Lamar is interested in the tension between employee performance and potential misconduct.  What is that tension?   What makes it so pervasive?

Lamar explained that high-powered incentives, such as those that salespeople get to sell more stuff, may actually generate problems.  It’s easy to sell more stuff by lowering prices too much, for example    There are a class of policies that managers face that fall into this category.  In general, managers are playing whack-a-mole, and it’s hard for them to think through all the unintended consequences that may arise from the incentives they put in place.

The flipside of the coin:  Companies take a policy like retail stealing of snickers bars and seek to route it out.  That’s not really worthwhile, of course.   Some petty actions really don’t matter.   What matters are things like preventing discrimination and assault, etc.   We need to focus on the important issues.

You’ve examined misconduct in a very wide range of settings, including used-car sales, the military, and healthcare.   How do you mitigate this as a manager?

What constitutes misconduct is truly an ethical issue.   What Lamar is focused on in his work is addressing the motivations that people have in particular situations, and how managers can understand how those play out in practice most fully.

What are the important mitigation efforts for managers?   Hire the right people.  Give them purpose.  And make sure that they have the autonomy to get important things done.  It all takes a ton of time.  And yet managers have to know when to step back.  They often tend to over-control.   The challenge is in setting up structures that work and then getting out of the way.

Anita asked Lamar about how we know misconduct isn’t ineptitude, inattention, bungling, and/or lack of commitment.   Lamar sees himself as working on the extreme issues, i.e., the issues for which there isn’t much ambiguity:   theft, lying, overprescribing opioids, sabotage.   Finding the ethical boundary requires the insights of ethicists, which Lamar sees as above his pay grade.  He did recommend a great case study, though, by Ian Larkin on Arc Systems.  This case illustrates the challenge of figuring out what needs to be stamped out before it escalates.  But for sure, the ways that people define misconduct varies.  What’s misconduct and what’s good governance?  It’s often a matter of judgement.

Anita asked Lamar what he wants us to know about how he is managing Organization Science.

Lamar has learned that people respond to non-financial incentives, and are often amazing in their capacities to contribute.  This is what makes him optimistic.   The team with which he works has made his job far easier and more meaningful.

Org Science has an important past, but at this point, Org Science is not the same as it was 20-30 years ago.   The same high-level values are there, but the types of research aren’t the same.  The journal is now much broader.   It advances new theories, methods ,and ideas.   It engages new ways of thinking about organizations.   That’s what’s moving us forward.