The Effect of Group Dynamics on Individual Ethical Decision Making

Abstract

Given that many significant decisions in accounting are made by groups of professionals, it is important to understand the impact of group interactions on ethical decision making. We examine how group dynamics can influence an individual’s ethical evaluations and intentions and whether the effect of these group interactions persists in the future. We also explore the ethical orientations used by participants to inform their ethical judgments. Our results indicate that individual initial assessments of ethical scenarios are consistently more ethical than group assessments of the same ethical scenarios. Groups consistently viewed questionable actions as more acceptable than individuals and were more likely to say that they or their peers would perform the action. This less ethical perspective persists in future individual ethical assessments, demonstrating a contagion effect on ethical judgments. Furthermore, our results show that justice and relativism are the moral constructs utilized by most participants to form ethical evaluations. Data Availability: Data are available from the authors.