Two researchers, Margaret Ormiston and Elaine Wong, recently followed up on this idea to find out whether Fortune 500 firms rely on moral credentialing. Indeed, they found that companies that touted “corporate social responsibility” in a specific arena—for example, by improving their safety records—were significantly more likely to behave irresponsibly down the road, maybe by ignoring important safety warnings. It was as though responsible behavior handed them a license to behave recklessly.
