Behavioral Ethics: Pushing The Boundaries Of An Emerging Field

The proliferation of corporate failures demonstrates the importance of inquiry into unethical behavior in organizations. In recent research, this inquiry has focused on the factors that influence unethical behavior and the psychological processes that underlie these influences. These factors include individual and contextual factors, and this research indicates that unethical behavior reflects the influence of more than controlled and conscious reason (for discussions, see Gino & Bazerman, 2012; Kish-Gephart, Harrison, & Trevino, 2010; Trevino, Weaver, & Reynolds, 2006; Weaver, Reynolds, & Brown, forthcoming). The papers in this symposium focus on these factors in the context of this recent perspective. In these papers, however, important theoretical propositions and empirical insights reported in prior research are revisited and challenged. This symposium pushes the boundaries of behavioral business ethics and indicates that though research has provided many insights into unethical behavior in organizati...