by Society

About the author: Society is a bimonthly periodical that focuses on issues concerning social science.

Nearly half, 48 percent, of U.S. workers admit to unethical or illegal acts during 1996. Those include one or more from a list of 25 actions, including cheating on an expense account, discriminating against coworkers, paying or accepting kickbacks, secretly forging signatures, trading sex for sales and looking the other way when environmental laws are violated.

The survey of 1,324 randomly selected workers, managers, and executives in multiple industries was sponsored by the Ethics Officer Association and the American Society of Chartered Life Underwriters & Chartered Financial Consultants. The 236-page report is especially sobering because workers were asked only to list violations that they attributed to “pressure” due to such things as long hours, sales quotas, job insecurity, balancing work and family...