The idealisation of charitable organisations can make it easier for staff and volunteers to ignore or downplay unethical behaviour, academics have concluded.
Research led by Isabel de Bruin from the Rotterdam School of Management at Erasmus University says self-glorification within charities can lead to unethical behaviour, termed as the “NGO halo effect”.
A survey conducted last year with 256 employees of charities across the globe showed that respondents felt deeply connected to their cause, believing it to be “sacred” and “extraordinarily important”.
The researchers also carried out 34 interviews with staff working for charitable organisations across the world, where respondents referred to their mission as “hope with a capital H” and “part of their DNA”.
The research suggests that this “shows that working or volunteering in an NGO is not considered as merely a job, but that the mission is intertwined with respondents’ identity and ethos”. It describes this as “moral justification” and a mechanism of the NGO halo effect.
Responses also suggested that employees often believed their organisation was better placed than others to carry out their mission, with one respondent saying: “We understand the science of this better than a lot of others… there’s a gap between what we do and what they do.”
The research describes this as a second mechanism of the NGO halo effect, termed “moral superiority”.
The research also argues that some employees were likely to believe that they and their colleagues “inherently know what is right and moral, and that, therefore, ethics management is not necessary”.
One respondent said: “You shouldn’t have to have [a code of conduct] really, should you? You shouldn’t have to have it written down, that’s bonkers.”
Across 85 per cent of the interviews conducted, evidence was found of a tendency to view staff and other internal stakeholders as inherently trustworthy. The research says this is the third mechanism of the NGO halo effect, termed “moral naïvety”.
The researchers then analysed 151 forms of unethical behaviour in NGOs to investigate whether they could be explained by these mechanisms of the NGO halo effect.
The behaviours included discrimination, abuse and exploitation; financial mismanagement, corruption and conflicts of interest; grant mismanagement and programme reporting; human resource mismanagement; not preventing or reporting unethical behaviour; and going against established norms or laws.
The research finds that 92 per cent of these cases can be explained by at least one of the NGO halo effect mechanisms, with 45 per cent being explained by two of them in combination.
The research says: “We find that moral justification explains the occurrence and continuation of certain types of unethical behaviours in and by NGOs, namely falsifying, exaggerating or misrepresenting program data and cover up/poor follow up of unethical behaviour in the name of prioritising the mission.”
It adds that moral superiority can be used to explain moral behaviour in the name of knowing what is right and moral, saying: “We find that moral superiority explains why NGOs feel motivated to break the law or fight against value-based systems they believe to be wrong and immoral.”
Moral naïvety was the most frequently identified mechanism explaining unethical behaviour, applying to 45 per cent of cases examined. The research says: “Moral naïvety explains when respondents did not see the need for internal ethics programs or the management of ethics… due to respondents’ belief in staff and volunteers being inherently good.”
De Bruin said: “Professionals and volunteers carefully select which organisation they join because their personal beliefs and values are aligned with those of the charity. But there are potential pitfalls to a strong sense of identification.
“You then expect people in the organisation to behave according to your expectations, and when they don’t, it can lead to cognitive dissonance. It can be psychologically easier to downplay or ignore unethical behaviour as it means asking fewer, harder questions about yourself and your own perceived identity as ‘good’.”
The research pushes for a “more bespoke approach to ethics management for NGOs”, saying: “NGO leadership must not only be reactive but foresee potential ethical issues by actively seeking out areas of moral glorification or exaggeration within their organisations.”
It adds that its findings emphasise the “crucial need for continuous organisational self-reflection and leadership introspection within NGOs”.