The Insightful Leader
Sent to subscribers on November 13, 2024
Sunlight: good for brightening the sky, enabling all life on earth, and triggering our bodies to produce vitamin D.
It’s also, at least metaphorically, a great disinfectant. Indeed, plenty of leaders have come to the conclusion that transparency will curb a multitude of ethical sins. Which is why we have developed “sunshine laws” and whistleblower-protection laws and public-record requests and a number of other transparency-enforcing practices.
But is transparency enough to curb workplace misconduct? That’s this week.
Beyond sunlight
All too often, even the most egregious professional misconduct elicits just a slap on the wrist—particularly in disciplines where self-regulation is common.
“It’s hard for people in the same profession to effectively discipline peer misconduct,” says Hatim Rahman, an associate professor of management and organizations at the Kellogg School. “Professionals often turn a blind eye and look the other way.”
Faced with this problem, many states have responded by implementing various transparency measures. But how effective is transparency, really?
In a new study, Rahman and a colleague, Ece Kaynak, turned to the medical field for answers: Would medical doctors hold their colleagues accountable for overprescribing opioids? The researchers find that even in cases leading to patient deaths, state boards overwhelmingly refrained from enforcing strict disciplinary action. This occurred despite a sunshine law requiring the board to provide its disciplinary proceedings and internal deliberations to the public and a task force installed to scrutinize how opioid-related misconduct cases were being disciplined.
As this study shows, “transparency is not a panacea,” Rahman says. It needs to be coupled with other efforts, from stronger incentives—such as repercussions for decision-makers who let misconduct slide—to the provision of sufficient resources to investigate and enforce accountability.
Otherwise, shared professional norms, bureaucratic inefficiencies, and good, old-fashioned sympathy could stand in the way.
Read more about this research in Kellogg Insight.
“When economic opportunities are less plentiful, I think there’s often, and unfortunately, this desire to pin it on someone.”
— Nancy Qian, on The Indicator from Planet Money, discussing the new research on the Chinese Exclusion Act’s wide-ranging economic impact on white U.S.-born Americans.
Jessica Love, editor in chief
Kellogg Insight