Bedroom cheats harm boardrooms

Many reasons for marital infidelity exist. A new study by US scholars established that corporate executives who cheat on their marriage partners are more likely to cheat in the boardroom as well.

The study found a strong correlation between adultery and workplace misconduct by corporate executives and financial advisers.

Finance professors at the University of Texas at Austin and Emory University reached that conclusion after analysing leaked data of customers of Ashley Madison, a dating site for married people looking to have affairs.

A computer hack in 2015 revealed the names and personal data of more than 30 million among them corporate executives, white-collar criminals and brokers.

Crosschecking against public records, they found that those Ashley Madison customers generally were more than twice as likely to have violated professional codes of conduct compared with a control group.

“Our study indicates cheating in one context carries over to cheating in others,” the scholars told Bloomberg. “We’re not trying to debate ethics or lecture people. All we’re doing is examining the data and the data is fairly strong.”