The Dark Side of Creativity: Original Thinkers Can Be More Dishonest - Dan Ariely and Francisco Gino

Creativity is a common aspiration for individuals, organizations, and societies. Here, however, we test
whether creativity increases dishonesty. We propose that a creative personality and a creative mindset promote individuals’ ability to justify their behavior, which, in turn, leads to unethical behavior. In 5 studies, we show that participants with creative personalities tended to cheat more than less creative individuals and that dispositional creativity is a better predictor of unethical behavior than intelligence (Experiment 1). In addition, we find that participants who were primed to think creatively were more likely to behave dishonestly than those in a control condition (Experiment 2) and that greater ability to justify their dishonest behavior explained the link between creativity and increased dishonesty (Experiments 3 and 4). Finally, we demonstrate that dispositional creativity moderates the influence of temporarily priming creativity on dishonest behavior (Experiment 5). The results provide evidence for an association between creativity and dishonesty, thus highlighting a dark side of creativity.

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The Darker Side of Creativity - Original Thinkers Can Be More Dishonest - Harvard Business Review

Professors Francesca Gino and Dan Ariely offer this controversial view of creative beahviour and thinking.

Creativity is a common aspiration for individuals, organizations, and societies. Here, however,
we test whether creativity increases dishonesty. We propose that a creative personality and
creativity primes promote individuals’ motivation to think outside the box and that this increased
motivation leads to unethical behavior.

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Boards of Prevention - Why Leaders on Boards Should Be More Active in Overseeing Risk - Michael Schrage

Corporate directors can – and should – play a much more active role in overseeing risk and avoiding major crises. In July 2007, as once-giddy financial markets began sensing that something might be horribly wrong, the top executive of the then-largest financial-services firm in the United States justified his bank’s “party hearty” attitude toward risk. “When the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be complicated,” Citigroup’s Chairman and CEO Charles Prince told the Financial Times. “But as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance. We’re still dancing.”

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Social Media and Its Dishonesty - Michael Schrage - Harvard Business Review

Would I lie to you? Read on.... Probably not, but forgive me for preserving the option. Would you conceal a damaging truth from your boss? I wouldn't presume to guess. But one person's "discretion" is another person's "dishonest." It's getting harder to determine where one ends and the other begins. That's why the virtues of transparency have been wildly oversold by digital utopians. The (social) networks to organizational hell are wired with good intentions. The let's-hold-hands-and-sing-Kumbaya arguments that "the more information we share the better off we are" are demonstrably rubbish. All too often, far greater transparency guarantees far greater conflicts. In fact, legitimate tensions between professional privacy and personal visibility are unavoidable. Confusing transparency with integrity and honesty is a recipe for disaster.

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The Inauthentic Community of the Modern Executive - Roger Martin, Harvard Business Review

Marshall McLuhan famously said: "We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us." The same, I believe, holds for community. We shape our community by choosing which actors comprise it and what roles they play. And we want to be a valued member of that community, so we adhere to its norms and conventions — our happiness depends on it. For this reason, the community we choose is critically important. If it is a productive community, it will help make us better. If it is unproductive, it will quietly but surely make us worse. So it behooves us to explore the quality of the community of the modern business executive. As mentioned in my last post, customers, employees, home city and long-term shareholders loomed large in the typical community of the 1950s and 1960s. The intimacy of these communities was aided by the more manageable scale of the enterprises of the day. GM, the behemoth of 1960, pulled in revenues that would in today's dollars ($66 billion) put it behind Archer Daniels Midland, 2009's 27th placed company, way below number one Exxon Mobil with $442 billion. In fact, only ten companies in 1960 were bigger than regional power utility Pacific Gas and Electric (#176) in 2009.

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