Moral symbols can ward off evil bosses, study says

Moral symbols – such as a religious poster hanging on a cubicle wall, or an ethically righteous quote embedded in the signature of an email – can keep employees from getting pulled into an employer’s dishonest business practices and can even discourage the employees’ superiors from engaging in nefarious acts, according to researchers from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School.

The study found that staff who displayed “moral symbols” were more likely to be considered by their bosses to have high moral character. Photo: Getty Images/iStockphoto

Employees asked to fudge financials, help cover up a marital affair or participate in broad deceit of the kind exposed last year at Volkswagen, which admitted to cheating on emissions tests through a “defeat device” in its diesel engines, may feel forced to choose between their morals and their jobs.

However, displaying moral symbols can offer protection against unethical requests – like wearing a necklace of garlic to guard against vampires, only based on scientific observation, not fiction – according to the study, which is scheduled to appear in the Academy of Management Journal.

“We want to empower people,” said Maryam Kouchaki, assistant professor of management and organisations at Kellogg, who co-wrote the study with Sreedhari Desai at UNC. “How can we behave such that we reduce these incidents and requests?”

Employees may feel forced to choose between their morals and their jobs. Photo: Getty Images/iStockphoto

Kouchaki and Desai conducted five laboratory tests and one survey to test their theory that exposure to moral symbols would reduce immoral behaviour.

In one study, 148 college students were asked to play a decision-making game with prize money at stake. Participants were told they would be paired with two other team members – Pat and Sam – whom they would meet via email.

Some participants received an introductory email from Pat that included the morally themed quotation: “Better to fail with honour than succeed by fraud.” Others got an email from Pat with no quotation, and none of the emails from Sam contained a quote.

Each participant of Team 1 had to decide whether to send an honest or a deceptive message to Team 2 about whether a certain payment method would result in the most money for Team 2 – but with financial consequences for Team 1.

The honest message would likely result in Team 1 losing $18, while the deceptive message would result in Team 1 losing just $3. Team 1 also had to decide who would deliver the message. Neither Team 2 nor the messenger would ever know if the message was deceptive.

Displaying the right message may help ward off unethical requests. Photo: Getty Images/iStockphoto

The researchers found that participants were less likely to send a deceptive message if they had been exposed to Pat’s moral quote – 46 per cent who had been exposed to the quote chose to send the deceptive message, versus 64 per cent of people who had not been exposed to it. They also found that those who decided to send the deceptive message were far less likely to ask Pat to deliver it if they had received the moral quote – 23 per cent of those who had received the quote sent Pat on the mission, versus 55 per cent of those who had not.

When participants were asked later what influenced their decisions, none said the emails had been a factor, suggesting the effect operates, in part, on a subconscious level.

Four other experiments yielded similar results.

To test the theory in real life, the researchers surveyed 104 pairs of bosses and subordinates from a variety of organisations in India, where religious icons are commonplace.

They found that subordinates who displayed moral symbols – such as pictures of Krishna, Buddha, Jesus or rosary beads – were more likely to be considered by their bosses to have high moral character and were less likely to have been asked to compromise their ethics at work, even when the supervisors were of a different religion.

In addition, there was no difference in performance ratings or other backlash, suggesting that people who aren’t subjected to unethical requests because of moral displays don’t suffer retaliation for it.

The studies suggest that seeing a moral symbol increases a person’s own moral awareness, plus it creates the perception that the displayer of the symbol possesses a high moral character and is therefore less likely to fulfil an unethical request. That’s important, the researchers say, because it shows that employees have power to influence office behaviour from the bottom up.

The research did not explore how moral symbols influence workplaces where sketchy ethics are baked into the culture, though Kouchaki said she expects it would have an effect there too.

Perhaps the subprime mortgage crisis would have been averted with a few Gandhi quotes taped to computer monitors.