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- March 1, 2023
- Editorial
To Overcome Resistance to DEI, Understand What’s Driving It
By: Eric Shuman, Eric Knowles and Amit Goldenberg
Employees often resist DEI initiatives, which of course hinders their effectiveness. The authors — experts in the resistance to social-change efforts — write that the key to overcoming resistance to any effort is figuring out why people are resisting. When it comes to...
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- January 2023
- Case
Natura: Weathering the Pandemic at Brazil's Cosmetic Giant
By: Brian Trelstad, Pedro Levindo and Carla Larangeira
Brazil's Natura, a multi-brand cosmetics group, has taken several measures to safeguard the livelihoods of its thousands of employees and millions of sales representatives during the COVID-19 health and economic crisis. The company has also made strides in its efforts...
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Keywords:
COVID-19 Pandemic;
ESG Reporting;
Acquisition;
Customer Focus and Relationships;
Decision Making;
Social Entrepreneurship;
Environmental Sustainability;
Environmental Management;
Climate Change;
Ethics;
Moral Sensibility;
Values and Beliefs;
Global Strategy;
Corporate Governance;
Health Pandemics;
Human Resources;
Human Capital;
Crisis Management;
Growth and Development Strategy;
Marketing;
Distribution Channels;
Supply Chain;
Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact;
Mission and Purpose;
Organizational Culture;
Customer Ownership;
Relationships;
Business and Community Relations;
Business and Stakeholder Relations;
Networks;
Partners and Partnerships;
Science-Based Business;
Reputation;
Human Needs;
Social Issues;
Strategy;
Equality and Inequality;
Beauty and Cosmetics Industry;
Brazil;
Latin America
- 2023
- Working Paper
'It Wouldn’t Have Mattered Anyway': When Overdetermined Outcomes Justify Our Sins
By: Stephanie C. Lin, Julian J. Zlatev and Dale T. Miller
We identify and document an “overdetermined outcome defense” which occurs when one learns
that circumstances besides one’s own actions were sufficient to produce a negative effect (e.g.,
deciding not to go to the gym, but later discovering that the gym had been...
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- 2023
- Working Paper
Public Perception and Autonomous Vehicle Liability
By: Julian De Freitas, Xilin Zhou, Margherita Atzei, Shoshana Boardman and Luigi Di Lillo
The deployment of autonomous vehicles (AVs) and the accompanying societal and economic benefits will greatly depend on how much liability AV firms will have to carry for accidents involving these vehicles, which in turn impacts their insurability and associated...
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- December 2022 (Revised February 2023)
- Case
Daniel Defense: Responding to the Shooting at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, TX
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Daniel Fisher
At 11:33am on May 24, 2022, an 18-year-old man from Uvalde, Texas walked into the Robb Elementary School carrying a semi-automatic "AR-15-style” rifle manufactured by Daniel Defense and killed 19 children and two adults. Three days later, Representative Carolyn Maloney...
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Keywords:
Gun Violence;
Gun Policy;
Second Amendment;
Legal Liability;
Government Legislation;
Marketing Strategy;
Business or Company Management;
Product Marketing;
Ethics;
Corporate Accountability;
Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact;
Moral Sensibility;
Crime and Corruption;
Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms;
Manufacturing Industry;
Advertising Industry;
United States
- 2022
- Article
The Ordinary Concept of a Meaningful Life: The Role of Subjective and Objective Factors in Third-Person Attributions of Meaning
By: Michael Prinzing, Julian De Freitas and Barbara L. Fredrickson
The desire for a meaningful life is ubiquitous, yet the ordinary concept of a meaningful life is poorly understood. Across six experiments (total N = 2,539), we investigated whether third-person attributions of meaning depend on the psychological states an agent...
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- October 2022
- Article
When Does Moral Engagement Risk Triggering a Hypocrite Penalty?
By: Jillian J. Jordan and Roseanna Sommers
Society suffers when people stay silent on moral issues. Yet people who engage morally may appear hypocritical if they behave imperfectly themselves. Research reveals that hypocrites can—but do not always—trigger a “hypocrisy penalty,” whereby they are evaluated...
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- September–October 2022
- Article
Seeking Purity, Avoiding Pollution: Strategies for Moral Career Building
By: Erin Reid and Lakshmi Ramarajan
This study builds theory on how people construct moral careers. Analyzing interviews with 102 journalists, we show how people build moral careers by seeking jobs that allow them to fulfill both the institution’s moral obligations and their own material aims. We...
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- 2022
- Working Paper
Moral Thin-Slicing
By: Julian De Freitas and Alon Hafri
Given limits on time and attention, people increasingly make moral evaluations in a few seconds or less, yet it is unknown whether such snap judgments are accurate or not. On one hand, the literature suggests that people form fast moral impressions once they already...
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Keywords:
Moral Judgement;
Thin Slices;
Social Media;
Fake News;
Misinformation;
Moral Sensibility;
Behavior;
News
- 2022
- Chapter
Redirecting Rawlsian Reasoning Toward the Greater Good
By: Joshua D. Greene, Karen Huang and Max Bazerman
In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls employed the ‘veil of Ignorance’ as a moral reasoning device designed to promote impartial thinking. By imagining the choices of decision-makers who are blind to biasing information, one might see more clearly the organizing...
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- July 2022
- Article
When Alterations Are Violations: Moral Outrage and Punishment in Response to (Even Minor) Alterations to Rituals
By: Daniel H. Stein, Juliana Schroeder, Nicholas M. Hobson, Francesca Gino and Michael I. Norton
From Catholics performing the sign of the cross since the 4th century to Americans reciting the Pledge of Allegiance since the 1890s, group rituals (i.e., predefined sequences of symbolic actions) have strikingly consistent features over time. Seven studies (N = 4,213)...
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Keywords:
Ritual;
Morality;
Groups;
Norms;
Commitment;
Groups and Teams;
Values and Beliefs;
Change;
Moral Sensibility;
Behavior
- 2022
- Working Paper
Moral Deteriorations Sever Firm Identity
By: Julian De Freitas, Zarema Khon, Pechthida Kim and Samuel G.B. Johnson
Firms change over time. Which changes are so damaging that consumers believe the firm’s very
identity ceases to exist? We explored this question using Twitter data and eight experiments
involving nearly 3,000 subjects. Consumers judged that moral deteriorations were...
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- April 2022 (Revised August 2022)
- Case
Conflicts of Interest at Uptown Bank
By: Jonas Heese
In 2013, two employees debated whether to blow the whistle on their employer, Bell Bank, after completing an internal review that revealed undisclosed conflicts of interest. Bell Bank’s Asset Management business disproportionately invested clients’ money in Bell Bank’s...
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Keywords:
Whistleblower;
Whistleblowing;
Mutual Funds;
Conflicts Of Interest;
Decision Making;
Decisions;
Judgments;
Ethics;
Moral Sensibility;
Values and Beliefs;
Finance;
Financial Institutions;
Banks and Banking;
Financial Management;
Investment;
Investment Funds;
Governance;
Corporate Accountability;
Corporate Disclosure;
Corporate Governance;
Governance Compliance;
Governance Controls;
Policy;
Law;
Legal Liability;
Social Psychology;
Motivation and Incentives;
Perception;
Perspective;
Trust;
Financial Services Industry;
North and Central America;
United States
- Article
Creating High-Impact Coalitions: CEOs Can Lead the Charge on Society’s Biggest Problems
By: Rosabeth M. Kanter and Tuna Cem Hayirli
Traditionally, responses to crises and societal problems—the COVID-19 pandemic, natural disasters, racial inequities—are considered the responsibility of the public sector and NGOs. But addressing the world’s most critical problems requires leadership, resources, and...
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- 2022
- Chapter
Firms, Morality, and the Search for a Better World
Book Abstract: Defining a just economy in a tenuous social-political time. If we can agree that our current social-political moment is tenuous and unsustainable—and indeed, that may be the only thing we can agree on right now—then how do markets, governments, and...
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- 2022
- Chapter
State-Formation, Statist Islam, and Regime Instability: Evidence from Turkey
By: Kristin Fabbe
Religion, and particularly the forces of political Islam and state secularism, have been central to discussions of regime stability in the Turkish case. Intense polarization, political instability, and military interventions have propelled Turkey into crisis about once...
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- 2022
- White Paper
Building from the Bottom Up: What Business Can Do to Strengthen the Bottom Line by Investing in Front-line Workers
By: Joseph B. Fuller and Manjari Raman
A significant number of American workers—44%—are employed in low wage jobs at the front line of industries. Despite undertaking some of the most tedious, dirtiest, and most dangerous jobs, low-wage workers are—and have long been—the most likely to be overlooked by...
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- December 2021
- Case
Slice Labs: Creating a Fraud-free Online Insurance Platform
By: Amit Goldenberg, Max Bazerman and Ruth Page
"Slice Labs: Creating a Fraud-Free Online Insurance Platform" engages students with the challenge of how to influence other parties to not engage in fraud in the context of digital insurance. The case is centered around Slice, a digital insurance company that was...
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Keywords:
Technology;
Insurance;
Digitization;
Honesty;
Negotiation;
Fraud;
Ethics;
Negotiation Process;
Negotiation Tactics;
Negotiation Types;
Social Psychology;
Conflict and Resolution;
Trust;
Fairness;
Moral Sensibility;
Values and Beliefs;
Crime and Corruption;
Insurance Industry;
Technology Industry;
United States;
Canada
- Article
The Emergence of Mafia-like Business Systems in China
By: Meg Rithmire and Hao Chen
A large body of literature on state–business relations in China has examined the political role of capitalists and collusion between the state and the private sector. This paper contributes to that literature and understanding of the internal differentiation among...
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- October 15, 2021
- Article
Virtuous Victims
By: Jillian J. Jordan and Maryam Kouchaki
How do people perceive the moral character of victims? We find, across a range of transgressions, that people frequently see victims of wrongdoing as more moral than non-victims who have behaved identically. Across 15 experiments (total n = 9,355), we document this...
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