Goal Setting as a Motivator of Unethical Behavior

By Maurice E. Schweitzer, Lisa D. Ordóñez, Bambi M. Douma. 2004

691 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Information Systems and Management, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management, Safety Research

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/93eafdc5f9ca35a188cfc1290a97b9bc8c6bc31f

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In Information Systems and Management

In Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

In Safety Research

Citations in the corpus

Towards a Dialectic Perspective on Formalization in Interorganizational Relationships: How Alliance Managers Capitalize on the Duality Inherent in Contracts, Rules and Procedures (2007, background): “Goals set in formal documents, for example, sometimes give rise to unethical behaviour, including overstatement and false claiming of accomplishments (Schweitzer et al. 2004).”
Behavioral Ethics: Toward a Deeper Understanding of Moral Judgment and Dishonesty (2012, neutral): “Alternatively, scholars have used other types of ability-based tasks where they gave participants the opportunity to cheat by overstating their performance on the task (e.g., Schweitzer et al., 2004; Gino & Pierce, 2009).”
Why Do We Lie? A Practical Guide To The Dishonesty Literature (2018, background): “Schweitzer et al. (2004) find that people who are exposed to overly ambitious goals, which they are unable to meet, are more likely to overstate their performance Journal of Economic Surveys (2018) Vol. 32, No. 2, pp. 357–387 C© 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. and cheat compared to groups who are asked…”
Bringing ethics into focus: How regulatory focus and risk preferences influence (Un)ethical behavior (2011, background): “As in prior studies that used anagram tasks to investigate goal setting, our goal was set equal to the 90th percentile of performance (e.g., Schweitzer et al., 2004).”
The Ethical Mirage: A Temporal Explanation as to Why We Are Not as Ethical as We Think We Are (2010, background): “…a goal (such as following the rules of a sanctioning system or meeting an environmental standard) can dominate a decision process, fading the ethics from the situation and suppressing the “should” self, Schweitzer, Ordonez, and Douma (2004) found that goal setting can promote unethical behavior.”
Deciding what's right: The role of external sanctions and embarrassment in shaping moral judgments in the workplace (2008, background): “Economic stimuli include pay cuts, fines, garnished wages, and other financial penalties (Gomez-Mejia, Welbourne & Wiseman, 2000; Greenberg, 1990; Wageman, 1995; Wiseman & Gomez-Mejia, 1998; Schweitzer et al., 2004; Tenbrunsel & Messick, 1999).”
Investigating the Effects of Moral Disengagement and Participation on Unethical Work Behavior (2011, background): “Indeed, we extend our reasoning to the performance management domain, where some preliminary evidence has suggested that goal-setting and reward initiatives may have an impact on ethical work behavior (Schweitzer et al., 2004).”
Understanding unethical behavior by unraveling ethical culture (2011, background): “This also corresponds with the empirical findings of Cressey (1953), Robertson and Rymon (2001), and Schweitzer et al. (2004).”