The goal of this paper was to better understand why ethical misconduct is rarely sanctioned on the basis of narrative ethnographic accounts about serial ethical transgressors (SETs). Narrative 1 focuses on a SET, Prof. Jessica Lang/Ippolito from RWTH Aachen University, who demanded full control over children, and then used this control to demand academic work for her career, and also used her university hospital psychiatry to misdiagnose her daughter with ADHD to avoid that she would leave for her father's household. Narrative 2 details the actions of two transgressors, Prof. Ute Hülsheger-Brülls from Maastricht University and Prof. A, who repeatedly manipulated authorship credits and exploited their positions for career advancement at the expense of other researchers. In both narratives, formal or informal exception policies awarded to healthy organizational members based on being a minority (immigrant/foreigner/female) like quotas (diversity), avoidance of open speech or critique (inclusion or safety), and resource bonuses (equity) as well as respect policies demanding civility, professionalism, etc. existed. The resulting organizational environments allowed transgressors to invoke these policies to avoid scrutiny. The author (Narratives 3-5) faced whistleblowing retaliation, organizational exclusion, legal threats, criminal investigation, disciplinary investigation, arrest by the police, and a short jail time for trying to attend a conference, removal of membership and fellowship status from a professional society, and dismissal from his business school position. The broad refusal of the field and its formal and informal structures to do anything about proven misconduct is comprehensively documented. Implications for trust in academic research outputs in organizational research are discussed.
Keywords: Ethnographic research, whistleblowers, Deny-Attack-Reverse-Victim-Offender, Diversity-Equity-Inclusion-Policy-Abuse, fairness

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