Abstract
Recent findings in experimental philosophy have revealed that people attribute intentionality, belief, desire, knowledge, and blame asymmetrically to side-effects depending on whether the agent who produces the side-effect violates or adheres to a norm. Although the original (and still common) test for this effect involved a chairman helping or harming the environment, hardly any of these findings have been applied to business ethics. We review what little exploration of the implications for business ethics has been done. Then, we present new experimental results that expand the attribution asymmetry to virtue and vice. We also examine whether it matters to people that an effect was produced as a primary or side-effect, as well as how consumer habits might be affected by this phenomenon. These results lead to the conclusion that it appears to be in a businessperson’s self-interest to be virtuous.
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Notes
Although the convention in philosophy of mind would designate the opposite of a side-effect a “main effect,” we use the expression “primary effect” in order to avoid confusion with the statistical expression “main effect,” which will be used to describe the results below.
Note that we are discussing here ordinary people’s attributions of mental attitudes, virtues, and vices. There is of course a question whether the people’s patterns of attributions are right or even roughly correct. Nevertheless, from the point of view of business leaders, people’s attributions matter even when they are mistaken. As we show in the “New Experimental Results on Virtue and Vice” section, people are less inclined to do business with a company whose leaders they regard as vicious.
Knobe (2004) also found the side-effect effect in cases involving an esthetic norm. It is preferable to adopt an explanation of the side-effect effect that covers all cases of the phenomena rather than to have several theories; each account for only some of the data. Wible’s explanation then seems inadequate on this criterion, while Alfano and company’s heuristics account succeeds. So far, Alfano et al. (2012) is the only attempt we know of that attempts to be consistent with all the published side-effect effect studies.
See Appendix for the full text of each of the vignettes.
The closest thing to a study contrasting attributions in side-effect and primary-effect cases is Cova et al. (2012). They contrasted side-effect cases with means-to-an-end cases, and found that the side-effect cropped up for both, but that means were overall judged to be more intentional than side-effects. We are encouraged by this finding, since it seems plausible to think of means as falling between primary effects and side-effects on the scale of intentionality.
We are grateful to Joshua Knobe for suggesting we test this hypothesis.
This mediational model was also tested using not only the more common—but also more conservative—Sobel test (MacKinnon et al. 1995). The results mirrored those of the bootstrapping test of mediation; there was a significant indirect effect with callousness mediating the relationship between the effect-type variable and the self-reported inclination to avoid purchasing, Z = −2.47, p < .05.
We cannot provide any conclusions on the basis of our data here as to what degree virtuous behavior is expected or required of businesspeople at the cost of profitability. Despite being a legitimate and important question, it goes beyond the scope of our study which focused solely on cases in which profitability was not a variable.
See Sripada (2011) for a similar point about mediation.
Presumably, participants who report themselves to be less willing to punish the compassionate CEO will be more likely to praise him and reward him with future business. Despite being intuitive, this move is theoretical since our study only asked about participants’ willingness to punish.
One might worry that the is-ought problem arises at this point, thinking that we have moved from factual statements about how participants responded to the normative conclusion about how businesspeople ought to behave. Luckily, this concern is easily allayed. One commits the is-ought fallacy by inferring a normative conclusion (an “ought” as it were) from a set of only factual premises (“is” statements). As long as there is at least one normative premise as well, one has not committed the is-ought fallacy. Such is the case here. Our premises include not only the fact that people report themselves willing to punish the callous, but also the normative assertion that business people ought be profitable. Thus, our normative conclusion is legitimate.
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Appendix
Appendix
Fire/Side-Effect
The vice-president of a manufacturing company was talking with the CEO. The vice-president said, “We are thinking of implementing a new policy. If we implement the policy, it will increase profits for our corporation. It will also mean that we have to fire 10 % of our employees, many of whom will have difficulty finding other work.” The CEO said, “I don’t care at all about the employees. I just want to make as much money as possible. Let’s implement the policy.”
They implemented the policy. Just as the vice-president had predicted, profits increased, 10 % of the employees were fired, and many of them were unable to find other work.
Hire/Side-Effect
The vice-president of a manufacturing company was talking with the CEO. The vice-president said, “We are thinking of implementing a new policy. If we implement the policy, it will increase profits for our corporation. It will also mean that we have to increase our workforce by 10 %, hiring many people who would have difficulty finding other work.” The CEO said, “I don’t care at all about the employees. I just want to make as much money as possible. Let’s implement the policy.”
They implemented the policy. Just as the vice-president had predicted, profits increased, the workforce was increased by 10 %, and many of the new workers would have been unable to find other work.
Fire/Main Effect
The vice-president of a manufacturing company was talking with the CEO. The vice-president said, “We are thinking of implementing a new policy. If we implement the policy, it will increase profits for our corporation. It will also mean that we have to fire 10 % of our employees, many of whom will have difficulty finding other work.” The CEO said, “I’ve been looking for ways to fire some of our employees, and of course I always want to increase profits. Let’s implement the policy.”
They implemented the policy. Just as the vice-president had predicted, profits increased, 10 % of the employees were fired, and many of them were unable to find other work.
Hire/Main Effect
The vice-president of a manufacturing company was talking with the CEO. The vice-president said, “We are thinking of implementing a new policy. If we implement the policy, it will increase profits for our corporation. It will also mean that we have to increase our workforce by 10 %, hiring many people who would find it difficult to find other work.” The CEO said, “I’ve been looking for ways to hire some more employees, and of course I always want to increase profits. Let’s implement the policy.”
They implemented the policy. Just as the vice-president had predicted, profits increased, the workforce was increased by 10 %, and many of the new workers would have been unable to find other work.
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Robinson, B., Stey, P. & Alfano, M. Virtue and Vice Attributions in the Business Context: An Experimental Investigation. J Bus Ethics 113, 649–661 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-013-1676-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-013-1676-4