Why Becoming A Leader Makes Some People More Unethical

The higher up the corporate ladder you climb, the more likely you might be to engage in unethical behavior.

That’s the findings of the latest study from Jessica Kennedy, assistant professor of management at Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management. Kennedy says she had a hunch that high-ranking executives had more difficulty accurately perceiving ethical problems, even though previous studies suggested that they had the confidence, influence, and control of resources necessary to put a stop to unethical practices.

To find out if this was true, Kennedy studied archival survey data from more than 11,000 U.S. federal government agency employees. Then separate experiments were conducted in which about 300 participants were randomly assigned high- or low-ranking positions.