This article examines the work of professional service firms (PSFs) in their relationships with public corporations; work that is designed to ensure that investors and potential investors have information that will enable them to participate in the capital markets. Using an institutional theory lens, we view these efforts by PSFs as institutional maintenance work and specifically analyze their work related to policing (i.e., rating), enabling (i.e., tutoring), and embedding and routinizing (i.e., collaborating) that helps to support the capital market as (...) a core institution in society. We illustrate how there is a “dark” side to each of these forms of institutional work that exists because of ongoing conflicts of interest within and between their work practices. This dark side has the unintended consequence of producing often biased information or information unavailable to many. When a crisis brings this bias to light, some repair is introduced but often not enough to alleviate the distortion. Our contribution is, therefore, to shed light on the dark side of institutional maintenance work and to explore why repair is increasingly necessary, but often only partially effective. (shrink)

This article examines the work of professional service firms (PSFs) in their relationships with public corporations; work that is designed to ensure that investors and potential investors have information that will enable them to participate in the capital markets. Using an institutional theory lens, we view these efforts by PSFs as institutional maintenance work and specifically analyze their work related to policing (i.e., rating), enabling (i.e., tutoring), and embedding and routinizing (i.e., collaborating) that helps to support the capital market as (...) a core institution in society. We illustrate how there is a “dark” side to each of these forms of institutional work that exists because of ongoing conflicts of interest within and between their work practices. This dark side has the unintended consequence of producing often biased information or information unavailable to many. When a crisis brings this bias to light, some repair is introduced but often not enough to alleviate the distortion. Our contribution is, therefore, to shed light on the dark side of institutional maintenance work and to explore why repair is increasingly necessary, but often only partially effective. (shrink)

In attempting to explain or deal with negative workplace behaviours such as workplace bullying, the notion of ‘workplace psychopaths’ has recently received much attention. Focusing on individual aspects of negative workplace behaviour is at odds with more systemic approaches that recognise the contribution of individual, organisational and societal influences, without seeking to blame a person(s) for their behaviour or personality disorder. Regarding a coworker as a psychopath is highly stigmatising, and given the relatively low prevalence of psychopathy in the community, (...) is likely to be incorrect. Sources promoting the notion of workplace psychopathy provide lists of diagnostic criteria and appear to encourage the perception that it is common. This research examines how lay persons use behavioural criteria consistent with psychopathy and the label ‘psychopath’ in relation to a coworker. 307 Australian workers completed an online survey concerning their experience of workplace bullying, which also asked them to rate a coworker’s behaviour on a range of scales to assess perceptions of psychopathy. Rates of psychopathy, when using labels and behavioural criteria, were found to be much higher than scientific estimates of prevalence, for both participants who had been bullied and those who had not. A higher proportion of non-bullied participants classified a coworker as a psychopath when using the label ‘psychopath’, compared to when using behavioural criteria. The notion that there are psychopaths in every workplace should be treated with caution to ensure that the potential for ‘misdiagnosis’ and stigmatisation do not cause further harm in situations of unacceptable workplace behaviours. (shrink)

This article reports on empirical research that establishes strong, positive, and significant correlations between the ethical issues of bullying and unfair supervision in the workplace and the presence of Corporate Psychopaths. The main measure for bullying is identified as being the witnessing of the unfavorable treatment of others at work. Unfair supervision was measured by perceptions that an employee's supervisor was unfair and showed little interest in the feelings of subordinates. This article discusses the theoretical links between psychopathy and bullying (...) and notes that little empirical evidence confirms the connection in management research. The sample of 346 Australian senior white collar workers used in the research is described as is the measure of behavior for identifying psychopaths. The findings are then presented and discussed showing that when Corporate Psychopaths are present in a work environment, the level of bullying is significantly greater than when they are not present. Further, that when Corporate Psychopaths are present, supervisors are strongly perceived as being unfair to employees and disinterested in their feelings. This article concludes that around 26% of bullying is accounted for by 1% of the employee population, those who are Corporate Psychopaths. (shrink)

Although we need the good witness of others to form our best selves, an argument can be made that we need to study the dark side of the equation as well. The understanding and analysis of bad leaders/misleaders is an important component of leadership studies. However, we argue that bad leaders should never be defined as leaders. Leadership aims at the good of its communities, while misleaders do not. Ethics, therefore, is not only essential to the practice of leadership but (...) to the very meaning of the term. (shrink)

This short theoretical paper elucidates a plausible theory about the Global Financial Crisis and the role of senior financial corporate directors in that crisis. The paper presents a theory of the Global Financial Crisis which argues that psychopaths working in corporations and in financial corporations, in particular, have had a major part in causing the crisis. This paper is thus a very short theoretical paper but is one that may be very important to the future of capitalism because it discusses (...) significant ways in which Corporate Psychopaths may have acted recently, to the detriment of many. Further research into this theory is called for. (shrink)

Although we need the good witness of others to form our best selves, an argument can be made that we need to study the dark side of the equation as well. The understanding and analysis of bad leaders/misleaders is an important component of leadership studies. However, we argue that bad leaders should never be defined as leaders. Leadership aims at the good of its communities, while misleaders do not. Ethics, therefore, is not only essential to the practice of leadership but (...) to the very meaning of the term. (shrink)

While top-down descriptors have received much attention in explaining corruption, we develop a grassroots model to describe structural factors that may influence the emergence and spread of an individual’s (un)ethical behavior within organizations. We begin with a discussion of the economics justification of the benefits of competition, a rationale used by firms to adopt structural aides such as the ‹stacking’ practice that was implemented at Enron. We discuss and develop an individual-level theory of planned behavior, then extend it to the (...) dyadic level in an internally competitive organization, and finally extend the dyadic model to the social network. We apply social network theory to predict favorable and unfavorable conditions for the emergence and diffusion of an intraorganizational instance of unethical behavior and find that network conditions favoring the suppression of the emergence of unethical behavior also promote its diffusion. For illustrative purposes, we utilize examples from Enron’s internally competitive structure to embed our arguments in a real world context and bring reality to our theorizing. Implications for both researchers and managers are discussed. (shrink)

Applying evidence from recently available public information on Enron, I defined Enron’s culture as one rooted in agency theory by asserting that Enron’s members were predominantly agency-reasoning individuals. I then identified conditions present at Enron’s collapse: a strong agency culture with collectively non-compliant norms, a munificent rare-failure environment, and new hires with little business ethics training. Turning to four possible antidotes (selection, objectivist integrity, integrity capacity, and stewardship reasoning) to an agency culture under these conditions, I argued that the currently (...) available ethics literature would have made little difference toward averting Enron’s collapse if any of the recommendations from the relevant ethics literature had been implemented. I conclude by identifying new directions for business ethics literature in order to make it more implementable under the conditions identified at Enron. Essentially, we need a way to clearly determine (1) the difference between connivance and commitment, (2) what is meant by balance with regard to the multiple dimensions of ethics and legal theories, and (3) the proper balance between agency and stewardship reasoning. (shrink)

Ethical analyses of the relations between managers and subordinates have traditionally focused on the employment contract. The inequality and requisite mutual trust between managers and subordinates makes the sub-disciplines of professional ethics and feminist ethics more applicable than the contractarian perspective. When professional ethics is applied to hierarchic relationships, specific obligations emerge for managers and subordinates alike. The application of feminist ethics results in the identification of an entirely different, though not contradictory, set of obligations. In toto, the analysis improves (...) on the conventional wisdom governing hierarchic relationships while at the same time remaining consistent with our moral intuitions. (shrink)