Examining the role of harm-to-others in lay perceptions of greed

Despite its centrality to public discourse and everyday ethical judgment and behavior, a robust understanding of how individuals form judgments of greed has been lacking from the organizational behavior literature. This paper closely examines the psychological process that turns resource-pursuing business practices into acts of greed in the minds of perceivers. In five studies, we show that perceivers base their judgments of agents’ greed not...