The document discusses "bad apples" in organizations and how to manage them. It defines bad apples as discontented, troublemaking, or dishonest employees who can negatively influence others. It examines how bad apples are formed, noting factors like environment, peer pressure, and defensive behaviors. It identifies traits of bad apples, such as an external locus of control, hostile attribution styles, aggression, absenteeism, and bullying. Finally, it stresses the importance of managers addressing bad apples directly to prevent them from damaging morale and productivity.

1. Submitted By:-
Arshi Aadil (1307)
&
Avishek Roy (1352)
(Students, Post Graduate Diploma in Forest Management)
(Indian Institute of Forest Management, Nehru Nagar, Bhopal-462003)

2. ‘Bad Apples’: A Threat to Ethical Behaviour at Work 2
‘Bad Apples’: A Threat to Ethical
Behaviour at Work
Abstract:
The article talks about multiple facets related to Bad Apples in an organisation-their behaviour,
characteristics, etc. The article revolves around the identification and management of Bad apples,
it emphasises on the role of the management to work efficiently considering the negative forces
brought to the working space by bad apples.
Introduction
Now a day’s it is become almost impossible to look through a newspaper or turn on a television
channel or radio without being exposed to a report of unethical behavior of one type or another
in different places and scenarios. Be it the corporate giants or the cabinet of a country or could be
in a sports events, the evil grasp of unethical behaviour has spread everywhere. Unethical
behaviour reported in different forms like insider trading, cheating on taxes, insurance fraud, chit
funds, employee theft, illegal siphoning of black money, academic dishonesty, athletes’ use of
illegal drugs, digital piracy, illegal downloading of software and digital content, you name it and
you have it. Corporate names such as Enron, Tyco, Arthur Andersen, Satyam Computers etc.
provide extreme examples. (Gino, Ayal, & Ariely, 2009)
The first question that comes to mind is what is the effect of all these unethical behavior to an
ethical mind? Can an honest person turn to dishonest in peer pressure? To what extent an ethical
person tend to start engaging in unethical behavior in difficult workplace situation? In this
context the figure of speech ‘Bad Apples’ in an organization comes into play.
‘Bad Apple’ is a figure of speech based on a proverb borrowed from a truism - the full context
of the proverb is "One Bad Apple Spoils the Barrel."
As they ripen, some fruits, like apples and pears, produce a gaseous hormone called ethylene,
which act as a ripening agent. When fruits are stored together, the ethylene each piece emits
induces the others around it to ripen further. The riper a fruit is, the more ethylene it produces,

3. ‘Bad Apples’: A Threat to Ethical Behaviour at Work 3
and overripe fruit gives off even more ethylene, eventually leading to a concentration of the gas
that’s enough to overripe all the fruit in the surroundings. So in that context it means that a bad
person can ruin everyone around him. (Soniac, 2014)
Benjamin Franklin had used the idiom as "…the rotten apple spoils his companion…," in one of
his writings.
A Bad Apple in an organization can be defined as a discontented, troublemaking or dishonest
person, whose behavior is likely to have a detrimental influence on the other members of
the group.
Following and Not Leading Behaviour in Ethical Issues
The fear of getting caught or being responsible for an unethical behavior mostly persuade
individual’s/employee’s decision making process towards blindly following an order of the boss
or senior bypassing his/her own judgmental and leadership approach towards the issue.
"I was just doing what I was told." It's a common explanation used by everyone from Nazi
soldiers when they were asked about those mass murders of Jews to the participants in Stanley
Milligram’s infamous electric shock study that attempts to shift responsibility to authority figures
when it came down to an ethical issues. (Dukerich, 2011)
Also there is always a higher chance of unethical behavior happening in collective because no
individual will be feeling solely accountable for that. “Bystander apathy” comes into play when
the practitioners can see a division of responsibilities as stated by Dukerich.
Formation of Bad Apples
When we talk about Bad apples in an organization, one question that is left unanswered is
regarding the creation of Bad Apples? What creates these Bad apples? How are Bad apples
formed? Is it Nature or Nurture which leads to the existence of Bad Apples in an organization?
Though there is some evidence that the environment can heighten or dampen the tendency to act
on bad impulses, the neurobiological evidence suggest that there is a basic distribution of
habitual amoral actors in any large group. The Managers should be aware of the existence of Bad
apples at any level in an organization.

4. ‘Bad Apples’: A Threat to Ethical Behaviour at Work 4
Most people are the product of the environment they are in; they tend to do what others do in an
organization. If they perceive that the environment gives them space to act as per their will
without any enforcement of ethics, they tend to seek maximum advantage of the environment
and act in order to serve their individual interests.
Another factor pertaining to the creation of Bad apples in an organization is ‘Peer Pressure’ or
the ‘Pressure of Authority’. Stanley Milligram’s obedience to authority experiments, support the
notion that people obey authority figures even if it means harming other individuals. The
question is that can we call the people obeying authority as ‘Bad Apples’? Many of them were
reluctant but obeyed the authority figure and did what they were told to do. If a junior member of
any financial firm is asked to manipulate the figures by his senior manager, would he simply say
no or comply to his senior’s advances in order to save his job? The unethical conduct in similar
situations is easy to carry out and more likely to occur. The premise is that some people are
morally wrong, they would always find ways to bring negative results which are harmful for
others, such people are can be said to be wrong at individual level while many others do wrong
because that is what their organization asks them to do. Such people are the product of their
organizational system.
The last category of Bad Apples is of the people who mould themselves according to the context
they find themselves in. According to Janis and Mann’s (1977) model of decision-making,
members of groups become defensive when all decision alternatives have low probabilities for
success. In the case of the bad apple, frustration is caused by an individual who behaves in
dysfunctional ways, has a negative impact on personal well-being, impedes performance – and
yet, due to organizational constraints on acceptable social action – cannot How, When, and Why
Bad Apples Spoil the Barrel 187 be easily reformed or rejected. When there’s no viable way to
deal with a harmful person, but members are still strongly influenced by them, the only recourse
is defensive self protection. (Will, Terence, & Eliza, 2006)
Attributional Styles of Bad Apples
Most of the Bad apples in an organization tend to have certain characteristics; an attempt to
identify many of those has been done below:

5. ‘Bad Apples’: A Threat to Ethical Behaviour at Work 5
1. Locus of Control
People who are fatalistic, believing their life is more likely governed by chance are more prone
to be Bad Apples. (Adrian & Taylor, 2011). Clearly they possess an External locus of control.
2. Behaviours and Style
Those with hostile and pessimistic attribution styles or the ones who attribute their personal
failure either to external, stable and intentional causes are more prone to become
counterproductive in an organizational setting. (Mackey & Martinko, 2012)
3. Self Evaluations
These are beliefs about self similar to self esteem, the people who are more likely to carry “I can
do anything” attitude are the ones who are most counterproductive and turn out to be the bad
apples in an organization.
4. Aggression, hostility and Violence
One of the attributes of Bad apple is that they are highly aggressive and short tempered and have
this propensity to get indulge in criticisms and blame game.
5. Absenteeism, withdrawal and social loafing
Total absenteeism, arriving late, early and sudden departures can all have great implications on
financial consequences which is a characteristic of Bad apples. They never put effort in any of
the tasks and try to shirk most of the given responsibilities.
6. Workplace Bullying
This behavior deliberately targets an individual and aim to threaten, humiliate, undermine or
victimize them. Typical acts would include physical and verbal abuse, assigning very stressful or
impossible tasks to the subordinates.
7. Insults and Rudeness
Bad apples never miss a chance to hurl insults on the subordinates and coworkers, they tend to
behave very rude and basically misuse or abuse the power to defame another person.

6. ‘Bad Apples’: A Threat to Ethical Behaviour at Work 6
8. Political Behaviours at work
It refers to exploitative, negative and manipulative behavior which is self serving and
opportunistic. These traits could be found extensively in bad apples in an organization.
Managing Bad Apples
Every organization has at least one or more than one employee who for some or the other reason
keeps complaining, arguing with subordinates and peers, and tends to drag down the morale of
coworkers with their horrific attitude which can lead to the breakdown of the entire team. It is a
very tough task to deal with these Bad apples but managers should make it a top priority. If
Managers don’t find ways to deal with them in time, they will create situations which will be
very difficult to deal with.
There should indeed be a culture which doesn’t allow people to pawn problems off on others.
Many a times, it has been observed that the managers want the team members to deal with Bad
Apples, but team members push it back on the management as they don’t want to get into issues.
This problem can be tackled by giving enough power to the team members and instilling in them
a sense of ownership and belongingness to the company.
It becomes very tough task for the organization to get rid of a Bad Apple or to manage him or her
in case he is a star performer in the organization or possess some very hard to find skills or
competence. Such Bad apples must be made to realize that their annoying behavior might
dampen their chances of progress and promotions in the organization as they will find no support
from others.
Reward should be given to employees who go out of their way to help their teammates on
projects. There should be a peer review system and the managers should be open and responsive
to employee feedback.
Bad apples destructive tendencies could be modified by creating employees who value team
work and understand how their behavior affects their coworkers.
Firing bad apple if they refuse to change their behaviors is not at all easy, it is in fact one of the
most unpleasant task for many individuals to do. There should be an exit meeting and the bad

7. ‘Bad Apples’: A Threat to Ethical Behaviour at Work 7
apples should be reminded of the warnings that were previously given to them relating to their
past actions which have led the organization to take such a step.
Bad Apples or Bad Barrels
Philip Zimbardo, the famous Stanford professor who conducted the famous Stanford Prison
Experiment (also known as Zimbardo Prison Experiment) in 1971 has raised the question in his
book ‘The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil’ written in context of the
experiment that, are evil acts the sole result of “bad apples” – individuals who are simply, by
nature, evil – or are there also situational and systemic factors – “bad barrels” – that can cause
even good, decent people to carry out, support or tolerate evil acts? (Zimbardo, 2007)
In this experiment, the group of college boys, he selected with no sign of mental illness,
sociopathy or sadism for the role playing as guards, started submitting the prisoners to sadistic
abuse far beyond the needs of role playing after a few days. The same type of boys selected as
prisoners started descending into very real depression and apathy left with Dr. Zimbardo the
conclusion that there are certain powerful situational and systemic factors which can change
people’s moral and behavior drastically.
So it can be conclude that not always a person in an organization is necessarily evil but the
situation and workplace around him can drag him into showing some unethical behavior in the
workplace.
Conclusion
The greatest danger for an organization from the small percentage of ‘Bad Apples’ lies in their
ability to influence the major percentage of good employee inside the same organization.
Managing the two segments and the interaction between is a toiling task for the leaders. There
are numerous occasions in the last century itself where leaders emerged in confusing and
unsettling times have failed to lead people towards the right path. Knowing that values can
influence human behaviour for doing the right things in situation what one need is an able,
charismatic and moral leader who could bring back an organization on the right track. There
should be a proper mechanism to identify bad apples and their attributes so that the rest
employees can be saved from their negative influences. Stress should be laid upon morality and

8. ‘Bad Apples’: A Threat to Ethical Behaviour at Work 8
values, thereby making an organization learn modest ways to deal with all problems emanating
from Bad Apples.
Bibliography
Adrian, F., & Taylor, J. (2011). In Bad Apples: Identify, prevent and manage negative behavior.
Palgrave Macmillan.
Dukerich, J. (2011). Knowledge To Go. Retrieved from http://www.today.mccombs.utexas.edu/:
http://www.today.mccombs.utexas.edu/2011/10/corrupt-companies-bad-apples-or-bad-
barrels
Gino, F., Ayal, S., & Ariely, D. (2009). Contagion and differentiation in unethical behavior the
effect of one bad apple on the barrel. Psychological Science, 20(3), 393-398.
Mackey, J., & Martinko, M. J. (2012). 3. The role of gender and attributional style in
counterproductive aggressive work behaviors. In S. Fox, & T. R. Lituchy (Eds.), Gender
and the Dysfunctional Workplace (p. 43). Edward Elgar Publishing.
Soniac, M. (2014). Does One Bad Apple Really Spoil the Whole Bunch?/ Mental Floss.
Retrieved from www.mentalfloss.com: http://mentalfloss.com/article/31666/does-one-
bad-apple-really-spoil-whole-bunch
Will, F., Terence, M., & Eliza, B. (2006). How, when, and why bad apples spoil the barrel:
Negative group members and dysfunctional groups. Research in organisation Behavior,
27, 175-222.
Zimbardo, P. (2007). The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. Random
House LLC.

9. ‘Bad Apples’: A Threat to Ethical Behaviour at Work 9