Large payments and social acclaim create felt obligation to break rules

Evidence

Being a foremost hedge fund titan bestows considerable financial and social power. Rajaratnam wielded that power unsparingly in recruiting a cadre of tipsters. On the financial side, the payments were huge. This created a strong sense of obligation to produce illegal tips. Anil Kumar, a senior executive at a global consulting firm with access to corporate secrets, described his sense of obligation to provide inner corporate secrets when pressed for details, “I felt that I owed him something, given how much money he was paying me” (Lattman & Ahmed, 2011). Generous acclaim for profitable tips served as another influential incentive. When a tip about a secret forthcoming merger produced a large trading profit, Kumar was praised profusely: “That was fantastic. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1463

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1463