The new ethical consumer

Mendini, Monica; Peter, Paula C.; Honea, Heather; Grasso, Martina

doi:10.4324/9781003163732-3

Cited by 1 publication

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“…In addition, we suspect there may be cases where the impact of this link appears stronger or weaker. For instance, we suspect that the influence of perceived unethicality and consumer/employee behavior may be even stronger among members of recent generations, who appear to emphasize activism in response to corporate malfeasance (Francis & Hoefel, 2018; Mendini et al, 2022).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Big Is Bad: Stereotypes About Organizational Size, Profit-Seeking, and Corporate Ethicality

Freund

O’Connor

2023

Pers Soc Psychol Bull

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Individuals tend to hold a dim view of for-profit corporations, believing that profit-seeking comes at the expense of ethicality. In the present research, we show that this belief is not universal; rather, people associate ethicality with an organization’s size. Across nine experiments ( N = 4,796), people stereotyped large companies as less ethical than small companies. This size-ethicality stereotype emerged spontaneously (Study 1), implicitly (Study 2), and across industries (Study 3). Moreover, we find this stereotype can be partly explained by perceptions of profit-seeking behavior (Supplementary Studies A and B), and that people construe profit-seeking and its relationship to ethicality differently when considering large and small companies (Study 4). People attribute greater profit- maximizing motives (relative to profit- satisficing motives) to large companies, and these attributions shape their subsequent judgments of ethicality (Study 5; Supplementary Studies C and D).

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%