Companies risk being criticized as hypocritical when their words and deeds don't match - even if those discrepancies are decades apart, Cornell-led research finds.
In a series of studies involving nearly 5,000 participants, real and fictional organizations were deemed hypocritical for inconsistencies separated by more than a half-century - if, for example, they accepted a government bailout in 2008 after having opposed bailouts in the 1960s.
The findings suggest perceptions of organizational hypocrisy may persist long beyond the tenure of any individual leader or leadership team, the researchers said, potentially hurting reputations and stock prices, or prompting protest.
Companies can minimize the harm by showing that their current position is both rooted in moral principles and has incurred real costs, such as lost market share.
"If 60 years have gone by, you might think people would understand that organizations change and adapt over time, or they might attribute hypocrisy to an individual who is no longer there," said Brian Lucas, associate professor of organizational behavior in the ILR School. "But we find that these hypocrisy effects linger and we see inconsistency penalties over these longer periods of time."
Lucas is the first author of "Intergenerational Hypocrisy: When an Organization's Distant Past Limits Its Legitimacy to Practice or Preach in the Present," published Feb. 2 in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Co-authors are Kieran O'Connor, associate professor of management at the Willamette University Atkinson Graduate School of Management; Zachariah Berry, M.S. '20, Ph.D. '24, assistant professor of management and organization at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business; and Daniel Effron, professor of organizational behavior at London Business School.
The new research is the collaborators' latest investigating the conditions that underlie hypocrisy judgments, and the first to examine how such judgments apply to organizations over timespans longer than a few years or weeks. During those shorter periods, a company's failure to practice what it has preached (or vice versa) could more easily be blamed on the leadership then in place.
"In general, it's much easier to identify a person with a name and face compared with something that's a little more amorphous like an organization," said Lucas, a member of the Experimental Psychology and Organizations (ExPO) Lab.
The research team's first of five surveys and three supplemental studies presented a historical case study about German opposition to debt relief for Greece in 2015. Study participants read news articles noting that Germany had accepted debt relief in 1953, or that Poland had in 1991. Those reading the German context perceived its behavior generations later as significantly more hypocritical.
Additional experiments posed fictional scenarios in which positions changed over time on various hot-button issues - in addition to bailouts and debt relief, outsourcing, predatory lending, product safety, pollution, gender bias, sweatshop labor, deforestation and animal testing. Survey participants similarly viewed misalignment with past words or deeds as hypocritical; viewed those companies' actions as less legitimate; and reported a stronger inclination to protest.
This "intergenerational hypocrisy effect" proved surprisingly robust, Lucas said. Even on issues where social norms have changed markedly over time, such as deforestation or animal testing, companies preaching against something they had practiced long ago were called hypocritical, albeit to a lesser extent. They received a pass only if the new moral stance required a meaningful financial sacrifice.
With businesses increasingly asked to take stands on political and social issues, the researchers said, the findings imply that they must consider positions taken long before any existing leadership was in place, and how today's actions might be seen years down the road. Research suggests organizations are sensitive to such concerns: Some opt not to publicize recognition for environmental standards or corporate governance lest a future misstep be branded hypocritical.
"Companies are aware of these issues and consider them when making strategic decisions," Lucas said. "Our research shows that the timeline you should consider spans further back than you might think."
In prior collaborations dating to 2015, the research team has found that people are seen as hypocritical when their values appear to contradict those of the organizations where they work - an environmentalist working for an oil company, say. And that motives matter: You'll be seen as hypocritical if you consistently do something good, but for the wrong reasons. The project has sought to better understand what leads to judgments of hypocrisy, potentially helping organizations avoid contradictions in the eyes of the public, customers or employees.
"Despite some cynicism around organizations' motives," Lucas said, "most people within them want to behave ethically and consistently - and they surely don't want to be labeled as hypocrites."
