Individual ethical behavior: impact of goal setting procedure
Event Title
2nd Symposium on Ethics and Social Responsibility Research
Year (definitive publication)
2013
Language
English
Country
Portugal
More Information
Abstract
Goal setting procedure is a self-regulation key process which allows individuals to evaluate
their behaviors and perform the necessary adjustments in order to deal with the discrepancy
between actual outputs and desired outcomes. In the last decades this process has been
presented as essential to reinforce individual motivation and to improve organizational
performance. However, some researchers suggested that high challenging goals could
actually constrain the individual ability to recognize moral issues and, because that, incite
unethical behaviors. The results of the present study, done with undergraduate students
(N=84), show that the presence of financial incentives combined with the absence of
external control and high performance goals tend to diminish the ethical quality of
individual’s behavior. We discuss the practical implications of these results for preventing
unethical behaviours as well as reinforce formal mechanisms which penalize these
unethical behaviors.
Acknowledgements
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Keywords
Goal setting, external control, individual ethics.