Professionalism and Moral Behavior

Abstract

The dissertation abstract and reflection commentary present the work of Dr. Maryam Kouchaki. The abstract provides an overview of research examining the role of professional identities on ethical behavior. Across a number of studies, this work demonstrates that professionalism, either measured or manipulated, can increase individuals’ unethical behaviors. This dissertation extends prior work on professionalism by examining its psychology and shedding new light on importance of its meanings in driving individuals’ behaviors. Below, the author discusses the reasons for why professionals may engage in unethical behaviors. Finally, the reflection commentary provides insights about the author’s journey as a PhD student.

Keywords

professionalism ethical behavior professional identity

The appeal of the discourse of professionalism in all occupations lends support to Wilensky’s (1964) prediction that eventually everyone can claim to be a professional. This prediction concerns not only management, which is supposed to professionalize itself (Khurana, 2007), but skimming the web and the Yellow Pages reveals that the most unlikely occupations are struggling for professionalization. Considering the trend toward professionalization, as we witness the generalization of the notion of professionalism, it becomes increasingly important to examine the consequences of professional identities for one’s moral behavior.

In light of the epidemic of corporate fraud by organizations such as Enron in which Arthur Andersen—one of the Big Five accounting firms—turned a blind eye to Enron’s shady accounting practices and did not fulfill their professional responsibilities in connection with their audits of Enron’s financial statements, an important question challenging many scholars is why professionals’ unethical behaviors persist in spite of professional associations’ and individual professional efforts to the contrary. The author contends that professionalism can be part of the reason for the continued existence of wrongdoing. The goal of this dissertation was to investigate the link between professionalism, the extent to which one views oneself as a professional, and individuals’ ethical behavior. Although the prediction of greater unethical behaviors for professionals may seem counterintuitive, it is consistent with streams of research on moral licensing and the consequences of an amoral, rationalistic approach to ethical decision making. A number of recent studies show that establishing moral credentials (Castilla & Benard, 2010; Kouchaki, 2011; Monin & Miller, 2001), and prominence of amoral, rational, and impersonal and emotionally detached approaches in which individual self-interests are pursued with absence of moral concerns (Kouchaki, Smith-Crowe, Brief, & Sousa, 2013; Molinsky, Grant, & Margolis, 2012; Tenbrunsel & Smith-Crowe, 2008) can increase the likelihood of self-interested and unethical behaviors. Next, the abstract explains how and why a personal sense of professionalism will lead to greater likelihood of unethical behaviors.

Background and Hypotheses

Two lines of research support the author’s prediction that professional identities could lead directly to unethical and self-interested behaviors. First, professionalism generally has been accepted as a virtue. Many professionals and professions believe in their integrity and the ethical conduct of the professions (Abbott, 1988; Larson, 1977; MacDonald, 1995). Professionals think that their training, their professional associations, and their devotion to professionalism protect them against unethical behavior. Earlier sociological accounts of professions focused on the ideal of service to the public and presence of codes of conduct as essential characteristics of professions (Goode, 1957; Parsons, 1951). For instance, Durkheim argued that professions could cultivate order, discipline, and duty. Indeed, the presence of code of ethics sets apart professions from other occupations. However, later sociologists criticized this view and argued that the inclusion of professional codes of ethics are part of professional ideology, “a carefully polished image to win elite support, designed for public relations and justification for the status and prestige,” which professions assume in comparison with other occupations (Newton, 1982, p. 34). Critics further argued that this discourse is used to mislead the public into thinking that the occupation is a worthy recipient of professional autonomy and prestige, creating illusions of professions’ ethicality for the sake of maintaining power (Cullen, 1978; Newton, 1982). In this view, the emphasis on codes of ethics is to maintain the moral prestige and reputation of professionals in society, to inspire trust in the professionals, to advance and protect the interests of their members.

In brief, while some sociologists take ethics as a defining characteristic of professionalism (Parsons, 1951), others perceive it as tools for social status, as a public relations ploy (Larson, 1977). Importantly, for the purpose of this dissertation, both groups of sociologists assume the presence of a discourse around ethics and moral superiority. Efforts by professional associations and individual professionals have led professionals—and even the public—to believe moral and technical superiority are an integral aspect of professionalism.

Recent work on licensing has demonstrated that a personal sense of morality may license individuals to engage in morally questionable behavior (Merritt, Effron, & Monin, 2010; Monin & Miller, 2001; Sachdeva, Iliev, & Medin, 2009). Moral self-licensing occurs because past moral behavior makes people feel secure in their moral self-image (Merritt et al., 2010). For instance, Effron, Cameron, and Monin (2009) demonstrated that the opportunity to express support for Barack Obama made individuals subsequently more willing to describe a job stereotypically suited for Whites as less suited for African Americans. In sum, this study showed that expressing support for Obama granted people moral credentials, thus reducing their concern with appearing prejudiced. In addition, in another domain, research has examined how moral licensing can lead to violation of prosocial norms and selfish behavior. Participants assigned to describe a time when they had acted morally compared with those who wrote about a control topic or immoral past behavior subsequently indicated that they are less likely to engage in prosocial activities (e.g., donating blood, volunteering, and giving to charity) and were more likely to cheat (Jordan, Mullen, & Murnighan, 2011). There are more examples. In sum, past research consistently has shown that prior good deeds can affect individuals’ future behavior and liberate them to act in morally questionable behaviors.

Importantly, one does not even need past good deeds for licensing; writing about a minority friend (Bradley-Geist, King, Skorinko, Hebl & McKenna, 2010), being a member of an organization that emphasizes meritocracy as a core organizational value (Castilla & Benard, 2010), or other in-group members’ non-prejudiced behavior (Kouchaki, 2011) can license people to engage in unethical behaviors. This dissertation suggests that assumptions of professionalism inscribing moral and technical superiority of professionals can lead one to establish “professional credentials,” which may be enough to lead to more unethical behaviors. As noted, this study relies on sociology literature to understand the links between professionalism and morality and what that would entail for a professional’s moral behavior.

A second research stream on role expectations and schema activation also supports the link between professionalism and unethical behaviors. Professionalism is understood to be infused with expectations of technical and intellectual superiority (Larson, 1977). However, professionals are expected not only to be competent, knowledgeable, objective, and highly rational (Cheney, Lair, Ritz, & Kendall, 2010; Roberts, 2005) but also to be cool, distant, impersonal, and unemotional (Cheney et al., 2010; Molinsky et al., 2012; Sanchez-Burks, 2005). Professionalism dampens compassion and empathy as people perceive expressing emotions as unprofessional (Molinsky et al., 2012). As Cheney and colleagues (2010) provide many examples of expectations for professional behavior, they reveal that acting “like a professional,” “doing the best job,” and “good work,” often imply immersing oneself in one’s work, not really thinking about people, and more generally that one should not be too concerned with ethics. Similarly, Mertz’s (2007) linguistic study of law school socialization shows that much of the law school classroom dynamics and texts persuade students to “think and talk like a lawyer,” to discount the moral dimensions of their careers, and to limit their thinking to legal thinking. Unfortunately, similar situations are found in medical education where the emphasis is put on technical skills at expense of interpersonal, relationship-centered skills (Coulehan & Williams, 2001). Past research has demonstrated the critical role that emotional processes, particularly social emotions, and intuition play in ethical decision making and behavior (Molinsky et al., 2012; Sonenshein, 2007). Moreover, amoral decision making, which follows from moral unawareness, though it can lead to ethical decisions, is more likely to lead to unethical decisions (Tenbrunsel & Smith-Crowe, 2008).

Even though little research has explicitly designated the notion of a professional schema, the aforementioned discussion provides clues about the nature of a professional schema. The author heavily relied on the Anglo-American perceptions of professions and professionals (Sanchez-Burks, 2005). She defines professional schema, as a knowledge structure that people use to organize and make sense of information in professional situations, which currently prioritizes technical skills, objectivity, rationality, efficiency, impersonality, and amoral thinking (defined in terms of moral neutrality or moral unawareness). In fact, individuals who perceive themselves as a professional are highly motivated to demonstrate that they are capable of meeting the demands and expectations (i.e., the existing professional schema) of their professional jobs as the consequences of acting inconsistently with the professional schema can be costly. Professional image (i.e., others’ perceptions of one’s competence and character) has important implications for career success; thus, individuals invest considerable energy to fit into and conform to expectations, to meet the social and technical demands of professionalism (Roberts, 2005).

Prior work on schema activation suggests that a schema helps organize one’s memory of past events and guides one’s future behaviors with providing scripts of appropriate behavior to deal with the situation faced (Bargh & Ferguson, 2000; Fiske & Taylor, 1984). Therefore, a professional schema guides individual professionals’ behaviors. Importantly, the existing professional schema with its emphasis on technical skills, rationality, objectivity, efficiency, impersonal and emotionally detached approaches to work, and prominence of amoral thinking in conjunction with use of an economic and business frame, in which individual self-interests are pursued in the absence of ethical concerns or awareness, can lead to self-interested and unethical behaviors (Kouchaki et al., 2013; Molinsky et al., 2012; Tenbrunsel & Smith-Crowe, 2008).

In brief, relying on past research, the author hypothesizes that a strong professional identity (i.e., conceiving oneself as a professional) increases the likelihood of engaging in unethical behaviors.

Individuals differ in terms of their professional identities. Given that self-concept activation is context sensitive (DeSteno & Salovey, 1997), an important question is what predicts the differential strength and accessibility of professionalism in one’s self-view. Some professions such as medicine are thought to be prototypical (Hughes, 1956). Thus, with the historic emphasis on professionals as members of certain occupations, a professional identity is generally more accessible and salient for members of these traditional occupations (e.g., medicine, law, and accounting) compared with other occupations as self-conceptions form over time with varied experiences and feedback that allow people to gain insight about their conceptions (Swann, 1983). However, occupations vary in the extent to which they meet the traditional model of professions criteria and are classified on a continuum of professionalism.

Given that occupational membership is a basis of differing levels of accessibility of professionalism, the author expects professional identities to be more accessible for members of traditional occupations compared with members of other occupations. Thus, the author hypothesizes that a greater likelihood of engaging in unethical behavior is expected from members of traditional occupations, given that they are more likely to hold stronger professional self-conceptions compared with other occupations.

Summary of Studies

In this dissertation, four studies investigated the effects of a personal sense of professionalism on unethical behavior. Study 1 demonstrated that individuals assuming the role of a professional employee compared with a regular employee were more likely to act unethically. In this study, professionalism was manipulated by asking participants to read a short story about a new employee in a service firm and imagine themselves as the person being described. A conflict of interest task was used to measure unethical behavior. Results showed that individuals who imagined themselves as being a professional employee compared with an employee provided more biased estimates (i.e., more unethical behaviors). Study 2 examined whether the higher unethical behavior observed in Study 1 was as the result of accessibility of a personal sense of professionalism or that the accessibility of the concept of professionalism, per se, is enough to lead to more unethical behaviors. The results from this study confirmed the author’s prediction and showed that participants who read the professional story from a first-person perspective engaged in more unethical behavior compared with other conditions. Thus, the accessibility of professional identities rather than the concept of professionalism is responsible for the observed unethical behaviors. Study 3 replicated the effect of professional identities on unethical behaviors and confirmed that participants’ professionalism mediated the effect of taking the role of a professional employee compared with a regular employee on increased unethical acts. Study 4, a survey study of working adults from different occupations, showed that membership in occupations traditionally associated with professions compared with other occupations led to higher unethical behaviors. This study generalized the effect to naturally occurring differences in professional self-conceptions between working adults rather than experimental manipulation of the accessibility of professional self-conceptions.

Discussion

In this dissertation, the author develops the theoretical argument and provides empirical evidence that individuals assuming the role of a professional employee compared with a regular employee may engage in more unethical behaviors. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the present findings raise a cautionary flag for those—in particular professionals themselves, professional associations and schools, and the employing organizations—who believe that the mere fact of being a professional prevents people from engaging in unethical behaviors.

These findings have significant theoretical implications. Given the fact that the concepts of profession and professionalism have a long history of use in the organizational and sociological literature, examining the psychology of professionalism is critical. In this dissertation the author investigated the psychological consequences of seeing oneself as a professional. The author provided a psychological account of why individual professionals may act unethically. More specifically, a substantial body of research and writing about professionalism and ethics exists (Abbott, 1983; Newton, 1982). As noted earlier, codes of ethics are considered an inherent characteristic of professions setting them apart from other occupations. Nearly all professions have some form of ethical code that governs behavior. Despite the centrality of professional codes of ethics, there has been very limited empirical analysis of the connection between the existence of professional codes of ethics and behavior (Abbott, 1983). This dissertation advances research by empirically testing, for the first time in the literature, the relationship between a personal sense of professionalism and individual professionals’ moral behaviors.

Maryam Kouchaki—Commentary on the Research Process

As I reflect on my experience as both a PhD student and a researcher, I am convinced passion for the research topic is the key to success in this profession. The research process, in general, and the PhD program, in particular, are challenging, difficult, extremely demanding, long, and full of negative feedback, just to name a few. What makes it possible is to find the topic that you care about, the thing you want to understand, what you find important enough to devote your life to.

It is impossible for me to reflect on my doctoral research process without considering the experiences that inspired my area of research. For me, the journey to a PhD in a business school started from an introductory management class in my second year as an undergraduate physics major. I took the class as an elective and found myself curious about the issues discussed, curious enough to switch and obtain an MBA and then apply for a PhD. In my first year in the program, I spent countless hours reading the literature to find my topic of interest. It was not easy, but given my background and personal experience, I was not about to give up on finding my passion, a cause to dedicate my life to. At the end, I found morality and ethics intriguing and immersed myself into the research.

Even though you find an engaging topic, you cannot complete a PhD without the right environment and support. I was lucky to have a wonderful set of people around me that supported me at every step of the way. I am deeply indebted to my advisor for his continuous care, support, attention, and, intellect. Of course, my committee was invaluable in guiding me through the process; I received consistent advice, support, and encouragement from the best in the field. Many other researchers inspired me and guided me along the way. Interestingly, I went through the PhD program alongside my husband; he was a PhD student in a different department in the same business school. I am grateful for his intellectual companionship, steady encouragement, and sharing with me both the difficulties and successes.

My word of advice to those working on their dissertation or starting a PhD program is to find their passion, give themselves the chance to explore or to discover what they would like to understand about the world. Do not think about what topic is right to study, who my advisor could be, and so on, but let your passion and interest guide you. Arguably, there is a right time or even right place or right advisor for every topic. As much if you can determine that, it is good to be strategic about it, but do not let others lead your future. Whether you are in right place or not, you should determine your fate. Being strategic is good but in this journey you need to prepare yourself for the ups and downs but do not plan based on others’ needs or expectations. Give yourself a chance and follow your passion! Think about what you want to understand about the world.

The dissertation is just the beginning. Even though the journey is a difficult one, it can be extremely fulfilling if you follow your calling.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was funded by the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics Fellowship at Harvard University and by the David Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah.

The article was accepted during the editorship of Duane Windsor.

Author Biography

Maryam Kouchaki is an assistant professor of Management and Organizations at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. She received her PhD in Organizational Behavior in 2012 from the David Eccles School of Business, University of Utah. Maryam completed a 2-year post-doctoral fellowship at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, Harvard University. Her research examines ethical decision making and behavior in workplace and how instances of unethical and corrupt behavior can be prevented. Her work has appeared in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Administrative Science Quarterly, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and Psychological Science, and has been featured in media outlets such as The New York Times, Business Week, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, and BBC world radio.

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