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Since 2014, the automotive company Volkswagen (VW) has been enthralled in a reputation-tarnishing scandal that has drawn much scrutiny toward the automotive industry. Researchers studying the emissions of a VW diesel-burning vehicle identified a large discrepancy between the emissions level produced under laboratory and typical driving conditions (Thompson, Carder, Besch, Thiruvengadam, & Kappanna, 2014). Under laboratory conditions, this vehicle would meet emissions standards set forth by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). However, under typical driving conditions, these vehicles produced between five and thirty-five times the level of toxins deemed acceptable (Thompson et al., 2014). Such a violation has a nontrivial social impact. Estimates suggest that the excess pollution from VW diesel-burning vehicles will cause approximately 59 premature deaths, 31 cases of chronic bronchitis, 34 hospital admissions, 120,000 days of restricted activity—including lost work days—210,000 days with lower-respiratory problems and 33,000 days with increased use of asthma inhalers. Overall, the cost burden placed on society would be approximately $450 million (Barrett et al., 2015).
How did VW cheat the system? Early reports of VW employees suggest that approximately thirty managers were responsible for creating and installing what has become known as a ‘defeat device’ (Hawranek, 2015), which modulated engine performance depending on whether the steering wheel was being used. During laboratory testing, the steering wheel is rarely turned and the defeat device recognized that it was being tested and responded by suppressing the vehicle’s emissions output.
The VW scandal raises a series of questions that should be of interest and importance to both management academics and practitioners: What role might management play in causing employees to collaboratively cheat? The available literature is rife with theory that explains why individuals might breach their own ethics for their organization (e.g., unethical pro-organizational behavior; Umphress, Bingham, & Mitchell, 2010). There is also empirical research suggesting that certain conditions promote collective cheating (e.g., team utilitarianism and psychological safety; Pearsall & Ellis, 2011). However, theoretical work specifying the processes by which individuals collaboratively cheat is needed. Therefore, the goal of our investigation is to study the VW scandal in order to create a theory that describes the social psychology of collaborative cheating. We will then test this theory by examining other cases of cheating in the automotive industry. Indeed, in spite of the $20 billion dollars in fines endured by VW, other automakers appear to be undeterred from cheating the system, and may be using their own defeat devices (Toxic Emissions…, 2017). In February of 2018, we plan on submitting a manuscript containing our findings to the journal Personnel Psychology, which is publishing a special issue on The Study of Behavioral Ethics Within Organizations.
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