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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

dimensions_citation
453 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
932 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.

Twitter Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 611 tweeters who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 932 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 880 94%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Ph. D. Student 211 23%
Student > Master 144 15%
Researcher 107 11%
Student > Bachelor 91 10%
Professor > Associate Professor 58 6%
Other 184 20%
Unknown 137 15%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Economics, Econometrics and Finance 182 20%
Business, Management and Accounting 153 16%
Psychology 144 15%
Social Sciences 79 8%
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 48 5%
Other 146 16%
Unknown 180 19%

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 1220. 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 22 December 2022.
All research outputs
#9,694
of 23,420,064 outputs
Outputs from Nature
#1,052
of 92,291 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#59
of 366,117 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Nature
#14
of 969 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 23,420,064 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 92,291 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 100.3. 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 366,117 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 969 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.