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Contribution Details
| Type | Working Paper |
| Scope | Discipline-based scholarship |
| Title | The Dynamics of Escalation in Cheating: Lessons from the Volkswagen Emissions Scandal |
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| Language |
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| Institution | University of Zurich |
| Series Name | SSRN |
| Number | 4191411 |
| ISSN | 1556-5068 |
| Number of Pages | 41 |
| Date | 2022 |
| Abstract Text | This paper aims to determine why and how companies that did not start out with the intention to deceive can, nonetheless, enter a vicious circle of moral decline that may culminate in reaching a point of no return. Drawing on a qualitative analysis of the Volkswagen emissions scandal, we offer a stage-of-escalation framework that portrays the dynamics of cheating as a multistage process, whereby the function of cheating is substituted from one stage to the next. Building on behavioral ethics, social psychology, and organizational research, our analysis further explores what happens at the key points at which the company advanced to the next stage of moral decline and why those functional shifts in cheating occurred. The paper concludes by deriving (testable) propositions about factors that increase the probability of initiating, reinforcing and breaking a downward spiral. |
| Free access at | DOI |
| Digital Object Identifier | 10.2139/ssrn.4191411 |
| Other Identification Number | merlin-id:23158 |
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