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Business culture and dishonesty in the banking industry

Overview of attention for article published in Nature, November 2014
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About this Attention Score

  • In the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (99th percentile)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (98th percentile)

Citations

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543 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
987 Mendeley
citeulike
4 CiteULike
Title
Business culture and dishonesty in the banking industry
Published in
Nature, November 2014
DOI 10.1038/nature13977
Pubmed ID
Authors

Alain Cohn, Ernst Fehr, Michel André Maréchal

Abstract

Trust in others' honesty is a key component of the long-term performance of firms, industries, and even whole countries. However, in recent years, numerous scandals involving fraud have undermined confidence in the financial industry. Contemporary commentators have attributed these scandals to the financial sector's business culture, but no scientific evidence supports this claim. Here we show that employees of a large, international bank behave, on average, honestly in a control condition. However, when their professional identity as bank employees is rendered salient, a significant proportion of them become dishonest. This effect is specific to bank employees because control experiments with employees from other industries and with students show that they do not become more dishonest when their professional identity or bank-related items are rendered salient. Our results thus suggest that the prevailing business culture in the banking industry weakens and undermines the honesty norm, implying that measures to re-establish an honest culture are very important.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 597 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 987 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
United Kingdom 10 1%
Switzerland 7 <1%
Germany 7 <1%
United States 6 <1%
France 4 <1%
Japan 3 <1%
Netherlands 2 <1%
Spain 2 <1%
Australia 1 <1%
Other 10 1%
Unknown 935 95%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Ph. D. Student 216 22%
Student > Master 144 15%
Researcher 109 11%
Student > Bachelor 94 10%
Professor > Associate Professor 60 6%
Other 200 20%
Unknown 164 17%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Economics, Econometrics and Finance 187 19%
Business, Management and Accounting 158 16%
Psychology 143 14%
Social Sciences 82 8%
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 50 5%
Other 159 16%
Unknown 208 21%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 1206. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 13 January 2024.
All research outputs
#11,783
of 25,582,611 outputs
Outputs from Nature
#1,188
of 98,302 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#57
of 371,049 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Nature
#13
of 970 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,582,611 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 99th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 98,302 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 102.6. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 98% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 371,049 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 970 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 98% of its contemporaries.