From his involvement in the Council for Ethics in Economics' Honesty Project, Dr. Roy Lewicki pursued the opportunity to study honesty in the workplace of a Columbus (Ohio) corporation. This is a report on the progress of his research.
Those present introduced themselves including a statement of what interest they had in the topic. Comments received included disposition of specific personality types toward dishonesty, qualities of ethics and leadership, dissemination of information beyond this gathering, and the query "How can one tell when someone will be honest or dishonest?"
Lewicki described the development of his approach to "honesty in the workplace." During courses in conflict manaagement and dispute resolution, he used role-playing as a teaching tool. He learned that students often used deceptive tactics in the role-playing exercises. He further discerned that those tactics generated negative repercussions for the duration of the students' interactions with each other, in the classroom and elsewhere. His work with the Honesty Project in 1992 led him to issues of fairness and how people act when they are treated unfairly in the workplace.
For the purposes of this discussion, Lewicki differentiated between two types of dishonesty—proactive and reactive. Proactive dishonesty is a behavior or character trait in which one has a predisposition to act dishonestly to gain temporary advantage. The person uses both cost/benefit and expectancy calculations to determine if dishonest behavior is worth the risk of being caught. Reactive dishonesty is characterized by one's predisposition to act dishonestly to redeem injustice, or because one expects others are going to behave dishonestly first. If someone perceives an imbalance or incorrectness in a situation, that person may act dishonestly to "make it right."
Expanding the model of proactive and reactive dishonesty, Lewicki outlined some of the moderators that influence a person's behavior when faced with an ethical choice. Moderators influencing proactive dishonest behavior include personality, attitudes, goal/motivations, culture, and supervisory practices. Moderators for reactive dishonesty include culture, supervisory behavior, the need to respond, capacity to influence or make changes, one's withdrawal propensity and the capacity to be heard. Whether the unfair treatment that is being reacted to is directly or indirectly related to the actor also influences the response to the perceived injustice.
Lewicki's research project employed questionnaires and focus groups at a financial services organization, in the division that issues credit cards, processes statement, and investigates consumer fraud. The main question managers wanted answered was "How would we know if we had an honesty problem?" All 1,000 members of the division received questionnaires. The response rate was excellent with 841 respondents. The variables examined are: job satisfaction or loyalty; fairness of supervisor treatment; perceived fairness of organizational treatment; capacity to be heard; capacity to influence or initiate change; need to respond or take action; propensity for withdrawal or leaving the organization; the culture or environment that promotes caring and honesty (or lack thereof); a person's willingness to act dishonestly; and demographics.
Behaviors derived from focus group discussions were distinguished as either honest or dishonest and further grouped into 19 categories—6 honest and 13 dishonest. Twenty-five percent of the incidents discussed were focused on honest behaviors and the remaining 75 percent were dishonest.
Effective communication is a key to many variables affecting honest behavior. If people feel they have a conduit for concerns and their communications receive acknowledgment, then destructive behavior can be averted. Some destructive behaviors are passive/aggressive and center on "sliding by" with the minimal amount of work. Other behaviors are more active and fall primarily in four categories: Minor theft; productivity lying; time theft; and major theft—although major theft is rare. Within the study, Lewicki found that participants were candid with their concerns and examples, and that employees readily discussed the "causes" of dishonest behavior and policies that encourage dishonesty.
Based on this study, Lewicki was able to create models of which factors are the primary predictors of minor theft, productivity lying, time theft, and major theft. The common factor in each case was the culture for dishonesty.
Creating a culture for honesty and pride in the organization is an important inhibitor of dishonest behavior. Throughout his research, Lewicki has found that organizations that have better mechanisms for employee input have a better organizational dynamic. In addition, opportunity for input improves the acceptance of change, such as when an organization downsizes.
Demographically the study revealed that women tend to behave more honestly than men and that older workers tend to be more honest. There appear to be trends, however, toward petty theft and time theft among workers with more seniority as they adapt to the system.
In discussing the issue of reactive dishonesty, Lewicki noted that simple explanations of unfair compensation do not appear to predict behavior. His models revealed that the causes of dishonesty at work are complex and due to a mix of environmental factors.
In an acknowledgment of the limited scope of the study, Lewicki suggested that further analysis needs to be done. Research needs to be extended to other organizations in similar industries and to different organizations and industries.
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