Most people think of themselves as moral and ethical. And yet, major fraud and unethical behaviour is widespread. A team of researchers from the University of North Carolina, University of Washington and University of Arizona studied how people who are otherwise good allow themselves to become involved in increasingly unethical behaviour. “There are a number of […]
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Özalp Özer of The University of Texas at Dallas and Yanchong Zheng of MIT Sloan researched the role of regret and availability misperception in shaping a retailer's pricing and inventory strategies. They found that forward-looking consumers who see a product they want to buy will hesitate: should they buy it now, or wait till later when […]
There is a decision to be made. The decision makers know what they want to do, and take action. Reflecting on the action later, however, they realize that they did not make the decision that they should have made. On reflection, they see the attributes of the should choice — the new elements or special […]
When envy pervades a company — when employees and managers for one reason or another focus more on competing against each other instead of the company’s marketplace competitors — the result is a dysfunctional organization whose effectiveness and efficiency is greatly undermined. For example, various explanations are given for Microsoft’s failure to compete effectively against […]
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Why are some people more open to change and others instinctively resistant to anything that significantly alters the status quo? The key is often in an individual’s basic attitude toward change. Some people will default to an unfavourable, negative attitude toward change that leads to resistance, while others have within them a favourable positive attitude […]
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Love is not a word often found in management literature, although the consensus now recognizes the power of emotions in motivating (or demotivating) people. Daniel Goleman and others have popularized the influence of emotions in effective leadership. But even in discussions involving emotions, rarely does the word ‘love’ come up. Love in the workplace? Don’t […]
The decisions of C-suites and boards are influenced by the previous experiences of their members. In uncertain situations, organizations gain legitimacy — and reduce the costs of experimentation — by copying others. These common-sense principles are borne out in a large body of research that points to the importance of ‘interlocks’ — i.e. previous or current ties to […]
Motivation can be divided into two dimensions: outcome-focused and process-focused. With outcome-focused motivation, people are driven by the desire of an achievement. They want to finish the task so that the task is done. They want a finished report in hand and ready to be submitted; they want the presentation to be written and delivered. […]
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The use of reference points — for example, a monthly sales quota of 20 sales — is at the heart of reference-dependent behavioural economic theories, the most influential being “prospect theory.” According to prospect theory, an outcome is evaluated based on a reference point. Failure to achieve the reference point (19 sales instead of 20) […]
Recent years have seen a surge in ‘unethical’ behaviours in the workplace, whether in the form of corporate scandals, fraud, or just disrespecting company values. As management research has focused on the drivers of such behaviours, increasingly sleep deprivation has come up; recent studies have found that sleep deprivation can deplete self-regulatory resources, which can […]
Read More… from How Sleep Deprivation Can Cause Unethical Behaviour
