alt Hacker NewsNot quite. The idea that corporate employees are fundamentally "not average" and therefore more prone to unethical behaviour than the general population relies on a dispositional explanation (it's about the person's character).
However, the vast majority of psychological research over the last 80 years heavily favours a situational explanation (it's about the environment/system). Everyone (in the field) got really interested in this after WW2 basically, trying to understand how the heck did Nazi Germany happen.
TL;DR: research dismantled this idea decades ago.
The Milgram and Stanford Prison experiments are the most obvious examples. If you're not familiar:
Milgram showed that 65% of ordinary volunteers were willing to administer potentially lethal electric shocks to a stranger because an authority figure in a lab coat told them to. In the Stanford Prison experiement, Zimbardo took healthy, average college students and assigned them roles as guards and prisoners. Within days, the roles and systems set in place overrode individual personality.
The other relevant bit would be Asch’s conformity experiments; to whit, that people will deny the evidence of their own eyes (e.g., the length of a line) to fit in with a group.
In a corporate setting, if the group norm is to prioritise KPIs over ethics, the average human will conform to that norm to avoid social friction or losing their job, or other realistic perceived fears.
Bazerman and Tenbrunsel's research is relevant too. Broadly, people like to think that we are rational moral agents, but it's more accurate to say that we boundedly ethical. There's this idea of ethical fading that happens. Basically, when you introduce a goal, people's ability to frame falls apart, including with a view to the ethical implications. This is also related to why people under pressure default to less creative approaches to problem solving. Our brains tunnel vision on the goal, to the failure of everything else.
Regarding how all that relates to modern politics, I'll leave that up to your imagination.
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My favourite part about the Milgram experiments is that he originally wanted to prove that obedience was a German trait, and that freedom loving Americans wouldn't obey, which he completely disproved. The results annoyed him so much that he repeated it dozens of times, getting roughly the same result.
The Stanford prison experiment has been debunked many times : https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31380664/
- guards received instructions to be cruel from experimenters
- guards were not told they were subjects while prisoners were
- participants were not immersed in the simulation
- experimenters lied about reports from subjects.
Basically it is bad science and we can't conclude anything from it. I wouldn't rule out the possibility that top fortune-500 management have personality traits that make them more likely to engage in unethical behaviour, if only by selection through promotion by crushing others.
> The Milgram and Stanford Prison experiments are the most obvious examples.
BOTH are now considered bad science. BOTH are now used as examples of "how not to do the science".
> The idea that corporate employees are fundamentally "not average" and therefore more prone to unethical behaviour than the general population relies on a dispositional explanation (it's about the person's character).
I did not said nor implied that. Corporate employees in general and Forbes 500 are not the same thing. Corporate employees as in cooks, cleaners, bureaucracy, testers and whoever are general population.
Whether company ends in Forbes 500 or not is not influenced by general corporate employees. It is influenced by higher management - separated social class. It is very much selected who gets in.
And second, companies compete against each other. A company run by ethical management is less likely to reach Forbes 500. Not doing unethical things is disadvantage in current business. It could have been different if there was law enforcement for rich people and companies and if there was political willingness to regulate the companies. None of that exists.
Third, look at issues around Epstein. It is not that everyone was cool with his misogyny, sexism and abuse. The people who were not cool with that seen red flags long before underage kids entered the room. These people did not associated with Epstein. People who associated with him were rewarded by additional money and success - but they also were much more unethical then a guy who said "this feels bad" and walked away.
I find this framing of corporates a bit unsatisfying because it doesn't address hierarchy. By your reckoning, the employees just follow the group norm over their own ethics. Sure, but those norms are handed down by the people in charge (and, with decent overlap, those that have been around longest and have shaped the work culture).
What type of person seeks to be in charge in the corporate world? YMMV but I tend to see the ones who value ethics (e.g. their employees' wellbeing) over results and KPIs tend to burn out, or decide management isn't for them, or avoid seeking out positions of power.