Blind Spots : Why We Fail to Do What's Right and What to Do about It

204 Pages·2011·2.45 MB·English

by  Max H.

Blind Spots
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Blind Spots
Why We Fail to Do What’s Right
and What to Do about It
Max H. Bazerman
Ann E. Tenbrunsel
Princeton University Press
Princeton and Oxford
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Copyright © 2011 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,
Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street,
Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW
press.princeton.edu
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bazerman, Max H.
Blind spots : why we fail to do what’s right and what to do about it / Max H. Bazerman,
Ann E. Tenbrunsel.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-691-14750-5 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Business ethics. 2. Corporate culture.
3. Decision making—Social aspects. I. Tenbrunsel, Ann E. II. Title.
HF5387.B39 2011
174′.4—dc22 2010046640
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
This book has been composed in Scala and Avenir
Printed on acid-free paper ∞
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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This book is dedicated to Dave Messick, whose ideas inspired us to study
behavioral ethics, even before behavioral ethics had a name.
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
1 The Gap between Intended and Actual Ethical Behavior 1
2 Why Traditional Approaches to Ethics Won’t Save You 24
3 When We Act against Our Own Ethical Values 38
4 Why You Aren’t as Ethical as You Think You Are 61
5 When We Ignore Unethical Behavior 77
6 Placing False Hope in the “Ethical Organization” 100
7 Why We Fail to Fix Our Corrupted Institutions 128
8 Narrowing the Gap: Interventions for
Improving Ethical Behavior 152
Notes 173
Index 187
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Acknowledgments
We have been working on this book for the last two decades—t hough we
didn’t know this for much of the time. In 1991, Ann entered the doctoral
program at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management
and spent much of her time there doing some of the early research that
brought psychology into the realm of business ethics. Central to this work
was Ann’s collaboration with David Messick, who arrived at about the
same time, as the first Kaplan Distinguished Professor of Ethics at Kel-
logg. Their work examined ethical fading, or the tendency for otherwise
ethical people to make unethical decisions because the ethical implica-
tions have faded from their decisions. Max connected with Ann and Dave
on some of this research, but was largely an observer and fan of this work.
In 2000, Max joined the Harvard University faculty and started con-
ducting research with new colleagues Mahzarin Banaji and Dolly Chugh
on what we called bounded ethicality, or the systematic ways in which
people engage in unethical behavior without their own awareness. The
ideas that resulted from this collaboration, together with those from Dave
and Ann’s collaboration, proliferate throughout this book.
At about the same time, Enron collapsed, and organizations and busi-
ness schools were pushed to do something about the erosion of ethics in
society. Consequently, the field of business ethics started to shift in ways
that are described throughout our book. One core shift was the develop-
ment of the field of behavioral ethics, which focuses on the psychology of
how real people act in ethical contexts. Interest in behavioral ethics has
grown exponentially over the past decade, and this burst of interest
prompted us to combine our view of behavioral ethics in this book.
Our work on ethics has been affected by our interactions and collabo-
rations with many scholars. Some of these scholars include Modupe
Akinola, Mahzarin Banaji, Iris Bohnet, Art Brief, Daylian Cain, Eugene
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