Leadership and Persistency in Spontaneous Dishonesty

Abstract

Extensive evidence shows that when given the opportunity, people cheat for monetary rewards, but only to the extent that they can keep a positive self-concept. In this study, we investigate various factors that may influence the degree to which people can keep their positive self-concept while cheating for monetary gains. We find that authentic leadership, gender, cheating norm, experience of cheating, and expectations of others’ cheating behavior have no effect on participants’ spontaneous dishonesty on an abstract task. Therefore, reducing people’s cheating behavior might be a long-term project for the management of fraudulent organizations and more difficult than might be expected.

Keywords: Cheating, dishonest behavior, authentic leadership, self-concept maintenance, organizations

JEL Classification: C92, J53, M5