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Chapter Cheating, Corruption, and Concealment 2016 How Moral Flexibility Constrains Our Moral Compass |
Cheating, fraud, deception, uncooperative actions, and many other forms of unethical behavior are among the greatest personal and societal challenges of our time. While the media commonly focuses on the most sensational scams (e.g., Enron, Bernard Madoff), less attention is given to more prevalent "ordinary" unethical behavior—unethical actions committed by people who value morality but behave unethically when faced with an opportunity to cheat. Ordinary unethical behavior causes considerable societal damage, as demonstrated by increasing empirical evidence. Drawing on recent research in moral psychology and behavioral ethics, I examine "moral flexibility," or the common ability to justify one's immoral actions by generating multiple and diverse rationales for why these actions are ethically appropriate. The chapter discusses various antecedents to moral flexibility that are likely to prompt ordinary people to do wrong while feeling moral and suggests future research directions regarding how self-serving justifications result in ethical misconduct.
Keywords: Moral Sensibility; Behavior; Organizations; Attitudes;
Gino, F. "How Moral Flexibility Constrains Our Moral Compass." In Cheating, Corruption, and Concealment: The Roots of Dishonesty, edited by Jan-Willem van Prooijen and Paul A.M. van Lange. Cambridge University Press, 2016.
