如何打破商业欺骗泛滥的怪圈

    某些情况下，当回报很高风险很低时，大脑会告诉我们欺骗是可行的。我们想办法自我麻痹，为和我们的价值观不符的行为找到借口。

    商界领袖，特别是银行业人士在最近因为错误选择而丑闻不断，为此《财富》杂志（Fortune）研究了这些作弊者的心态。发现在为盈利铤而走险的现象背后有着强大的心理动力。但下一步却极其困难，那就是我们如何才能控制那些大脑中的奖赏通路，鼓励符合道德的行为，

    密歇根大学（University of Michigan）罗斯商学院的管理学教授戴维•梅耶尔指出：“很不幸的是，我们了解许多这类自欺欺人的行为。但我们对如何干预却知之甚少。”不过，还是有办法避免和对抗欺骗的诱惑。

    与其去想如何应对欺骗带来的巨大压力和道德谴责，不如从根本上杜绝这种活动。虽然做起来并不容易，领导者还是能够以身作则，向员工和股东传递良好的商业价值观。中田纳西州立大学（Middle Tennessee State University）的心理学教授马克•弗雷姆专门研究职场心理学，他认为：“如果广泛宣传自己的道德主张，就会雇用到道德水准更高的员工。有点像电影《梦幻之地》（field of dreams）：你造好场地，他们自会到来。”

    公司通常认为自己的价值观已经广为人知，而实际上普通员工并不清楚。即使正受到此类指控，没有一家银行的使命宣言会说他们会为了快速盈利而抄近路。然而这些公开的道德准则和公司内部的激励体系却背道而驰，压力来自于对股东的短期责任、基于快速盈利能力的升职，还有金融危机前夕和危机期间残酷无情的工作环境。

    要让人们遵循良好的商业道德，首先就需要明确阐述正确的价值观，并且给予适当的激励。在加州大学伯克利分校（University of California, Berkeley）研究领导与沟通的教授巴里•斯托指出：“道德和盈利之间仍然存在灰色区域。”例如，交易员的行为有时看来就像在用别人的钱来赌博。“我觉得，至少在很长一段时间内，我们难以除去市场压力，” 斯托教授说。考虑到这一点，“人们需要知道底线在哪里，”那个底线不应该局限于禁止非法行为。“公司需要表明，是的，这样做你也许不会被逮捕，但是你越线了。”

    严格的内部政策可以实现某种程度的损害控制。领导者应该努力制裁不道德的行为，避免它恶化到引起监管者关注的地步。“公司内部需要有这样的共识，不是说‘如果监管者抓到我们，你就玩完了，’” 斯托说。“而应该是‘如果你越线了，一旦我们发现，即使是合法的越线，你也会马上丢掉饭碗，而且我们还会考虑是否向有关当局告发你。’”这并不是一个让人开心的奖赏通路，更像是灌输对个人处罚的恐惧，而不是对盈利的奖赏。

    领导者实施这些政策的动力其实来自于他们自身对后果的恐惧。近期银行高管的辞职，包括巴克莱（Barclays）的首席执行官鲍勃•戴蒙德和汇丰银行（HSBC）的合规总监戴维•巴格利，都给其他金融大佬敲响了警钟，必须有人为系统性的问题负责。斯托认为，这就会促使高管遵循其公开的道德准则。

    弗雷姆指出，在压力巨大而关系密切的工作环境中，个人很容易卷入一个有着共同行为模式的人组成的紧密圈子。某个选择在小集团内部看起来没问题，外部世界却不这么看。弗雷姆说：“高管们需要开始考虑的不是他们在做什么，而是别人对其行为的判断。他们并不总是了解公众舆论的看法。”

    退一步看，如果在经受大公司的道德坩埚考验之前，人们就得到更好的培训，我们的公司环境也许会更有道德感。道德培养需要修正了，要从商学院就开始：商学院学生对道德的看法和他人有些微不同。2006年发表于《商业伦理期刊》（Journal of Business Ethics）的一篇文章调查了268名来自不同领域的学生对欺骗的看法。虽然商科学生并没有比其他人表现出更多的欺骗行为，但他们对欺骗的定义要宽松得多。

    人类的道德难以改变的说法是个谬论，梅耶尔说：“我想主要的来源是这个观点，即一个人的早期经历决定了他是何等样人：父母是否尽职，朋友品质如何？而现实中，这些确实是重要的因素，但我们过分弱化了环境对我们的影响以及我们对环境的影响。”

    通过关注环境对个人选择的影响，人们开始把道德看成是可以培养的技能，并且随着学生毕业、入职，乃至成为管理层，还能继续发展这项技能。

    In certain situations – when the rewards are high and the risks are low -- our brains tell us that it's okay to cheat. We figure out a way to rationalize behavior that may not otherwise align with our values.

    Given that business leaders, especially at banks, have lately been in the news for their poor choices, Fortune took a look at what goes on in the mind of a cheater. There are powerful psychological forces behind rule-breaking for financial gain. But the next step -- harnessing those powerful reward pathways in the brain to encourage ethical behavior -- is incredibly difficult.

    "Unfortunately, we know a lot of these rationalization behaviors that people engage in. We're not quite as good yet about figuring interventions," says David Mayer, a management professor at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business. Still, there are some ways to avoid or fight the temptation to cheat.

    The best way to handle a high-pressure, unethical situation is to never get involved in one at all. That's easier said than done, but leaders can work on the front-end to communicate solid business values to employees and shareholders. "If you advertise that you are trying to be ethical, you're going to wind up hiring more ethical people. It's kind of that field of dreams thing: if you build it, they will come," says Mark Frame, a psychology professor at Middle Tennessee State University who specializes in workplace psychology.

    Companies often think they have communicated their values when, in fact, they remain unclear to the rank and file. None of the banks in court now have mission statements that say they want to cut corners for quick cash. Yet the short-term responsibility to shareholders, promotions based on money earned fast, and the cutthroat work environment in the run up to and during the financial crisis set up a competing reward system that stood in contrast to the businesses' stated moral code.

    The first step to getting people on board with good business ethics is to state the right thing, clearly, then reward it.

    "There are still gray areas of business between ethics and profit," says Barry Staw, a professor of leadership and communication at the University of California, Berkeley. Traders, for example, engage in activities that can look plenty like gambling with other people's money. "I'm not sure that we will successfully, at least for a long time, be able to get rid of the market pressure," says Staw. Given that, "people need to know where the boundary is," and it should go beyond prohibiting illegal behavior. "Companies need to say, okay, you might not get arrested for this, but it is over the line."

    Strict internal policies could do some damage control. Leaders ought to work on sanctioning unethical behavior before it gets to a level that regulators would flag. "There would have to be a message within companies, not just that 'if we're caught by regulators, you're going to fry,'" says Staw. "It's that 'if you are going over the line legally, as soon as we find out about it, you will immediately lose your job and we will decide whether or not to report you to various authorities.'"

    This isn't a very fun reward pathway; it's more about instilling fear of personal punishment than rewarding people for making money.

    For leaders to establish those policies, they're going to have to fear the consequences themselves. To that end, some of the recent high-profile resignations at banks -- CEO Bob Diamond at Barclays (BCS) and head of compliance David Bagley at HSBC -- could serve as examples to other finance executives that someone at the top will take the fall for systemic problems. That could force those top execs to adhere to their stated ethical code, Staw suggests.

    In a high-pressure and close-knit work environment, it's easy to get tangled in a tight circle of people behaving a certain way, says Frame. Certain choices may seem right within the group, but the outside world will view them differently. "Executives really need to start thinking about, not what it is they are doing, but how is it that they are being judged. They don't always understand how it is going to come out in the court of public opinion," says Frame.

    Taking a step back, we might have a more ethical corporate environment if we trained people better before they get in a moral crucible at a big company. Ethics training might be due for a revise, starting at the business school level -- especially since business school students might view ethics a little differently than others. In a 2006 paper published in the Journal of Business Ethics, researchers surveyed 268 students in various fields about cheating. While business students didn't report cheating more often than others, they had significantly more relaxed standards about what it meant to cheat.

    The idea that our ethics are hard-wired is a fallacy, Mayer says. "I think a lot of it comes from this idea that who you are is determined early on -- did you have good parenting, did you have good friends? In reality, that's a piece of the puzzle, for sure, but we de-emphasize our environment and the environment that we create."

    By paying attention to how the environment affects our choices, people can begin to treat their ethics as a skill to develop and continue developing, even as students graduate, enter the workforce, and become executives.