How common is unethical behavior in US organizations?

Published in: Harvard Business Review - 20 March 2020

Written by

Zorana Ivcevic, Jochen Menges and Anna Miller

Summary

What we found: In a collaboration with the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, we studied more than 14,500 US employees across industries and found that nearly one in four people regularly feels pressured to do things that they know are wrong at work. But employees whose su­pervisors are more emotionally intelligent were less likely to feel the pressure to behave unethically, as well as other positive outcomes.

Why it matters: Unethical behavior at work can have huge costs to company reputation, productivity and perfor­mance, and employee retention. Fostering emotional intelligence at work can help to relieve the pressure em­ployees feel to engage in wrongdoing and create a more ethical company climate.

What next: To prevent unethical behavior at work, emoti­onal intelligence should be cultivated in managers.