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

忏悔的不情愿与道德执行：零容忍的矛盾成本

• 批准号: 1534083
• 负责人: Kurt Gray
• 金额: $ 40.88万
• 依托单位: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-08-01 至 2019-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1534083&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Confessional; Reluctance; Ethics; Enforcement; Paradoxical

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.

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，其中小的违规行为受到实质性的惩罚。虽然惩罚性政策可能会降低违反道德的基本比率，但它们可能会通过阻止员工报告违规行为的意愿而增加重大道德违规行为。这种现象被称为忏悔不情愿，其定义是拒绝向同事和主管披露违反道德的行为。坦白的不情愿可能把轻微的道德违规变成重大的道德灾难，因为组织成员试图通过欺骗、伪造记录和其他手段来掩盖他们的错误。这个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，在几项研究中研究忏悔不情愿。这项研究很重要，因为了解和预防组织伦理灾难对一个正常运作的社会至关重要。违反道德规范会给公众、公司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，包括员工选拔，改善工作团队运作，以及实施更积极主动的组织道德氛围。最终，这项研究将提供一个简单的和vocational支持的方法，使组织更加ethical.Technical Description这个项目提出了一个多层次的模型连接惩罚性的道德气候，忏悔不情愿和不道德的升级，并通过档案，实地和实验研究进行测试。 为了更好地理解忏悔不情愿-并使干预措施，以减少它-本研究还确定学习氛围，团队/领导成员的交流和亲社会的动机作为惩罚忏悔不情愿关系的关键主持人。研究1通过在线调查提供了忏悔不情愿及其与惩罚性道德气候的联系的初步证据。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研究惩罚性政策与重大道德违规行为之间的联系，研究5提供了该模型在该领域的纵向测试。本研究通过结合组织变量（即，气候）和个体变量（即，（三）多层次的框架。我们的方法利用了不同方法的互补优势，包括实验室的控制，档案研究的现实主义和现场样本的普遍性。实验室研究提供了严格的惩罚性气候与现实的模拟组织行为和违反道德和忏悔不情愿的行为措施的操纵。档案研究将我们的模型扩展到一系列公司，纵向实地研究考察了我们在公司各分支机构的完整模型。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。我们的模式特别具有变革性，因为它与管理的基本直觉相矛盾。对违反道德的一个可以理解的反应是使道德氛围更具惩罚性，但这可能会使重大道德违规行为更有可能发生。因此，这项研究提出了一个具体的干预措施，使组织更加道德。