Robin Vliegenthart Student number: 1546244 Rijksuniversiteit Groningen Faculty of Economics en Business
JM Den Uylstraat 81 9728RJ Groningen
tel.: 06-15147854
e-mail: robinvliegenthart@hotmail.com
Graduation supervisor: L.B. Mulder
Title: The effect of accountability on ethical behavior when people are put under time pressure
Abstract
It is important for organizations that their employees make ethical decisions. Accountability is a tool that should contributes to that. We hypothesized that time pressure plays a moderating role in this process, because people need to explain their behavior to an authority.
And it takes time to find justification for a decision. If they need to take a quick decision, they do not have enough time to choose unethically, because they need to think of a reason why they choose unethically and that takes extra time.
The study was held under 181 participants who were confronted with three moral scenarios in which they needed to decide for the good of themselves or what is right for the organization.
The three scenarios did not come up with a confirming result. This means that accountability does not make that people behave more ethically and time pressure does have an positive effect on the relation between accountability and ethical behavior.
Keywords
Accountability, ethical behavior, time pressure, ethical decision
INTRODUCTION
In 2011 it was reported that Olympus, the camera producer, committed fraud. They had covered up losses over the last decades. After the fraud came out the market value of Olympus went down by 60 percent. In the 1990s an even huger scandal came to light, the Enron scandal. This energy company invested money in businesses outside their core business. But they spent money that they did not have. The losses they suffered were held outside the accounting books. Eventually the losses came out and bankruptcy could not be averted anymore. There was a loss of 20 billion dollars and 21.000 people lost their job.
The scandal of Enron is a business scandal that led to a new way of corporate governance starting with the Sarbanes-Oxley act in 2002. This act was aimed to set a new standard of control for all the public boards in the United States. But in the decades before the Enron scandal there were a series of international business scandals as well. The scandals of that time stimulated organizations to institute codes of ethics as symbols, to both internal and external stakeholders, of their commitment to ethical practices (Murphy, 1995). Despite the efforts of the past 30 years companies still show unethical behavior. This indicates that the effect of unethical behavior can have huge consequences in today’s business as well.
The examples above are example of how boards behaved unethically. But unethical behavior takes place on a smaller scale as well. Unethical behavior such as stealing is prevalent in today’s business, despite the efforts to prevent this from happening. This is due to the fact that every employees face moral dilemmas on a daily basis in which they need to make an ethical decision. It is important to support ethical behavior since unethical behavior may have an adverse influence on organizational performance (Beu and Buckley, 2004).
Another reason why it is important to learn more about ethical decision making is that, the more we learn about ethical decision making the more we are able to influence
positive ethical behavior (Abdolmohammadi & Baker, 2008). This is good for restoring the public trust, because ethical decisions are in the end better for society at large.
For this reason ethical behavior is a hot subject within the research field. Much research is done to find out what causes unethical behaviour (Trevino, Weaver, & Reynolds, 2006). There are studies about the circumstances in which unethical behavior is expected to be higher (Kish-Gephart, Harrison and Trevino, 2010). They summarize that unethical behavior can arise from individual characteristics, moral issue characteristics and organizational environment characteristics.
A recent development in behavioral ethics is accountability. According to Beu and Buckley (2004) accountability can be defined as the perception of defending or justifying one’s behavior to an audience with reward or sanction authority. This means that people need to defend their behavior and need to explain their behavior and decisions to others. This development should make people more ethical, because they need to think more thoroughly about the decision they need to make.
According to Beu et al (2004) is has shown that the presence of peers and peer perception can strongly influence the ethical decision making and behavior. The effect of the presence of peers makes that the individual, who needs to make a decision, considers the impact of his unethical behavior on his reputation (Brass, Butterfield, Skaggs, 1998). People do like to protect their self-image so they want to prevent that their reputation will be damaged. A peer may notice that a person behaves unethical and this may have influence on how they perceive this person in the future. So the reputation of an individual is at stake when others find out that he or she is behaving unethical. That is the reason why accountability could cause that people behave more ethically.
However, Lerner and Tetlock (1999) state that accountability does not affect people in how they behave but that accountability only has effect on the willingness to say what they
are thinking. In this way accountability does not directly affect the way how people make their decision, but accountability does only have an effect on the outcome of a decision. In short, they know what the ethical decision is, but the way they are thinking is still unethical.
So the effect of accountability might be that people eventually will behave ethical, but with a remark that the people are not ethical themselves. If people, who need to decide, see a chance to behave the way they want it is not certain that they will choose the ethical option. So accountability does only have an effect on what people say and not in how they act (Lerner &
Tetlock, 1999). This means that accountability only has an effect on how people respond to their superior or other people who can hold them accountable and that they will tell their superiors what they want to hear.
Another reason why accountability can have a negative influence on ethical behavior is that the aim of most organizations is to make profit. Ethical decision do not always contribute to that aim. Therefore decisions that are not aimed at making profit, may be perceived as bad decision for the organization, because it does not contribute to making profit (Grover, 1993).
This brings up the question: What is the effect of accountability on ethical behavior?
The literature shows that accountability can influence ethical behavior in both a negative as a positive manner. Which one is correct? This research focuses on a moderator that might determines what the effect of accountability is on ethical behavior. This moderator is time pressure.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Ethics is a subject within many scientific fields, such as philosophy, sociology, psychology and business ethics. This makes it hard to give an unambiguous definition for ethical behavior, since every scientific field focusses on a different aspect on ethics. Another reason why it is hard to give a definition is because definitions are imprecise and relativistic (Cavanagh, Moberg, Velasquez, 1981).
Most studies on ethical behavior refer to the cognitive moral development model of Kohlberg (1973). He states that ethical behavior is a process where people solve moral dilemmas by applying moral principles. Rest (1986) gives a somewhat different definition, he states that ethical decisions are those where the consequences of an individual affects the interest, welfare or expectations of others. A more recent definition is given by Jones (1991).
He states that an ethical decision is one that is both legal and morally acceptable to the larger community. Conversely, an unethical decision is either illegal or morally unacceptable to the larger community. This is also supported by Paolillo and Vitell (2002) who say that the definition is supported in other existing ethics models. These definitions show that ethical behavior is a social phenomenon where an individual needs to make a moral decision that has influence on the group that he is part of. The definition of Jones (1991) in particular is useful in business ethics because the larger community can refer to an organization as well as to a larger social group Therefore this definition is chosen to be used in this research.
Adams, Taschian and Shore (2001) on the other hand, point out that the legal system, as proposed in the definition of Jones (1991), of a country does not necessarily lead to ethical behavior and that for this reason further rules or codes are needed to establish ethical behavior. The application of codes and business principles to create more ethicality into business already started during the 1970s (Adams et al, 2001). And in 1990s the number of
organizations that made use of ethical codes increased tremendously to a 93 per cent in the northern U.S. (center for Business ethics, 1992).
Codes of ethics can be viewed as attempts to institutionalize the morals and values of the company founders in a way that they become part of the corporate culture and help socialize new individuals into the culture (Weiss, 1994). In other words a company tries to comprise what they think is important into an ethical code. A code consists of principles, values, standards, or rules of behavior that guide the decisions procedures and systems of an organization in a way that it contributes to the welfare of his key stakeholders (Oddo, 1997).
However ethical codes cannot include all the varieties of situation people encounter in day to day work. There is no ‘one size fits all’ rule that covers all the possibilities in rules. So an ethical code on itself is not sufficient. Adams et al (2001) say that an ethical code can be used in two ways. The good can use it as a legitimacy for their actions and loose cannons can use it as a guideline. In both ways an ethical code sends out a message to the employees (Stephens, 1994). Shaw and Barry (1995) in addition say that an ethical code is an attempt to improve the organizational climate so that individuals can behave ethically, so an ethical code tries to influence ethical behavior on a wider area than setting rules alone. An ethical code is therefore not a code that can be strictly maintained, because it cannot cover all the areas where ethics is involved.
A development to cope with these shortcomings is that organizations hold their employees accountable for their behavior. The concept of accountability is used for many years but since the last decade it is expanding to a broad concept (Mulgan, 2000). It is used, for instance, for organizational accountability (Rasche and Esser, 2006), this is the readiness or preparedness of an organization to give an explanation and justification to relevant stakeholders for its judgments, intentions, acts, and omissions when appropriately called upon to do so. The core in this definition of accountability is that organizations need to justify
towards their stakeholders. Other researcher expanded accountability by breaking up the concept into different types. According to Siegel-Jacobs and Yates (1996) there are two types of accountability. The first focuses on the justification of the procedure used to arrive at an action, this is called procedural accountability or process accountability. The second type focuses on the quality of the outcome of an action, this is called outcome accountability. In this form people are only evaluated based on the outcome of the action and not on the process how they came to that action (Lerner and Tetlock, 1999).
Although accountability is an expanding concept; the core meaning of accountability remains the same. In every definition there is a higher authority involved to which someone needs justify his actions. The authority can exist out of external party, supervisor or society at large (Paul, 1991). In short Jones (1992) gives the definition that accountability is a process of being called to account to some authority for one’s actions.
A development as reaction to accountability is comply or explain, introduced in 1992 in the Cadbury report. The essence of comply or explain is that it is a disclosure obligation (MacNeil and Li, 2006). This means that compliance is not mandatory, but disclosure or explaining why is obliged when the code is not followed up. People are obliged to explain why they diverge from the ethical rules and they know that they can be called out to justify their actions. In this research we limit ourselves to this principle as a form of accountability.
Effects of accountability
Previous research has shown that accountability induces people to make the right decision, especially process accountability (Libby, Salterio and Webb, 2004). Process accountability focuses on justification of the method used to come up with the right action.
This way of justification is more profound, compared to outcome accountability, because the way of reasoning towards the right decision makes that people will think thoroughly to come
up with the right decision. Libby et al (2004) performed an experimental study under 227 MBA students. They were asked to imagine themselves as a senior executive in an organization. The participants received information about each division within the organization containing performance measures. In their role they evaluated the performance of the divisional managers. The manipulation consisted of the requirement (or not) that participants need to justify their evaluations of each division manager performance, before providing a final performance measure. The results showed an increase in the use of unique measures in managerial performance. So process accountability caused that the participants took a more profound look at the performance measurements of the divisional manager than participants who were not required to justify their decision. Process accountability thus has a positive relation with making the correct decision.
The research of Libby et al (2004) is, as most other researches, aimed at making better judgment in a decision. Little research, though, is done to find out whether accountability actually promotes an ethical decision. Accountability may have an positive effect on the ethicality of the decision because it makes people more aware of their decision. They think more thoroughly about the decision so that the chance is greater that they will decide to choose the ethical alternative. The reason why people will start to think more thoroughly is because they start considering the effect of an unethical decision on their reputation (Brass et al, 1998). They want to protect their self image and so they behave ethically.
However there is reason to believe that, in ethical decision making, accountability will not necessarily have a positive effect. If an employee needs to explain why he made a decision to his superior, he still can choose the unethical option. This is due to the agency theory. Agency theorist discuss the moral hazard derived from agents and principals having divergent goals (Grover, 1993). When the employee (agent) has more information than his superior (principal) and the goals of these two differ, it is possible for the employee to choose
in favour of its own interest. This is possible because the agent knows more than the principal and therefore can lie or deceive the principal. The agent can explain his or her behavior in such a way that it looks like he or she behaves in accordance with the organizational goals.
According to Grover (1993), the reason why people behave unethical is usually out of self-interest and for this reason they may be motivated to choose the unethical option.
According to Schwartz (2001) there are three types of self-interest. The first one is greed, people just want to have more for themselves and therefore choose in favour of themselves.
The second type is that people want to be the best in the organization. It is tempting to choose unethically if that decision is essential to succeed in being the best. A third reason to behave out of self interest is financial distress. People are in need of some extra money and therefore they choose the unethical option to gain that extra money.
In case of self-interest accountability may trigger motivated reasoning. Motivated reasoning is about the effect that goals and motives have on reasoning (Kunda, 1990).
Dawson, Gilovich and Regan (2002) say that people are inclined to draw conclusions that suggest positive outcomes for themselves. In other words, people distort their reasoning depending on their motives or goals. Instead of searching for rational arguments people search for reasons that fit their own motivations. Mullen and Skitka (2006) gives the most clear definition of motivated reasoning. They say that people are motivated to justify their preferred outcome and therefore actively distort procedural information to support their preferred conclusion. So people make a selection of the information that they receive based upon their own interest and make use of this distorted information to deceive their supervisor.
Motivated reasoning may lead people to choose for the unethical option. Namely the option to choose for the benefit of themselves instead of choosing for the option what is good for the organization in which they are working. Because they are held accountable they know that they need to find a reason why they choose for themselves in a way that it looks like they
choose ethically. The process of reasoning towards what is good for yourself is called motivated reasoning.
The findings show that accountability can have different outcomes on ethical behavior. It can either stimulate people to behave ethically, because they become more aware of the ethicality involved in a decision. Furthermore they need to be able to explain their decision to their supervisor and are therefore triggered to behave ethically. On the other side people might behave unethically if they are held accountable, because unethical behavior may be better for themselves, they start to collect information that is beneficial for their own interest. Due to the agency theory they are able to distort the information they use to justify their decision towards their supervisor. This brings up the question: when does accountability show a positive effect and when does it show a negative effect on ethical behavior?
The answer might be that time pressure determines whether the relationship between accountability and ethical behavior is positive. In case of time pressure there is little time to make a decision. This means that people also do have little time to think about making their decision so they need to make a quick decision. They will choose for the ethical option in this case.
When there is much time, motivated reasoning might occur. If people have enough time to gather information and to find gaps in the information, than they can distort the information so that the choose for the unethical decision that might be better for themselves.
Motivated reasoning is a process of retrieving information and filtering out the information that is relevant to underpin a self-interested decision. This filtered information is presented to mislead their supervisor.
This process of collecting and filtering information takes time. So when there is time pressure the process of motivated reasoning will take too long, so that people have no time to
+
+
H1 H2
think of excuses or other reasons why they choose for unethically. That is why they will choose ethically in case of time pressure.
Hypothesis 1. Accountability stimulates people to behave more ethically.
Hypothesis 2. Time pressure moderates the relation between accountability and ethical behavior in such a way that accountability leads to more ethical behavior with high time pressure, but to less ethical behavior with low time pressure.
FIGURE 1: Conceptual model
Time pressure
Ethical behaviour Accountability
METHOD Design and participants
Participants were 181people (106 male, 75 female; Mage = 37.55, SDage = 14.22) who took part in an experiment. They participants were aged between 15 and 65, since this forms the working population. The participants were gathered by sending out emails to students and to people from the author’s social network. A relative large part of the participants were students. The respondents were randomly assigned into one of the four conditions of the 2 (accountability high vs, accountability low) x 2 (time pressure high vs. time pressure low). In this experiment also self-interest was manipulated (high self-interest vs. low self-interest), but this factor was unrelated to the research question. For this reason this manipulation was left out of this research.
Procedure
Participants received an introduction of the experiment and what they could expect in terms of question type and the length of the experiment. After that, demographic question were asked such as gender, age and education.
Participants were explained that they would face three scenarios in which they were asked to make a decision and that they needed to imagine themselves working in an (imaginary) organization to make a decision. The participants were told that the organizations in which they were working had a code of conduct. This code consisted of two principles:
take careful handling of the company’s finances and prevent conflicts of interest. Hereafter the manipulation of accountability and time pressure took place. Further details were described in the measures and manipulation section.
Then the participants received an example scenario in which they needed to decide whether they would make use of their business car to transport their son and friends to the
swimming pool where he celebrated his birthday. The children did not fit in the personal car, but it is forbidden to drive the business car for personal use. The participant was asked:
“would you bring the children to the swimming pool in your business car?” (for the full scenario, see Appendix A: example scenario). After they had made their decision in the example scenario, participants were presented three ethical scenarios.
In the first scenario the participant imagined a dinner with a business associate who was a friend. This dinner was meant to discuss business, however, during this dinner business was not discussed at all. The question asked to the participants is: “Would you reimburse your expenses of the dinner with your befriend business associate?” (for the full scenario, see Appendix A: dinner scenario).
In the second scenario the participant imagined that he wanted to sell a big amount of bicycle lights to a client. They both did not agree on the price and decide to negotiate further the next day. The client meanwhile offered two concert tickets of the favourite music band of the participant for a concert that was sold out. The decision that the participants needed to make is “Would you accept the concert tickets?” (for the full scenario, see Appendix A:
concert scenario).
In the third scenario participants were asked to imagine that they were a municipal official who was responsible for assessing and assigning of planning permission. The participants applied for a planning permission themselves and they expected that a colleague would be assigned to assess the permission. However the participants themselves were directed to assess the application. The participants needed to decide: “Would you assess the permit yourself without redirecting it to a colleague?”(for the full scenario, see Appendix A:
planning permission scenario).
After this, moral rationalization questions and questions about the change to be caught were asked. At last, there were questions asked to check to what extent participants
experienced that they were held accountable and to what extent they experienced time pressure.
Measures and manipulations Accountability
In the explanatory text before the scenarios, the participants read that they worked within an organization that uses a code of conduct. The group with high accountability received additional information. They were explained that all employees needed to be able to explain their behavior and decisions in view of the code. If behaviour was not aligned with the code, they should have been able to explain why they choose different. So all the decisions needed to be explained. Furthermore they were told that they needed to explain their decision after each scenario questions.
Time pressure
The amount of time participants had to answer the scenarios was manipulated. Participants either had time pressure or they did not have time pressure. In the explanatory text before the scenarios participants with time pressure were told that the one of the aims was to find out how people decide under time pressure and for that reason the time to answer a question was limited. They were told that the amount of time should be just enough to read the scenario and to understand it, however there is little time to think out the scenario. Time pressure was manipulated with the presence of a countdown bar. This countdown bar was placed above the scenarios so it was clearly visible. The time that was required to finish the scenario was pre- tested by the researcher. The timing needed to be just right to give the participant enough time to read the scenario and make a decision, but strict enough to give time pressure. For both the example scenario and dinner scenario the participants received 21 seconds. For the concert
scenario they received 20 seconds and for the planning permission scenario they received 30 seconds. Once the time expired a pop up screen told the participant that time was over and that they needed to make the decision right know. After the popup message participants had unlimited time to decide. In each condition the time participants took to make the decision was recorded.
Ethical behavior
In the three scenarios, participants were confronted with a moral dilemma. For each subject in the dilemma, there was a code of conduct applied. The participants needed to decide what they would do. In the dinner scenario the question was: “Would you reimburse the costs of the dinner?” In the concert scenario the question was: “Would you accept the concert tickets?” In the planning permission scenario the question was: “Would you approve the building permit yourself without handing it over to your colleague?” The answers to the questions were given on a six-point scale (1= certainly not, 2= probably not, 3= I do not think so, 4= I think so, 5=
probably, yes 6= certainly yes). The most ethical option was number one and the most unethical option was option seven. The cronbachs alpha (α = 0.08) showed that the three different scenario could not be taken together. So for every scenario the results needed to be looked at separately.
Manipulation checks Accountability
To check whether the participant actually felt that they was held accountable three questions were asked on a five point scale (1= completely disagree, 5= completely agree).
The following questions were asked to the respondents after they finished the three scenarios. Each questions started with: “In the previous situations” followed by: “I had the
feeling that I was held responsible for my decisions”, “I had the idea that I had to explain my actions”, I had the feeling that I needed to justify my decisions”. The cronbachs alpha (α = 0.88) was high.
Time pressure
To check whether the respondent actually felt time pressure three questions were asked on a five point scale (1= completely disagree, 5= completely agree). Each questions started with reference to one of the three scenario’s. Three question started with: “During making the decision” and then: “I had the idea that I had to give answers quickly”, “I had little time to think over the situation”, “I felt rushed”, “I had little time to answer the question”. The cronbachs alpha (α = 0.91) was high.
The three questions were followed by a questions that asked how time pressure expressed itself. There were four answering possibilities. The first option was: “I had not enough time to read and understand the scenario, let alone to take a considered decision.”. The second option was: “I did have enough time to read and understand the scenario, but I did not have enough time to take a considered decision.” The third option was: “I had enough time to read and understand the scenario to take a considered decision.”. The last option was: “I did not experience time pressure during the scenarios.”
RESULTS Manipulation check
An independent t-test was run to check the manipulations. The first manipulation check was about the accountability condition. On average, participants experienced a greater amount of accountability when they were told to explain their actions (M = 4.07, SD = .79) then without being told to explain their actions (M = 3.70, SD = .90). The difference was significant t(179)
= -2.933, P < 0.01.
The second manipulation check was about the time pressure condition. On average, respondent experienced a greater amount of time pressure when they were put under time pressure (M = 3.60), SD = 1.10) then without being put under time pressure (M = 2.14, SD = .78). The difference was significant t(142.62) = -10.13, P < 0.01.
Participants were asked how time pressure expressed itself. Table 1 shows what the consequences, for the participants, were of time pressure for answering the scenario questions.
It shows that eleven participants (6.07%) did not have enough time to read and understand the scenario, let alone to take a considered decision. Ten of these were put under time pressure. 38 participants (21%) indicate that they did have enough time to read the scenario, but they did not have enough time to make a considered decision. The timing for these people was set correctly. In total there were 127 participants who did have enough time to read the scenario and to make a considered decision or they did not experience time pressure at all. 91 of these participants were given no time pressure.
TABLE 1
Frequencies of how time pressure expressed itself time pressure no time pressure No time to read and to make decision 10 (5.52%) 1 (.55%) Enough time to read, no time to make decision 38 (21%) 5 (2.76%) Enough time to read and to make decision 18 (9.94%) 21 (11.6%)
Felt no time pressure 18 (9.94%) 70 (38.67%)
Effects of accountability and time pressure on ethical behavior
We hypothesized that accountability stimulates people to behave more ethically. A 2 (accountability) x 2 (time pressure) ANOVA was performed on how many participants were stimulated to behave more ethical due to accountability (see table 2).
The test showed no main effect of accountability on ethical behavior F(1,177) = .01, P = .97 for scenario 1. There was no main effect of time pressure on ethical behavior is F(1,177) = 1.64, P = .20. The interaction effect of accountability and time pressure on ethical behavior is F(1,177) = .21, P = .65. So there was no interaction effect.
Scenario 2 (see table 3) also did not show a significant relation for the main effect of accountability on ethical behavior F(1,177) = .229, P = .63. There was no main effect of time pressure on ethical behavior is F(1,177) = .78, P = .38. The interaction effect of accountability and time pressure on ethical behavior is F(1,177) = 1.70, P = .19. Again there was no interaction effect.
Scenario 3 (see table 4) did not show a significant relation for the main effect of accountability on ethical behavior F(1,177) = 2.54, P = .13. There was no main effect of time pressure on ethical behavior is F(1,177) = .86, P = .36. Again there was no interaction effect of accountability and time pressure on ethical behavior is F(1,177) = .28, P = .60.
None of the tests shows a significant result. However the moderating effect of time pressure in scenario 2 is in line with what is expected the level of significance is not clear enough on a level of P = .19. This is the same for the main effect of accountability on ethical behavior with P = .13.
TABLE 2
Means and standard deviations dinner scenario
Low accountability High Accountability Unethicality of the decision
Low time pressure 2.98 (1.64) 2.88 (1.64)
High time pressure 2.57 (1.50) 2.68 (1.54)
TABLE 3
Means and standard deviations concert scenario
Low accountability High Accountability Unethicality of the decision
Low time pressure 3.41 (1.54) 3.22 (1.54)
High time pressure 2.91 (1.52) 3.32 (1.49)
TABLE 4
Means and standard deviations planning permission scenario Low accountability High Accountability Unethicality of the decision
Low time pressure 1.80 (1.24) 1.44 (0.91)
High time pressure 1.86 (1.23) 1.68 (1.01)
DISCUSSION
This research was aimed to find a connection between accountability and ethical behavior and the effect of time pressure on this relation. If people are held accountable for their actions they rather would choose for the ethical decision than the unethical decision. It was argued that time pressure enhances this effect since people are forced to make a quick decision and they know what the right decision is. And it takes more time to reason why they would choose for the unethical decision, because they need to think of an explanation for their supervisor.
Effects of accountability and time pressure on ethical behavior
As the results show there is no significant result of accountability on ethical behavior in none of the three scenarios. In scenario three however, the pattern of the result is in
accordance with the hypothesis (F(1,177) = 2.54, P = .13). The level of significance though is not low enough to assume that the hypothesis is correct. This means that accountability does not have an direct effect on ethical behavior.
The moderating effect of time pressure on the relationship between accountability and ethical behavior also did not show a significant result in either of the three scenarios. This means that people would not choose more ethical in times when they are put under time pressure.
Implications and limitations
A reason why the results do not show significant results may be due to the way constructs were manipulated. The method to measure the constructs might have been wrong.
As table 1 shows there were 38 participants (21%) who were given time pressure and claim to have had enough time to read the scenario but did have not enough time to make a decision.
This was exactly the aim of the time pressure. However there are 36 participants who claim that they had enough time or even did not experience time pressure. The timing was not set correctly for these people. This could mean that people are very quick in reasoning why they could choose the unethical option. Although the time that was set, was pre tested, people still did not experience time pressure. This also could mean that time pressure does not effects people to choose the unethical option and they will always think of the unethical option and are just as quick in reasoning for the unethical option as for the ethical option.
Another reason why time pressure did not show a significant results is that time pressure can make people blind for what is important for others in the organization (Chau &
Liu, 2000). However time pressure can reduce motivated reasoning, because people do not have enough time to collect and distort information under time pressure. Because people are rushed to make a decision they only can think about themselves and not about others, so the whole process of reasoning does not take place anymore. That is why the effect of blindness might neutralize the effect of motivated reasoning.
Accountability was manipulated by giving participants additional information. They were told that they needed to be able to explain their behavior and decisions in view of the business code. This is a form of comply or explain. This chosen definition of accountability may be narrowed down too much according to Fasterling (2012). He says that there is no evidence that comply or explain are good alternatives for ethical codes. However he does not dismiss the comply or explain principle, because it may not show a direct influence on ethical behavior it still can serve to help people to develop moral norms and it contributes to the ethical dialogue within an organization. In this way accountability and the comply or explain principle can contribute to ethical behavior in an indirect manner.
Previous research already showed that accountability is not a panacea to ethical behavior (Lerner et al, 1999). This is caused by the complexity of the construct of
accountability. Because other variables may affect the outcome of accountability on ethical behavior. For instance the relationship with the supervisor and the organizational climate.
These variables could not be excluded from having influence on this research. This may have caused that the outcomes of this research were not significant.
Tenbrunsel et al (2008) show that previous research on behavioral ethics show
inconsistent findings. They say this is due to the fact that the research field is relatively young and the concept of ethical behavior is never defined. They even state that a definition is badly needed or else the research field would become irrelevant. Elm et al (2012) go beyond this by saying that there is no separation between ethical decision making and other forms of decision making. According to Elm et al (2012) this means that the field of ethical decision making may be impoverish to decision making in general. Since the focus of ethical decision making is only on one type of decision making the results may vary between researches. This means that the aim of this study was too much narrowed down to ethical decision making instead of focusing on decision making in general.
Tenbrunsel et al (2008) show that it is hard to define the concept of ethical behavior.
Moreover Beu et al (2004) state that is ethical behavior is complex and many factors can influence ethical behavior. So there could have been other factors involved what caused that there is no significant result, despite the effort to exclude other factors from having influence on this research. For instance organizational factors may have an influence (Beu and Buckley, 2004). If the participants do not agree upon the organizational moral norms and standards than they do not care about the possibility that they need to explain their decision to their
supervisor. So they might choose for the unethical option. In the experiment participants were asked to visualize themselves in the organization in which they were working themselves or in a fictitious organization. Because the effect of organizational factors can have a big impact on how people perceive accountability, this may have influenced the results negatively.
Practical implications
Accountability may not have a direct effect on ethical behavior, according to this research, nevertheless there are signs that accountability could have effects on ethical behavior. Accountability helps people to develop moral norms by making them aware of the ethicality in each decision they need to make. Because people know that they need to explain their behavior they become aware of themselves and on the long term this could make people more to behave more ethically. Comply or explain may be the right manner to implement accountability in the organization, but this does not mean that employees will behave more ethical directly.
Future research
Time pressure did not show a significant moderating effect, but this may have been caused by giving too much time to the participants. About 21 percent of the participants claimed that they had enough time to read and/or make the decision within the given time.
This was a crucial element in the experiment, because the participants needed to feel time pressure so that this might have influenced their decision. In future research the timing should be shorter so that every participant experience time pressure.
The effects of accountability on ethical behavior can be subject to other variables. In future research the effect of other variables should be as low as possible. This can be done by performing a different type of research which exclude other variables from having influence.
This research was done among people who work in different organizations. To exclude the organizational climate and other organizational variables from having influence, future research needs to be done within one organization.
This research is done while people needed to imagine that they were in a business situation. They were confronted with a scenario, but they could have chosen different in a real life situation. In a real life scenario self-interest is more tangible and therefore this would be more tempting to choose the unethical alternative. Although the results are gathered anonymously, people could have answered social desirable and not how they would have decided if they were confronted with it in real life. Research within an organization could offer a solution. By doing research within an organization the scenarios can be adapted to real life scenario that are present in the organization.
APPENDICES Appendix A
Example scenario
“This week you have the possibility to make use of a business car, because you need to visit a lot of relation. This business car is only used for business purposes only. Next to this business car you own a car yourself.
Your latest son has its birthday and he celebrates it today by giving a swim party. You want to transport them to the swimming pool, but the your son and his friends do not fit in your personal car. In your business car they will fit with ease.”
Dinner scenario
“For your work, it often happens that you go dining with a business associate. You can always reimburse the expenses of such a dinner at your organization. On a day you are going to dine extensively with a business associate who happens to be a personal friend. That evening you hardly speak about business and basically it was a dinner with a personal friend.”
Concert scenario
“For your employer you want to sell a large batch of bicycle lights to a client. You do not agree about the price and the both of you decide to negotiate further tomorrow. The client offers you two tickets for a concert of your favorite music band that gives a concert in the Netherlands in many yours that is sold out already. The client tells you that he gives you these tickets because he thinks that you are an important relation for him.”
Planning permission scenario
“As a municipal officer you are responsible for assessing and assigning of planning permissions. Fortuitously, you applied for a planning permission yourself. This building permit is important for you since it can increase the value of your house so that you do not have to sell with a loss and perhaps even with profit. You are quite certain that the application for the planning permission will be granted and that this application will be assessed by a colleague. However, the application is directed to you. Now you have to decide whether you assign the application or that you hand it over to a colleague.”
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