IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jinter/v26y2014i1-2p97-118.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Corruption in the Context of Moral Trade-offs

Author

Listed:
  • James Dungan

    (James Dungan (corresponding author), Department of Psychology, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA. E-mail: james.dungan@bc.edu)

  • Adam Waytz

    (Adam Waytz, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL. E-mail: a-waytz@kellogg.northwestern.edu)

  • Liane Young

    (Liane Young, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA. E-mail: liane.young@bc.edu)

Abstract

Moral psychology has begun to characterize the circumstances that lead people to commit moral violations. However, the decision to engage in corrupt behaviour may not always reflect a choice between right and wrong. Rather, the decision may represent a trade-off between competing moral concerns (for example, being fair and impartial to all versus loyal to one’s own group). Taking the tension between fairness and loyalty as a case study, we demonstrate that the way people make trade-offs between competing moral norms predicts morally relevant behaviour, such as decisions to blow the whistle on unethical acts. We then suggest that this tension reflects a deeper distinction within our moral psychology, namely, a distinction between group-based norms (for example, loyalty) and norms that apply universally, independent of group membership (for example, fairness). Finally, we discuss what factors may influence the adoption of group-based versus group-independent norms and therefore, how these factors might deter or promote corruption.JEL: M14 Corporate Culture, Diversity, Social Responsibility

Suggested Citation

  • James Dungan & Adam Waytz & Liane Young, 2014. "Corruption in the Context of Moral Trade-offs," Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics, , vol. 26(1-2), pages 97-118, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jinter:v:26:y:2014:i:1-2:p:97-118
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://jie.sagepub.com/content/26/1-2/97.abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mehmet Okan Ta?ar & Sava? Çevik, 2015. "Cultural Determinants of Corruption and Bribery: A Cross-Country Comparison," Proceedings of International Academic Conferences 2504043, International Institute of Social and Economic Sciences.
    2. Gustavo Gouvêa Maciel & Luís de Sousa, 2018. "Legal Corruption and Dissatisfaction with Democracy in the European Union," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 140(2), pages 653-674, November.
    3. Michael C. Munger, 2019. "Tullock and the welfare costs of corruption: there is a “political Coase Theorem”," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 181(1), pages 83-100, October.
    4. Pazhanisamy, R., 2019. "Corruption in Tax and Taxing the Corruption," EconStor Preprints 193967, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    5. Hildreth, John Angus D. & Gino, Francesca & Bazerman, Max, 2016. "Blind loyalty? When group loyalty makes us see evil or engage in it," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 16-36.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Corruption; hypocrisy; fairness; loyalty; whistle-blowing;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • M14 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - Corporate Culture; Diversity; Social Responsibility

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:jinter:v:26:y:2014:i:1-2:p:97-118. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.