Milgram revisited

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to re‐examine Milgram's obedience experiment and see how it can be used in management teaching and training. Milgram's discussion of authority, obedience and defence mechanisms are familiar to psychologists and sociologists, but less so to managers and people of responsibility in corporations, for whom it can help highlight ethical and psychological issues that undermine a sense of responsibility.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper revisits the experiment which shows how conscience can be manipulated by a fake ideal. The possibility of such external manipulation, it is then hypothesized, is favoured by an insufficiently human personal ideal, and by extension an inadequate corporate vision. The absence of an ideal may generate a whole series of “internal manipulations” which are frequently encountered in business life whenever a genuine sense of an ideal has been neutralized, allowing conformity to external pressures to take the upper hand. Examples are provided of such internal manipulations, taken from the world of business.

Findings

Two conditions are suggested for encouraging responsibility. First, a dynamic link with a meaningful personal and corporate ideal and second, a personal call to unmask various forms of self‐avoidance and confront psychological truth in the face of responsible decision. The paper underlines the inescapably personal and not merely social or contextual origin of deviant behaviour.

Originality/value

The paper offers openings for ethical training in responsibility in terms of inwardness (conscience, self‐questioning, virtues) and not simply in terms of incantations to conform to mission statements or charts.

Citation

Shanks, M. (2012), "Milgram revisited", Journal of Global Responsibility, Vol. 3 No. 1, pp. 66-82. https://doi.org/10.1108/20412561211219292