IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jobhdp/v109y2009i2p142-155.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The abundance effect: Unethical behavior in the presence of wealth

Author

Listed:
  • Gino, Francesca
  • Pierce, Lamar

Abstract

Three laboratory studies investigated the hypothesis that the presence of wealth may influence people's propensity to engage in unethical behavior for financial gain. In the experiments, participants were given the opportunity to cheat by overstating their performance on an anagram task. In each study, one group was stimulated by the visible proximity of monetary wealth. We found that the presence of abundant wealth led to more frequent cheating than an environment of scarcity. Our experiments also investigated the potential mechanisms behind this effect. The results showed that the presence of abundant wealth provoked feelings of envy toward wealthy others that, in turn, led to unethical behavior. Our findings offer insights into when and why people engage in unethical behavior.

Suggested Citation

  • Gino, Francesca & Pierce, Lamar, 2009. "The abundance effect: Unethical behavior in the presence of wealth," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 109(2), pages 142-155, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jobhdp:v:109:y:2009:i:2:p:142-155
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749-5978(09)00024-7
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hoch, Stephen J & Loewenstein, George F, 1991. "Time-Inconsistent Preferences and Consumer Self-Control," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 17(4), pages 492-507, March.
    2. Maurice Schweitzer & Donald Gibson, 2008. "Fairness, Feelings, and Ethical Decision- Making: Consequences of Violating Community Standards of Fairness," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 77(3), pages 287-301, February.
    3. Cable, Daniel M. & Judge, Timothy A., 1996. "Person-Organization Fit, Job Choice Decisions, and Organizational Entry," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 67(3), pages 294-311, September.
    4. Todd R. Zenger, 1994. "Explaining Organizational Diseconomies of Scale in R&D: Agency Problems and the Allocation of Engineering Talent, Ideas, and Effort by Firm Size," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 40(6), pages 708-729, June.
    5. Treviño, Linda Klebe & Butterfield, Kenneth D. & McCabe, Donald L., 1998. "The Ethical Context in Organizations: Influences on Employee Attitudes and Behaviors," Business Ethics Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, vol. 8(3), pages 447-476, July.
    6. Jack A. Nickerson & Todd R. Zenger, 2008. "Envy, comparison costs, and the economic theory of the firm," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(13), pages 1429-1449, December.
    7. McCabe, Donald L. & Trevino, Linda Klebe & Butterfield, Kenneth D., 1996. "The Influence of Collegiate and Corporate Codes of Conduct on Ethics-Related Behavior in the Workplace," Business Ethics Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, vol. 6(4), pages 461-476, October.
    8. Greenberg, Jerald, 1993. "Stealing in the Name of Justice: Informational and Interpersonal Moderators of Theft Reactions to Underpayment Inequity," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 81-103, February.
    9. Steven D. Levitt, 1999. "The changing relationship between income and crime victimization," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, vol. 5(Sep), pages 87-98.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Francesca Gino & Lamar Pierce, 2010. "Robin Hood Under the Hood: Wealth-Based Discrimination in Illicit Customer Help," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 21(6), pages 1176-1194, December.
    2. Teppo Felin & Nicolai J. Foss, 2009. "Social Reality, the Boundaries of Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, and Economics," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 20(3), pages 654-668, June.
    3. Emilie R. Feldman & Claudine Gartenberg & Julie Wulf, 2018. "Pay inequality and corporate divestitures," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(11), pages 2829-2858, November.
    4. Nicholas S. Argyres & Todd R. Zenger, 2012. "Capabilities, Transaction Costs, and Firm Boundaries," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 23(6), pages 1643-1657, December.
    5. Kaptein, S.P. & Schwartz, M.S., 2007. "The Effectiveness of Business Codes: A Critical Examination of Existing Studies and the Development of an Integrated Research Model," ERIM Report Series Research in Management ERS-2007-030-ORG, Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
    6. John Pearce, 2013. "Using Social Identity Theory to Predict Managers’ Emphases on Ethical and Legal Values in Judging Business Issues," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 112(3), pages 497-514, February.
    7. John, Leslie K. & Loewenstein, George & Rick, Scott I., 2014. "Cheating more for less: Upward social comparisons motivate the poorly compensated to cheat," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 123(2), pages 101-109.
    8. Thomas Li-Ping Tang & Toto Sutarso & Mahfooz A. Ansari & Vivien K. G. Lim & Thompson S. H. Teo & Fernando Arias-Galicia & Ilya E. Garber & Randy Ki-Kwan Chiu & Brigitte Charles-Pauvers & Roberto Luna-, 2018. "Monetary Intelligence and Behavioral Economics: The Enron Effect—Love of Money, Corporate Ethical Values, Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), and Dishonesty Across 31 Geopolitical Entities," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 148(4), pages 919-937, April.
    9. Aviva Geva, 2006. "A Typology of Moral Problems in Business: A Framework for Ethical Management," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 69(2), pages 133-147, December.
    10. Jared Nai & Reddi Kotha & Jayanth Narayanan & Phanish Puranam, 2020. "Transparency and Fairness in Organizational Decisions: An Experimental Investigation Using the Paired Ultimatum Game," Strategy Science, INFORMS, vol. 5(1), pages 55-70, March.
    11. Christof Miska & Günter K. Stahl & Matthias Fuchs, 2018. "The Moderating Role of Context in Determining Unethical Managerial Behavior: A Case Survey," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 153(3), pages 793-812, December.
    12. Marko Pitesa & Stefan Thau, 2013. "Compliant sinners, obstinate saints: How power and self-focus determine the effectiveness of social influences in ethical decision making," Post-Print hal-00814614, HAL.
    13. Elizabeth Umphress & Lily Ren & John Bingham & Celile Gogus, 2009. "The Influence of Distributive Justice on Lying for and Stealing from a Supervisor," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 86(4), pages 507-518, June.
    14. Zur Shapira & Gary Dushnitsky, 2011. "Entrepreneurial Finance Meets Organizational Reality: Comparing Investment Practices And Performance Of Corporate And Independent Venture Capitalists," Discussion Paper Series dp589, The Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
    15. Brahm, Francisco & Tarziján, Jorge, 2012. "The impact of complexity and managerial diseconomies on hierarchical governance," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 84(2), pages 586-599.
    16. J. Adam Cobb & Ken-Hou Lin, 2017. "Growing Apart: The Changing Firm-Size Wage Premium and Its Inequality Consequences," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 28(3), pages 429-446, June.
    17. Yam, Kai Chi & Reynolds, Scott J. & Hirsh, Jacob B., 2014. "The hungry thief: Physiological deprivation and its effects on unethical behavior," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 125(2), pages 123-133.
    18. Michael S. McLeod & G. Tyge Payne & Robert E. Evert, 2016. "Organizational Ethics Research: A Systematic Review of Methods and Analytical Techniques," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 134(3), pages 429-443, March.
    19. Muel Kaptein, 2011. "Toward Effective Codes: Testing the Relationship with Unethical Behavior," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 99(2), pages 233-251, March.
    20. Terri Rittenburg & Sean Valentine & James Faircloth, 2007. "An Ethical Decision-Making Framework for Competitor Intelligence Gathering," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 70(3), pages 235-245, February.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jobhdp:v:109:y:2009:i:2:p:142-155. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/obhdp .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.