our own system

My dad told me when I was growing up that business people judge character based upon how one plays the game of golf.  Research isn’t needed to validate his claim but this Marketplace interview between Kai Ryssdal and Dan Ariely on cheating and golf notes the reality (emphasis added).

Dan Ariely: We do know how they did. First of all, it turns out that people in the pharmaceutical industry cheated a lot, but they also said their industry is the most honest that there is. …

Kai Ryssdal: Bring this back to the workplace for me then. What does this tell us about the way things get done in this country, and how we actually do and manage our economy?

Dan Ariely: First of all, I think cheating in golf is kind of a good example for how we think about day-to-day tasks. The fact that people can take a mulligan or how they can cheat on golf, I think tells us that’s there a lot of corner bending that we see in the business world. And what I worry about is that once we start in this path of immorality, even with small bending of rules and cutting corners here and there, that this tendency could become bigger and bigger and really a part of the collective understanding of how business is actually done.