Social norms on unethical behaviors in the workplace: a lab experiment Social norms on unethical behaviors in the workplace

• Published in: International review of economics Vol. 72; no. 1
• Main Authors: Guerra, Alice, Turrini, Enya
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.06.2025
• Subjects: Economic Policy; Economic Theory/Quantitative Economics/Mathematical Methods; Economics; Economics and Finance; History of Economic Thought/Methodology; Law and Economics; Quality of Life Research; Research Article; Social Policy; D20; D01; Ethical norms; M41; Gender stereotypes; Social norms; J16; Krupka-Weber method; M14; C71; Misreporting; C92; Business ethics; Norm-behavior consistency
• ISSN: 1865-1704; 1863-4613
• DOI: 10.1007/s12232-024-00479-2

We analyze social norms on unethical behaviors in the workplace using a laboratory experiment. We conducted a norm-elicitation experiment in which we considered two unethical actions as observed in an earlier behavior experiment by Amore et al. (J Bus Ethics 183:495–510, 2023): leaders’ and workers’ untruthful reporting, and workers’ misalignment with their leader’s truthful reporting. We presented participants with Amore et al.’s (2023) background: in experimental firms (1 leader and 3 workers), each member can report their performance via automatic or self-reporting, where the latter allows for profitable and undetectable earnings manipulation. Using the Krupka–Weber procedure, we asked participants to assess the social appropriateness of the reporting decisions that the subjects in Amore et al. (2023) could have taken. We find prevailing norms against self-reporting for artificial profit inflation, and workers’ self-reporting when the leader used automatic reporting. Yet, despite these norms, many subjects in the previous experiment engaged in such unethical misreporting for personal gain. These findings reveal a disconnection between the prevailing social norms and the observed unethical behaviors.