As Donald Trump returns to power, what happens when employees no longer respond to traditional ethics messaging? Social scientist Caterina Bulgarella analyzes three post-election behavior patterns that signal mounting challenges for corporate integrity programs.
After months of campaigning and opposing rallying cries, American voters selected the presidential candidate who consistently engaged in norm- and values-breaking behavior. Not even a track record of unethical performance or frequent threats to undo parts of America’s great democratic experiment were disqualifying.
A majority of voters still preferred Donald Trump, the anti-system alternative.
It is possible that most felt confident in democracy’s resilience. Still, many weighed character and ethics as less important than other factors.
Setting aside the political implications of this most recent shift in voting behavior, the last election cycle underscores three patterns that may reshape organizations’ very ability to build an ethical culture: the diminishing impact of values-based appeals, the added complexity of making ethical decisions in a climate of ethical chaos and the hidden comfort norm-breaking behavior may provide at a time of change and uncertainty.
The dwindling impact of values-driven appeals
Whether explicit or subtle, calls to action based on values like integrity, respect, freedom, equality, fairness and the like were a cornerstone of the 2024 presidential election. Akin to the culture-building campaigns organizations use to actualize their ethical blueprint, these values-based communications underscored the costs of an unethical culture while also emphasizing the best and highest qualities of democracy’s social fabric. For example, voters would hear that lying, mistreating others and abusing power is not “who we are.” But they would also be reminded that “what we have in common is much more than what separates us.”
To understand why this multi-pronged messaging failed to nudge voters toward prioritizing ethical considerations, we must look not at people’s ethics — doing the right thing matters to most — but the effect of ethical fading on decision-making.
Accordingly, it’s not that character or values are not important but ethical issues may be dwarfed by other factors, such as the heightened pocketbook, security and identity concerns that were at the forefront during this election.
Notably, voters did not have to contend just with the cost of milk and eggs but continuous conflicting signals about the importance of shared values. Take, for example, the fact that competing leadership models with profoundly different ethical orientations were treated as equivalent. Or the growing emphasis placed on local values. Or the widespread individualism permeating the current culture. Or the choice to frame the election process as a horse race and voters’ exercise in personal agency as a self-interested bid based on what’s in it for them.
Far from being a set of unique political conditions, these tendencies reveal a de-facto fragmentation in values much more impactful than any messaging about common principles.
Thus, in the current environment, activating a shared ethical blueprint may require creating one. Without addressing needs, reframing responsibility and restoring a sense of shared identity, leaders should expect that their values-based appeals will have a dwindling effect — both as a goalpost and as a nudge for ethical decision-making.
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Read moreDetailsThe challenge of making ethical decisions in a state of ethical chaos
As Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris zig-zagged swing states, various gauges of voter enthusiasm painted an increasingly divergent picture. Harris’ rallies continued to grow in size and energy, while Trump’s tended to shrink, even losing attendees in real time. Simultaneously, enthusiasm metrics gave Democrats the edge.
Still, at the polls, more voters supported Trump than supported Harris.
If ineffective at predicting voter behavior, enthusiasm indicators may have correctly captured quantitative and qualitative differences in voter engagement. For example, voters kept scrutinizing Harris, but they were far less interested in gathering new information about Trump. Thus, when Trump refused to debate Harris for a second time or avoided the scrutiny of traditional media like “60 Minutes,” voters did not penalize him for it. On the contrary, they were more likely to vote early, effectively preventing new input from interfering with their decision.
At a time when people may have disengaged to avoid any dissonance between their personal standards and the conduct of their candidate of choice, the increasing cropping up of ethical concerns likely accelerated this process.
Indeed, voters’ decision to stop exercising close scrutiny unfolded in the context of a political campaign that, in many respects, executed the moral disengagement playbook to a T. From dehumanizing immigrants as pet-eaters, to blaming the other party for any and all post-pandemic challenges, to framing rioting as love for country, to explaining negative judicial outcomes as politically motivated miscarriages of justice, to claiming primacy over traditional values, to faulting the system as irreparably broken, the Trump campaign kept spinning the ethical compass in all directions.
Caught in an ethical storm, people simplified their task. On the one hand, they deprioritized normative ethical concerns. On the other, they weighed immediate and personal economic issues more heavily (e.g., “I just want my family and business to do better”).
While unsurprising, in a climate of continued ethical chaos, the prioritization of personal economic interest over shared ethical interest could mean that self-interested behavior becomes the norm far beyond the political realm, a pattern that would accelerate conduct risk for organizations. For companies, this risk is ever-present but even more perilous at a time when people’ sense of right and wrong is constantly reshaped by strong external role models.
The normalization of norm-breaking behavior
It could be said that Trump was elected despite his norm-breaking behavior. But at a time when people looked for an anti-system alternative, Trump’s rule-breaking conduct may have credentialed his status as the change candidate.
In this climate, Harris paid a dual price. On the one hand, she was the status-quo choice — separate yet too close to Joe Biden. On the other, she was the institutional alternative.
Some voters overtly indicated that they couldn’t see a woman as president of the United States, while others noted that they couldn’t see this woman in that role. What voters may have not fully verbalized was that Harris, a successful career prosecutor who had elevated herself to the US Senate and vice presidency of the United States, was inherently well-equipped to defend the fabric of institutions, shared norms and rules of law that shape the status quo.
For her part, not only did Harris offer the public a narrative of prosecutorial effectiveness, but she repeatedly gave proof of her ability to play prosecutor-in-chief. Thus, on the debate stage, she took Trump to task. And when it came to facing enemy fire, such as the scrutiny of hostile media, she was unafraid — like the time, early on in her career, when she fought the cartels and the lobbies and won.
Unwittingly, in sharing stories about her allegiance to the rule of law, her pride in hard work (i.e., “hard work is joyful work“), and her respect for institutions, Harris projected forward an image of law- and norm-abiding hyper-competence that may have threatened the anti-system vote.
While it’s still too early to fully understand what that anti-system energy entailed (reforming institutions, transitioning to a more autocratic form of government, etc.), it certainly underscores the desire to empower a social structure in which, from time to time, it’s acceptable to take shortcuts and bend the rules.
In a reality where inequalities keep piling up and the American Dream is increasingly defined by a set of unattainable requirements, playing fair may not always pay off. Yet, if voters gave Trump a break because they, too, wanted one, they also started normalizing norm-breaking behavior.
Caterina Bulgarella is co-founder and managing director of Be Thread, a platform of advisory services and apps to enable the future of ethical work. She’s helped businesses address some of today’s most fundamental challenges: engaging employees, building work processes on the foundations of trust and purpose; developing a strong ethical culture; creating leadership capacities for an era of fast change and deep complexity; and nurturing inclusive belonging. A social scientist with deep expertise in culture measurement and the design of data-driven organizational practices, Bulgarella has contributed to organizations’ understanding of conduct risk through theoretical and applied research interventions. She holds a Ph.D. in organizational psychology from New York University (NYU). She is a leadership strategy fellow at the American College’s Maguire Center for Ethics. She also teaches leadership strategy in the I/O psychology master program at NYU. 
