Fluent Essays

Read the following paper attached below: FLYNN, F. J., & WILTERMUTH, S. S. (2010). WHO'S WITH ME? FALSE CONSENSUS, BROKERAGE, AND ETHICAL DECISION MAKING IN ORGANIZATIONS. Academy Of Management Journal, 53(5), 1074-1089. doi:10.5465/AMJ.2010.54533202 Part 1: Prepare a position paper considering the following: Identify the parties involved, their rights, their responsibilities Identify the salient ethical issues of the case. Identify the relevant factual issues, conceptual issues, social constraints, and any additional information necessary for an accurate understanding of the case Formulate possible courses of action. Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of those actions, indicating which course of action you would choose, and why. Provide your own opinions; do not regurgitate others’ opinions. "Use your facts/sources to convince me of your ethical point of view". Part 2: SUMMARY: Requirements 1 paragraph about your selected organization (this can be your place of work or any organization you can conduct research) 1-page summary of each article read Your Theory about the Company (Theory X or Y) Culture evaluation and measurement APA formated bibliography Writing Requirements APA format 3 pages in length (excluding cover page, abstract, and reference list) WHO’S WITH ME? FALSE CONSENSUS, BROKERAGE, AND ETHICAL DECISION MAKING IN ORGANIZATIONS FRANCIS J. FLYNN Stanford University SCOTT S. WILTERMUTH University of Southern California We propose that organization members overestimate the degree to which others share their views on ethical matters. Further, we argue that being a broker in an advice network exacerbates this false consensus bias. That is, a high level of “betweenness centrality” increases an individual’s estimates of agreement with others on ethical issues beyond what is warranted by any actual increase in agreement. We tested these ideas in three separate samples: graduate business students, executive students, and employees. Individuals with higher betweenness centrality overestimated the level of agreement between their ethical judgments and their colleagues’. For members of organizations, ethical standards can help guide individual decision making by clar- ifying what the majority of others believe is appro- priate. But given that ethical standards often are tacitly held, rather than explicitly agreed upon (Haidt, 2001; Turiel, 2002), individuals may strug- gle to recognize the normative view—what most others believe is the “right” course of action. Peo- ple’s tendencies to project their own opinions can alter their judgments about what others think is ethical, perhaps giving them a sense of being in the majority even when they are not. The ramifications of this false consensus effect may be problematic: if members of organizations erroneously assume that their actions are in line with prevailing ethical principles, they may subsequently learn of their misjudgment when it is too late to avert the consequences. In the present research, we examine whether bro- kers in a social network show evidence of false consensus in ethical decision making. Because bro- kers span structural holes (missing relationships that inhibit information flow between people [see Burt, 1992]), one might assume that these individ- uals possess greater insight into others’ attitudes and behaviors. But can acting as a broker (i.e., hav- ing “betweenness”) inform a focal individual about his or her peers’ ethical views? In interactions with colleagues, people generally refrain from initiating moral dialogue; rather, they prefer to discuss less sensitive attitudes and opinions (Sabini & Silver, 1982). We argue that this tendency to avoid moral discourse and instead discuss superficial connec- tions worsens the false consensus bias in ethical decision making, providing an illusion of consen- sus where none exists. The notion that having an advantageous position in a social network might exacerbate, rather than mitigate, false consensus bias in ethical decision making represents a novel insight for those inter- ested in the link between social networks and in- dividual judgment. Prior work on identifying the determinants of false consensus has focused pri- marily on motivational drivers, such as ego protec- tion, or cognitive heuristics, such as “availability bias” (for a review, see Krueger and Clement [1997]). Yet, the nature of false consensus—a flawed view of one’s referent group—suggests that an individual’s set of social ties can also play an important role. In contrast to the authors of work on ethical decision making who have treated social networks as a means of social influence (e.g., Brass, Butterfield, & Skaggs, 1998), we propose that social networks can distort social cognition (see Flynn, Reagans, Amanatullah, & Ames, 2006; Ibarra, Kilduff, & Tsai, 2005), particularly the judgment of others’ ethical views. We aim to make several contributions to the scholarly literatures on social networks and ethical decision making in organizations. First, we intro- duce the concept of false consensus bias in the context of ethical judgments, thereby adding to a growing literature on the psychological factors af- fecting organization members’ moral reasoning (see Mannix, Neale, & Tenbrunsel, 2006). Second, and more importantly, we explore whether one’s loca- The authors would like to acknowledge helpful com- ments on drafts of this article offered by Dale Miller and Benoit Monin. � Academy of Management Journal 2010, Vol. 53, No. 5, 1074–1089. 1074 Copyright of the Academy of Management, all rights reserved. Contents may not be copied, emailed, posted to a listserv, or otherwise transmitted without the copyright holder’s express written permission. Users may print, download or email articles for individual use only. tion in an advice network can influence this false consensus bias; thus, we examine ethical decision making in organizations as a form of social judg- ment. Finally, we provide a counterpoint to re- search showing that many forms of centrality in social networks can improve social perception (e.g., Krackhardt, 1987), suggesting instead that an individual’s judgments of ethical standards (i.e., the ability to gauge a consensual position) may be impaired by occupying a broker role (i.e., by having more betweenness). Ethical Judgments and False Consensus Bias Ethical principles can be defined as consensually held positions on moral issues (e.g., Frtizsche & Becker, 1984; Kohlberg, 1969, 1981; Mackie, 1977; Payne & Giacalone, 1990; Toffler, 1986; Turiel, 2002). According to this conventional view of eth- ics, moral values are continually evolving and are shaped by patterns of behavior and discourse within a social group (Phillipps, 1992; Schweder, 1982; Wieder, 1974). Other approaches to ethics, such as the principles approach advocated by Locke’s utilitarianism, Kant’s categorical impera- tive, and higher-level stages of morality in Kohl- berg’s (1969) model of moral reasoning, do not con- tain such an assumption that ethics are socially determined. In the present research, we focus on the conventional approach and acknowledge that in other approaches, consensus may not be as im- portant in deciding which behaviors are ethical. For members of organizations, socially shared ethical standards are important to recognize but often difficult to gauge (Treviño, 1986). Such un- certainty in diagnosing the conventional ethical view can invite various forms of cognitive bias. In particular, empirical studies of the “false consen- sus effect” (Marks & Miller, 1987) have consistently shown that “people’s own habits, values, and be- havioral responses . . . bias their estimates of the commonness of the habits, values, and actions of the general population” (Gilovich, 1990: 623). Peo- ple who are shy, for example, tend to think that more people are shy than do those who are gregar- ious (Ross, Greene, & House, 1977). In some sense, false consensus is akin to an “anchoring and adjust- ment” process, whereby people anchor on their own attitudes and insufficiently adjust for ways in which they are likely to differ from others (Davis, Hoch, & Ragsdale, 1986). We propose that false consensus bias can play a critical role in ethical decision making by influ- encing how individuals see their decisions in relation to how others see the same decisions. Ac- cording to Haidt’s (2001) social intuitionist model, when prompted to defend their moral reasoning, most individuals are motivated to see their choices and attitudes as consistent with others’ choices and attitudes. This desire for normative alignment may, in turn, lead them to interpret their own actions and beliefs as “common and appropriate” (Ross et al., 1977: 280). Conversely, the same people will see alternative responses (particularly those di- rectly opposed to their own) as deviant, or uncom- mon and inappropriate. In short, people are predis- posed to view their decisions as being more in line with the prevailing view than others’ decisions are (Krueger & Clement, 1997). The concept of appropriateness plays a pivotal role in the domain of ethical decision making be- cause it provides a motivational driver for individ- ual judgment (Haidt, 2001; Haidt, Koller, & Dias, 1993). People are motivated to make moral judg- ments and avoid making immoral ones (Colby, Gibbs, Kohlberg, Speicher-Dubin, & Candee, 1980). But what happens when they are unclear about moral standards? When the ethical course of action is ambiguous (e.g., there is a dilemma in which one ethical principle stands opposed to another), mem- bers of organizations will be inclined to see their actions as normative rather than deviant. The cumulative effect of this motivated reasoning is straightforward: employees’ intuitions about whether others agree with their ethical judgment will be biased, so that they overestimate the prev- alence of their own views. We therefore put forth: Hypothesis 1. People estimate that a majority of others share their views on ethical issues— even when their views are actually held by a minority of others. Brokerage and False Consensus Bias in Ethical Decision Making Can an individual’s location in a social network, particularly his or her centrality, affect ethical de- cision making? Brass et al. (1998) argued that more centrally located employees are less likely to per- form immoral acts because being well known makes individual behavior more visible and in- creases potential damage to one’s reputation. Ac- cording to Sutherland and Cressey (1970), the effect of network centrality on individual ethical judg- ment is a matter of social influence rather than reputation. To the extent that a focal individual is connected to many unethical colleagues, network centrality will likely be a strong predictor of uneth- ical behavior; to wit, a higher percentage of “bad apples” in one’s social circle can cloud one’s moral judgment. 2010 1075Flynn and Wiltermuth We suggest an alternative link between network centrality and ethical decision making— one that connects social networks with social projection. Centrality in a social network is often described as a form of power (or potential power) because hav- ing a central network position offers an individual “greater access to, and possible control over, rele- vant resources,” such as information (Brass, 1984: 520). One specific form of power in advice net- works, betweenness centrality, is closely associated with informational advantage (Burt, 1992). Be- tweenness captures the extent to which a point falls between pairs of other points on the shortest path connecting them. In other words, if two people, A and C, are connected only through another person, B, then B has some control over any resources that flow between A and C. In effect, B can act as a broker between A and C. As a measure of centrality, betweenness is well suited to capture the control of information in advice networks (Freeman, 1979). Thus, betweenness centrality may be a particularly relevant source of power that pertains to ethical decision making in organizations. Given that brokers have an informational advan- tage, one might assume that these individuals have greater insight into their group’s shared moral atti- tudes and beliefs and therefore will be more accu- rate in estimating others’ ethical judgments. In con- trast, we argue that the opposite may be true. Individuals learn about others’ attitudes through ongoing conversation and casual observation, but the insight they gain from such interactions can often be superficial (Hollingworth, 2007). People are inclined to talk about “safe” subjects—sports, kids, current events—rather than sensitive subjects such as politics, religion, and morality (Kanter, 1979; Skitka, Baumann, & Sargis, 2005). Thus, little of the information that brokers gain from their so- cial ties may apply to personal bases of moral judg- ment because people are loath to discuss their moral values openly with their colleagues. Instead, such discussions of morality seem almost taboo (Sabini & Silver, 1982; Turiel, 2002). Although people may be reluctant to discuss moral quandaries with their colleagues, those who broker social ties in an advice network may assume that they share their colleagues’ views on moral issues, even when this is not the case. Recent re- search suggests that powerful individuals, such as those who occupy powerful positions in social net- works, are prone to failures in perspective taking. They are less attentive to social cues and less sen- sitive to others’ views (Erber & Fiske, 1984; Keltner, Gruenfeld, & Anderson, 2003). In fact, according to Galinsky, Magee, Inesi, and Gruenfeld, perspective taking—“stepping outside of one’s own experience and imagining the emotions, perceptions, and mo- tivations of another individual” (2006: 1068)— has been described as antithetical to the mind-set of the powerful, given that powerful individuals are less empathic, less considerate of others’ opinions, and less likely to take into account others’ information when making decisions. Are powerful people, such as brokers, likely to assume that others’ ethical views are more like their own, or less? We propose that brokers may be more likely to assume their views are in line with the conventional standard because they possess an inflated sense of similarity. Brokers often have to negotiate across boundaries and manage people with diverse interests (Burt, 2007). As social con- duits, they identify, establish, or create bases of connection, communion, and correspondence, which, in turn, reinforce a sense of shared attitudes and beliefs (Stasser, Taylor, & Hanna, 1989). Bro- kers may assume that the agreement they share with others on explicit topics of conversation per- tains to unspoken attitudes, such as moral beliefs. Thus, for individuals who have high levels of be- tweenness (i.e., brokers), estimates of how their moral attitudes align with those of their colleagues may become exaggerated. They may overestimate the extent to which their ethical views are aligned with others’ because brokers are inclined to believe they are highly similar to their peers. Formally, we propose: Hypothesis 2. People who are highly central within a social network are more likely than those who are less central to overestimate so- cial support for their ethical views. Overview and Summary of Predictions We propose that ethical decision making in or- ganizations is subject to the false consensus bias—a tendency for people to assume that others hold the same opinions as they do. We predict that individ- uals who are asked to evaluate whether a certain act is ethical or unethical will assume that more of their peers will provide a response similar to their own than is actually the case. One might predict that an advantageous position in an advice network (i.e., betweenness) would mitigate this false con- sensus bias, because brokers sometimes enjoy an informational advantage over others. However, we predict that having more betweenness centrality increases, rather than decreases, the false consen- sus bias in ethical judgments. Being a broker will not expose the unspoken differences in moral opin- ions that often exist; rather, it will strengthen an individual’s belief that her or his peers hold similar 1076 OctoberAcademy of Management Journal ethical views (i.e., inflating estimates of agreement with others). We tested these ideas by collecting judgments of ethical decision making in the workplace from master’s of business administration (MBA) stu- dents, students enrolled in a master’s of manage- ment program for executives, and employees in the marketing department of a manufacturing firm. Fol- lowing previous research on the false consensus bias (e.g., Ross et al., 1977), we asked each partici- pant in our study to consider several hypothetical scenarios that featured ethical dilemmas and to provide their opinion about whether the action de- scribed was ethical and what percentage of their colleagues held the same view. We also collected data from participants describing their advice net- works; specifically, we asked whom among their colleagues they would go to for help and advice (and who among their colleagues would come to them for help and advice). METHODS Participants Marketing department sample. Thirty-four em- ployees (78 percent women; mean age, 34.3) in the marketing department of a large food manufactur- ing company participated in this study in exchange for $25 gift certificates to a major online retailer. Seventy-seven percent of eligible participants (i.e., all employees in the marketing department at the company’s headquarters) completed the survey. On average, participants had worked for the company 3.2 years (s.d. � 4.3) and for the department 2.3 years (s.d. � 2.5). All participants worked at one location and therefore had the opportunity to inter- act with each other frequently. In fact, the (former) head of the marketing department suggested that the group had a strong identity because (1) the employees were colocated and (2) they often did not need to contact employees from other depart- ments to complete their work (a large percentage of their communication was internal). People from all levels of the department completed the survey. Re- spondents’ titles ranged from administrative assis- tant to vice president of marketing. MBA student sample. One-hundred-sixty-two master’s of business administration students (20 percent women; mean age, 29.4 years s.d. � 5.4) at a private East Coast university participated in this study as part of a required course in organizational behavior. Participants were split equally across three sections of the same class. During the first year of the MBA program, students were required to take courses with the same group of fellow stu- dents. At the time of this study, the students in each class had been together for approximately seven months. These “clusters” constituting the MBA classrooms are meaningful to the students, given that they take all of their classes and organize many of their social activities together during their first year. Providing evidence of how insular these groups are, a separate survey revealed that more than 80 percent of respondents’ self-reported net- work ties were with people from their own cluster rather than other clusters. Ninety-five percent of eligible participants completed the online study questionnaire. Participants had an average of 5.6 (s.d. � 2.8) years of work experience. Executive sample. Fifty-three students in a full- time master of management program for executives at a private West Coast university (25 percent wom- en; mean age, 35.6 years, s.d. � 3.9) participated in this study as part of a required course in organiza- tional behavior (again, students were required to take all of their courses with the same group of fellow students). Ninety-five percent of eligible participants completed the study questionnaire, which was administered eight weeks after the start of their program. Executive students in this pro- gram have a strong social identity. They take all their classes in the same room and socialize fre- quently outside of class. The executive students had an average of 12.7 (s.d. � 3.9) years of work experience. Procedures Participants were invited to complete an online survey. After following a link to the study website, they were presented with a series of hypothetical scenarios describing ethical dilemmas in a work- place setting. Following each scenario, participants were asked to indicate whether they viewed the action taken in each dilemma to be ethical (“yes” or “no”). In addition, they were asked to estimate the percentage of others within their class or depart- ment who would agree with their response. Partic- ipants then responded to a series of questions de- signed to assess their social network within the class or department. Finally, they were asked to provide basic demographic information on their race, sex, home country, and age. Participants in the marketing department sample also indicated their hierarchical status. Materials and Measured Variables Ethical dilemmas. Following other research on social projection (e.g., Ross et al., 1977; Sabini, Cosmas, Siepmann, & Stein, 1999), we created a set 2010 1077Flynn and Wiltermuth of hypothetical scenarios to serve as stimuli. The Appendix summarizes the six scenarios. Each of the scenarios we derived drew on Kidder’s (1995) taxonomy of “right vs. right” ethical dilemmas, in which two moral values are placed in direct oppo- sition; following one moral value would lead an individual to make one decision and following the other moral value would lead the same individual to make a different decision (see also Badaracco [1997] and Toffler [1986] for a similar description of ethical dilemmas). Specifically, we employed Kidder’s classification of three different types of ethical dilemmas: individual/community, truth/ loyalty, and justice/mercy. According to Kidder (1995), an individual versus community dilemma refers to situations in which one option presents substantial costs to an individ- ual but the alternative option presents substantial costs to the community. In contrast, a justice versus mercy dilemma entails a choice between delivering punishment swiftly and surely or demonstrating compassion and leniency for a given transgression. Finally, a truth versus loyalty dilemma involves a situation in which the principle of honesty com- pels one to answer accurately but doing so would simultaneously break the confidence of another colleague. We drew on these three different classi- fications to generate six scenarios: two pitted the needs of the individual against the needs of the community, two pitted truth against loyalty, and two pitted justice against mercy. After reading each of these six scenarios, participants were asked to indicate whether the decision described in the sce- nario was ethical (“yes” or “no”). Each dilemma was pretested to confirm that par- ticipants would treat the dilemma as an ethical one. Fifteen pretest participants rated how much they perceived each scenario to be an ethical dilemma (1 � “not at all,” 7 � “very much”). Participants gave five of the six vignettes a rating significantly higher than the midpoint of the scale (all p’s � .01), and they rated the vignette that described an em- ployee leaving a start-up company marginally higher than the midpoint (p � .06). For the set of six scenarios, the mean rating of how much partic- ipants perceived a scenario to be an ethical di- lemma was 5.4 (s.d. � 1.4). Estimated agreement. In addition to collecting participants’ individual responses about the deci- sion made in each scenario, we collected their opinions about how others would respond. That is, after reading each of the six hypothetical dilemmas, participants were asked, “What percentage of other people within your department [class] would share your opinion about the ethicality of the decision?” Participants could provide any number ranging from 0 through 100 in response to this question. We calculated the average response as part of our mea- sure of social projection (see de la Haye, 2000; Krueger, 1998). Actual agreement. For each participant, we calculated the actual level of agreement for each individual for each dilemma by computing the per- centage of others in that individual’s class or de- partment who made the same choice as the focal participant. In other words, if a participant classi- fied a decision as unethical, actual agreement was defined as the percentage of others in the class or department who also classified that decision as unethical. Perhaps participants’ estimates of agreement did not accurately reflect the actual percentage of oth- ers in their referent group (i.e., class or department) who agreed with their ethical judgments but did reflect the extent to which others in their network agreed with their ethical judgments. To test for this possibility, we created a second measure of actual agreement that pertained to each individual’s ad- vice network. Specifically, we calculated the per- centage of people within a participant’s advice net- work (this measure is described below) who classified a particular decision the same way as he or she did (ethical or unethical). Network centrality. Network centrality has been measured in several different ways. We calculated three specific measures: degree centrality, close- ness centrality, and betweenness centrality. Degree centrality was the sum of the number of ties di- rected to a focal individual (i.e., the number of other individuals from whom she or he received advice) and emanating from the focal individual (i.e., the number of other individuals to which she or he gave advice). Closeness centrality was a mea- sure of the shortness of paths between a focal indi- vidual and all other members of a network. Finally, betweenness centrality was the fraction of shortest paths between dyads that passed through a focal individual. Although we considered all three mea- sures of centrality in our analysis, we expected betweenness centrality to have the most direct con- nection to false consensus because betweenness centrality captures the potential influence that an individual has over the spread of information through a network. In line with our research ques- tion, we investigated whether individuals who had higher levels of power based on informational in- fluence overestimated the overlap between their own and others’ ethical views. To calculate these measures of centrality, we col- lected ego (self) and alter (peer) reports of network ties, particularly those ties that refer to the ex- change of help and advice (Krackhardt, 1987). Par- 1078 OctoberAcademy of Management Journal ticipants in each of the three samples were pre- sented with a complete list of colleagues (classmates for the business school students and executive students, coworkers for the marketing department employees) and asked, “To whom would you go for help or advice if you had a ques- tion or a problem?” Participants checked off the names of colleagues who met this criterion (for the members of the MBA student sample, the names were limited to the other students enrolled in their particular class); there was no limit on the number of names participants could select. On the next page of the questionnaire, participants were asked to repeat the exercise, but in this case they indi- cated which individuals might “come to them for help or advice.” Thus, participants were asked to describe both sides of each dyadic relation. To reduce the influence of egocentric bias, we focused on confirmed ties (Carley & Krackhardt, 1996) as the basis for our measures of centrality. In a confirmed advice-seeking tie, a focal participant reports that he/she receives advice from the listed alter and the listed alter reports that he/she gives advice to the ego. We calculated a “directed” mea- sure of betweenness centrality following the steps outlined by White and Borgatti (1994). We also calculated a measure of closeness centrality based on directed graphs (Freeman, 1979). Finally, we calculated degree centrality by summing the num- ber of confirmed ties for each participant. Degree centrality represented not only the number of in- tragroup ties an individual possessed, but also the proportion of the referent group to which the indi- vidual was connected in this manner. Hierarchical status. To account for the possibil- ity that employees in high-status positions estimate higher levels of agreement than employees in low- status positions (cf. Flynn, 2003), participants in the marketing department sample were asked, “How would you describe your position in the organization?” They responded using a seven-point Likert scale (1 � “entry level,” 7 � “top level”). Demographic variables. Given that sex differ- ences have appeared in measures of network cen- trality (Ibarra, 1992) and false consensus bias (Krueger & Zeiger, 1993), we controlled for partic- ipant sex in each of our analyses. We also con- trolled for age, which varied widely in the market- ing department sample and, to a lesser extent, in the executive student sample. We used dummy variables to control for the regions of participants’ home countries in the MBA student sample and the executive student sample (an Asian country, a Lat- in-American country, or another country outside of the United States). Because only three people in the marketing department sample had a home country that was not the U.S., we did not control for region in that sample. RESULTS Tables 1, 2, and 3 report means, standard devia- tions, and correlations for all variables in the marketing department sample, the MBA student sample, and the executive student sample, respec- tively. We analyzed each of these samples sepa- rately, including the three separate sections of the MBA student sample. Preliminary graphical and statistical analyses of the MBA student sample re- vealed that two outliers whose responses were three standard …