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UNETHICAL BEHAVIOUR AND MORAL RATIONALIZATION: THE MODERATING EFFECT OF MORAL IDENTITY

Master’s thesis Submitted: July, 7th 2017

Marcia Welink m.welink@student.rug.nl

Supervisor: Dr. Laetitia B. Mulder Department of Human Resource Management & Organizational Behaviour University of Groningen

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ABSTRACT

In this paper, I theorize that unethical behaviour leads to moral rationalization and I test whether moral identity influences this relation. Moral identity can be argued for as either positive or negative affective on moral rationalization. Moral identity can positively affect moral rationalization because an individual with a high moral identity, should have more issues with engaging in unethical behaviour, which creates a higher need for rationalization their behaviour. Though moral identity can also negatively affect moral rationalization as individuals with a high moral identity feel more strongly about doing the right thing and feel less need to engage in rationalizing behaviour. The hypotheses were tested in by way of an online experiment, in which participants were assigned to one of two conditions, the conditions being previous behaviour: immoral vs. control. The outcomes of the questionnaire confirmed the proposition that unethical behaviour leads to post-hoc moral rationalization. However this was not moderated by moral identity.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ... 1

1. INTRODUCTION ... 4

2. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND HYPOTHESES ... 7

Unethical behaviour and moral rationalization ... 7

Moral identity ... 9

Guilt ... 12

3. METHODOLOGY ... 14

Participants and design ... 14

Procedure ... 14

Previous behaviour (immoral vs. control). ... 14

Measures ... 15 4. RESULTS ... 18 Correlations ... 18 Main analyses ... 19 Additional analyses ... 20 5. DISCUSSION ... 23

Hypotheses and findings and theoretical implications ... 23

Practical implications ... 25

Limitations and further research ... 26

Conclusion ... 27

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1. INTRODUCTION

Unethical behaviour that occurs within organizations has risen to an alarming extent. Statistics are available that show that 56% of American employees report to engage in unethical or immoral behaviour. Examples of these behaviours are lying, stealing, misreporting hours worked and abusing the internet (Ethics Resource Center, 2007). Unfortunately, these numbers can be above the actual amount of unethical behaviour, seeing that individuals are hesitant to admit to themselves and others that they engage in unethical behaviour. (Un)ethical behaviour is categorized into three categories, as unethical behaviour that is contrary to accepted norms in society, routine ethical behaviour that meets the minimum moral standards of society, and extraordinary ethical behaviour that goes beyond society’s moral minima (Treviño, Den Nieuwenboer, & Kish-Gephart, 2014). Unethical behaviours have severe negative consequences for the organization and its employees, by diminishing a person’s ability to establish and maintain positive relationships, work-related success and a positive reputation. Furthermore, committing small immoral acts can lead to large immoral acts in the long run (Welsh, Ordóñez, Snyder, Christian, 2015). In an effort to reduce the amount of such unethical behaviours within organizations, scholars are increasingly investigating the concept of moral rationalization and moral identity.

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studies conducted that are concerned with post-hoc rationalization, which is rationalization after engaging in the act of unethical behaviour. Most studies are only concerned with ex-ante moral rationalization or do not distinguish the difference between the two. Nevertheless, moral rationalization is a dangerous mechanism that allows individuals to engage in unethical behaviour, by rationalizing the extent of the consequences or the immorality of the act itself. Rationalizing unethical behaviour may make engaging in future unethical behaviour even easier, which might develop an escalation of unethical behaviour.

In order to create more information in the mechanism of post-hoc rationalization, a research design is set up to test unethical behaviour in the form of lying, as a predictor of post-hoc moral rationalization, with moral identity as a moderator. In theory, the paper provides information to fill the literature gap by investigating how post-hoc moral rationalization is influenced by moral identity. Do high moral identifiers engage more or less in post-hoc moral rationalization than low moral identifiers? This paper contributes to the concern of unethical behaviour, post-hoc moral rationalization and moral identity, since there is a need for information about these concepts in a model.

In practice the paper possibly creates a helping hand for organizations in handling unethical behaviour and its negative outcomes. After all, unethical behaviour such as lying and gossiping are dangerous for the organization’s performance, as it decreases job satisfaction and creates unproductive work hours (Duffy, Ganster, & Pagon, 2002). To decrease unethical behaviour in the workplace, a manager must first understand which kind of employees engage in unethical behaviour. This paper gives insight into the moral identity and moral rationalizing behaviour of those employees.

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2. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND HYPOTHESES

Unethical behaviour and moral rationalization

Unethical behaviour is defined as behaviour that is, in broad terms, illegal or morally unacceptable to the larger community, and ethical behaviour is viewed as legal and morally acceptable (Jones, 1991). Cavanagh, Moberg and Velasquez (1981) analyse theories such as utilitarianism, theory of rights and theory of justice to judge behaviour as ethical or unethical. The line between what is ethical and what is unethical is blurred and can be judged from several perspectives. What are the means and ends of a decision, and what are the consequences to the self and others? In other words, is behaviour seen as morally justified or not, and why? Examples of unethical behaviours are violations of ethical norms, lying, gossiping and stealing (Gino et al., 2011). People engage in these kinds of behaviour because they can often benefit from it (Ruedy, Moore, Gino, Schweitzer, 2013).

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mechanisms. These are rationalisations in which people convince themselves that the act is not immoral. Bandura et al. (1996) recognizes three rationalization categories. These categories focus on the differences in how to morally rationalize, either minimizing consequences, morally justify or shift responsibilities. Respectively, examples of these types of moral rationalizations are ‘I do not disadvantage anyone with…’, ‘I would disappoint someone if…’, and ‘Someone else is responsible for…’

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behaviours. Furthermore, moral disengagement processes are positively related to the decisions to support military action (Aquino, Reed, Thau, & Freeman, 2007). Though most of the findings concerning moral rationalization focus on ex-ante moral rationalization, Shalvi, Gino, Barkan and Ayal (2015) made a distinction between ex-ante rationalization and hoc rationalization, which they refer to as respectively, pre-violation justifications and post-violation justifications. Pre-post-violation justifications are excuses that people make for misbehaviours they are about to commit, while post-violation justifications are excuses that people make for violations that people have already committed. Shu, Gino, and Bazerman (2011), have proven in their research that an individual’s unethical behaviour increases moral rationalization and additionally, increases the deliberately forgetting of moral rules. However, besides Shu, Gino and Bazerman (2011), little is known about specific post-hoc moral rationalization. Quite possibly, post-hoc rationalization requires specific situations to have an effect on feelings of guilt (Shalvi et al. 2015). Most studies that tested moral disengagement in relation to unethical behaviour, tested the concept as a predictor of unethical behaviour. Moral rationalization has a strong relation with unethical behaviour, however studies have mostly shown only one way; that is moral disengagement as a predictor of unethical behaviour. Though the effect of unethical behaviour on moral rationalization is not evident yet.

Hypothesis 1: There is a positive relation between unethical behaviour and post-hoc rationalization.

Moral identity

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rationalization. Moral identity can be defined as how important being moral is to an individual’s identity. Most conceptualizations of moral identity come from Blasi’s (1983) reasoning. He proposed a theoretical model that attempts to explain the mechanisms that occur before or after unethical behaviours, which lead to the concept moral identity. Moral identity is defined as one kind of self-regulatory mechanism that motivates moral action and it may be associated with certain beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours (Aquino & Reed, 2002). A different definition states moral identity as a commitment that is in line with the sense of self to actions that promote or protect the welfare of others. It is related to psychological functioning (Hart, Atkins, & Ford, 1998). There is evidence that moral identity acts as a motivation to engage in prosocial behaviours and abstain from antisocial behaviours (Hardy, Bean, & Olsen, 2015). In their study, evidence was found of moral identity acting as a moderator between moral disengagement and aggression. In the results, moral identity decreased antisocial outcomes such as aggression. Furthermore, Aquino and Reed (2002) studied moral identity as a predictor for donation (ethical behaviour), in which they found that high moral identity leads to higher odds of donating as opposed to weak internalization of moral identity. Moore et al. (2012) linked moral identity and moral rationalization together, providing evidence for the negative relation between the propensity to morally disengage and moral identity. Although the relation is different as moral disengagement is seen as the predictor of moral identity, instead of the other way around.

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explained that high moral identifiers care more about others in a social sense. This suggests that the outcome of their (unethical) actions in terms of consequences for others are important for them, and that unethical behaviour will negatively affect their sense of self even though they morally rationalize their behaviour. In line with the proposition of Detert, Treviño and Sweitzer (2008) that high moral identifiers are less likely to engage in moral rationalization, I expect that moral identity will decrease the effect of unethical behaviour on moral rationalization.

However, moral identity can also be argued for as a positive influence on moral rationalization. When an individual has a high sense of moral identity, the person has more issues with displaying unethical behaviour and feels more guilt than individuals with a low moral identity. Which creates a higher need to rationalize behaviour as being ‘not so morally unacceptable’. Individuals with a high moral identity have moral concepts which make them more aware of moral implications in situations and decision making (DeCelles, Margolis, DeRue, & Ceranic, 2012). High moral identifiers feel the need for connection between their actions and their moral norms (Shao, Aquino & Freeman, 2008) and when the connection is missing, high moral identifiers will most likely engage in moral rationalization to justify their immoral behaviour.

Hypothesis 2a: Moral identity acts as a moderator in the relationship between unethical behaviour and post-hoc rationalization. Moral identity decreases the positive effect of

unethical behaviour on post-hoc rationalization.

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As Shalvi et al. (2015) explain in their research, unethical behaviour can threaten the self-concept. Two ways to maintain the self-concept are excusing the unethical behaviour (ex-ante moral rationalization) and compensating the unethical behaviour (post-hoc moral rationalization). As both types of rationalizations relate very differently to unethical behaviour, it is likely that moral identity plays a different role as well. Comparing to literature that give evidence for the relation between moral identity and moral rationalization (Detert, Treviño and Sweitzer, 2008; Hardy, Bean, & Olsen, 2015), this model should give more insight in if moral identity moderates the effect of unethical behaviour on moral rationalization.

Guilt

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self-regulatory mechanisms such as guilt. When a individual with a high moral identity engages in moral rationalization, this individual will still feel guiltier about it than a person with a low moral identity. This reasoning I will test with the following hypotheses:

Hypothesis 3a: Moral rationalization has a negative effect on feelings of guilt

Hypothesis 3b: Moral identity decreases the effect of moral rationalization on feelings of guilt

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3. METHODOLOGY

Participants and design

Eighty-two people participated in an online questionnaire via Qualtrics (51% female, 𝑀𝑎𝑔𝑒 = 28.0, 𝑆𝐷 = 10.14). Respondents were collected through social media and personal network. Of the eighty-two participants, 23 worked full-time, 45 worked part-time and 14 were currently unemployed. Furthermore, 77 participants stated The Netherlands as their country of origin, 1 stated Romania and 4 stated Belgium. The effect of unethical behaviour on moral rationalization was investigated, with a moderating effect of moral identity and feelings of guilt as an explanatory variable. Immoral behaviour (yes or no) was manipulated and participants were randomly assigned to one of the two conditions. The moderator of moral identity was measured.

Procedure

At the beginning of the online questionnaire, moral identity was measured, after which they filled in some filler questionnaires (to decrease any salience of morality caused by the moral identity measure). These questionnaires measured empathy, creativity and personality through the big five. After these measures, participants were asked to write about a behaviour in the past (immoral/control). Next, an explicit measure of moral rationalization was presented, followed by a measure of emotions, that included guilt. At the end of the questionnaire the likelihood that participants would engage in unethical behaviour in the future was measured.

Previous behaviour (immoral vs. control).

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situation in which they had a conversation with a co-worker about a subject outside of work. Both conditions are stated as identical as possible, to control for variables. In the first situation, participants were asked the following “Describe a situation at length in which you lied to a co-worker or withheld information. In other words: a situation in which you misrepresented the truth. This should preferably be a recent situation. It is important that you describe the situation in such a way, that we have a clear image of what happened: what was the conversation about, what was the lie about, and what was the effect of the lie?”. In the second situation, participants were given an instruction that was different in the type of situation: “Describe a situation at length in which you had a conversation with a co-worker about a subject outside of work. This should preferably be a recent situation. Describe in such a way, that we have a clear image of the situation: where did the conversation took place, what was it about and what was the effect of the conversation?”.

Measures

Moral identity measures. Respondents rated 10 statements about characteristics that

are perceived as moral traits on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree) (Aquino & Reed, 2002). The moral traits were listed in the questionnaire as ‘characteristics that might describe a person’, and these moral traits were ‘caring, compassionate, fair, friendly, generous, helpful, hardworking, honest, kind. Examples of the statements that were asked are “it would make me feel good to be a person who has these characteristics” and “being someone who has these characteristics is an important part of who I am”. The 10 items were averaged to determine a moral identity score for each participant (α = .75)

Moral rationalization measures. Moral rationalization was measured in two ways.

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situation on moral rationalization and secondly, explicit moral rationalization was measured through a scale that the respondents filled in.

The coding of the previous behaviour variable (both immoral and control) was done by two raters. The raters coded the responses, independently from each other, based on the same instructions which stated that every response received a code varying from 0 (no apparent moral rationalization), to 1 (a little moral rationalization), to 2 (clear moral rationalization). An example of an answer that was coded as 1 entailed lying about certain work that the participant did not do, the participant described the situation very honestly and only once justified the lie in terms of consequences. An example of an answer that was coded as 2 stated: ‘I lied about a customer. This customer ordered a product, but after a month wanted a different more expensive version. Normally this would not be possible, but changing the product (cellular subscription) would not cost my company anything and would create a satisfied customer. So I lied to a colleague who has the power to cancel the original order. This little white lie made it possible to order a new more expensive version and created a happy customer’. The response was coded as 2, because there was apparent rationalization on the outcome of the lie. Both raters were unaware of the specifics of the study. After this, the codes of both raters were averaged, to create one code per participant (α = .88).

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aware of this possibility’. The 6 items were averaged to determine a moral rationalization score for each participant (α = .73).

Feelings of guilt measures. The participants were asked to rate certain emotions,

including guilt, on a 5-point Likert scale (1= not at all, 5= extremely), by answering the question ‘At the moment I feel happy, sad, guilty etc.’.

Future behaviour. To explore whether participants would engage in lying in the future,

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4. RESULTS

Correlations

Twenty-one participants were filtered out of the dataset, because they did not fill in the open question. Eighty-two participants remained.

Pearson correlations are displayed in Table 1. This shows that unethical behaviour is significantly correlated with the implicit moral rationalization measure. However, moral identity was found to have no correlation with the two post-hoc moral rationalization measures. And furthermore, the guilt measure was not significantly correlated with previous behaviour or post-hoc moral rationalization.

Table 1

Means, standard deviations, and zero-order Pearson correlations

M (SD) 1 2 3 4 5

1. Moral identity 4.82 (.65)

2. Previous behaviour

(immoral=1, control=2) 1.40 (.49) -.03 3. Moral rationalization

self-rating 3.39 (.92) .01 -.05

4. Moral rationalization code .52 (.66) .06 -.62** .22

5. Feelings of guilt 1.37 (.73) .15 -.07 .03 -.05

6. Future unethical behaviour .10 -.06 -.16 -.09 .68

* 𝑝 < .05 , ** 𝑝 < .01

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Main analyses

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Table 2

Regression analysis between moral identity, unethical behaviour, and moral rationalization

DV: Explicit moral rationalization DV: Implicit moral rationalization

Predictor Step 1 Step 2 Step 1 Step 2

β p β p β p β p Main effects: 1. Unethical behaviour .00 .99 .00 .99 -.40 .00** -.40 .45 2. Moral identity .00 .99 .00 .99 .01 .92 .01 .97 3. Interaction effect (1*2) -.03 .77 -.00 .99 R^2 .00 .00 .38 .38 Adjusted R^2 -.03 -.04 .36 .35 *p < .05. **p < .01. Additional analyses

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Table 3

Regression analysis between implicit moral rationalization, moral identity and feelings of guilt.

DV: Guilt

Predictor Step 1 Step 2

β p β p Main effects: 1 Implicit moral rationalization -.15 .31 -.18 .23 2 Moral identity .19 .24 .19 .23 3 Interaction effect (1*2) .16 .34 R² Adjusted R² .07 .02 .10 .01 *p < .05. **p < .01.

Lastly, a regression was conducted that tested whether implicit moral rationalization predicted future unethical behaviour. Implicit moral rationalization was found to have no significant effect on future behaviour (β = -.16, p > .05). These results suggest that there cannot be a mediating role for moral rationalization between past unethical behaviour and future unethical behaviour. Secondly, a regression was conducted for implicit moral rationalization and moral identity as predictors of future behaviour (M = 2.68, SD = 1.13). The analysis showed no significant results regarding moral identity and future behaviour (β = .01, p > .05), neither between the interaction effect and future behaviour (β = -.13, p > .05).

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5. DISCUSSION

Hypotheses and findings and theoretical implications

The main goal of this study was to investigate whether the effect of unethical behaviour on post-hoc moral rationalization is stronger when a person has a high moral identity than when a person has a low moral identity. I expected that a person would morally rationalize their behaviour when they engage in unethical behaviour (hypothesis 1). Secondly, I was curious to find out whether moral identity affects the relation between unethical behaviour and post-hoc moral rationalization either positively or negatively (hypothesis 2). Lastly, I expected that guilt would act as an explanatory variable. Which means that when a person experiences guilt, it should lead to strong efforts to compensate their actions, either by rationalizing their behaviour, or prevent engaging in unethical behaviour in the future (hypothesis 3).

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and Seeley (1992), who claim that people tend to be fairly accurate when asked to evaluate their own behaviours. Moral rationalization has a positive effect on unethical behaviour (Detert et al., 2008; Bandura, 1999) and adding to this finding, unethical behaviour has also an effect on moral rationalization. Thus, unethical behaviour and moral rationalizing behaviour is related in both directions.

Secondly, the findings did not prove that moral identity increases post-hoc moral rationalization when engaging in unethical behaviour. Furthermore, moral identity was also not proven to decrease moral rationalization when engaging in unethical behaviour. Though Detert et al. (2008) did find support for a comparable proposition, proving that moral identity is negatively related to moral disengagement, it was not the case in this study. However, both the negative and positive effect could have cancelled each other out. In that way, there was both a positive effect of moral identity on moral rationalization, and a negative effect. A different explanation is differences in culture as a factor that influences moral identity, and so is participation in moral actions (Shao, Aquino, & Freeman, 2008; Hardy & Carlo, 2011). These factors can also influence moral rationalization. This sets moral identity merely in the middle of the actual influence relations. This creates the concept of culture as a predictor for moral rationalization, and moral identity as a mediator between culture and moral rationalization.

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individuals who did not rationalize their unethical behaviour, did not find it to be unethical, and would not have felt guilty.

Additionally, with the measures that were conducted in the survey, I saw the opportunity to analyse different relations that were interesting to explore. For example testing whether unethical behaviour ultimately influences whether or not a person decides to act unethically in the future. Interpreting the results of the data analysis, future (un)ethical decision making is not affected by morally rationalizing unethical behaviour. Tenbrunsel and Messick (2004) argue that moral rationalization may lead to more immoral behaviour. Referred to as the ‘slippery slope’, a person’s repeated exposures to unethical behaviour may prevent a person to see that a dilemma is ethical and may engage in an unethical decision. Along with the induction problem of the slippery slope, which determines that if something was OK in the past, then it is also OK in the future. It suggests a benchmark for judging a new practice or decision.

Practical implications

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lying, gossiping, stealing, peculating and acts that are in such a way unethical, are being justified through post-hoc moral rationalization. Adding to this, it is even harder to identify individuals who engage in these acts, because both high moral identifiers and low moral identifiers engage in such behaviours. With this in mind, it is important for HR professionals to be aware and suspicious of these kinds of mind-sets in employees, and workplace behaviours or cultures that demonstrate these kinds of mind-sets.

Limitations and further research

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Conclusion

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LITERATURE

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Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 1423–1440.

Aquino, K., Reed, A., Thau, S., & Freeman, D. (2007). A grotesque and dark beauty: How moral identity and mechanisms of moral disengagement influence cognitive and emotional reactions to war. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43, 385–392.

Bandura, A. (1999) Moral disengagement in the perpetration of inhumanities.

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Cavanagh, G.F., Moberg, D.J., & Velasquez, M. (1981). The ethics of organizational politics. Academy of Management Review, 6, 363-374.

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APPENDIX I:

MORAL IDENTITY SCALE (Aquino & Reed, 2002)

Participants will answer the following statements on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree) about the characteristics: caring, compassionate, fair, friendly, generous, hardworking, helpful, honest and kind

1. It would make me feel good to be a person who has these characteristics. 2. Being someone who has these characteristics is an important part of who I am 3. I would be ashamed to be a person who has these characteristics. (R)

4. Having these characteristics is not really important to me. (R) 5. I strongly desire to have these characteristics.

6. I often wear clothes that identify me as having these characteristics.

7. The types of things I do in my spare time (e.g., hobbies) clearly identify me as having these characteristics.

8. The kinds of books and magazines that I read identify me as having these characteristics. 9. The fact that I have these characteristics is communicated to others by my membership in certain organizations.

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APPENDIX II:

FUTURE BEHAVIOUR: SCENARIO

Imagine yourself in the following situation as if you are really experiencing it:

You will soon finish your degree and have been actively seeking the perfect position. Interviews have been progressing well: you already have two offers and the company you really want to work for has expressed interest in you. For some reason, this company believes that you are at the very top of your class. You‘re not sure how they got this idea. You‘ve done reasonably well, but you don‘t have straight A‘s. They call back and inform you that they will offer you the position and a signing bonus that‘s double what they would normally offer because of your exceptional record. What do you do?

1. I indicate tremendous interest and tell them that I am not in the top of my class 2. I accept the offer, wait a few months, and then tell them about my record

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