩展到一系列公司，纵向实地研究在公司的分支机构中检查我们的完整模型。我们的跨学科方法使用组织行为学和实验社会心理学的工具来扩展我们对道德行为的理解。我们的模型尤其具有变革性，因为它违背了关于管理的基本直觉。对于违反道德的行为，一个可以理解的反应是使道德氛围更具惩罚性，但矛盾的是，这可能会增加重大违反道德的可能性。因此，本研究提出了一个具体的干预措施，使组织更道德。

Nontechnical DescriptionIn response to recent high profile ethical catastrophes, many organizations have adopted tougher ethical stances, the most extreme of which are "zero tolerance" policies, in which small infractions are substantially punished. Although punitive policies may reduce the base-rate of ethical violations, they may paradoxically increase major ethical infractions by discouraging employees' willingness to report violations. This phenomenon is referred to as confessional reluctance, defined as the resistance to disclosing ethical violations to peers and supervisors. Confessional reluctance could turn minor ethical violations into major ethical catastrophes, as organization members seek to cover-up their mistakes through deception, falsification of records, and other means. This research project will examine confessional reluctance across several studies with multiple methods, including archival, experimental and a real-world field study. This research is important because understanding and preventing organizational ethical catastrophes is essential to a functioning society. Ethical breaches take economic and social tolls among the general public, corporations and governments. By identifying a new way of understanding major ethical breaches, our research will suggest actionable strategies for decreasing them, including employee selection, improving work-team functioning, and implementing more proactive organizational ethical climates. Ultimately, this research will provide a straightforward and empirically-backed method for making organizations more ethical.Technical DescriptionThis project proposes a multilevel model linking punitive ethical climates, confessional reluctance and unethical escalation, and test it through archival, field and experimental studies. To better understand confessional reluctance - and to enable interventions to reduce it - this research also identify learning climate, team/lead-member exchange and prosocial motivation as key moderators of the punitiveness-confessional reluctance relationship. Study 1 provides preliminary evidence for confessional reluctance and its link to punitive ethical climates through an online survey. Studies 2, 3 and 4 examine the link between confessional reluctance, punitive ethical climate and the escalation of unethical behavior through experimental studies. Study 4 uses company annual reports to examine the link between punitive policies and major ethical infractions, and Study 5 provides a longitudinal test of the model in the field. This research extends the literature by combining organizational variables (i.e., climate) and individual variables (i.e., prosocial motivation) into a multilevel framework. Our approach harnesses the complementary strengths of different methodologies, including the control of the lab, the realism of archival studies, and the generalizability of field samples. The lab studies provide rigorous manipulations of punitive climate with realistic simulations of organizational behavior and behavioral measures of ethical violations and confessional reluctance. The archival study extends our model to a range of companies, and the longitudinal field study examines our full model across branches of a corporation. Our interdisciplinary approach uses the tools of organizational behavior and experimental social psychology to extend our understanding of ethical behavior. Our model is particularly transformative because it contradicts basic intuitions about management. An understandable reaction to ethical breaches is to make an ethical climate more punitive, but this can paradoxically make major ethical violations more likely. Therefore, this research suggests a concrete intervention for making organizations more ethical.