1 Collectivism: a boundary to unethical behavior?
The mediating influence of collectivism on the relationship between deep-level diversity and unethical behavior.
Yvonne van der Zwaag S2156504
University of Groningen
Abstract
Collective unethical behaviors might cause high impact scandals and reputational damage for organizations and, therefore, this research examines the relationship between diversity and collective unethical behavior. The central research question that will be investigated is: “How does diversity influence collective unethical behavior and is this relationship explained by collectivism?”. In this thesis, I argue that diversity in groups will lead to less collectivism (due to lesser shared values and goals). Therefore, diversity will lead to more collective unethical behavior due to this reduced collective mindset. This argumentation will be tested by using a laboratory experiment. This research contributes to existing literature by investing a new antecedent/mediator of unethical behavior and it extends the amount of available literature on collective ethical behavior in groups.
2 INTRODUCTION
Modern researchers have recognized the prevention of unethical behavior (e.g., Kish-Gephart et al., 2010; Pearsall & Ellis, 2011). In particular, the prevention of unethical
behavior is considered critical and necessary to protect organizations’ reputation and, therefore, the survival of the organization (Sidhu, 2009). An example is Siemens, which, in 2006, had to pay a fine of almost 2 billion dollars for bribery and, as a result of this bribery, had to deal with reputational damage. These high-impact scandals in organizations and the penalties paid have generated interest in ethical and unethical behavior in organizations (Trevino et al., 2006). Unethical behavior in organization can be the result of individual actions or collective actions of groups in which employees have to perform a task or activity. Collective unethical behavior refers to the ethical or unethical decisions that the group as a whole makes instead of the decision that an individual group member makes. In this thesis, collective unethical behavior is defined as behavior that has a harmful effect upon others and is either legal or morally unacceptable to the larger community (Jones, 1991). An act may have a harmful effect upon others when the consequences of an individual’s decision affects the interest, welfare or expectations of others (Rest, 1986).
In these groups, diversity may exist between the group members. Harrison et al. (1998) distinguish between two types of diversity, surface-level diversity and deep-level diversity. The former is defined as differences among group members in overt demographic characteristics and the latter is defined as differences among group members’ psychological characteristics such as personalities, values, and attitudes. In this research, I will look at deep-level diversity. Harrison (1998) found that the length of time group members worked together weakened the effects of surface-level diversity and strengthened the effects of deep-level diversity as group members had the opportunity to engage in meaningful interactions. This thesis focuses on the relationship between diversity and collective
3 I expect that the relationship between diversity and collective unethical behavior is mediated by feelings of collectivism within the group. According to Hui and Triandis (1986), collectivism can be defined as a concern by a person about the effects of his or her actions or decisions on others, the willingness to share resources with others, as well as to accept the opinions and views of others, and a feeling of involvement in and contribution to the lives of others. The diversity in groups that exists due to differences between individuals leads to less collectivism (due to lesser shared values and goals). Thus, diversity will lead to more collective unethical behavior due to this reduced collectivism. When one has to perform a task in a homogeneous group, one will be more likely to take the interests of others into account because an individual group member has shared values and goals with the other group members. This explanation can be valid, because the degree to which people have shared values and goals can differ and one can feel more associated to one person than to another. So, in short I can say that diversity leads to more collective unethical behavior through its reduced collective mindset. Therefore, the research question in this thesis is: “How does diversity influence collective unethical behavior and is this relationship explained by collectivism?”
Since collective unethical behavior leads to negative effects for the organization, it is crucial to examine the influence of group diversity on collective unethical behavior. This study potentially contributes to the existing literature and practice in two ways. First, it extends research in the fields of group diversity and collective unethical behavior, which is fairly sparse, and specifically examines the role of collectivism as a potential mediating variable. In addition, Pearsall and Ellis (2011) state that, to date, little research has examined collective ethical and unethical behavior by groups. In this research, I will focus on collective unethical behavior by groups, thereby extending existing literature. Secondly, this
contribution provides implications for organizations; if managers know the effects of group diversity on unethical behavior they could improve work groups through procedures designed to produce the optimal blend of employees.
4 also be found in this section. I will then present the preliminary method used to examine the problem. After the methods, the outcomes of the study are presented in the results section and these results will be discussed in the discussion section. In the end, there will be a conclusion in which the main points of this research are stated, limitations of the research are mentioned, and suggestions for future research can be found.
THEORY
The relationship between diversity in groups and collective unethical behavior
Currently, more and more information and attention is given to unethical behavior and its consequences. Unethical behavior is the behavior that runs counter to generally-accepted norms of behavior (Pearsall & Ellis, 2011). In this research, the focus will be on collective unethical behavior, which, as mentioned before, refers to the ethical or unethical decisions that the group, as a whole, makes instead of the decision that an individual group member makes. As mentioned before, I will examine how diversity will lead to more
unethical behavior. There are several theories and statements that can be applied to explain how diversity will determine the degree of collective unethical behavior.
First, one could look at the similarity-attraction paradigm. This theory of Byrne (1971) states that people are attracted to and prefer to be with similar others because they
anticipate that their own values, attitudes, and beliefs will be reinforced or upheld. Here the focus will not be on feeling associated with others based on characteristics but on the goals and values that one has in common with other group members. This theory suggests that one wants group members to be similar to oneself, because this will increase the possibility that one’s own interest will be fulfilled. Peterson (2012) found that high scores on self-interest were associated with more frequent unethical behavior.
5 evaluate other members in the group who appear to hold the same features as they do. Lau and Murnighan (1998) support this view by saying that diversity reduces social contact and, therefore, reduces social integration. In conclusion, when group members differ from one another, group members may not be able to identify with other group members and, therefore, feel less connected to the group.
In addition, Stasser and Titus (1985) found that diversity results in group members keeping more resources for themselves. They state that group members often fail to pool information effectively, because discussion in groups tends to be dominated by information that group members hold in common before the discussion. According to Stasser and Titus (1985), another reason that information is not shared during discussion is that most of the information that is unique is inconsistent with members’ pre-discussion preference and, therefore, does not seem valuable to discuss. This implies that, due to the abovementioned reasons, in diverse groups, unique and distinctive knowledge that individual group members hold is not shared with other group members even though this might be in the interest of the other members. Therefore, when one does not discuss unique and distinctive knowledge one does not take into account the interests of others (which, as mentioned above, is a form of unethical behavior).
Finally, findings suggest that more heterogeneous groups have to deal with more task conflicts (Pelled et al., 1999; Lovelace et al., 2001), less work group cohesion (Harrison et al., 1998) and lower member commitment (Riordan & Shore, 1997; Tsui et al., 1992). According to Pelled et al. (1999), heterogeneous groups have to deal with more task conflict, because diversity leads to more interaction and exchanges with dissimilar others who have divergent views and, as a result, task conflicts within a group may become more pronounced. Less workgroup cohesion and lower member commitment will be the case because people in heterogeneous groups have less shared values and less shared goals than people in homogeneous groups.
6 of others. In addition, Habyarimana et al. (2007) state that people who are more different from each other engage more in cheating and, therefore, unethical behavior than do people who feel more similar towards each other. Summarizing this, I come to the following
conclusion:
Hypothesis 1: Diversity will lead to more collective unethical behavior.
Diversity, collective unethical behavior and the mediating role of collectivism.
I expect that the relationship between diversity and collective unethical behavior is mediated by collectivism. Collectivism is characterized by social integrity and giving priority to group goals over individual goals (Kashima et al., 1995). Collectivists are closely linked individuals who view themselves as parts of a whole and are mainly motivated by the norms and duties imposed by the collective entity (Triandis, 1995). Traindis (1995) also talks about people who are the opposite of collectivism, individualists, who are motivated by their own preferences, needs, and rights, giving priority to personal rather than to group goals. Yamaguchi (1994) found that collectivism resulted in a lower need for uniqueness, higher external locus of control, and higher interpersonal sensitivity.
Several studies make suggestions about collectivism. Firstly, it is argue that
collectivists performed more worse when given individual responsibility versus when given shared responsibility (Early, 1989). So, collectivism can have implications for the
performance of a group and, therefore, also for the organization in which groups perform tasks. Moreover, collectivism also has implications for the willingness of individual group members to work together with other group members. Kirkman et al. (2001) found that individualists were more resistant to teamwork and felt less comfortable with having their individual pay based on team outcomes than collectivists were.
7 on how similar they feel to the other and how attentive one is to the views of others. People that are part of a diverse group will be more likely to take their own interests into account (due to lesser shared goals). In addition, Moore and Loewenstein (2004) state that people who emphasize their own interests more will act in more unethical manners. Therefore, the expectation is that people who score low on collectivism will have more difficulty taking into account the interests, values, and goals of dissimilar others and, therefore, will engage in more unethical behaviors. Summarizing this, I come to the following conclusion:
Hypothesis 2: Diversity leads to more collective unethical behavior through its reduced collective mindset.
Figure 1: conceptual model
METHODS
Sample
In order to test the hypothesis, I conducted an experiment. The participants in this experiment were 356 undergraduates at the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Groningen, who were assigned to 119 groups. The group consisted of 219 male students (61.69%) and 136 female students (38.31%). The ages ranged between 19 and 36 years, while the mean age in this sample was 21.85 years (SD = 2.31). Most of the
8 administration, and the remaining 20 participants belonged to other studies. For doing the experiment, they were told that they were compensated by receiving between 0 and 0.25 extra points to their final grade based on how their group performed. However, in order that there was no actual premium for cheating, all participants received 0.25 points added to their final grade (this was not known by the participants during the experiment).
Procedures
Participants first had to complete a questionnaire to obtain some background information about demographics (age, gender, nationality) and personality (ethical orientation, diversity beliefs and moral identity). Participants were told that groups were comprised based on their answers to these questions. To make the group diversity or homogeneity manipulation salient, groups were told that they were formed based on their similarity in personality (homogenous) or based on their differences in personality (diverse). In actuality, group assignment was completely at random. Such a method was also used by Homan et al. (2007) and van Knippenberg et al. (2007).
In the experiment, the paradigm was adapted from that by Pearsall and Ellis (2011). Each group had to read and analyze a case. Following the submission of their case analysis, they then had to complete a self-grading form on which they had to evaluate whether they had recognized all the critical issues in the case. There were a total of eight critical issues that the group could identify. However, in reality, only 7 out of the 8 critical issues could be legitimately recognized from the case that they received. Therefore, this self-grading form was used to identify whether the group engaged in unethical behavior, which occurred when the group had identified the eighth critical issue that was, in fact, not contained in the case. The final decision and solution to this case had to be submitted to the teacher. Each group member signed his or her name on the self-grading sheet to indicate that he or she
contributed to the assignment and agreed with what the group was submitting.
9 Measures
Diversity. The effect of diversity was examined by having participants work in groups which they believed were comprised of either diverse or similar others (based on a personality questionnaire).
Collectivism. The degree to which group members had a preference for collectivism instead of individualism was measured using a scale developed by Kashima et al. (1995). This scale measured collectivism based on questions like “I stick with my group even through
difficulties”, “I think it is more important to give priority to group interest rather than to personal ones” and “I am prepared to do things for my group at any time, even though I have to sacrifice my own interest”. Participants could answer these questions on a 7-point Likert scale.
Unethical behavior. Whether groups engaged in collective unethical behavior was examined if they indicated having identified the eighth (fake) issue in the case. When groups indicated that they had covered the eighth (and bogus) point, I concluded that they had cheated. This is the case because the group was able to legitimately discover only seven points. It is important to mention that I focused on the group’s decision to engage in unethical behavior and not the decision of an individual to engage in unethical behavior, as that was irrelevant to my theory and unable to be measured.
RESULTS Correlations
10 that ICC1 and ICC2 for collectivism were too low to allow data aggregation. ICC1 might have been low, because there was insufficient variance within the group, and ICC2 because there was insufficient variance between groups. ICC1 might have been low since there might have been no absolute agreement between individuals in the group. ICC2 might have been low since ICC2 is dependent on the group size, which was relatively small in this research (each group consisted out of 2 or 3 participants).
Subsequently, the program SPSS was used to measure the reliability of the
collectivism scale. The collectivism scale consisted of seven items that had an reliability of 0.52, indicating that the items used to measure collectivism were not reliable.
Means, standard deviations and correlations between the variables studied (diversity, collectivism, and collective unethical behavior) are shown in Table 1. Results demonstrated that there was no correlation between diversity and collective unethical behavior (r = 0.13), diversity and collectivism (r = 0.05), and collectivism and collective unethical behavior (r = 0.04). There was no correlation since none of these relationships were significant. In terms of control variables, the results showed a marginal (r = 0.16) positive correlation between age and collectivism. In addition, a marginal (r = -0.20) negative correlation was shown for age and diversity. No other relationships between the control variables were marginal or significant.
Table 1: correlation table
M SD 1 2 3 4 5
1. Gender 1.62 0.29
2. Age 21.85 1.46 -0.09*
3. Diversity 1.50 0.50 0.10 -0.20*
4. Collectivism 4.62 0.41 -0.04 0.16* 0.05
5. Collective unethical behavior 0.29 0.46 -0.05 -0.01 0.13 0.04
Note. N = 119 groups. * p < .10
Regressions
11 Hypothesis 1. Hypothesis 1 proposed that diversity would lead to more collective unethical behavior. The relationship between diversity and collective unethical behavior was tested and controlled for age and gender. As shown in Table 2, diversity was not related to the likelihood that a group would engage in unethical behavior. Therefore, the first hypothesis is rejected.
Table 2: logistic regression results for the main effect
Hypothesis 2. Hypothesis 2 proposed that diversity would lead to more collective unethical behavior through its reduced collective mindset. As mentioned above, there is no significant relationship between diversity and collective unethical behavior. As a result, it makes no sense to see whether diversity will lead to more collective unethical behavior through its reduced collective mindset. Therefore, also hypothesis 2 is rejected. Results of this analysis can be found in table 3.
Table 3: logistic regression results for the mediation relationship
DISCUSSION
Collective unethical behavior
B SE DF P Gender Age Diversity -0.47 0.00 0.62 0.75 0.15 0.43 1 1 1 0.53 0.99 0.15
Collective unethical behavior -0.16 3.76 1 0.97
Nagelkerke 0.03
-2LL 130.32
X2 2.31
Collective unethical behavior
B SE DF P Gender Age Collectivism Diversity -0.470 -0.008 0.187 0.610 0.746 0.154 0.519 0.436 1 1 1 1 0.529 0.960 0.718 0.162 Collective unethical behavior -0.843 4.191 1 0.841
Nagelkerke 0.032
-2LL 130.190
12 Summary of Results
The main relationship, that diversity would lead to more collective unethical
behavior, was not supported by the results. In addition, no evidence was found in support of the mediation hypothesis. So, no evidence was found to support the hypothesis that
diversity would lead to more collective unethical behavior through its reduced collective mindset.
Theoretical and Managerial Implications
This study contributes to the existing literature in two ways. First, it extends research in the fields of group diversity and collective unethical behavior, which is fairly sparse, and specifically examines the role of collectivism as a potential mediating variable. Secondly, Pearsall and Ellis (2011) state that, to date, little research has examined collective ethical and unethical behavior in groups. In this research, I focused on collective unethical behavior in groups, thereby extending existing literature. So, this research expands existing literature about diversity, collective unethical behavior, and the mechanism of collectivism. This was done in order to obtain new insights and better understanding of the determinants of collective unethical behavior.
In my study, diversity did not lead to more collective unethical behavior. This was in contrast with results found by Brass et al. (1998) who found that diversity increased the opportunity for unethical behavior since one does not felt the need to comply to the roles and expectations of those who they felt dissimilar to (and, therefore, had less interpersonal relationships with). This difference could be explained with the theory provided by Harrison et al. (1998). They stated that surface-level diversity had more influence in the earlier stages of group forming and that deep-level diversity would become more important when groups worked together for a while. Since my manipulation was closer to deep-level diversity (since participants were placed in groups based on a message of their similarity or homogeneity in personality), it might be that diversity was not very visible and, therefore, the relationship was not tested in a right manner.
13 inconsistent with the view of Moore and Loewenstein (2004) who stated that people who scored low on collectivism (and, therefore, put more emphasis on their own interests) act more unethical. The hypothesis could not be confirmed since it is not possible to mediate a non-significant main effect. However, other researchers like Nemeth (1986) showed that groups containing members with different viewpoints were more creative than groups whose members shared the same viewpoint. So, this view might imply that when group members see the value of diverse views, these members will also take the interests and views of others into account. When one becomes less self-interested, unethical behavior will become less frequent (Peterson, 2012).
Secondly, this contribution provided implications for organizations; if managers knew the effects of group diversity on unethical behavior they could improve work groups through procedures designed to produce the optimal blend of employees. Although my results did not show that diversity had a significant effect on collective unethical behavior, previous research showed that managers should always take diversity into account and that they should have tried to prevent collective unethical behavior as much as possible. Research had already showed that diversity in work groups had implications for performance, creativity, conflict, and cohesion (Harrison et al., 1998; van Knippenberg et al., 2004; Nemeth, 1986; Pelled, 1996). Habyarimana et al. (2007) found that diversity led to more unethical behavior. When more is clear about this relationship, organizations can try to prevent collective unethical behavior and, therefore, prevent scandals from occurring.
Limitations and Future Directions
14 was bogus, we can not argue that groups were really diverse or homogeneous and that there were true differences in deep-level characteristics. Thus, future research should investigate the relationship between diversity and collective unethical behavior and, thereby, focus on real differences in deep-level and/or surface-level characteristics.
Secondly, the Cronbach’s Alpha for collectivism was quite low (0.52). Cronbach’s alpha indicates if the different items are measuring the same construct. Whether this is possible depends on the inter-correlation of the scale items. A low value of Cronbach’s alpha could be due to a low number of questions, poor inter-relatedness between items or
heterogeneous constructs (Tavakol et al., 2011). In this study, the number of questions was high enough. However, since there was no correlation between the items, Cronbach’s alpha was low due to poor inter-relatedness between items.
Finally, the only participants in this study were business students. This might have implications, since it is shown that students cheat more and have less ethical standards than, for example, businessmen (DeSalvia and Gemmill, 1971; Wood et al., 1988). Furthermore, most of the participants were Dutch (94.38%). The results might have been different in other countries and with different cultures. This problem could be addressed by future research. Future research could look at the effects of diversity on collective unethical behavior in multiple countries and with more culturally-diverse groups. This studies can include students, but it is important that they include other groups as well to make diversity more visible.
Conclusion
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