Search results

Forty-five years ago, psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted a series of famous experiments on obedience and authority that tested individuals' willingness to administer electric shocks to a test subject under the direction of an authority figure. This paper discusses how Milgram's work on human psychological tendencies can be used to address subordination of judgment and other ethical issues in financial accounting and reporting, including accounting for income taxes. The teaching approach described relies on readings, videos, and mini-cases to give students an appreciation for the role of organizational influences on ethical decision making in today's accounting world. This teaching approach is innovative in its use of social psychological theories to address accounting ethical dilemmas, and its incorporation of contemporary international financial reporting standards and tax reporting issues into the ethics debate.

The 1990s war in Bosnia and Herzegovina is remembered for the atrocities committed by each of the ethnic groups involved. However, while it was mainly the leaders that were held to blame, the role of followers in these events also needs consideration. One cannot lead without followers. One cannot accomplish genocide without obedient followers. This study will examine the war in terms of three types of followers – participants, bystanders, and upstanders (those who stood up for their beliefs of right and wrong, refusing to obey orders from superiors or give in to the pressures of the situation). Studies in the past, such as the Milgram Experiment and the Stanford Prison Experiment, focused on the negative side of human behavior. We need to also focus research on the positive side of human behavior such as that displayed by the upstanders, so that such positive behavior can be encouraged and further developed in the interests of peace.

Social psychology has focused on two major explanations for political mass killing: obedience-authoritarianism and conformity although competition and in-group-out-group distinctions also have drawn substantial attention. However, the ability of any of the social sciences to account for the phenomena has been limited. Another perspective is developed, which examines (a) support for international law governing restraint in conflict and (b) views of respondents towards attackers and victims in actual historical incidents. A national probability sample of 1,504 Russian adults was interviewed in early 1999 and shortly afterwards a sample of 579 students at the Russian State University for the Humanities (RSUH) in Moscow. Respondents were presented with statements, from international law governing restraints in armed conflict. In addition, a short description of a historical incident was presented. Each respondent was asked to (a) assign a penalty if any to each of three organizational levels of the attackers and (b) evaluate the attributes and motives of the attackers and the victims. The international law section indicated weak to moderate support for many of the principles. Results for the historical events included (1) relatively high penalties for at least one level of the attacking hierarchy, (2) lower penalties for attackers in which the home country was the initiator, (3) higher penalties for the commanders than for lower levels, and (4) a similar factor structure in each sample for the victim–attacker assessments and high predictability from victim–attacker evaluations to assigned penalty. This chapter focuses on the psychological dimensions for evaluating political mass killing.

The aim of this chapter is to argue that charisma is a collective representation, and that charismatic authority is a social status that derives more from the “recognition” of the followers than from the “magnetism” of the leaders. I contend further that a close reading of Max Weber shows that he, too, saw charisma in this light.

I develop my argument by a close reading of many of the most relevant texts on the subject. This includes not only the renowned texts on this subject by Max Weber, but also many books and articles that interpret or criticize Weber’s views.

I pay exceptionally close attention to key arguments and texts, several of which have been overlooked in the past.

Writers for whom charisma is personal magnetism tend to assume that charismatic rule is natural and that the full realization of democratic norms is unlikely. Authority, in this view, emanates from rulers unbound by popular constraint. I argue that, in fact, authority draws both its mandate and its energy from the public, and that rulers depend on the loyalty of their subjects, which is never assured. So charismatic claimants are dependent on popular choice, not vice versa.

I advocate a “culturalist” interpretation of Weber, which runs counter to the dominant “personalist” account. Conventional interpreters, under the sway of theology or mass psychology, misread Weber as a romantic, for whom charisma is primal and undemocratic rule is destiny. This essay offers a counter-reading.

Machiavelli's dictums in The Prince (1977) instigated the modern discourse on power. Arguing that “there's such a difference between the way we really live and the way we ought to live that the man who neglects the real to study the ideal will learn to accomplish his ruin, not his salvation” (Machiavelli, 1977, p. 44), his approach is a realist one. In this text, Machiavelli (1977, p. 3) endeavors to “discuss the rule of princes” and to “lay down principles for them.” Taking his lead, Foucault (1978, p. 97) argued that “if it is true that Machiavelli was among the few…who conceived the power of the Prince in terms of force relationships, perhaps we need to go one step further, do without the persona of the Prince, and decipher mechanisms on the basis of a strategy that is immanent in force relationships.” He believed that we should “investigate…how mechanisms of power have been able to function…how these mechanisms…have begun to become economically advantageous and politically useful…in a given context for specific reasons,” and, therefore, “we should…base our analysis of power on the study of the techniques and tactics of domination” (Foucault, 1980, pp. 100–102). Conceptualizing such techniques and tactics as the “art of governance”, Foucault (1991), examined power as strategies geared toward managing civic populations through shaping people's dispositions and behaviors.

From Egypt to South Korea, traditional institutions and sources of authority are being challenged as never before. To survive and prosper, organizations and institutions adapt to the changing values and needs of people in a modern, globalizing world. This essay discusses how some organizations adapt traditional, hierarchical authority to the challenges of a dynamic, diversifying society. It presents three claims. First, modernizing, liberalizing societies generate a tendency to separation and indifference. Second, “authoritative” organizations that stress obedience to a set of beliefs and practices partly counter these atomizing tendencies and attract many, diverse persons. Third, the formation of diverse, authoritative communities is more likely among newcomers or outsiders less attached to historic, societal divides. I illustrate this with some preliminary findings and observations, mostly in USA but also in South Korea. ¹

Friendships, an important form of people’s everyday relationships with others, have been studied by many scholars from different disciplines. However, there is limited research on friendship in the context of childhood, particularly that of Chinese rural children. This chapter presents findings from an in-depth study on Chinese children’s understandings and experiences of friendships with peers in the context of a rural primary boarding school. Data for this research were collected through an intensive five-month study, using an ethnographic approach, in a rural primary boarding school (given the pseudonym ‘Central Primary School’) in the western area of China in 2016. This chapter discusses parents’ influences on children’s selection of friends, particularly their ‘good’ friends, and their understandings of the functions of making friends in the context of rural China. It unpacks parents’ interventions on children’s friendships by discussing the moralised hierarchical relationship between children and their parents – children are expected to show obedience to parents. Then, it argues that the Confucian-collectivist values construct a relationship between a child’s individual achievement and their family’s collective good, which makes friendship not only an individual issue but also a collective one too.