Irelenbusch, B, Mussweiler, T M, Saxler, D J, Shalvi, S and Weiss, A (2020) Similarity increases collaborative cheating. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 178. pp. 148-173. ISSN 0167-2681
Abstract
We report two experimental studies testing how a cognitive feeling of similarity affects dishonesty in individual and collaborative tasks when cheating hurts others. By employing a novel die-in-the-box paradigm with a total of 1,080 subjects, we find that a sense of similarity (vs. dissimilarity) tends to increase dishonesty in settings highlighting the relationship with a collaborator, but tends to decrease dishonesty in settings highlighting the relationship with others who suffer from cheating. Corroborating these results, a code of conduct highlighting similarity towards the firm’s employees leads to higher levels of cheating than a code of conduct highlighting similarity towards other members of the society. The results provide insights into how to craft effective organizational codes of ethical conduct.
More Details
Item Type: | Article |
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Subject Areas: | Organisational Behaviour |
Additional Information: |
© 2020 Elsevier. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 |
Funder Name: | Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, ECONtribute: Markets and Public Policy |
Date Deposited: | 29 Jun 2020 09:24 |
Date of first compliant deposit: | 27 Jun 2020 |
Subjects: | Ethics |
Last Modified: | 20 Sep 2024 09:19 |
URI: | https://lbsresearch.london.edu/id/eprint/1434 |