Does Getting Promoted Alter Your Moral Compass?

[daftandbarmy]

Oh hell yeah, apparently:​

"Given the right circumstances, anyone’s moral compass can drift — and holding higher rank only makes it that much harder to stay on course."

Does Getting Promoted Alter Your Moral Compass?

Recent years have seen no shortage of leaders promising to make their companies a force for good in the world — and yet time and time again, we’ve seen executives fail to live up to their stated ideals. What has kept these leaders from actually speaking out against unethical practices when they arise in their own organizations?

To answer that question, I conducted a series of studies with my co-author, Cameron Anderson, at the University of California, Berkeley. We consistently found that holding a higher rank within a group strengthens people’s identification with that grou turn blinding them to the group’s unethical practices. This means that even if leaders are otherwise highly ethical, the higher they rise within their own organizations, the less likely they are to speak out.

In our first study, we explored whether holding higher rank was associated with lower levels of speaking out against unethical practices for more than 11,000 employees in 22 U.S. government agencies. Survey respondents anonymously reported whether they had witnessed different types of unethical behavior in their organizations, as well as how they had responded to that behavior. We controlled for a host of other variables such as age, gender, and time working in the organization, and we found that with each step up in rank, the odds of speaking out decreased — to the point that senior executives were 64% less likely to dissent than employees in the lowest-ranking positions.

Does Getting Promoted Alter Your Moral Compass?

Now more than ever, we need leaders who are willing to speak out against unethical practices. But new research sheds light on why otherwise-ethical people often struggle to dissent against their organizations. Based on a survey of more than 11,000 employees as well as several lab studies, the...

hbr.org

 

[Kat Stevens]

Understandable. The higher you go, the more you get and the greasier you become to hang on to it. As a gobby Corporal, I didn't have too far to fall. The MWO with an eye for the RSMs chair and has the power to unfuck things, seldom does, lest he find his next posting is roads and grounds supervisor in Frobisher Bay.

 

[daftandbarmy]

Understandable. The higher you go, the more you get and the greasier you become to hang on to it. As a gobby Corporal, I didn't have too far to fall. The MWO with an eye for the RSMs chair and has the power to unfuck things, seldom does, lest he find his next posting is roads and grounds supervisor in Frobisher Bay.

Sometimes, but not always, this quote nicely describes the ever present challenge:

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men..." John Dalberg-Acton

 

[Haggis]

Learning "what right looks like" is so important at the most junior level of leadership.

 

[The Bread Guy]

I suppose it can be like winning the lottery: more resources/power are no guarantee of being able to use them well if you didn't have decent operating principles beforehand.

 

[X Royal]

This is a no win discussion depending on who from what rank replies.
IMO yes sometimes but not always.
A private/corporal will have a different viewpoint than a S/NCO or Officer.

 

[Weinie]

This is a no win discussion depending on who from what rank replies.
IMO yes sometimes but not always.
A private/corporal will have a different viewpoint than a S/NCO or Officer.

Interesting discussion and obviously relevant to realities today.

I have worked for a number of senior officers. Some were hands off, some were micro-managing hands on. In many cases, their staff influence how aware they were of the pitfalls/subtleties involved in an issue, whether through access, or pre-conceptions or bias. Sometimes it was like the whisper "telephone' game, where what was described, and what actually occurred, were vastly different. Not trying to excuse un-ethical behaviour, just trying to provide some context.