Deterring Unethical Behavior in Online Labor Markets

  • William D. Brink
  • Tim V. Eaton
  • Jonathan H. Grenier
  • Andrew Reffett
Original Paper
First Online:
Received:
Accepted:

Abstract

This study examines how codes of conduct, monitoring, and penalties for dishonest reporting affect reporting honesty in an online labor market setting. Prior research supports the efficacy of codes of conduct in promoting ethical behavior in a variety of contexts. However, the effects of such codes and other methods have not been examined in online labor markets, an increasingly utilized resource that differs from previously examined settings in several key regards (e.g., transient workforce, lack of an established culture). Leveraging social norm activation theory, we predict and find experimental evidence that while codes of conduct and monitoring without economic penalties are ineffective in online settings, monitoring with economic penalties activates social norms for honesty and promotes honest reporting in an online setting. Further, we find that imposing penalties most effectively promotes honest reporting in workers who rate high in Machiavellianism, a trait that is highly correlated with dishonest reporting. In fact, while in the absence of penalties we observe significantly more dishonest reporting from workers who rate high versus low in Machiavellianism, this difference is eliminated in the presence of penalties. Implications of these findings for companies, researchers, online labor market administrators, and educators are discussed.

Keywords

Corporate ethics Social norm theory Online labor markets Honesty Mechanical Turk 
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.

Notes

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank two anonymous reviewers as well as Annie Farrell, Michele Frank, Eric Marinich, Jon Pyzoha, and workshop participants at Miami University for constructive feedback and Chunying Piao for research assistance. The authors also appreciate the financial support of the Farmer School of Business and the Department of Accountancy at Miami University. Jonathan Grenier would like thank PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP for financial support.

References

  1. Akerlof, G. (1970). The market for “lemons:” Quality uncertainty and the market mechanism. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 84(3), 488–500.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  2. Antle, R. (1984). Auditor independence. Journal of Accounting Research, 22, 1–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  3. Bass, K., Barnett, T., & Brown, G. (1999). Individual difference variables, ethical judgments, and ethical behavioral intentions. Business Ethics Quarterly, 9(2), 183–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  4. Bernardi, R. A., & Bean, D. F. (2008). Establishing a standardized sample for accounting students’ DIT scores: A meta-analysis. Research on Professional Responsibility and Ethics in Accounting, 12, 1–21.Google Scholar
  5. Bicchieri, C. (2006). The grammar of society: The nature and dynamics of social norms. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
  6. Blay, A. D., Gooden, E. S., Mellon, M. J., & Stevens, D. E. (2016). The usefulness of social norm theory in empirical business ethics research: A review and suggestions for future research. Journal of Business Ethics. doi: 10.1007/s10551-016-3286-4.
  7. Bloodgood, J. M., Turnley, W. H., & Mudrack, P. E. (2010). Ethics instruction and the perceived acceptability of cheating. Journal of Business Ethics, 95(1), 23–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  8. Brasel, K., Doxey, M. M., Grenier, J. H., & Reffett, A. (2016). Risk disclosure preceding negative outcomes: The effects of reporting critical audit matters on judgments of auditor liability. Accounting Review, 91(5), 1345–1362.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  9. Brink, W., & Lee, L. (2015). The effect of tax preparation software on tax compliance: A research note. Behavioral Research in Accounting, 27(1), 121–135.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  10. Brink, W., & White, R. (2015). The effects of a shared interest and regret salience on tax evasion. The Journal of the American Taxation Association, 37(2), 109–135.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  11. Buckless, F. A., & Ravenscroft, S. P. (1990). Contrast coding: A refinement of ANOVA in behavioral analysis. Accounting Review, 65(4), 933–945.Google Scholar
  12. Buhrmester, M., Kwang, T., & Gosling, S. (2011). Amazon’s Mechanical Turk: A new source of inexpensive, yet high-quality, data? Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6(1), 3–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  13. Chen, Y., & Tang, T. L. (2013). The bright and dark sides of religiosity among university students: Do gender, college major, and income matter? Journal of Business Ethics, 115(3), 531–553.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  14. Christensen, A. L., Cote, J., & Latham, C. K. (2016). Insights regarding the applicability of the defining issues test to advance ethics research with accounting students: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Business Ethics, 133, 141–163.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  15. Christie, R., & Geis, F. L. (1970). Studies in Machiavellianism. New York, NY: Academic Press.Google Scholar
  16. Cialdini, R., & Trost, M. (1998). Social influence: Social norms, conformity, and compliance. In D. T. Gilbert, S. T. Fiske, & G. Lindzey (Eds.), The handbook of social psychology (Vol. 2, pp. 151–192). Boston: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
  17. Covey, M. K., Saladin, S., & Killen, P. J. (1989). Self-monitoring, surveillance, and incentive effects on cheating. The Journal of Social Psychology, 129(5), 673–679.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  18. Craft, J. (2013). A review of the empirical ethical decision-making literature: 2004–2011. Journal of Business Ethics, 117(2), 221–259.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  19. Cressey, D. R. (1973). Other people’s money. Montclair: Patterson Smith.Google Scholar
  20. Dalton, D., & Radtke, R. R. (2013). The joint effects of machiavellianism and ethical environment on whistle-blowing. Journal of Business Ethics, 117(1), 153–172.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  21. Davidson, B. I., & Stevens, D. E. (2013). Can a code of ethics improve manager behavior and investor confidence? An experimental study. The Accounting Review, 88(1), 51–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  22. Dellaportas, S. (2006). Making a difference with a discrete course on accounting ethics. Journal of Business Ethics, 65(4), 391–404.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  23. Dobson, J. (2013). Mechanical Turk: Amazon’s new underclass. The Huffington Post 19 February. Web. 25 March 2014. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julian-dobson/mechanical-turk-amazons-underclass_b_2687431.html.
  24. Erwin, P. (2011). Corporate codes of conduct: the effects of code content and quality on ethical performance. Journal of Business Ethics, 99, 535–548.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  25. Farrell, A., Grenier, J., & Leiby, J. (2017). Scoundrels or stars? Theory and evidence on the quality of workers in online labor markets. The Accounting Review, 92(1), 93–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  26. Folbre, N. (2013). The unregulated work of Mechanical Turk. The New York Times 18 March. Web. 25 March 2014.Google Scholar
  27. Gino, F., Ayal, S., & Ariely, D. (2009). Contagion and differentiation in unethical behavior. Psychological Science, 20(3), 393–397.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  28. Glazer, E. (2011). Serfing the web: Sites let people farm out their chores. The Wall Street Journal 28 November. Web. 26 March 2014.Google Scholar
  29. Goodman, J., Cryder, C., & Cheema, A. (2012). Data collection in a flat world: The strengths and weaknesses of Mechanical Turk samples. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 26(3), 213–224.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  30. Hartmann, F. G. H., & Maas, V. S. (2010). Why business unit controllers create budget slack: Involvement in management, social pressure, and Machiavellianism. Behavioral Research in Accounting, 22(2), 27–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  31. Hobson, J., Mellon, M., & Stevens, D. (2011). Determinants of moral judgments regarding budgetary slack: An experimental examination of pay scheme and personal values. Behavioral Research in Accounting, 23(1), 87–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  32. Hogue, M., Levashina, J., & Hang, H. (2013). Will I fake it? The interplay of gender, Machiavellianism, and self-monitoring on strategies for honesty in job interviews. Journal of Business Ethics, 117(2), 399–411.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  33. Horton, J., & Chilton, L. (2010). The labor economics of paid crowdsourcing. In Proceedings of the 11th ACM conference on electronic commerce. New York, NY: ACM.Google Scholar
  34. Horton, J., Rand, D., & Zeckhauser, R. (2011). The online laboratory: Conducting experiments in real labor markets. Experimental Economics, 14(3), 399–425.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  35. Ipeirotis, P. (2010). Analyzing the Amazon Mechanical Turk marketplace. XRDS, 17(2), 16–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  36. Jenkins, J., Deis, D., Bedard, J., & Curtis, M. (2008). Accounting firm culture and governance: a research synthesis. Behavioral Research in Accounting, 20(1), 45–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  37. Kapstein, M. (2004). Business codes of multinational firms: what do they say? Journal of Business Ethics, 50, 13–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  38. Kelley, S. W., Ferrell, O. C., & Skinner, S. J. (1990). Ethical behavior among marketing researchers: An assessment of selective demographic characteristics. Journal of Business Ethics, 9(8), 681–688.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  39. Kish-Gephart, J., Harrison, D. A., & Treviño, L. K. (2010). Bad apples, bad cases, and bad barrels: Meta-analytic evidence about sources of unethical decisions at work. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95(1), 1–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  40. Kohlberg, L. (1969). Stage and sequence: The cognitive developmental approach to socialization. In D. Goslin (Ed.), Handbook of socialization theory and research (pp. 347–480). Chicago, IL: Rand McNally.Google Scholar
  41. Lapinski, M. K., & Rimal, R. (2005). An explication of social norms. Communication Theory, 15(2), 127–147.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  42. Lopes, J., & Fletcher, C. (2004). Fairness of impression management in employment interviews: A cross-country study of the role of equity and Machiavellianism. Social Behavior and Personality: An International Journal, 32(8), 747–767.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  43. Majors, T. (2015). The interaction of communicating measurement uncertainty and the dark triad on managers’ reporting decisions. The Accounting Review, 91(3), 973–992.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  44. Mazar, N., & Ariely, D. (2006). Dishonesty in everyday life and its policy implications. Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, 25(1), 117–126.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  45. Mims, C. (2015). How everyone gets the sharing economy wrong. Wall Street Journal 24 May. Web. 19 June 2015. http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-everyone-gets-the-sharing-economywrong-1432495921.
  46. Murphy, P. R. (2012). Attitude, Machiavellianism and the rationalization of misreporting. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 37(4), 242–259.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  47. O’Fallon, M., & Butterfield, K. (2005). A review of the empirical ethical decision-making literature. Journal of Business Ethics, 59(4), 375–413.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  48. Paolacci, G., Chandler, J., & Ipeirotis, P. (2010). Running experiments on Amazon Mechanical Turk. Judgment and Decision Making, 5(5), 411–419.Google Scholar
  49. Pope, K. R. (2005). Measuring the ethical propensities of accounting students: Mach IV versus DIT. Journal of Academic Ethics, 3(2–4), 89–111.Google Scholar
  50. Quah, C. H., Stewart, N., & Lee, J. W. C. (2012). Attitudes of business students’ toward plagiarism. Journal of Academic Ethics, 10(3), 185–199.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  51. Rayburn, J. M., & Rayburn, L. G. (1996). Relationship between Machiavellianism and type a personality and ethical-orientation. Journal of Business Ethics, 15(11), 1209–1219.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  52. Rezaee, Z., Elmore, R., & Szendi, J. (2001). Ethical behaviors in higher education institutions: The role of the code of conduct. Journal of Business Ethics, 30, 171–183.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  53. Rigby, K. (1984). Acceptance of authority and directiveness as indicators of authoritariansm: A new framework. Journal of Social Psychology, 122(2), 171.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  54. Rosman, A. J., Biggs, S. F., & Hoskin, R. E. (2012). The effects of tacit knowledge on earnings management behavior in the presence and absence of monitoring at different levels of firm performance. Behavioral Research in Accounting, 24(1), 109–130.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  55. Shafer, W. E., & Simmons, R. S. (2008). Social responsibility, Machiavellianism and tax avoidance. Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, 21(5), 695.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  56. Stevens, D. (2002). The effects of reputation and ethics on budgetary slack. Journal of Management Accounting Research, 14, 153–171.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  57. Stevens, B. (2008). Corporate ethical codes: effective instruments for influencing behavior. Journal of Business Ethics, 78, 601–609.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  58. Suri, S., Goldstein, D., & Mason, W. (2011). Honesty in an online labor market. Human Computation Papers from the 2011 AAAI Workshop. Palo Alto, CA: AAAI.Google Scholar
  59. Trevino, L. K. (1992). Moral reasoning and business ethics: Implications for research, education, and management. Journal of Business Ethics, 11(5–6), 445–459.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  60. Triki, A., Cook, G., & Bay, D. (2015). Machiavellianism, more orientation, social desirability, Response bias, and anti-intellectualism: A profile of Canadian accountants. Journal of Business Ethics. Web. 4 September.Google Scholar
  61. Verbeke, W., Uwerkerk, C., & Peelen, E. (1996). Exploring the contextual and individual factors on ethical decision making of salespeople. Journal of Business Ethics, 15(11), 1175–1187.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  62. Verschoor, C. C. (2016). Lessons from the Wells Fargo scandal. Strategic Finance.Google Scholar
  63. Wakefield, R. L. (2008). Accounting and Machiavellianism. Behavioral Research in Accounting, 20(1), 115–129.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  64. Worstall, T. (2013) On the New York Times’ stupidity over Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Forbes 19 March. Web. 5 January 2016. http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/03/19/on-the-new-york-times-stupidity-over-amazons-mechanical-turk/.
  65. Zittrain, J. (2009). The internet creates a new kind of digital sweatshop. Newsweek 7 December.Web. 17 September 2014. http://www.newsweek.com/internet-creates-new-kindsweatshop-75751.

Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2017

Authors and Affiliations

  • William D. Brink
    • 1
  • Tim V. Eaton
    • 1
  • Jonathan H. Grenier
    • 1
  • Andrew Reffett
    • 1
  1. 1.Miami UniversityOxfordUSA

Personalised recommendations