Analysis of Unethical Behaviors in Social Networks: An Application in the Medical Sector

The analysis of ethical problems in the organizational life requires considering individual, contextual, and issue-related factors, as well as the social relationships of actors, who are embedded into the system. Focusing on this last dimension, the current study aims to explore the nature of unethical behavior from a social network perspective and attempts to investigate how such behaviors spread among the actors in Turkish medical sector, which has become strictly competitive after the structural health reforms. Since the relationship between physicians and drug companies’ sales representatives is usually seen at the paramount of unethical relations in the medical sector, this link was chosen as a focal dyad and two surveys were simultaneously conducted on physicians and sales representatives. The type and structure of relations were analyzed to reveal the nature of unethical behaviors in terms of frequency of interaction, trust, power inequalities, common values, and information sharing. The findings of study revealed that unethical behavior is not only a problem of focal dyad between physicians and sales representatives and showed an epidemic structure that might affect the whole system. Managers should consider the disseminating structure of unethical conduct in order to prevent such behavior in different segments and functional units of organizations. Strategies that eliminate unethical routes within the organizational channels should be explored and adopted.