While modern organizations generate economic value, they also produce negative externalities in terms of human physical fitness, such that workers globally are becoming physically unfit. In the current research, we focus on a significant but overlooked indirect cost that lack of physical fitness entails-deviance. In contrast to early (and methodologically limited) research in criminology, which suggests that physically fit people are more likely to behave in a deviant manner, we draw on self-control theory to suggest the opposite: That physically fit people are less likely to engage in deviance.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntegrative value generation through negotiated business deals is a fundamental way in which organizations and economic systems attain economic benefits. It is also an important way in which individuals can improve their financial situation. We propose that individuals most in need of improving their financial standing, those in a financially vulnerable situation, are least likely to reap the benefits of integrative value generation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBased on evolutionary theory, we predicted that cues of resource scarcity in the environment (e.g., news of droughts or food shortages) lead people to reduce their effort and performance in physically demanding work.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPeople generally hold positive stereotypes of physically attractive people and because of those stereotypes often treat them more favorably. However, we propose that some beliefs about attractive people, specifically, the perception that attractive individuals have a greater sense of entitlement than less attractive individuals, can result in negative treatment of attractive people. We examine this in the context of job selection and propose that for relatively less desirable jobs, attractive candidates will be discriminated against.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis research tested the idea that the risk of exclusion from one's group motivates group members to engage in unethical behaviors that secure better outcomes for the group (pro-group unethical behaviors). We theorized that this effect occurs because those at risk of exclusion seek to improve their inclusionary status by engaging in unethical behaviors that benefit the group; we tested this assumption by examining how the effect of exclusion risk on pro-group unethical behavior varies as a function of group members' need for inclusion. A 2-wave field study conducted among a diverse sample of employees working in groups (Study 1) and a constructive replication using a laboratory experiment (Study 2) provided converging evidence for the theory.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn the research presented here, we tested the idea that a lack of material resources (e.g., low income) causes people to make harsher moral judgments because a lack of material resources is associated with a lower ability to cope with the effects of others' harmful behavior.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis article provides an answer to the question of why agents make self-serving decisions under moral hazard and how their self-serving decisions can be kept in check through institutional arrangements. Our theoretical model predicts that the agents' power and the manner in which they are held accountable jointly determine their propensity to make self-serving decisions. We test our theory in the context of financial investment decisions made under moral hazard using others' funds.
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