"Let's do it just this one time, to give us some breathing room to improve performance." "Don't worry about it! Everyone else is doing it, so why shouldn't we?" "The folks at the top, including the board of directors, would want us to handle it this way." Whatever wording is used to justify an otherwise underhanded action, the implication is that people behave unethically in the workplace not because they're "bad people," but because they don't realize that what they're doing is unethical. Understanding why people make unethical decisions might possibly help companies reduce the number of these poor decisions in the future. For businesses, there are a variety of explanations offered for unethical behavior, including the attitudes at the top, ethical "blind spots," and rationalizations. We set out to conduct a study of IMA® (Institute of Management Accountants) members to help explore this issue further with funding from the IMA Research Foundation. In particular, we sought to examine two specific aspects of unethical behavior: tone at the top vs. tune in the middle and the theory of self-concept maintenance. (See "What Our Survey Asked.")
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