Goal setting is often a subject of discussion about behavioral ethics and internal programs.  We’ve seen in recent cases such as at Wells Fargo and Volkswagen how cheating and lying become the norm when performance goals are not reasonably achievable.  Recent evidence in a paper by Niki den Nieuwenboer, João da Cunha, and ES collaborator Linda Treviño shows the internal dynamics and processes that lead directly to cheating behaviors.  

The researchers, one of which was embedded inside the company, observed managers and sales staff over 15 months at a large (10,000 employees) telecommunications company.  The company had established goals for its desk sales teams designed to motivate productivity, including a target for sales as well as sales-related work, such as making cold calls to customers, and gathering information about potential customers, among other planning activities.

In the wake of the 10 year anniversary of the collapse of Bear Stearns, we’ve been considering the long-term impact of the financial crisis and its reverberations on Main Street today. For many, there’s been a seemingly permanent shift in how they view Wall Street, including its purpose and the people who have been charged with managing their hard earned money. While the economy may have recovered since the Great Recession, there are numerous former investors whose levels of trust in financial companies have not.

In a recent piece in The Wall Street Journal, writer Jason Zweig spotlights how the collapse of Bear Stearns wreaked havoc on the sense of fairness among everyday investors and “what psychologists call ‘belief in a just world,’ the notion that, on average, we get what we deserve.”

Featured Expert Mira Dewji, Attorney, Adjunct Professor and Strategic Advisor

What are your current areas of work and instruction?

I’m a practicing attorney in the social impact sector and an Adjunct Professor in the Business and Society Program at NYU’s Stern School of Business. I provide legal and strategic advice to high-impact social enterprises, small businesses, foundations, and nonprofits whose means and ends align with my values. I see the law as a tool with which I can craft, protect and facilitate my clients’ social objectives. Perhaps because my clients are organizations and not individuals, my interest in business ethics is at the organizational level. When social impact is framed as ethics, it adopts a powerful lexicon. A business or industry’s responsibility becomes more than merely a conversation around compliance with law or private sector benevolence. Social impact encompasses the duties and relationship between an organization and the environment that facilitates its existence. 

From this perspective, it is not sufficient for an organization to maintain certain ethical practices with key stakeholders such as employees, customers, and partners. Designing systems that define and foster company values such as honesty, integrity, transparency, accountability, trust, and ethical leadership are essential. But organizations also participate in shaping societal values and outcomes, and the extent to which a company embraces that responsibility is a reflection of its ethics.