STATEMENT OF RESEARCH INTERESTS

Bounded Ethicality: The Ethical Consequences of the Hurried Manager

My research interests center on “bounded ethicality” (Chugh, Banaji, and Bazerman, 2005). While the normative expectation of unbounded rationality (bounded rationality; Simon, 1957) is a clear anachronism, the belief in unbounded ethicality as a psychologically reasonable expectation persists. In my research, I challenge this belief with evidence of bounded ethicality. Specifically, I study the unintentional ways in which managers, leaders, and other hurried decision-makers are unethical, despite their intention not to be.

Bounded ethicality emerges from very ordinary psychological constraints on real-time decision-making, and has ethical and practical consequence. This three part definition captures the three primary threads of my research program: the psychology of implicit bias (what's in the decision maker's head), the real-time challenges of the hurried manager (what's in the decision maker's environment), and the consequences of the “stereotype tax” (what's at stake for the decision maker; Chugh, 2004).

In my dissertation, I explore how hurried decision makers use or discount both good and bad advice, as a function of the identity of the advice-giver and the implicit biases of the advice-taker. The assessment of advice quality is a central and consequential activity for managers. The costly errors of inappropriately taking bad advice, or of ignoring good advice, have practical consequence for the decision-maker, making biased advice-taking an excellent example of what I call the stereotype tax. I focus particularly on implicit gender and racial bias, and its behavioral consequences for advice-taking decision-makers in important organizational contexts. I currently rely on laboratory methods, but eventually, hope to conduct related field experiments.

Two recent papers illustrate my research program. In “Societal and Managerial Implications of Implicit Social Cognition: Why Milliseconds Matter” (published in Social Justice Research), I propose that the very conditions that characterize managerial work – messy decision-making, fragmented attention, and pressured stakes – are exactly the conditions under which bounded ethicality is likely to occur. In “Implicit Discrimination” (co-authored with economists Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan and published in the American Economic Review), we propose that implicit bias is a useful alternative explanation for discriminatory behavior.

With my research program, I hope to provide actionable insight to those who strive for behavior that is consistent with their consciously held ethics. My hope is that educators, particularly in business schools, will adapt their teachings with a more psychologically rich perspective on ethical behavior, and that managers will more proactively prepare for, and avoid, known ethical pitfalls.

Chugh, D. (2004). Societal and Managerial Implications of Implicit Social Cognition: Why Milliseconds Matter. Social Justice Research, 17(2).
Chugh, D., Banaji, M.R., and Bazerman, M.H. (2005). Bounded Ethicality as a Psychological Barrier to Recognizing Conflicts of Interest. In Moore, D. A., Cain, D. M., Loewenstein, G. and Bazerman, M. (eds.), Conflicts of Interest: Problems and Solutions from Law, Medicine and Organizational Settings. London: Cambridge University Press.
Bertrand, M., Chugh, D., and Mullainathan, S. (2005). Implicit Discrimination. The American Economic Review. 95 (2).

Last Revised November 2, 2005