Unnoticed Unethical Behavior when Gradually Escalated: Implications for Management of Safety

Atsuo Murata and Tomoya Morinaga
Additional contact information
Atsuo Murata: Department of Intelligent Mechanical Systems, Okayama University, Okayama, Japan
Tomoya Morinaga: Okayama University, Okayama, Japan

International Journal of Applied Behavioral Economics (IJABE), 2016, vol. 5, issue 2, 1-11

Abstract: The authors paid attention to an unethical behavior motivated by the economic incentive or the pursuit of efficiency. When facing a situation under which one must weigh the ethics of safety rule and the efficiency (economic aspect) in the balance, it is difficult to recognize the unethical behavior when it was corroded gradually than when it was corroded abruptly. More concretely, it was explored how the change of actual amount of money and estimate (gradual change, or abrupt change), the reward of approval of the estimate, the revelation probability of dishonesty and the amount of punishment affected the dishonesty (unethical behavior) under the conflict of interest. The participants were less likely to criticize the actions of others, and tended to approve the estimate and receive the reward when their behavior eroded gradually over time than when their behavior changed abruptly. The authors could identify the combined effect of both large amount of punishment (reward of 10% of the estimated value) and low revelation probability (1%) for the contribution of increased percentage approval of the gradual change. In other words, the percentage approval under the gradual change condition was significantly larger than that under the abrupt change condition when the reward and the probability of revelation was 10% and 1%, respectively.

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://services.igi-global.com/resolvedoi/resolve. ... 018/IJABE.2016040101 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:igg:jabe00:v:5:y:2016:i:2:p:1-11

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Applied Behavioral Economics (IJABE) is currently edited by Yun Wan

More articles in International Journal of Applied Behavioral Economics (IJABE) from IGI Global
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journal Editor ().