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Organizational Behavior

The attribution theory is a process by which individuals attempt to explain the why of behavior as based on people's attributions of causes to events that happen to them. Attribution theory views the process by which individuals interpret events around them being caused by (attributed to) a relatively stable portion of their environment.
In relation to the corporate scandals of several CEO' s illegal behavior the majority of the population will associate their behavior as being the norm in their business. According to the attribution process there must be an initial event that ignites the future perception of behavior. In respect to the corporate scandals the initial event would be the scandal itself followed by an analysis of why the event happened, in this case it would be greed of the CEO's and other high-ranking officials within a company. Next the process calls for reinforcement of that analysis, in this case it could be seen as more than one CEO from several companies all followed their greed, which lead to their scandals to be made public. Because of the initial scandal coupled with the fact it was not an isolated case would lead to the perception that this practice is widespread between CEO's of major companies, which completes the attribution process of perception.
The attribution process can be important in understanding the behavior of others. The behavior of others can be examined on the basis of its distinctiveness, consistency, and consensus. The question can be posed to these CEO's if their moral center is so far off that they behave this way outside of work and other situations, this speaks to the distinctiveness of their behavior. If they are consistent with their behavior they will act accordingly at different times, meaning if they are stealing from their clients and lying about the financial success at work they might also be lying or cheating on their taxes while at home. In terms of outside opinion of CEO's the consensus built around of...