Dalam konteks bisnis, yang lebih menyedihkan dari 27 hal tersebut, dan banyak terjadi, adalah bila bisnis dibangun hanya untuk melancarkan niatan awal menjalankan Bad Things, dengan maksud untung besar secara cepat tanpa etika bisnis semestinya.
- Tunnel vision
Single-minded focus on setting and achieving the goals can blind people to ethical concerns.
- The power of names
The use of euphemisms for questionable practices can free them of their moral connotations, making them seem more acceptable.
- Social bond theory
Employees can begin to feel more like numbers or cogs in a machine than individuals
- The Galatea effect
Self image determines behavior. People who have a strong sense of themselves as individuals are less likely to do unethical things. Alternatively, employees who see themselves as determined by their environment are more likely to bend the rules,as they feel less individually responsible.
- Time pressure
When encouraged to go as fast as possible, 90 percent ignored the man.
- Acceptance of small theft
Small thefts are ignored
- Self-serving bias
Most think they’re smarter and more ethical than those around them
- Conspicuous consumption
The mere presence of money makes people more selfish
- The Pygmalion effect
The way that people are seen and treated influences the way they act.
- Environmental influence
Employees reflect their environment
- Reactance theory
People resent threats to their freedom, and they often manifest that resistance by flouting certain rules.
- Obedience to authority
when people see themselves as an instrument of another’s wishes, they feel less responsible
- The blinding effect of power
The blinding effect of power
- Broken window theory
When people see disorder or disorganization, they assume there is no real authority. In that environment, their threshold to overstepping legal and moral boundaries is lower.
- The free-rider problem
If total damage is limited, people feel as though they can take more liberties.
- The foot in the door
When a figure in authority asks someone to skirt the rules, they want to seem like a team player. In that frame of mind, they may be willing to do increasingly unethical things.
- Winner take-all competition
In situations where there is a clearly-defined winner and loser, people are more likely to cheat. They desperately want to avoid the financial and reputational costs of losing.
- Cognitive dissonance and rationalization
The bigger the dissonance, the larger the rationalization, and the longer it lasts, the less immoral it seems.
- Problematic punishments
Rather than being about whether something is right or wrong, it becomes an economic calculation about the likelihood of getting caught versus the potential fine.
- Lack of sleep and hypoglycemia
People who are hungry or tired have less self control
- Escalating commitment
The feeling that there’s no way out.
- The induction mechanism
As the unethical becomes routine, the extremely unethical, once unthinkable, enters the realm of possibility.
- Market and shareholder pressure
“As long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance.”
- The compensation effect
Sometimes people, having been moral and forthright in their dealings for a long time, feel as if they have banked up some kind of “ethical credit,” which they may use to justify immoral behavior in the future.
- Negative consequences of transparency
Experiments examining the publication of conflicts of interest have found a perverse effect.
- Bad communication
Rather than sounding out ideas that border on unethical, people push and test their limits.
- The pressure to conform
In order to fit in with a group, people do things they might not otherwise.