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the classic experiments of Milgram (1963) on obedience to authority, to Latane and
Darley’s (1969) demonstrations of bystanders’ inaction to cries of help, to the contemporary
research on implicit social cognition reviewed in this chapter, social psychologists
have shown again and again that humans make systemic errors, inconsistent with
their own desired ethics, that can profoundly harm others.
Much of this book considers the systematic and predictable errors that we make
against the criterion of rationality. In this chapter, we have focused on the ethical errors
we make against the criterion of our intended ethicality. We have documented perceptual
and cognitive errors that lead our ethicality to be bounded in ways that contradict
our typical assumption of unbounded ethicality. Most of us hold a stable view of ourselves
as moral, competent, deserving, and thus immune from ethical failures (Banaji,
Bazerman, & Chugh, 2003). This high self-esteem keeps us from monitoring our own
behavior and makes bounded ethicality all the more likely.
Can ethics training help people behave more consistently with their values? At
least some knowledgeable observers argue that the actual results of ethics training are
disappointing (Badaracco & Webb, 1995). Like Tenbrunsel and Messick (2004), we
believe that most ethical training focuses too narrowly on explicitly unethical behavior.
The concept of bounded ethicality confronts unethical behavior that escapes the actor’s
conscious awareness. Most managers think of themselves as ethical people and do not
intentionally engage in unethical behavior. They therefore question why they should
waste their time listening to lessons that tell them to behave ethically. The concepts
presented in this chapter highlight ethical concerns that are likely to have escaped the
attention of honest and dishonest managers alike.
More than a decade ago, Messick and Bazerman (1996) argued against the perspective
that questions of executive ethics can be boiled down to explicit tradeoffs between
ethics and profits. Rather, they asserted that a focus on psychological tendencies
will lead to improved ethical decision making. The authors of this book now believe that
the unconscious aspects of these psychological tendencies offer the best hope for improving
individual and organizational ethics.