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Blame The Shepherd Not The Sheep: Imitating Higher-Ranking Transgressors Mitigates Punishment For Unethical Behavior, Christopher W. Bauman, Leigh Plunkett Tost, Ong, Madeline Nov 2016

Blame The Shepherd Not The Sheep: Imitating Higher-Ranking Transgressors Mitigates Punishment For Unethical Behavior, Christopher W. Bauman, Leigh Plunkett Tost, Ong, Madeline

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Do bad role models exonerate others’ unethical behavior? Based on social learning theory and psychologicaltheories of blame, we predicted that unethical behavior by higher-ranking individuals changes howpeople respond to lower-ranking individuals who subsequently commit the same transgression. Fivestudies explored when and why this rank-dependent imitation effect occurs. Across all five studies, wefound that people were less punitive when low-ranking transgressors imitated high-ranking membersof their organization. However, imitation only reduced punishment when the two transgressors werefrom the same organization (Study 2), when the transgressions were highly similar (Study 3), and whenit was unclear whether the initial transgressor was punished (Study 5). …


The Sensible Organization: A New Agenda For Is Research, Helen M. Hasan, L. Warne, H. Linger Jan 2007

The Sensible Organization: A New Agenda For Is Research, Helen M. Hasan, L. Warne, H. Linger

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

IS research and practice does not adequately address modern organizational forms of flatter hierarchies; decentralized decision-making, greater capacity for tolerance of ambiguity, permeable internal and external boundaries, capacity for renewal, self-organizing units, self-integrating coordination mechanisms and continual change. The important challenge for IS is to determine what sort of organizational forms, structures and systems are most appropriate to meet the demands of the current and foreseeable environment. We argue that this challenge can be met through a new agenda for IS based on the concept of the ‘sensible organization’. Our argument is grounded in evidence drawn from the findings of …