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Companies rarely become unethical through one decision. More often, a small exception becomes a routine, the people involved build reasons why it is acceptable, and management systems that reward results while blurring responsibility allow the practice to persist. Organizational scholars treat this as a process that unfolds over time, shaped by routines, culture, incentives, leadership, and individual moral disengagement. The useful question is therefore not only “Who did this?” but “How did the organization come to accept it?”
How the drift works
The most widely cited account of this process comes from Ashforth and Anand (2003), in their review “The Normalization of Corruption in Organizations” in Research in Organizational Behavior. They describe three processes that reinforce one another. Together they explain how a practice can outlast the people who first introduced it.
Institutionalization: the first act becomes a structure
An initial act, such as a shortcut to hit a target or a workaround that avoids a slow approval step, gets embedded in routines, forms, and reporting habits. Once it is built into how work gets done, it no longer requires a fresh decision each time. People simply follow the procedure that now exists.
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Rationalization: explanations make it acceptable
Explanations emerge to justify the practice. Staff may say “everyone does it,” “the customer expects it,” or “the rule was never realistic.” Ashforth and Anand note that rationalizations can go beyond excusing the conduct and begin to valorize it, so that doing it is framed as being competent or loyal.
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Socialization: newcomers learn it as normal
New employees learn the practice from colleagues and supervisors rather than from the written code. Because they never see the original decision, they experience the workaround as “how things are done here.” This is how a practice can survive turnover among the people who started it.
Where management fits in
Entwistle and Doering (2023), in “Amoral Management and the Normalisation of Deviance: The Case of Stafford Hospital” in the Journal of Business Ethics, examine how an ethically silent management approach can be sustained by organizational characteristics. In their case analysis, three features combined to make wrongdoing more likely:
- A strong focus on bottom-line performance, which made results the main measure of success.
- Diffused responsibility, so that no single manager clearly owned the consequences of practices that were failing patients.
- High organizational identification, which made staff reluctant to challenge the institution they felt part of.
The authors argue that scandals of this kind should not be explained solely by exceptional individual misconduct. Dysfunctional systems and culture matter. This is a single case analysis, so it shows how these conditions can operate together; it does not prove that every company follows the same path.
Why individuals go along
Individual psychology explains part of the picture. Moral disengagement describes the mental mechanisms that let a person take part in conduct without confronting its moral meaning or consequences. Moore et al. (2012), in “Why Employees Do Bad Things: Moral Disengagement and Unethical Organizational Behavior” in Personnel Psychology, report that a person’s propensity for moral disengagement predicted several outcomes across laboratory and field studies. These included self-reported unethical behavior, a fraud decision, a self-serving workplace decision, and unethical work behavior reported by supervisors and coworkers.
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These findings concern a measurable tendency. They do not mean that every employee who joins a drifting organization will disengage in the same way, and they do not make individual disengagement the sole cause of misconduct. Treviño, den Nieuwenboer, and Kish-Gephart (2014), in their review “(Un)Ethical Behavior in Organizations” in the Annual Review of Psychology, frame individual factors alongside ethical infrastructure, organizational context, interpersonal influence, and cognitive and affective processes. The strongest reading of the evidence is that individual and organizational explanations work together.
When the written rule and the work diverge
A more recent mechanism concerns the gap between formal rules and daily demands. Catino (2026), in “Inevitable violations? Etiology of deviance in organizations” in Crime, Law and Social Change, argues that rules may not fit the actual demands of work. When the formal means prescribed by policy cannot deliver the ends the job requires, breaking the rule can start to seem operationally necessary.
The article’s scope is specific. It concerns intentional departures from rules that benefit the organization. It excludes events caused solely by human error and planned criminal behavior. Catino argues that reducing this kind of deviance requires aligning formal rules with established practices and building broader agreement around norms.
The article reproduces a sentence attributed to Lawton (1998, p. 91), and it is cited here only as Catino quotes it: “If the rules do not work, within a particular situation, then people will violate in order to do the job.”
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A sequence the literature points to
The studies above do not establish a single causal sequence that applies to every company. The following is a synthesis of how their mechanisms fit together, not a universal case history:
- A target or workaround is introduced. Pressure to meet a result or a formal process that is slow or unworkable creates a reason to shortcut it.
- It succeeds or goes unchallenged. If the shortcut delivers results and nobody with authority objects, it is repeated.
- People develop reasons it is acceptable. Rationalizations and moral disengagement make the conduct easier to carry out and to defend.
- Newcomers learn it as normal. Socialization carries the practice past the people who started it.
- Responsibility becomes harder to locate. Diffused accountability means no one clearly owns the outcome.
- The formal policy stays in place while daily practice diverges. The written rule still exists, so the organization can appear compliant on paper.
Comparing the explanations
These models are complementary lenses rather than competing winners. They differ by level of analysis, mechanism, and time course.
| Lens | Level of analysis | Core mechanism | Main source | Key limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Normalization of corruption | Organizational routines and newcomers | Institutionalization, rationalization, socialization | Ashforth and Anand (2003) | A conceptual review, not a measure of how common the process is |
| Amoral management | Management and organizational culture | Bottom-line focus, diffused responsibility, strong identification | Entwistle and Doering (2023) | A single case analysis |
| Moral disengagement | Individual employee | Mental mechanisms that separate conduct from moral consequences | Moore et al. (2012) | Predicts a propensity; does not explain organizations on its own |
| Rule-to-work gaps | Formal rules and daily work | Rules that cannot deliver the ends the job requires | Catino (2026) | Limited to intentional departures that benefit the organization |
What the evidence suggests for responses
The studies point to several areas where an organization can look for the conditions that enable drift. None of them is established as a guaranteed fix.
- Incentives: Check whether targets reward results in ways that make shortcuts the easiest path to success.
- Accountability: Confirm that a named person owns each outcome, so responsibility is not diffused across a team or committee.
- Leadership signals: Notice what managers praise, tolerate, or ignore, since these signals shape what newcomers learn is normal.
- Rule fit: Test whether policies work under the conditions employees actually face, and revise rules that cannot be followed in practice.
- Norms and voice: Build agreement around norms and create ways for staff to challenge practices that have become routine.
The sources reviewed here do not establish that ethics training alone prevents this process. Training can be one part of a broader approach, but the mechanisms above operate through structures, incentives, and leadership, which a course by itself does not change.
What the evidence does not establish
Several limits should be kept in view. The sources do not provide a verified prevalence rate for drift or misconduct, so no claim is made here about how many companies experience it. Entwistle and Doering’s analysis rests on one case. Moore et al.’s findings concern a propensity measured in studies, not a universal explanation for employee behavior. Catino’s argument is bounded to intentional, benefit-oriented rule violations. Readers should treat these models as ways to ask better questions about their own organizations, not as a checklist that proves or disproves misconduct in any particular firm.
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