Bounded Ethicality as a Psychological Barrier to Recognizing Conflicts of Interest

By D. Chugh, Max H. Bazerman, Mahzarin R. Banaji. 2005

402 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: General Health Professions, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/237fe0a5698a0521b3a9135ae2e81e8bb254df2b

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In General Health Professions

In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

Understanding ordinary unethical behavior: why people who value morality act immorally (2015, neutral): “In fact, many studies have found that people act unethically without their own awareness and fail to notice the unethical behavior around them [31,32 ,33].”
When misconduct goes unnoticed: The acceptability of gradual erosion in others’ unethical behavior (2009, result): “By contrast, other scholars have suggested that our ethical decisions are compromised by the same systematic errors that characterize our thinking and decision-making processes overall (Messick & Bazerman, 1996), some of which are beyond our conscious awareness ( Chugh, Bazerman, & Banaji, 2005 ).”
Behavioral Ethics: Toward a Deeper Understanding of Moral Judgment and Dishonesty (2012, background): “The literature on implicit attitudes and associations documents how it is that people act in racist and sexist ways without being aware that they are doing so (e.g., Chugh et al., 2005).”
Conflict of interest and the intrusion of bias (2010, background): “This view is compatible with what Chugh et al. (2005) call bounded ethicality: people routinely do things that dispassionate observers would regard as unethical without intending to behave unethically or even considering the possibility that their behavior has ethical implications.”
Revisiting External Validity: Concerns About Trolley Problems and Other Sacrificial Dilemmas in Moral Psychology (2014, background): “We also worry that reviewers may now be less likely to scrutinize the methodological merit of studies that use even highly artificial sacrificial dilemmas because papers that feature them have made it through the review process in the past.”
Bounded awareness: what you fail to see can hurt you (2007, background): “Similarly, Chugh, Bazerman, and Banaji (2005) have introduced the concept of " bounded ethicality " to refer to the limits on our ethics of which we are not even aware.”
Moral Disengagement in Processes of Organizational Corruption (2008, background): “Recently, researchers have begun to think about the ways in which our cognitive biases make us boundedly ethical as well as boundedly rational (Chugh et al., 2005; Murnighan et al., 2001; Tenbrunsel and Messick, 2004).”
The effect of unethical behavior on trust in a buyer–supplier relationship: The mediating role of psychological contract violation (2009, background): “Chugh et al. (2005) extend this work and introduce a phenomenon they called ‘‘bounded ethicality.’’”
Why Do We Lie? A Practical Guide To The Dishonesty Literature (2018, background): “In a non-math-based task, Fosgaard et al. (2013) found evidence that once females are reminded that cheating is an option, they cheat more, whereas the same reminder did not influence men’s dishonesty.”
13 Ethical Decision Making: Where We’ve Been and Where We’re Going (2008, background): “The examination of a specific subset of amoral decision making, namely that which results in unethical decisions, is found in recent discussions of “bounded ethicality” (Banaji & Bhaskar, 2000 ; Banaji, Bazerman, & Chugh, 2003 ; Chugh, Bazerman, & Banaji, 2005 ).”
When Employees Do Bad Things for Good Reasons: Examining Unethical Pro-Organizational Behaviors (2011, background): “An individual’s tendency to fail to recognize ethical conflicts of interest is more likely when the unethical actions favor the individual’s in-group (Chugh et al. 2005).”
Rule breaking in adolescence and entrepreneurial status: An empirical investigation (2009, background): “Because of bounded ethicality (Chugh et al., 2005), people have limitations or psychological barriers in recognizing the imminent ethical risks in decision making that involve the self.”