Information misbehavior: How organizations use information to deceive

Abstract

Recent examples of organizational wrongdoing such as those that led to the opioid crisis and the 2008 financial meltdown show that organizations can deliberately use information to deceive others, resulting in serious harm. This brief communication explores the role of information in organizational wrongdoing. We analyze a dataset consisting of 80 cases of high-penalty corporate wrongdoing in the United States in the period 2000–2020. Our analysis of documents filed by the US Department of Justice and federal regulatory agencies in those cases found that organizations use two general information strategies to deceive and mislead. First, organizations can “sow doubt” on statements by others that hurt the organization's interests. Second, organizations can “exploit trust” that others have placed in them to provide truthful information. Our analysis suggests that which strategy is adopted depends on the degree that the organization's external information use environment is “contested” or “controlled.” Across the cases examined, we observe three types of information behaviors that implement the strategy of sowing doubt and exploiting trust: information obfuscation, information concealment, and information falsification.