Lecture 8

Question 1

What is organisation misconduct

Answer 1

When individuals or groups violate internal or external rules
Can emerge by accident when attempts to carry out one behaviour unintentionally results in another

Question 2

What is organisational deviance

Answer 2

An event, activity or circumstance occurring in a formal organisation that deviates from both formal org design goals and normative standards or expectations

Question 3

What is the rational choice perspective

Answer 3

Focus on growth goals shifts towards inappropriate risk taking, manipulation of accounts or outright fraud
Assumes self interested actors who need to be controlled in order not to choose actions that would be beneficial for them but harmful for transaction partners or third parties
Aligns with cost benefit analysis- trade off between control costs and misconduct costs
Actions chosen because the benefits outweighs the potential sanction

Principle agent relationship is likely to create a moral hazard
Managers with stock options ar likely to manipulate accounts to influence stock value

Question 4

What is strain theory

Answer 4

Actors resort to misconduct when they are unable to achieve their goals through legitimate means

Failing and marginal organisations are most likely to offend
Can result because of power and status contents
Gaps between goals and achievements may be used to result in misconduct

Provide reason why impoverished are more likely to engage in illegal activity

Question 5

What are cultural theories of misconduct

Answer 5

Assumptions about how human nature is fundamentally competitive
May encourage members to achieve ends without providing guidance or by promoting rule breaking and unnecessary risk taking
Such s culture may be exacerbated when there are pressures for achieving extraordinary performance

Question 6

What are the 3 main ways a culture may support misconduct

Answer 6

Endorse misconduct
Permit misconduct under certain circumstances
Can give rise to other conditions that facilitate misconduct

Question 7

What is the network perspective

Answer 7

Focuses on misconduct linked by social ties and intentional efforts to deceive

Goodrich brake scandal

Question 8

What is accidental misconduct

Answer 8

Based on recognition that managers are limited in what they know
Based on bounded rationality, accidental misconduct is likely to be inevitable

Question 9

How does misconduct spread in organisations

Answer 9

Initiation- top managers embark on Wongful course of action

Proliferation- explicitly and implicitly encourage lower level employees to engage in misconduct

Institutionalisation1 misconduct becomes embedded in organisational memory and solidified through routine and structures

Socialisation- new participants exposed

Question 10

What does Palmer say

Answer 10

Misconduct can start anywhere

Range of social and psychological processes facilitate misconduct

Question 11

What is greves definition of misconduct

Answer 11

Behaviour in or by an organisation that a social controlmagent judges to transgress a line serperating right from wrong

Question 12

How do social control agents create misconduct

Answer 12

Move the line of what is acceptable and what is not

Question 13

What are some of the emerging issues in publishing

Answer 13

More submissions, pressures to publish, difficulties in finding reviewers

Question 14

What are the ethics in publishing

Answer 14

Preoccupation with elite journals creates incentives encouraging a system of gaming or pushing the boundaries of appropriate behaviour

Blatant misconduct is only part of the problem

Question 15

What are the pressures in business school research

Answer 15

Management education is growing
Salaries for business school professors are lucrative
Strong incentives and pressures to publish in as narrow range of reputable journals

Question 16

What is the no harm no foul misconception

Answer 16

Rare companies direct to attribute blame for their failures on fraudulent papers
Disconnect from research and practice

Question 17

What is do as i say, not as I do

Answer 17

How can ethics be taken seriously when self interest overrules ethical considerations

Question 18

What are rests 4 stages of ethical decisions

Answer 18

Awareness
Judgement
Intention to act
Action

Question 19

What are problems with business school research

Answer 19

Myopic focus on proxies tends to distance unethical behaviour
Some research may be downplayed by not harm no foul

Larger problem is the ethical culture business schools develop and promulgate

Question 20

What is plagiarism

Answer 20

The appropriation of another persons ideas, processes, results or words without getting credit

Question 21

What is fabrication

Answer 21

Making up of data

Question 22

What is falsification

Answer 22

Manipulating multiple materials, equipment and processes

Question 23

What are the elements of the taxonomy of research misconduct

Answer 23

Predetermined dishonesty- aware of misconduct but hides hoping to et away
Bending the rules- individual is aware but is unilaterally trying to shift the boundaries between appropriate and inappropriate
Complexity- increase variable in bounded rationality, making mistakes
Ignorance and sloppiness- perpetrator is aware of the rules but is perhaps hazy about details
Honest errors and genuine mistakes

Question 24

Who is effected by misconduct

Answer 24

Other researchers 
- may build on tainted work 
- lose status 
Themselves 
Employers
- damage institutional reputation 
Students
- legitimises unethical behaviour 
Editors 
- serious damage to reputation 
Firms

Question 25

What are some examples of org misconduct

Answer 25

Enron - 7th largest company in america, profit and debt manipulation

VW- cars found to have a defeat device that could detect when being tested
11 million cars effected
Big push to sell cars in US

Tesco- artificially inflated profit by 250m
4 senior executives. Subject to enquiry

Renault f1 team