Organisational Misconduct Flashcards
Organisational misconduct (Vaughan)
When individuals or groups violate organisational internal or external rules
Can emerge by accident when attempts to carry out one behaviour unintentionally results in another
Organisational deviance
An event, activity or circumstance occurring in and/or produced by a formal organisation, that deviates from both formal organisational design goals and normative standards or expectations, either in the fact of its occupancy or in its consequences and that produces an unanticipated suboptimal outcome
Theoretical perspective of organisational misconduct (Greve et al)
Rational choice perspective Strain theory Cultural theories of misconduct Network theories of misconduct Accidental misconduct
Rational choice perspective
Agency, contract and reputation theories that address the social control of individually rational actors.
Include inappropriate risk taking, accounts manipulation etc, where rational-action modelling 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
Assumes intro asymmetry between principals and agents.
Strain theory
Resorting to misconduct when one fails to achieve goals through legitimate means
Merton: why the impoverished were more likely to engage in illegal activities - does poverty liegitmize destructive entrepreneurship - do weak institutions facilitate misconduct
Used to explore how gals between goals and actual achievements may result in misconduct in various individual, organisational and societal levels as well as the implications of power and status
Cultural theories of misconduct
Organisational cultures include assumptions about how human nature is fundamentally competitive and how norms, values and beliefs about attitudes and behaviours are deemed appropriate and good
While it may condemn misconduct, sometimes it supports it by encouraging members to achieve ends without providing guidance about the means to get there, or by accepting rule breaking and unnecessary risk taking innovativeness
Such culture may occur when there are pressures for achieving extraordinary performance
Endorse, permit misconduct and facilitate it
Can be serious and in some case people have committed suicide not getting go ahead
Eron corporation had higher lower incentives and didn’t care what got in way
Zuckerburg Facebook - if they didn’t get caught then they wouldn’t be saying ‘it wasn’t meant for that bad reason’
Network theories of organisational misconduct
Cultural theories of misconduct do not explain variation in participation across organisational participants - network theories thus focus on misconduct among individuals linked by social ties and intentional collective efforts to deceive, such as price fixing
Accidental misconduct
Based on recognition that organisations are complex and that managers are limited in what they know (march)
Because of bonded rationality, accidental misconduct is likely to be inevitable
Complexity/bounded rationality are both legitimate causes and excuses to justify misconduct - and increasingly so in academic research.
Bounded rationality so cant feasibly come up with meeting everything so come up with satisfying. These are legitimate reasons
Emerging issues in publishing
Big and profitable industry
Open access issues - shifting business model in publishing
Major increases in submissions pressies to publish, difficulties finding reviewers
More unis from more countries
Even though more journals emerging, most still target prestigious publications (some linked directly to revenue, promotion or completion of PhD)
Lots of quality indicators (comprehensive lists (ABS), elite lists (FT50, UT Dallas 24), journal vs specific article, metrics based (eg impact factors)) -inconsistencies in quality indicators
Bouter problems with publishing
Pre occupation with elite journals/citations may create perverse incentives, encouraging systems gaming or pushing the boundaries of appropriate behaviour
Taxonomy of research misconduct
Blatant misconduct (fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, etc) only part of the problem - less flagrant, ambiguous behaviour remains poorly understood
To address this - taxonomy of researcher misconduct- ranging from appropriate practice to blatant misconduct.
Aim is to provide clearer, more consistent quirkiness for researchers, journal editors and others responsible for monitoring and preventing academic misconduct
This is the table of stuff in notes (remember that)
Business school info
Management education increasing
Salaries for business schools typically highest and sometimes lucrative (7 of top 10 highest paid US professors)
Strong incentives/pressures to publish in a narrow range of reputable journals - in UK, journal articles ranked 4* - world leading in terms of originality, significance and rigour - is a primary measure of allocating £1.6 billion of gov funding
Honing et al -
Collectively, this heightened level of competition, pre occupation with rankings and rushing research expectations has resulted in significantly increased pressure worldwide on faculty to publish in top tier journals
Behaviour examples
Fully aware of rules but breaking because risk-reward not aligned - rational choice
Desperate to get published cause of fear of losing job - strain theory
Others do it, so belief that’s way a head - cultural theories. (Above 3 - could lose job funding employment)
Aware of rules but attempt to shift boundary between appropriate/inappropriate conduct, exploiting inconsistent rules for personal gain - rational choice, cultural level
Greve et al reading
Misconduct towards employees -sweatshops
Towards customers - unsafe products
Towards third parties - environmental degradation
