We're staying close to home for this episode of The BIS! This week Cindy is interviewing Professor Jennifer Kish-Gephart from the University of Arkansas. Professor Kish-Gephart's research is based on why individuals behave unethically in the workplace particularly through the lens of emotions, moral disengagement, and the non-conscious.
Join us as Cindy Moehring and Professor Kish-Gephart discuss where she sees the future of business ethics education heading and her research in the role of status and status-related diversity.
Podcast:
Episode Transcript:
00:00 Cindy Moehring: Hi everybody. I'm Cindy Moehring, the Founder and Executive Chair of The Business Integrity Leadership Initiative at the Sam M. Walton College of Business, and this is the BIS, the Business Integrity School podcast. Here we talk about applying ethics, integrity and courageous leadership in business, education, and most importantly, your life today. I've had nearly 30 years of world wide experience as a senior executive, so if you're looking for practical tips from a business pro who's actually been there, then this is the podcast for you. Welcome. Let's get started. Hi everybody, welcome back for another episode of the BIS, the Business Integrity School, and I am really excited today to have one of our own Professor Jennifer Kish-Gephart. Welcome, Jennifer.
00:48 Jennifer Kish-Gephart: Thank you so much. I'm delighted to be here.
00:51 Cindy Moehring: Well, we're glad to have you here. Jennifer joined Walton College in 2010 after receiving her PhD from Penn State. And at Walton College, Jennifer is a professor in the Management Department for Walton College of Business. She teaches MGMT 4243, ethics and corporate responsibility course, which is near and dear to my heart, and she also sits as a member of my academic advisory board and is incredibly helpful to all of us in that capacity. So thank you for that.
01:19 Jennifer Kish-Gephart: Well, thank you.
01:19 Cindy Moehring: Broadly, Jennifer's research interests focus on social issues that affect employees, managers and organizations, and under this umbrella, she's interested in understanding why individuals behave unethically in the workplace with a particular emphasis on the role of emotions, moral disengagement, and the non-conscience... Quite interesting, and we'll talk about a little of your research here in a minute. Jennifer also studies the roles of status and status-related diversity, such as social class and gender within organizations, her research has been published in some top tier outlets, including the Academy of Management journal, The Academy of Management Review, Annual Review of Psychology, The Journal of Applied Psychology and research and organizational behavior. And in addition, Jennifer's paper encountering social class differences at work was a finalist for the 2013 Best Paper of the Year Award at the Academy of Management Review. Congratulations.
02:08 Jennifer Kish-Gephart: Thank you.
02:10 Cindy Moehring: Jennifer has also received the Faculty Excellence in Service Award, and the Faculty Excellence in Research Award from Walton College. So my goodness, you have an incredible resume and background, and you've been now going on like 10 years at being at Walton College. So how does it feel? Does it seem like 10 years or has it gone by quickly?
[chuckle]
02:31 Jennifer Kish-Gephart: You know, that's a great question. I feel like COVID has given us a lot of time to reflect, right? Yes, and I do think it actually went very quickly, it's hard to believe it's been... I think it's just about 10 1/2 years, but 10 1/2 is very good years.
02:47 Cindy Moehring: Wow. Yeah. Well, that's fantastic. Well, we are gonna jump right in to some of the topics today so that we can get to some of the the things that you've written as well and how that all ties together. So there was this article written in the Harvard Business Review... Gosh, almost 25 years ago, 26 years ago now, by a guy named Andy Stark, Professor Andy Stark of the University of Toronto, and he asked a question, what's the matter with business ethics? And believe it or not, that article, it still shows up, at near the top of just general Google searches, if somebody is typing in business ethics, and when I saw that and thought about it and read the article a couple of times, it just seemed to me that we've done so much in the field since that article was written, that it was really time to talk about all of that and find a way to update the thinking in that space and to share with everybody some of the changes. So at the time, again, 25, 26 years ago, Andy found and thought that ethics, business ethics was being taught in a way that was too general and too philosophical and too theoretical. So let me just ask you, you've been teaching at Walton College for 10 years and been in the field for a long time. Do you think that his criticisms of the way it was being taught still hold any water today?
04:04 Jennifer Kish-Gephart: Yeah, it's a great question. And you know, I'm actually glad that you were revisiting this because I think it's important for us to always reflect on what we're doing, and that way we can better ourselves, better growth. So to your question, I don't think it's as much of a problem, maybe as it was 25 years ago, what I would say is that over the last 25 years, we've really seen... Maybe you could classify it as two streams of research developed within Business Ethics. One kind of from a more normative perspective that focuses on the philosophical, on the what should we be doing question. And then another stream that tends to focus on the why do we do what we do, more of a psychological approach, a more of social-scientific approach to understand the why in the hopes that if we know why people do what they do, then we have a better way of potentially addressing it within organizations and minimizing the potential for those factors to influence unethical behavior. And so for me, I think that I have seen personally more of a focus on that social-scientific approach in classes than in the philosophical approach. And so I don't see that the philosophical side of it, it's too philosophical, it's too general as being as much of a problem as perhaps it was 25 years ago.
05:25 Cindy Moehring: Yeah, I tend to agree, and the behavioral ethics side of it and the social sciences has been a really important advancement, I think in the field, because you can't... Until you understand why something's happening and kinda get to the root cause, it's difficult to then build strategies around it to deal with what's causing the bad behavior.
05:45 Jennifer Kish-Gephart: Definitely, I think it's what we see in practical, that's the way to do it, is to know the why, so that it can be very practical for the outcomes, the way that we can address that.
05:54 Cindy Moehring: Exactly, I completely agree. So earlier this year, to that point, The Network for Business Sustainability actually published an article that was titled "Three reasons that employees act unethically," and the article was based on research that you did almost 10 years ago with Linda Trevino, who's also been a guest here on our podcast, and I know you studied under her at Penn State and David Harrison. And that research resulted in an academic publication as well in the Journal of Applied Psychology in 2010, and that was called bad apples, bad cases and bad barrels, and some meta-analytic evidence about sources of unethical decisions at work. So the article this year was sort of looking back at what you guys had written from an academic perspective 10 years ago, and putting it into almost layman's terms. What did you... Let's just start with talking about, what did you mean by bad apples and bad barrels and bad cases?
06:53 Jennifer Kish-Gephart: Sure, great question. So they refer to categories of factors that influence unethical behavior, and so bad apples refers to individual differences, something about the individual, whether a disposition or a personality trait that influences why they engage in unethical behavior. Bad barrels refers to the organizational environments, what is about the organization? The ethical culture, the ethical leadership, code of conduct enforcement, rule enforcement, that might influence unethical behavior. And then bad cases refers to the situation that there are characteristics of a situation that might lean a person more towards engaging in unethical behavior than another situation. So magnitude of consequences or even the opportunity to get away with it.
07:43 Cindy Moehring: Yeah. Yeah, and sometimes there's a mix of... Would you say all three of those, that arise?
07:51 Jennifer Kish-Gephart: Absolutely, absolutely.
07:52 Cindy Moehring: So it's not like they're individual separate things, maybe, but they can also all live together in one situation when you look at it and try to explain it.
08:00 Jennifer Kish-Gephart: Definitely, I think actually, we do ourselves a disservice when we try to focus on one as the primary explanation for something and avoid or ignore the other two. That's one of the things that I like to ask my students in class is, who does it benefit to make a bad apples argument, or who does it benefit to make a bad barrels argument? And inevitably, they come down to the opinion that with bad apples, it actually benefits a company, to say, the bad apples are the problem because then the company doesn't have to look internally and look at what could potentially be in your environment. And in some ways, it helps us as a society too, to say, "Oh, it's just evil people that are doing unethical behavior. It would never be a normal person like me, a person who really wants to do the right thing normally."
08:49 Cindy Moehring: Yeah, that is so interesting. And if you look at the bad barrel and say that, who would that benefit if they were talking about it's the bad barrel, what do your students say then when you ask them that?
09:00 Jennifer Kish-Gephart: That's a great question. It benefits the employee 'cause it's very easy to diffuse responsibility. "My boss told me to do it. Other people in the organization are doing it. I wasn't gonna get the bonus if I didn't do it."
09:12 Cindy Moehring: And if a company doesn't be, or if they're not able to step back and kinda look at all of it together, then you don't ever really get to fixing systemic problems that may very well exist even in bad apple situations, there can be systemic issues that from organizationally should be addressed.
09:28 Jennifer Kish-Gephart: For sure, yes.
09:30 Cindy Moehring: I love that analogy. Thinking that way, bad apples, bad cases and bad barrels. That's really cool. So let me ask you another question then about all of the different bad apples and bad cases and bad barrels, and how does... Is there a connection... Let me just ask you that way. Is there a connection between that at all, do you think, Jennifer, and stakeholder theory and thinking about all the different stakeholders that come into play in a particular situation, I'm thinking about the business roundtables, pronouncement last year about the whole purpose of a corporation and how it really isn't anymore, according to the Business Roundtable, for the benefit of just the shareholders, it's for the benefit of all the stakeholders, so you're talking about suppliers and you're talking about customers, you're talking about employees, and you're talking about the community. Does that in some way cause even a greater diffusion, if you will, of potential responsibility if something goes wrong, do you think?
10:32 Jennifer Kish-Gephart: You know, my initial reaction to this and I might I have to give it some more thought, but my initial reaction is that, that it wouldn't diffuse responsibility as much, if anything, I think it forces companies, managers within companies to think a bit more broadly about who they're gonna be affecting with their decisions, and perhaps might make them more aware of the perspective of those various stakeholders. Then they feel the need to actually go out and find out more information about how that stakeholder group might perceive this particular information, and so I think that it might actually be beneficial. I believe that it must be beneficial to consider multiple stakeholders in that decision-making.
11:18 Cindy Moehring: Yeah, yeah, I hadn't really thought about it and I just was thinking about... I think you're probably right, it probably causes them to think more broadly about how their decisions are affecting the different constituencies as opposed to maybe defusing the decision-making at all, but... So let me ask you this, what do you think about the new pronouncement by the Business Roundtable, and of course, one of the constituencies that they mentioned in terms of a stakeholder was in fact suppliers and dealing ethically with suppliers and thinking broadly about communities and employees, and not just the shareholder. Do you bring that into your classes at all, this new statement, do you talk about it with your students, and how does it affect your business ethics teaching?
12:02 Jennifer Kish-Gephart: Yeah, great question. Yes, so the short answer is yes, I do bring it in, I do talk about it. Really, what I think it does is, it provides legitimacy to arguments that have been made for quite a bit of time, and I were speaking earlier about Ed Freeman professor at the Darden School at the University of Virginia, and Ed has been a long time proponent of a multiple stakeholder perspective. I also think about the Credo that Johnson & Johnson is known for, which I was going back and looking, and I was surprised that the Credo has been around since 1943. And that Credo very explicitly points out the company's responsibility as they see it to multiple stakeholders. And so it is kind of... As I see it, an early evidence of a multiple stakeholder approach to thinking about how their decisions are going to influence people.
12:55 Cindy Moehring: Wow. Wow. Yeah, well that's a nice book, I said, "You must have just been jumping up and down in the room when you fell the new pronouncement from the Business Roundtable," he felt like he was sort of a canary in the coal mine, I think for years with thinking that way other than the Credo that you mentioned, 1943. Wow.
13:14 Jennifer Kish-Gephart: Yes, yes. It's been around for a very long time, you know what I would say too, that I think that the roundtable decision is probably reflective too of society more general kind of pushing the issue that we do need to think a bit more broadly about the purpose of business and who the stakeholders are.
13:34 Cindy Moehring: Have you seen any examples that you can think of of how that has come to live through COVID or even with the racial tension that we've seen in the US lately with some companies, so many of them, in my opinion, have stepped up to the plate and made pronouncements about things they're going to do, maybe the proof is still in the pudding, sort of like with the Business Roundtable, pronouncement, it was great on paper, but it's all gonna... We have to see what the businesses actually do, but I know that particularly during the time of COVID, if companies didn't focus on their employees as opposed to their profits, it was pretty clear they were gonna face some serious backlash for that. Edelman did a... They have the Trust Barometer report that they do every year, and they did a supplemental report in light of COVID on that exact question, and essentially people were saying, who they surveyed, if there's a company that isn't more focused on their employees than profits right now, then they wouldn't even go back and visit the company again because they just felt like they wouldn't have been able to trust the company.
14:38 Cindy Moehring: So, I feel like the Business Roundtable pronouncement may have sort of fast-forwarded some actions because of COVID and the racism issues that companies have been forced to address issues, social issues, I would say in a different way, and CEOs, Jennifer, you know, they don't... In the past, they didn't wait into social statement questions and feel as though they have to answer them as much as I think now, CEOs find themselves almost needing to provide an answer to their employees. Have you seen a change there, do you think too?
15:14 Jennifer Kish-Gephart: You know, I actually... I don't have specific examples of that. But one of the examples that came to mind as you are speaking related to Black Lives Matter is that higher education institutions have really been forced into thinking how they deal with race issues, and part of that though, even though we had this mass movement of a protest happening, part of what motivated the real, the real change or the movement within the organization or within the higher education institutes came from Twitter and people talking about what is it like to be Black at this particular institution or another institution, and I think a lot of higher ed institutions that thought they were doing fairly well, were forced to face a difficult reality, and then that's motivating change, and so I don't know if the Roundtable itself if that proclamation has you trickle down into paying attention to stakeholders or stakeholders speaking up more, and now they're facing a salience, in that way I wonder if the Roundtable pronouncement isn't in part because people in society are expecting more of their organization.
16:36 Cindy Moehring: You're right, you're right. It almost could have been a bubbling up as opposed to sort of a pronouncement down because in this, the power of digital media and the power that it puts in an individual's hands in order to be heard is pretty amazing actually. And you're right, this statement could have almost been a response and then reaction to this different world we live in today, this transparent connected world that we live in, and individuals are saying, "That's what we expect of you," and there could have been saying, "Okay, we agree with you, and we're gonna actually say it now," so, yeah, could be interesting way to think about it. So when you think then, Jennifer as you've reflected on business ethics and where it's been kind of that was exemplified by Andy's article, and you well know where it is now and you've contributed to where it is now with your great research on behavioral ethics, where do you think it needs to go in the future? Like if you were to look out over the next 25 years and think about the future of business ethics, are there three words or phrases that you think should be captured there?
17:41 Jennifer Kish-Gephart: Well, so I think that the future is bright. I think that there's a lot of opportunity to be impactful, to continue to be impactful, and I think innovation and imagination are gonna have to be a part of where we go in the future. And I love this quote from Ed Freeman, he was speaking recently at Trinity College in Dublin, or at least virtually with them, and something that he said is that, if you have to make trade-offs among stakeholders, it is a failure of imagination that we need to help people as business schools to figure out their creative imagination, and I just thought...
18:18 Cindy Moehring: I'm loving that.
18:18 Jennifer Kish-Gephart: Yeah, especially in light of what we were just speaking about with multiple stakeholders in consideration, and so if we start thinking about it that way, maybe there is a way that we can be more imaginative, more innovative.
18:30 Cindy Moehring: Yeah. 'Cause it's like the balance. It's like, No, the tension shouldn't pull you apart and you shouldn't be making trade-offs, you need to hold it all together and figure out how to do that, which is gonna require a lot of innovation and ingenuity and creativity. Oh, I like that, that's cool.
18:47 Jennifer Kish-Gephart: Absolutely, I agree. So that makes me very optimistic about the future, it also I think when I look back just 10 years from where I started in... After my PhD program, a lot has changed just within behavioral ethics of the research as a research stream, behavioral ethics research shows up in our top tier publications on a regular basis, there is a large group of people who are studying this who are doing really interesting creative research, we are finding out new things about the way that unethical behavior works that we didn't know 10 years, let alone 25 years ago. And so something that probably when you spoke to Linda Trevino came up back in the 1980s when she started working in this field, she was told, this is just gonna be a fad, it's just a niche and you're not gonna be able to get tenure off of this, and clearly we are way beyond a niche, and I think that we're doing... We have the potential to do a lot of influential work yet.
19:44 Cindy Moehring: I would agree, yeah, she really was a pioneer out there on her own, and it's not going away, so I would agree, yeah. This has been exciting to hear you talk about the fact that you've even seen changes in the field in the last 10 years. And I think that we're only in for an exciting ride as we continue forward, given all of the technology and the things that we can do in terms of really measuring the impact of ethics and compliance programs. That's one of the things that I think some of the softer skills side of management can be hard to manage on the HR side or in ethics and compliance. But the crisper we get at being able to use technology to measure the impact and the more we understand why people do things, I think then we'll be able to really turn the dial to that innovation and ingenuity that Ed talked about, to really make the programs a lot more effective.
20:42 Jennifer Kish-Gephart: Absolutely. Well, and actually just to add to what we're seeing, so back 25 years ago in the Stark article, and he spoke about... That a lot of universities had ethics classes. But I think we've gotten much further than that, that the ethics classes are perhaps taking a different perspective or approach than they may have 25 years ago. That we're recognizing that a comprehensive ethics program has to be a part of the business school as you're fighting, as you're working on, at the Walton College very successfully. So I think that that's an important piece of it.
21:21 Cindy Moehring: Yeah. Yeah, I think you're right, and Linda wrote some interesting research there as well. As you know, Linda Trevino, about business schools and creating an ethical culture, which was a great piece. But you're right. In my opinion, I think it's become much more practical, I think it's become much more analytical, the business ethics teaching that is done. And so that makes it more applicable for the new managers that are gonna get out because I'd still think the one thing that new managers don't appreciate when they get out into the working world, is that they're actually gonna be faced with these dilemmas frequently. And that business ethics isn't just that class I maybe took over here, but that whether I'm in marketing or merchandising or supply chain or even economics, that issues, just being in the working world means that ethical issues are gonna come up regardless of their chosen profession. So that comprehensive approach, I think, is important for us to be able to help young people navigate this new world they're gonna find themselves in.
22:23 Jennifer Kish-Gephart: Absolutely. Well, and I think, yeah, we can think about comprehensive even beyond the business school. So within the business school we need a strong ethical culture, we have to help students with understanding, being aware of ethical dilemma, of how do I address ethical dilemmas? And an understanding, kind of the psychology behind it. But then when they graduate and they go into an organization, the organizations have to do their part too to create the strong ethical culture because just knowing what we know about situational influences, organizational influences, but one class in college and then graduating and going into a company isn't probably gonna do it in the space with strong culture similar to, for example, Enron.
23:08 Cindy Moehring: Yeah, yeah. That's so true, very true. Well, Jennifer, this has been a great discussion. Thanks for taking some time out of your day to visit with us and I wanna end on some fun questions for you. Tell me what you have been either reading or listening to or watching, just for fun, some downtime in the middle of COVID, but yet you also find these really interesting ethical dilemmas woven into it. Anything fun?
23:32 Jennifer Kish-Gephart: Yes, fun. Well, I actually, yes, I think they're fun. I don't know if other people would agree with that. [chuckle] As far as books go, I'm currently reading through Viktor Frankl's book called Man's Search for Meaning, and it is actually about his experience in a concentration camp during the Holocaust, which is very heavy, very tragic. But he's looking at it from a psychological perspective to try to understand how people coped with that situation and the psychology behind different phases people go through when they are forced into the situation. But what I found was interesting is that he very much sees the way that we deal with any kind of struggle within the way that he had to decide how he was gonna deal with this particular struggle, which I think is an understatement to call it a struggle. But he makes the suggestion that it's almost a moral decision, how we decide to deal with struggles in our lives, that there are multiple ways to deal with them and there is a right way to deal with them. And I just thought, "Wow, how powerful." In a situation like this that someone could be thinking about it from that perspective.
24:50 Cindy Moehring: So that sounds like a really awesome book. Have you been watching anything that has been kind of fun during COVID but maybe also has an ethical dimension or dilemma or anything embedded in it?
25:01 Jennifer Kish-Gephart: Absolutely. So HBO actually has a show called The Vow, which is focused on a group called NXIVM. And NXIVM has similarities... At least the argument is it has similarities to a cult, and so they're really getting into the psychology of how this organization operated, how it influenced people. So again, the psychology basis is what I find fascinating.
25:25 Cindy Moehring: Oh yeah, yeah.
25:27 Jennifer Kish-Gephart: It also highlights what I would call, are the whistle blowers of this organization. People who are a part of this organization who really believed it, the purpose. And I think a lot of us go into organizations wanting to believe in the purpose of that organization.
25:42 Cindy Moehring: Yes.
25:42 Jennifer Kish-Gephart: And the show shows how difficult it was for them to see what was underneath that, what was unethical that was going on, or they felt was unethical and the struggle that they had both psychologically but also just to bring this information to light for the public to see. So that's been a very fascinating show.
26:01 Cindy Moehring: Well, Jennifer, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for contributing to this season of podcast. Thank you for the work you've been doing in the behavioral ethics space, and I'm just really excited to be able to work with you now in Walton College. And thanks for everything you're doing for us at the college as well. Appreciate it. It's fun working with you.
26:22 Jennifer Kish-Gephart: Thank you. You as well, yes, absolutely. Thank you for having me on today.
26:25 Cindy Moehring: You bet. Alright, talk to you soon.
26:27 Jennifer Kish-Gephart: Bye.
26:28 Cindy Moehring: Bye.
26:30 Cindy Moehring: Thanks for listening to today's episode of The BIS, the Business Integrity School. You can find us on YouTube, Google SoundCloud, iTunes or wherever you find your podcasts. Be sure to subscribe and rate us, and you can find us by searching TheBIS, that's one word, T-H-E-B-I-S. Tune in next time for more practical tips from a pro.
