Despite the recent rash of corporate scandals and the resulting rush to address the problem by adding more laws and regulations, seemingly little attention has been paid to how the nature (not the substance) of rules may or may not affect ethical decision-making. Drawing on work in the law, ethics, management, psychology, and other social sciences, this article explores how several characterist…
Recent corporate scandals have led to public pressure to reform business practices and increase regulation. Of course, dishonesty, greed, and cover-ups are not new societal concerns. Indeed, much of the existing system of corporate regulation in the United States emerged in response to vagaries of the late 1920s and the subsequent stock market crash. What has changed in recent years, though, …