The Dark Side of the Purchasing Agent

Abstract

Unethical practices are widespread in firms. In the purchasing activity can occur frauds such as bribery, and inflated expense reimbursements. Thus, firms try to protect themselves with the code of ethics. However, unethical practices among firms continue to exist, and the code of ethics is not sufficient to end these practices. Thus, this paper analyzes the effect of nonconscious ethical priming as a way to increase ethical decisions by purchasing agents. We elicited the ethical subconscious priming using self-concept maintenance and the Reynolds’ neurocognitive model. In addition, we tested the wrongdoing environment’s influence on the ethical decision-making process as the Cialdini effect: “when a lot of people are doing something, it is the right thing to do”. We applied two experimental studies. Our results showed that nonconscious ethical priming increases ethical decisions, and wrongdoing environment engages dishonest acts. These findings provided potential managerial features to engage ethical decisions when codes of ethics do not always work.