Max H. Bazerman Articles — HBS Working Knowledge

Behavioral Ethics: Toward a Deeper Understanding of Moral Judgment and Dishonesty

Authors:	Max H. Bazerman and Francesca Gino
Published:	January 26, 2012
Paper Release Date:	January 2012
Feature:	Working Papers

What makes even good people cross ethical boundaries? Society demands that business and professional schools address ethics, but the results have been disappointing. This paper argues that a behavioral approach to ethics is essential because it leads to understanding and explaining moral and immoral behavior in systematic ways. The authors first define business ethics and provide an admittedly biased history of the attempts of professional schools to address ethics as a subject of both teaching and research. They next briefly summarize the emergence of the field of behavioral ethics over the last two decades, and turn to recent research findings in behavioral ethics that could provide helpful directions for a social science perspective to ethics. These new findings on both intentional and unintentional unethical behavior can inform new courses on ethics as well as new research investigations. Such new directions can meet the demands of society more effectively than past attempts of professional schools. They can also produce a meaningful and significant change in the behavior of both business school students and professionals.

It's Alive!: Business Scholars Turn to Experimental Research

Published:	December 5, 2011
Feature:	Research & Ideas
Forum:	open for comment; 4 Comments posted

Business researchers are turning increasingly to experiments in the lab and field to unlock the secrets of what motivates CEOs, consumers, and policymakers.

Signing at the Top: The Key to Preventing Tax Fraud?

Published:	June 2, 2011
Feature:	Research & Ideas
Forum:	open for comment; 4 Comments posted

In filling out self-reported documents such as tax forms, we declare the information truthful with our signature, but usually we sign at the end of the form. Researchers Francesca Gino and Lisa Shu discuss whether governments and companies can bolster honesty simply by moving the honesty pledge and signature line to the top of the form, before people encounter the opportunity to cheat.

When to Sign on the Dotted Line? Signing First Makes Ethics Salient and Decreases Dishonest Self-Reports

Authors:	Lisa L. Shu, Nina Mazar, Francesca Gino, Dan Ariely, and Max H. Bazerman
Published:	May 26, 2011
Paper Release Date:	May 2011
Feature:	Working Papers

It's all-too-easy to lie on self-reported documents such as tax returns, expense reports, and insurance policy forms. That's why we're generally required to sign a statement declaring that the report is truthful. Usually, the signature line is located at the very end of the form—after it has been filled out already, and consequently, after the potential cheating has occurred. This paper examines whether governments and companies can bolster honesty simply by moving the signature line to the beginning of the form, such that signers are swearing that they will tell the truth rather than that they have told the truth. Research was conducted by Lisa L. Shu, Francesca Gino, and Max H. Bazerman of Harvard, Nina Mazar of the University of Toronto, and Dan Ariely of Duke University.

How Ethical Can We Be?

Published:	May 5, 2011
Feature:	What Do YOU Think?
Forum:	closed \| 38 Comments posted

Summing Up Managers like to think they act ethically, but at the end of the day ethical action is subjective, readers tell Jim Heskett. Reaction to the new book Blind Spots.

Blind Spots: We're Not as Ethical as We Think

Published:	April 20, 2011
Feature:	Research & Ideas
Forum:	open for comment; 12 Comments posted

Even when we think we are making principled decisions, recent research reveals we are not as ethical as we would like to believe. Professor Max H. Bazerman discusses his new book, Blind Spots: Why We Fail to Do What's Right and What to Do about It. Plus: Book excerpt.

Naivete and Cynicism in Negotiations and Other Competitive Contexts

Authors:	Chia-Jung Tsay, Lisa L. Shu, and Max H. Bazerman
Published:	February 16, 2011
Paper Release Date:	January 2011
Feature:	Working Papers

In business and in life, it's important to strike a smart balance between naïveté and cynicism. Act too naïvely, and someone is bound to take advantage of you. Skew cynical, and you may miss out on new opportunities with good people. This paper discusses the decision errors inherent in leaning too far in either direction. Research was conducted by Chia-Jung Tsay, Lisa. L. Shu, and Max H. Bazerman of Harvard Business School.

Cognitive Barriers to Environmental Action: Problems and Solutions

Authors:	Lisa L.Shu and Max H. Bazerman
Published:	December 15, 2010
Paper Release Date:	November 2010
Feature:	Working Papers

Researchers have long studied the cognitive barriers that cloud our thinking and decision-making. In a recent book chapter, HBS doctoral student Lisa L. Shu and professor Max H. Bazerman look at three barriers that can prevent clear decision-making, specifically on environmental issues. They also propose ways in which these biases could be put to advantage in promoting sound environmental policy and practice.

A Decision-Making Perspective to Negotiation: A Review of the Past and a Look into the Future

Authors:	Chia-Jung Tsay and Max H. Bazerman
Published:	August 20, 2009
Paper Release Date:	July 2009
Feature:	Working Papers

The art and science of negotiation has evolved greatly over the past three decades, thanks to advances in the social sciences in collaboration with other disciplines and in tandem with the practical application of new ideas. In this paper, HBS doctoral student Chia-Jung Tsay and professor Max H. Bazerman review the recent past and highlight promising trends for the future of negotiation research. In the early 1980s, Cambridge, Massachusetts, was a hot spot on the negotiations front, as scholars from different disciplines began interacting in the exploration of exciting new concepts. The field took a big leap forward with the creation of the Program on Negotiation, an interdisciplinary, multicollege research center based at Harvard University. At the same time, Roger Fisher and William Ury's popular book Getting to Yes (1981) had a pronounced impact on how practitioners think about negotiations. On a more scholarly front, a related, yet profoundly different change began with the publication of HBS professor emeritus Howard Raiffa's book The Art and Science of Negotiation (1982), which for years to come transformed how researchers would think about and conduct empirical research.

In Favor of Clear Thinking: Incorporating Moral Rules into a Wise Cost-Benefit Analysis

Authors:	Max H. Bazerman and Joshua D. Greene
Published:	August 13, 2009
Paper Release Date:	July 2009
Feature:	Working Papers

Policy decisions may be the most important set of decisions we make as a society. In this realm, moral rules often play an active and dysfunctional role. The typical way in which we make decisions—by weighing them individually—leads us to overuse moral rules in a manner that is inconsistent with the more reflective set of preferences we would identify through joint consideration of options. In their response to a companion article in Perspectives on Psychological Science, Max Bazerman, of HBS, and Joshua D. Greene, of Harvard University, argue that cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is unfairly stereotyped. The critique of CBA in the companion article could be better framed as a set of considerations that can contribute to more careful CBAs.

Policy Bundling to Overcome Loss Aversion: A Method for Improving Legislative Outcomes

Authors:	Katherine L. Milkman, Mary Carol Mazza, Lisa L. Shu, Chia-Jung Tsay and Max H. Bazerman
Published:	July 15, 2009
Paper Release Date:	June 2009 (revised December 2009)
Feature:	Working Papers

Citizens hope their elected representatives will pass legislation that creates net gains that outweigh net harms—in other words, legislation that has positive expected value for society. However, economist Joseph Stiglitz has noted that legislators often fail to pass such legislation, even when its net positive expected value is highly significant. The psychology and economics literature suggests that legislators face an uphill battle when proposing legislation that has both costs and benefits due to the power of loss aversion, a cognitive bias that has been found to cause individuals to dramatically overweight losses relative to gains. Here the authors propose and test a new type of policy bundling technique in which related bills that have both costs and benefits are combined in a way that reduces the harmful effects of loss aversion.

On Good Scholarship, Goal Setting, and Scholars Gone Wild

Authors:	Lisa D. Ordóñez, Maurice E. Schweitzer, Adam D. Galinsky, and Max H. Bazerman
Published:	May 20, 2009
Paper Release Date:	April 2009
Feature:	Working Papers

When confronted by anecdotal evidence and some causal evidence, how should scholars—and indeed businesses and society—react? In this response to a critique in the journal Academy of Management Perspectives, the authors articulate the aims of their article "Goals Gone Wild: How Goals Systematically Harm Individuals and Organizations," describe points of disagreement with the critics, offer a definition of good scholarship, and suggest a program of research for future studies of goal setting.

Sharpening Your Skills: Managing Teams

Published:	May 14, 2009
Feature:	Sharpening Your Skills

The ability to lead teams is fast becoming a critical skill for all managers in the 21st century. Here are four HBS Working Knowledge stories from the archives that address everything from how teams learn to turning individual performers into team players.

When Goal Setting Goes Bad

Q&A with:	Max H. Bazerman
Published:	March 2, 2009
Feature:	Research & Ideas

If you ever wondered about the real value of goal setting in your organization, join the club. Despite the mantra that goals are good, the process of setting beneficial goals is harder than it looks. New research by HBS professor Max H. Bazerman and colleagues explores the hidden cost when stretch goals are misguided.

Barriers to Acting in Time on Energy and Strategies for Overcoming Them

Author:	Max H. Bazerman
Published:	February 26, 2009
Paper Release Date:	October 2008
Feature:	Working Papers

What can the new presidential administration do to address our energy problems? For the past decade, most experts have accepted climate change as a fact, making the issue difficult to ignore—yet many politicians, and the voters who elect them, have done exactly that: ignored the problem. Scientists, policymakers, and others have come up with good ideas to address climate change and other energy issues. Many people seek to identify one cause of climate change, when it is abundantly clear that there are multiple causes. Cognitive, organizational, and political barriers exist that prevent us from addressing energy problems despite clearly identified courses of action. The creation and implementation of wise policy recommendations requires us to anticipate resistance to change and develop strategies that can overcome these barriers. Enacting wise legislation to act in time to solve energy problems requires surmounting cognitive, organizational, and political barriers to change.

Dishonest Deed, Clear Conscience: Self-Preservation through Moral Disengagement and Motivated Forgetting

Authors:	Lisa L. Shu, Francesca Gino, and Max H. Bazerman
Published:	February 19, 2009
Paper Release Date:	January 2009, revised April 2009
Feature:	Working Papers

Why do people engage in unethical behavior repeatedly over time? In Everybody Does It! (1994), Thomas Gabor documents the pervasive immorality of ordinary people. Challenging the stereotype that only criminals violate the law, Gabor describes the numerous transgressions of everyday life and suggests that the excuses people make for their dishonest behavior parallel the justifications criminals make for their crimes. This common tendency of people to justify and distance themselves from their unethical behavior has captured the attention of several psychologists, and a long stream of research has documented differences in the way people think about their own ethical behavior and that of others. Harvard Business School's Lisa Shu and Max Bazerman, with colleague Francesca Gino, show that seemingly innocuous aspects of the environment can promote the decision to act ethically or unethically.

Goals Gone Wild: The Systematic Side Effects of Over-Prescribing Goal Setting

Authors:	Lisa D. Ordóñez, Maurice E. Schweitzer, Adam D. Galinsky, and Max H. Bazerman
Published:	February 11, 2009
Paper Release Date:	January 2009
Feature:	Working Papers

For decades, goal setting has been promoted as a halcyon pill for improving employee motivation and performance in organizations. Advocates of goal setting argue that for goals to be successful, they should be specific and challenging, and countless studies find that specific, challenging goals motivate performance far better than "do your best" exhortations. The authors of this article, however, argue that it is often these same characteristics of goals that cause them to "go wild."

Dirty Work, Clean Hands: The Moral Psychology of Indirect Agency

Authors:	Neeru Paharia, Karim S. Kassam, Joshua D. Greene, and Max H. Bazerman
Published:	October 9, 2008
Paper Release Date:	August 2008, revised January 2009
Feature:	Working Papers

When powerful people do morally questionable things, they rarely interact directly with their putative victims. Mobsters have hit men. CEOs have vice presidents, lawyers, and accountants. More specifically, the powerful are likely to carry out their intentions through the actions of other agents, with varying degrees of explicit direction and control. This working paper describes four studies that explore the effects of such "indirect agency" on moral judgment.

Nameless + Harmless = Blameless: When Seemingly Irrelevant Factors Influence Judgment of (Un)ethical Behavior

Authors:	Francesca Gino, Lisa L. Shu, and Max H. Bazerman
Published:	October 2, 2008
Paper Release Date:	August 2008 (revised October 2009)
Feature:	Working Papers

Most of us regularly make ethical judgments about others' behavior and make decisions regarding whether or not to punish others' unethical behavior. Although many of us know how we would rationally like to behave in these situations, little prior research has explored the systematic errors we commit in the process of evaluating others' unethical behavior and acting upon it. The present research by Gino, Shu, and Bazerman focuses on the effects of both the outcome of unethical acts and the identifiability of the victim of wrongdoing on ethical judgments and decisions to punish unethical behavior.

How Can Decision Making Be Improved?

Authors:	Dolly Chugh, Katherine L. Milkman, and Max H. Bazerman
Published:	August 28, 2008
Paper Release Date:	June 2008, revised July 2008
Feature:	Working Papers

While scholars can describe how people make decisions, and can envision how much better decision-making could be, they still have little understanding of how to help people overcome blind spots and behave optimally. Chugh, Milkman, and Bazerman organize the scattered knowledge that judgment and decision-making scholars have amassed over several decades about how to reduce biased decision-making. Their analysis of the existing literature on improvement strategies is designed to highlight the most promising avenues for future research.

Max H. Bazerman

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