Women less willing to sacrifice ethical values for success at work

Kennedy, now an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management, was in the spotlight again recently with more research surrounding the origin of unethical business behavior, why it takes hold and how professionals can achieve their goals while acting ethically.

In an interview with Strategy+Business, Kennedy reflected on some of the practical consequences of her research, including women having greater reservations about sacrificing ethical values than men and how that could be impacting the rates at which men and women ascend to positions of authority over time.

“Are women more likely to lose interest in careers that they would otherwise enjoy if they think that these careers require ethical values to be compromised? And, in fact, I found evidence for that,” Kennedy said in the article. “If you show people job descriptions of prestigious careers—the types of jobs that new MBAs typically pursue—and you compare men’s and women’s interest in the jobs, you don’t see any difference. But if you tell people that the job requires them to compromise ethical values, men’s interest in the position doesn’t change, whereas women’s declines significantly.

Kennedy said this is significant, because even small differences in the degree to which men and women continue in a particular career can lead to big gender differences in authority over time. “Over the years, having a few women select out because of ethical conflicts means there are fewer women at the top to serve as mentors to junior women, which may then result in even fewer women making it into firm leadership roles.”

Anyone in the insurance and financial services industries knows these fields are heavily dominated by men. If women are indeed more likely to “select out” of the industry due to the potential for ethical conflicts, which certainly exist in these markets—it is likely hindering the industry from balancing out its gender inequity issues.