Levelling the Score - the role of individual perceptions of justice in the creation of unethical outcomes in business.

ACERP2016 Kobe, Japan, 2nd April 2016 - Conference Paper

Abstract

Rationalist models of ethical decision making assume that higher order conscious reasoning dominates the ethical decision making process however research shows that psychopaths have a similar capacity for ethical decision making to the rest of the population. In contrast research from the fields of social psychology, criminology and neurocognitive science shows that personal and contextual factors play a much larger role in the creation of unethical outcomes and that subconscious pattern matching processes are more prevalent than higher order conscious reasoning.

This paper presents a Causal Factor Model synthesized from inter-disciplinary research that illustrates the dynamic interplay between personal and contextual factors, perceptual blindness and moral neutralisations. The model has been tested using a multiple case study method involving interviews with people who have either been convicted of corporate crimes at a senior executive or board level, or who have been involve…