Taming Your Evil Streak & Staying Clear of Unethical Behavior
Corruption and scandals in the corporate world have become a regular feature and there’s always some news of unethical behaviour in the workplace.
Some recent examples of unethical behaviour include:
Rajat Gupta, the former head of McKinsey, who is accused of leaking information from confidential boardroom discussions held by Goldman Sachs and Procter & Gamble. The tips provided by Gupta are estimated to have made over $17 million for the recipients. Following the allegations of unethical behaviour, Gupta has resigned from the board of several prominent corporations and is shunned by business leaders who were once his friends.
Mark Hurd, Ex-CEO of Hewlett Packard, who faced charges that he sexually harassed Jodie Fisher, a former actress and reality-television personality who worked for HP as a marketing consultant.
He was also accused of submitting inaccurate expense reports.
What makes these people do such things and why do they engage in unethical behaviour? Are they just bad people or is there something else involved?
Let’s turn to psychology, to try and get some answers. According to research in the field, when people do bad things, this could be because of:
- Dispositional Factors (i.e. they are bad inherently), and/or
- Situational/Systemic Factors: (i.e. they are faced with circumstances, or put in certain roles/positions, that lead to the bad behaviour)
A few examples will help illustrate the second point, which I think is more interesting.
After the horrors of World War II, in 1963 psychologist Stanley Milgram set out to test people’s propensity to obey authority when ordered to hurt another person. The subjects in the experiment were divided into ‘teachers’ and ‘learners.’ The teachers were then asked to deliver electric shocks to the learners if they answered certain questions incorrectly. They were also told to increase the intensity of the shock if a learner kept giving the wrong answers. Despite the screams and moans of pain from the learners, the teachers continued to deliver increasingly severe shocks, if ordered to do so by the experiment facilitator (who claimed responsibility for their actions). They continued even when told they had rendered a learner unconscious (especially when they could hear the learner, who was in another room, but not see them).
In another study, Philip Zimbardo conducted an experiment which replicated a prison environment, in a basement at Stanford University. The participants (students) were divided into two groups - ‘prisoners’ and ‘guards.’ Several steps were taken to make the environment as realistic as possible and to make the participants fully internalise their roles. The guards performed several cruel and abusive acts on the prisoners, such as strip searching, head shaving and beating. The guards were encouraged by each other’s behaviour and it was easier to perform the acts as a group.
The video shown below, provides a more detailed explanation of these theories and experiments. [Warning: There are some gory images in the video].
My view on all of this, is that we all have the capacity to do evil (bad/unethical) things. In the workplace this could be relatively smaller actions, such as backstabbing a co-worker or taking all credit for someone else’s work. Or it could be something bigger, like fraud or sexual harassment. There are a few conditions, which if present, that make it easier for any of us to engage in unethical behaviour and be the next Gupta or Hurd:
- Thinking that we won’t get caught
- Believing that if an authority figure (such as a supervisor) tells us to do something unethical, then it is alright and we are not responsible for our actions
- Thinking that if everyone around us is doing things which are unethical, then it is acceptable for us to do those things as well
- Not being able to visualise the consequences of our actions in a concrete way
So I think we need to assume (and keep reminding ourselves) that unethical behaviour will get caught and that an unethical action does not become ethical, just because anyone else says it’s ok. Also, we are solely responsible for any actions that we take. And finally, when in doubt, try the ‘newspaper test’ and visualise how it will look, what you will feel and what might happen, if your actions were reported in tomorrow’s newspaper.
