Bad Apples Research Articles

A Matter of Trust

In December of 2015 two major journalistic scandals hit the Danish news media. The two scandals ran almost concurrently, which increased the media attention and was reflected in the coverage. In a time of diminishing trust in the news media these scandals represented a significant and acute credibility problem for the news media that were affected. Using paradigm repair theory coupled with a theory about transparency, this paper analyses which strategies the affected news media employed to re-instore trust in their journalism, and thus in the traditional news paradigm. Like previous studies, we find that the news media tried to distance themselves from the journalists involved in the scandals and describe them as “bad apples.” In both scandals the news media also went to great lengths to investigate the accusations and publically document the transgressions of the reporters. This effort could be seen as an attempt to increase transparency about the scandals, but the reports focused only on the journalists in focus, and not on the news organization, where they worked. As a consequence, the affected editors and news organizations largely avoided any blame and speculation as to their role in the scandals.

Decision‐making under uncertainty in child protection: Creating a just and learning culture

AbstractThe argument is made for having a positive error culture in child protection to improve decision‐making and risk management. This requires organizations to accept that mistakes are likely and to treat them as opportunities for learning and improving. In contrast, in many organizations, a punitive reaction to errors leads to workers hiding them and developing a defensive approach to their practice with children and families. The safety management literature has shown how human error is generally not simply due to a “bad apple” but made more or less likely by the work context that helps or hinders good performance. Improving safety requires learning about the weaknesses in the organization that contribute to poor performance. To create a learning culture, people need to feel that when they talk about mistakes or weak practice, there will be a constructive response from their organization. One aspect of reducing the blame culture is to develop a shared understanding of how practice will be judged and how those appraising practice will avoid the hindsight bias. To facilitate a positive error culture, a set of risk principles are presented that offer a set of criteria by which practice should be appraised.

The Corporate Ethical Culture Scale (CECS): A New Measure of Ethical Culture

Misconduct in organizations (such as fraud, stealing, deception, and harming others) is not only a matter of some “bad apples” but also related to the organizational context (“bad barrels”), which can facilitate either ethical or unethical behaviors. Given the financial crisis and recurring corporate ethics scandals, policymakers, regulators and organizations are interested in how to change their organizational cultures to enhance ethical behavior and to prevent further disasters. For this purpose, organizations need to better understand what strategies and factors of the organizational environment can affect (un)ethical behavior. However, to assess the corporate ethical culture, solid measures are required. Since there is an urgent need to have a German measure to promote research in German-speaking countries, this research developed and tested the German Ethical Culture Scale (GECS). Drawing on a prominent approach that has received much attention from scholars and practitioners alike, the GECS attempts to integrate the notion of compliance- and integrity-based ethics programs (with its focus on how to steer organizations) with the notion of ethical culture (with its focus on what factors inhibit or foster ethical behavior). Three studies with heterogeneous samples of German and Swiss employees and managers were conducted to develop, test and validate the multidimensional scale (total N > 2000). Overall, the studies provide first evidence of the measure’s construct, criteria-related and incremental validity. The paper concludes with a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the GECS and implications for future research.

When one bad apple spoils consumers’ judgment of the brand: exposure to an employee’s non-workplace transgression and potential remedies

Four experiments investigate consumers’ moral judgments of a firm’s brand reputation when given information about an employee’s non-workplace transgression. To the extent that the employee is perceived to have power in the firm (i.e., control over resources and decisions), the employee’s offensive action damages the firm’s reputation and decreases consumers’ purchase intentions. These effects occur even though the action occurs in the employee’s private life and is unrelated to product quality. The results replicate for three types of products and three types of offenses. The employee’s perceived power in the firm provides the most consistent explanation of customers’ negative responses and is a better predictor than the alternative explanations tested (e.g., perceived status). Results also show that after an offense comes to light, firm reactions that decrease or eliminate the employee’s power in the organization—such as reducing decision-making responsibilities or firing the employee—can help restore the firm’s reputation.

Are creative individuals bad apples? A dual pathway model of unethical behavior.

Research has been inconsistent in its quest to discover whether dispositional creativity is associated with more or less unethical behavior. Drawing on social cognitive theory, we propose that moral disengagement and moral imagination are 2 parallel mechanisms that encourage or inhibit unethical behavior, and that which of these mediation processes occur depends on moral identity. Study 1, a 3-wave study of a food service organization, shows that employees high on both dispositional creativity and moral identity are less likely to be morally disengaged and behave less unethically. The results of Study 2 replicate Study 1's findings in a scenario-based study of college students, and further show that individuals who are high on both dispositional creativity and moral identity are more likely to be morally imaginative and to behave less unethically. Theoretical and practical implications of our model are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record

Beyond bad apples, toward Black life: A re-reading of the implicit bias research

Increasingly, the death of Black individuals at the hands of the US legal system is interpreted in relation to the social science research on implicit bias. Having flourished in the past decade, this oft-cited framework for recognizing and eliminating anti-Blackness not only overwhelms the socio-legal and criminological scholarship, but also pervades political discourse and popular culture. Using as a site of study my own empirical research on implicit bias and Oregon prison sentences, I discuss problems related to the study of implicit bias and legal outcomes in the social sciences. Further, I examine common understandings of implicit bias research and the troubling application of these knowledges to legal policies and practices. In interrupting the current fascination with and use of implicit bias research, I turn toward “abolitionist pedagogy” in my interpretation of empirical evidence.

'Bad Apple' Peer Effects in Elementary Classrooms: The Case of Corporal Punishment in the Home

This paper provides the first empirical evidence on the existence of negative spillover effects from children exposed to corporal punishment in the home (CPH). We find that interactions with peers ...

Making good cider out of bad apples — Signaling expectations boosts cooperation among would-be free riders

AbstractThe present study investigates how group-cooperation heuristics boost voluntary contributions in a repeated public goods game. We manipulate two separate factors in a two-person public goods game: i) group composition (Selfish Subjects vs. Conditional Cooperators) and ii) common knowledge about group composition (Information vs. No Information). In addition, we let the subjects signal expectations of the other’s contributions in the experiment’s second phase. Common knowledge of Selfish type alone slightly dampens contributions but dramatically increases contributions when signaling of expectations is allowed. The results suggest that group-cooperation heuristics are triggered when two factors are jointly salient to the agent: (i) that there is no one to free-ride on; and (ii) that the other wants to cooperate because of (i). We highlight the potential effectiveness of group-cooperation heuristics and proposesolution thinkingas the schema of reasoning underlying the heuristics. The high correlation between expectations and actual contributions is compatible with the existence of default preference to satisfy others’ expectations (or to avoid disappointing them), but the stark end-game effect suggests that group-cooperation heuristics, at least among selfish players, function ultimately to benefit material self-interest rather than to just please others.

The Association between Dividend Payouts and Firm Growth in Australia: Do the Bad Apples Contaminate the Good?

The Association between Dividend Payouts and Firm Growth in Australia: Do the Bad Apples Contaminate the Good?

Bad Apples? Attributions for Police Treatment of African Americans

AbstractNumerous recent encounters between police officers and Black citizens have resulted in the deaths of African American men and have drawn renewed public scrutiny of police practices. We examine the public's attributions about these encounters. Does the public perceive violent confrontations between police officers and Black citizens as a result of broader problems in police practices or simply as isolated incidents? We employ attribution theory and social identity theory to understand how social and political identities influence beliefs about police use of force against African Americans. We argue that racial and political identities predispose individuals to believe certain attributional perspectives over others. We test several hypotheses using individual level survey data from two national surveys. Our findings suggest that racial and political identities strongly shape attributions, and these patterns have implications for public trust in government institutions and the ability of police to operate effectively. We conclude with recommendations for police and policymakers.

Group (Re-) formation in public good games: The tale of the bad apple?

We analyze how different previous roles as partners or strangers in public good games affect an individual’s subsequent cooperation in a partner setting. We systematically vary a group’s composition from all individuals being partner over blended groups of partners and strangers to all individuals being stranger in each round. We want to explore how individuals’ past experiences in blended groups of partners and strangers affect cooperation in newly formed groups with permanent members only. Our results show that previous group composition does not affect cooperation in the subsequent partner setting with one exception: Groups cooperate significantly less compared to all other settings, when one stranger entered the group. We further analyze this situation in-depth and find that only in a setting with one stranger a reaction chain based on negative reciprocity results in low contributions in the subsequent setting. Partners falsely attribute low cooperation levels to partners formerly assigned the role of a stranger. We conduct additional treatments to back up this result and to show how information about the stranger can prevent such an error.

Nonlinear Dynamical Systems and Humanistic Psychology

The recent debunking by Brown, Sokal, and Friedman of some high-profile results applying chaos theory to positive psychology creates the opportunity to shed light on the quality work that has been done by others in this area. Too many humanists may be unaware of the large volume of legitimate work that exists in the literature apart from Fredrickson and Losada’s article. Often, such legitimate lines of research are ignored, not for lack of scientific merit, but because of artificial guild boundaries and similar silos that separate groups of scientists—even when working in similar areas. It would be unfortunate to have one “bad apple” of an article spoil the reputation of the good scientific progress that has been made over the past couple of decades applying nonlinear dynamical systems theory to humanistic concepts. The present article is intended to help prevent and correct some of these problems, by providing an accesible review of some of this higher quality work.

“A few bad apples” or “rotten to the core”: Perceptions of corporate culture drive brand engagement after corporate scandal

AbstractFollowing unethical corporate behavior, consumers face decisions on how to engage with brands in the future. Consumers' beliefs about the underlying causes of a corporate scandal may influence future patronage intentions, for example, by influencing perceived likelihood of future wrongdoing. We investigated how beliefs about corporate culture and consumer proximity to the recent Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal influence expectations of future ethical action by Volkswagen Group (VW), feelings of anger, and future brand engagement. Results indicate that beliefs about corporate culture and proximity each independently influence future brand engagement. Specifically, owners who believed “a few bad apples” (rather than a “rotten” corporate culture) caused the scandal reported higher expectations of future ethical action by VW, less anger, and more positive intentions to engage with VW in the future. Those more proximately affected by the scandal, that is, turbocharged direct injection owners, were more likely to be angry and less likely to engage with VW. Expectation of future ethical action and anger mediated the effects of corporate culture on engagement, whereas only anger mediated the effects of proximity. This small set of factors accounted for over half of the observed variance in future brand engagement intentions, highlighting the importance of understanding consumer responses to corporate scandal.

Groups and teams: a review of bad apple behavior

PurposeThe purpose of this conceptual paper is to broaden the understanding of the three negative member (bad apple) behaviors – withholding of effort, interpersonal deviance and negative affect – put forth by Felps et al. (2006).Design/methodology/approachAn integrative review of extant literature was conducted to understand the impact of the negative member behaviors on other team members. Potential interventions to control this bad apple behavior are identified with supporting evidence from recent empirical studies.FindingsA review of empirical findings in the literature indicate that perceived coworker loafing may lead to counterproductive work behavior toward coworkers and interpersonal deviance may affect the task cohesion of the group. However, the presence of affectively negative individuals is empirically proven to improve the group performance, especially when the group task is related to creativity or information processing (decision-making and idea generation).Originality/valueDespite the empirical attention paid to “bad apple” behaviors, the implications for managing negative member behaviors are unclear and scattered. In this paper, building on the framework proposed by Felps et al. (2006), the authors focus on three behaviors and provide a concise review of literature and interventions to control or exploit these behaviors.

Luke Cage and Police Brutality

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Arts and CultureNo AccessLuke Cage and Police BrutalityJ. Corey Williams, M.A., M.D.J. Corey WilliamsSearch for more papers by this author, M.A., M.D.Published Online:1 Aug 2017https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp-rj.2017.120805AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail At first glance, you might think the new Netflix series Luke Cage is just another platitudinous superhero drama from Marvel Comics. But, there is something quite different about this hero: the hero is a dark-skinned black man dressed in a black hoodie. A celebration of this kind of image is radical change from the prototypical white male, caped crusaders casted in Marvel’s most recent popular products (i.e., Ant-Man, the Avengers, Captain America, etc.).The cultural and psychological significance of the show lies not just in having a black superhero, but also in the specific superpower of being bulletproof that may strike an emotional cord in the black consciousness. As a show character proclaimed, “There’s something powerful about seeing a black man bulletproof and unafraid.”The show sheds light on several issues: exploitation of black bodies in correctional facilities, misuse of police force on black bodies, and, perhaps more subtly, the experience of living in predominantly black neighborhoods under concentrated police surveillance.As a resident working mostly in urban centers, I regularly hear patients, especially African-American patients, tell me that they are afraid of the police and worry about being a target. The fear is omnipresent and palpable. Perhaps being an African-American physician makes patients more likely to reveal to me these concerns.Because we, as physicians, do not typically inhabit the same neighborhoods and are not subject to the same unjust institutional practices as our poor, urban patients, we may have a difficult time relating to their worries. The socioeconomic discrepancy between the physician and patient may make the physician more likely to distort or misinterpret a patient’s psychological reaction to a very real threat in his or her community. As a colleague once said after a patient described his fear of the police, “The patient may be suffering from delusional paranoia.”As an African American, I too am concerned about being a victim of police brutality. When I drive down the street and see a police cruiser in my rearview mirror, my grip around the steering wheel becomes a little tighter. One misunderstanding, one false move, could result in my untimely death. This hyperawareness is not simply the result of a few minor acts from “bad apple” officers, but from decades of tension and distrust between communities and law enforcement.The narrative of Luke Cage does not offer a logical, cognitive response to the problem of police brutality. Nor does the show offer social or political solutions to racial impropriety of law enforcement. However, it offers a symbolic representation of unapologetic black strength and resilience, which can speak to people in a powerful way. As we work with minority patients, we must be careful as to what we choose to pathologize about their experience, given the tragic victimization of the black community from police brutality and mass incarceration. As the TV show Luke Cage may provide an emotionally evocative narrative, clinical encounters can serve as an emotional outlet if clinicians listen with a non-judgmental ear to these experiences.Dr. Williams is a third-year resident in the Department of Psychiatry, Yale University, New Haven, Conn. FiguresReferencesCited byDetailsCited byViolence in the American Imaginary: Gender, Race, and the Politics of Superheroes13 September 2021 | American Political Science Review, Vol. 116, No. 22017 in ReviewRobert Freedman, M.D., David A. Lewis, M.D., Robert Michels, M.D., Daniel S. Pine, M.D., A. John Rush, M.D., Susan K. Schultz, M.D., Carol A. Tamminga, M.D., Rachel Katz, M.D.1 December 2017 | American Journal of Psychiatry, Vol. 174, No. 12 Volume 12Issue 8 August 01, 2017Pages 12-12 PDF download History Published online 1 August 2017 Published in print 1 August 2017

Human Capital of Misconduct in the U.S. Securities Industry

When misconduct is committed by an organization or by its members in the course of working for the organization, there is often a debate about whether it resulted from the actions of a few rogue members (i.e., bad apples) or from the characteristics of the organization as a whole (i.e., bad barrels). In this respect, I seek to examine the human capital of misconduct by estimating the relative importance of individual versus organizational characteristics in explaining the likelihood of misconduct. To do so, I examine the mobility and matching patterns within the U.S. securities industry. Specifically, I exploit the licensing database of the U.S. securities industry’s self-regulatory authority to build a unique dataset of the careers of 10,000 U.S. stockbrokers, including information on their employers as well as instances of organizational misconduct. I apply two-way fixed effects models to estimate the percentage of variation in misconduct that can be attributed to fixed effects of individuals versus fixed effects of firms. My analyses across two different random samples of stockbrokers suggest that the variation in organizational misconduct is largely explained by individual differences rather than organizational differences – i.e., misconduct by the stockbrokers in the context of brokerage firms is more a product of “bad apples” rather than “bad barrels.” I also find support for negative, rather than positive, sorting in the market based on ethics. Specifically, I find that, on average, bad apples are sorted into employment at less misconduct-facilitating firms – and vice versa. I employ several robustness checks to mitigate a potential bias in correlation between stockbroker and firm fixed effects by focusing on sub-samples with higher observed stockbroker mobility – these checks support my findings. I discuss my contributions to scholarship as well as the implications of my research for practice and policy.

Design Defects and Quality of Government Funded Building Projects In Isiolo County, Kenya

The Interface between design and pre-construction of government funded buildings projects is pivotal and yet very complicated. It is at this interface that defects emanating from design errors in the buildings have been found to occur adversely influencing the realization of quality buildings. This study investigated the influence of design defects on the quality of government funded building projects in Isiolo County. The study is guided by one theory; The Bad Apple Theory of human error. Descriptive survey research design is adopted. Study’s target population consisted; 137project clients, 92 contractors and 16 consultants. 149 respondents made up the study’s sample size and final subjects selected using Stratified and Simple random sampling techniques. Primary data was collected using three questionnaires. The analysis of quantitative data was achieved making use of descriptive statistics and qualitative data on the other hand was reported in form of narratives pivoted on themes under study. The study established that poor functionality of building parts, buildings’ fragility, high occurrence of unpleasant aesthetics in buildings and cost overruns were all as a result of design defects. This study concluded that design defects to a great extent influenced the quality of government funded building projects in Isiolo County. The study recommends that a design review involving project clients and consultants prior to the approval of the final design for construction should beunder taken. Further, to address design defects architectures should provide clear graphic and written representations which will allow contractors to transform concepts into physical reality in execution of government funded building projects in Is iolo County.

A Skeptical View of Financialized Corporate Governance

Managerial compensation typically relies on financial yardsticks, such as profits, stock prices, and return on equity, to achieve alignment between the interests of managers and shareholders. But financialized governance may not actually work well for most shareholders, and even when it does, significant tradeoffs and inefficiencies can arise from the conflict between maximizing financialized measures and society's broader interests. Effective governance requires that those in control are accountable for actions they take. However, those who control and benefit most from corporations' success are often able to avoid accountability. The history of corporate governance includes a parade of scandals and crises that have caused significant harm. After each, most key individuals tend to minimize their own culpability. Common claims from executives, boards of directors, auditors, rating agencies, politicians, and regulators include “we just didn't know,” “we couldn't have predicted,” or “it was just a few bad apples.” Economists, as well, may react to corporate scandals and crises with their own version of “we just didn't know,” as their models had ruled out certain possibilities. Effective governance of institutions in the private and public sectors should make it much more difficult for individuals in these institutions to get away with claiming that harm was out of their control when in reality they had encouraged or enabled harmful misconduct, and ought to have taken action to prevent it.

A Fresh Apple or a New Barrel: Business Ethics from an Individual to Corporate Level

The moral nature of corporations has been discussed for a long time. But, since 2001, with enormous economic effects of the misconduct of some corporations this discussion gained another dimension, it moved into the public sphere, the subject became more sensitive. The anger and mistrust of the public toward business triggered legislators and corporations to take urgent action. For example, just after the collapse of Enron (2001) the American Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (2002) that covers the responsibilities of boards of directors and requires compliance training at all levels. It also revived the old controversial arguments about the nature of business – whether the only purpose of business is to make profits, the relationship of business and ethics – whether business ethics is an oxymoron, and human nature – whether it is ‘bad apples’ or ‘bad barrels’. Yet, with new sets of regulations, in 2017, we are still witnessing the misconduct of corporations on a global scale. This article investigates the effectiveness of corporate efforts such as revisiting mission statements, polishing the codes of ethics and conducting training, by evaluating the nature of business, human nature and the understanding of ethics in the workplace. By looking through the lens of utilitarianism of ethical issues in business, I will argue that codes of ethics and ethics training are necessary but not sufficient. Within the scope of this paper I wish to pave the way to a holistic approach which is necessary and sufficient to create ethical businesses.

Improving research misconduct policies

Current US and international policies for dealing with misconduct in biomedical research follow a largely intuitive approach. For research funded by the Public Health Service in the USA, the definition of research misconduct is “fabrication (making up data or results and recording or reporting them), falsification (manipulating research materials, equipment or processes or changing or omitting data or results such that the research is not accurately represented in the research record), and plagiarism (the appropriation of another person's ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit)”. It does not include honest error or differences of opinion but “must be committed intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly; and the allegation must be proven by a preponderance of the evidence” (42 CFR 93.103, 104). > … the efficiency of research misconduct policies in meeting scientific and social goals […] remains largely unknown—as well as the causal factors that underlie misconduct. However, the efficiency of research misconduct policies in meeting scientific and social goals of ensuring public health and safety, the integrity of research and the prudent expenditure of public funds remain largely unknown—as well as the causal factors that underlie misconduct. A recent systematic review by the Cochrane organization found that the evidence on which these policies are based to be incomplete and the existing evidence of low quality and not generalizable. For more than four decades, research misconduct was thought to be extremely rare and largely committed by individual psychopathology—the proverbial bad apples—and that self‐correction by the scientific community is sufficient to manage the problem. The structure of regulation in the USA reflects many of these assumptions: that the individual is solely at fault; that institutions can adequately manage allegations; and that reliance on whistleblowers to draw attention to fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism (FFP) is sufficient. ### Findings from social psychology However, evidence from disciplines such as social …