Recent, groundbreaking work in neuroscience has illuminated sex differences that could have a profound impact on business organizations. Distinctions between the sexes that may have previously been presumed to be due to “nurture” may now also be demonstrably related to “nature.” Here, we report recent neuroscience findings related to males’ and females’ brain structures and brain chemistry, along with the results of recent neuroeconomic studies. We learn not only that male and female brains are structured differently, but also that different (...) portions of their brains are used for the same tasks, often leading to identical conclusions. Neuroeconomic studies also demonstrate that the effects of hormones—most notably, oxytocin and testosterone—urge males and females to both think and behave differently in ethical situations. We suggest that examination of these new results could benefit six areas of business ethics research: trust, moral decision-making, organizational justice, moral development, the ethic of care, and female management styles. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these findings for business practice, suggesting that it may be ethical to allow men and women to be treated differently in the workplace: such treatment may be advantageous not only for the workers’ firms, but also for the workers themselves. (shrink)

We review and synthesize over two decades of research on ethical culture in organizations, examining eighty-nine relevant scholarly works. Our article discusses the conceptualization of ethical culture in a cross-disciplinary space and its critical role in ethical decision-making. With a view to advancing future research, we analyze the antecedents, outcomes, and mediator and moderator roles of ethical culture. To do so, we identify measures and theories used in past studies and make recommendations. We propose, inter alia, the use of validated (...) measures, application of a wider range of theories, adoption of longitudinal studies, and study of group-level data in organizations. We explore research possibilities in new and emergent forms of organizations, ways of organizing work, and technology in ethical decision-making, such as the role of artificial intelligence. We also recommend the study of a broad range of leadership styles and their influence in shaping ethical cultures in organizations. (shrink)

We examine the effects of leader–member exchange differentiation on team members’ outcomes by using team moral disengagement as a psychological mechanism mediating this relationship and LMX differentiation bases moderating the relationship. Analysis of multilevel data collected from 289 frontline employees organized into 76 finance-related customer service teams shows that LMX differentiation significantly reduced team moral disengagement only when the performance basis was high, and that the negative relationship between LMX differentiation and team moral disengagement was significant only when the personal (...) liking basis was low. Furthermore, we found that the LMX bases moderated the indirect effect of LMX differentiation on team members’ outcomes through team moral disengagement. The findings advance team moral disengagement as a novel mechanism for cross-level relationship between LMX differentiation and team members’ outcomes at the individual level, and project differentiation bases as a condition under which LMX differentiation unpacks the reasons for team members’ favorable or unfavorable responses. They reveal LMX differentiation as a complex and multifaceted phenomenon, whose essence can only be understood if examined from multiple levels. We also contribute to the literature by revealing the cognitive pathway through which LMX differentiation may be associated with team members outcomes. (shrink)

Holistic thinking involves four subconstructs: causality, contradiction, attention to the whole, and change. This holistic perspective varies across Eastern–Western cultures and genders. We theorize that holistic thinking reduces three domain-specific risk-taking behavioral intentions (ethical, financial, and health/safety) directly and indirectly through enhanced risk-taking attitudes. Our formative theoretical model treats the four subconstructs of holistic thinking as yoked antecedents and frames it in a proximal context of causes and consequences. We simultaneously explore the direct and indirect paths and test our model (...) across cultures, genders, and the combination of the two. For the entire sample (N = 531), holistic thinking negatively relates to risk intentions via enhanced risk perceptions. Across cultures, the indirect paths prevail among Chinese people (n = 284), and both direct and indirect paths triumph for Americans (n = 247). Across genders, the indirect paths exist for females, whereas the negative direct path (risk-raking attitudes → behavioral intentions) succeeds for males. Across cultures and genders, holistic thinking negatively relates to American males’ ethical risks the most but Chinese males’ financial risks the least. Risk-taking perceptions are negatively related to Chinese males’ ethical risks the most, but Chinese people’s (males/females) financial risks the least. Causality and change are vital for all contexts, attention to the whole for all males and Chinese males, and contradiction for Americans and all females. Holistic thinking has limits and is less robust than risk-taking perceptions in reducing risky behavioral intentions. Our practical implications help people make ethical, healthy, and wealthy decisions. (shrink)

While deliberation has traditionally played a central role in philosophical and behavioral accounts of ethical decision-making, several recent studies challenge the value of deliberation. These studies find that deliberative thinking, such as considering divergent views or different perspectives, leads to less ethical decisions. We observe, however, that these studies do not address normative deliberation, in which decision-makers consider or apply a normative standard. We predict that normative deliberation improves ethical decision-making. Across six experiments, we examine the effects of non-normative deliberation (...) and normative deliberation on ethical decision-making. We find that normative deliberation improves ethical decision-making and, in contrast to recent studies, no form of deliberation harms ethical decision-making. (shrink)

This study via the sensemaking perspective examines whether spiritual leadership can influence employee workplace spirituality and employee corporate social responsibility (CSR) participation. We also examine the joint effects of spiritual leadership and employee Machiavellianism on employee workplace spirituality. Using a sample of 556 employees from four commercial banks in China, analyses demonstrate that employee workplace spirituality mediates the relationship between spiritual leadership and employee CSR participation and that the indirect effect of spiritual leadership on employee CSR participation is dependent on (...) the level of employee Machiavellianism. These results shed light on how and why spiritual leadership and employee Machiavellianism influence employee workplace spirituality and employee CSR participation. The theoretical and practical implications of these finding are discussed along with directions for future research. (shrink)

Many ethics initiatives have stipulated sets of principles and standards for good technology development in the AI sector. However, several AI ethics researchers have pointed out a lack of practical realization of these principles. Following that, AI ethics underwent a practical turn, but without deviating from the principled approach. This paper proposes a complementary to the principled approach that is based on virtue ethics. It defines four “basic AI virtues”, namely justice, honesty, responsibility and care, all of which represent specific (...) motivational settings that constitute the very precondition for ethical decision making in the AI field. Moreover, it defines two “second-order AI virtues”, prudence and fortitude, that bolster achieving the basic virtues by helping with overcoming bounded ethicality or hidden psychological forces that can impair ethical decision making and that are hitherto disregarded in AI ethics. Lastly, the paper describes measures for successfully cultivating the mentioned virtues in organizations dealing with AI research and development. (shrink)

Counterproductive work behavior is one of the most common behavioral decisions of employees in the workplace that negatively impacts the sustainable development of enterprises. Previous studies have shown that individuals make CWB decisions for different reasons. Some individuals engage in CWB due to cognitive factors, whereas others engage in CWB in response to leadership behaviors. The conservation of resources theory holds that individuals have the tendency to preserve, protect and acquire resources. When experiencing the loss of resources, individuals will show (...) irrational and aggressive behaviors in order to regain resources. When obtaining resources, individuals’ tension and pressure will be relieved. To maintain or continue obtaining resources, individuals will show more positive work attitudes and behaviors. Therefore, using the COR theory as the main theoretical framework, this study explores a serial mediation model between family supportive leadership and CWB through work-family conflict and moral disengagement, moderated by personal life attribution. A three-wave survey of 251 medical workers from three hospitals found that family supportive leadership can reduce employees’ perceived work-family conflict, which leads to less moral disengagement, resulting in lower CWB. Personal life attribution strengthens the negative indirect effect of family supportive leadership on CWB by reinforcing the negative association between family supportive leadership and work-family conflict. This study uses the COR theory to explore the mechanism and boundary conditions of family supportive leadership and CWB from the perspective of negative work-family relationship, which enrichis the research content of existing theories. Moreover, this study has important guiding significance for managers to take effective measures to reduce CWB. (shrink)

This article takes a novel approach to explaining the causes of unethical behavior in organizations. Instead of explaining the unethical behavior of employees in terms of their bad organization, this article examines how a good organization can lead to employees’ unethical behavior. The main idea is that the more ethical an organization becomes, the higher, in some respects, is the likelihood of unethical behavior. This is due to four threatening forces that become stronger when an organization becomes more ethical. These (...) forces are the upward, downward, backward, and forward forces. Each of these forces is illustrated with two effects and each effect is explained by a specific theory. The effects are the effects of the gold digger, high-jump bar, retreating-cat, forbidden-fruit, cheese slicer, moving-spotlight, repeat-prescription, and keeping-up appearances. This paradox of ethics, when goodness breeds badness, opens new research directions. (shrink)

This paper introduces a body of research on Organizational Behavior and Industrial/organizational Psychology that expands the range of empirical evidence relevant to the ongoing character-situation debate. This body of research, mostly neglected by moral philosophers, provides important insights to move the debate forward. First, the OB/io scholarship provides empirical evidence to show that social environments like organizations have significant power to shape the character traits of their members. This scholarship also describes some of the mechanisms through which this process of (...) reshaping character takes place. Second, the character-situation debate has narrowly focused on situational influences that affect behavior episodically and haphazardly. The OB/io research, however, highlights the importance of distinguishing such situational influences from influences that, like organizational influences, shape our character traits because they are continuous and coordinated. Third, the OB/io literature suggests that most individuals display character traits that, while local to the organization, can be consistent across situations. This puts pressure on the accounts of character proposed by traditional virtue ethics and situationism and provides empirical support to interactionist models based on cognitive-affective processing system theories of personality. Finally, the OB/io literature raises important challenges to the possibility of achieving virtue, provides valuable and untapped resources to cultivate character, and suggests new avenues of normative and empirical research. (shrink)

China has achieved economic prominence but damaged the natural environment. Can religions excite pro-environmental actions? Chinese religion encompasses Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, native Taoism, and indigenous folk beliefs (GuanDi and Mazu). We theorize that believers demonstrate more sustainable HOPE (Help Ourselves Protect the Environment) than non-believers. Religions with standardized and formal liturgy show more pro-environmental HOPE than those without it. We challenge the myth that the believers of Christianity and Islam display more sustainable HOPE than other faith. The 2013 Chinese General (...) Social Survey (involving 10,017 randomly selected participants across 28 provinces) revealed that 11.10% of them have faith. Believers display higher levels of HOPE than atheists, demonstrating the __religion__ effect. Among believers, native Taoism and Buddhism exhibit more ecological HOPE than other religions, supporting the __dogma__ effect in the Chinese culture. Religions with formalized liturgy demonstrate more pro-environmental HOPE than generalized folk beliefs—GuanDi and Mazu, validating the __liturgy__ effect. Females, married, and people with good income, education, health, and country-domicile—the haves—exhibit robust ecological HOPE. The rich get richer and greener. However, those who are older, males, urban residents, and the Han majority do not. We empirically demonstrate the Matthew Effect in Religious Social Responsibility: Religious faith facilitates believers’ pro-environmental behaviors—HOPE and ethical behaviors in China. (shrink)

To understand how compliance develops both in everyday and corporate environments, it is crucial to understand how different mechanisms work together to shape individuals’ (non)compliant behavior. Existing compliance studies typically focus on a subset of theories (i.e., rational choice theories, social theories, legitimacy theories, capacity theories, and opportunity theories) to understand how key variables from one or several of these theories shape individual compliance. The present study provides a first integrated understanding of compliance, rooted in complexity science, in which key (...) elements from these theories are considered simultaneously, and their relations to compliance and each other are explored using network analysis. This approach is developed by analyzing online survey data (_N_ = 562) about compliance with COVID-19 mitigation measures. Traditional regression analysis shows that elements from nearly all major compliance theories (except for social theories) are associated with compliance. The network analysis revealed groupings and interconnections of variables that did not track the existing compliance theories and point to a complexity overlooked in existing compliance research. These findings demonstrate a fundamentally different perspective on compliance, which moves away from traditional narrow, non-network approaches. Instead, they showcase a complexity science understanding of compliance, in which compliance is understood as a network of interacting variables derived from different theories that interact with compliance. This points to a new research agenda that is oriented on mapping compliance networks, and testing and modelling how regulatory and management interventions interact with each other and compliance within such networks. (shrink)

Previous corporate social responsibility studies at the employee level have focused on the influence of CSR on employees’ positive attitudes and behavior. However, little attention has been paid to the relationship between CSR and unethical behavior and the underlying mechanism. Based on social information processing theory, this study investigates how CSR affects employee cheating via employees’ organizational identification and perceived supervisor moral decoupling. Additionally, this study discusses the moderating effect of employee bottom-line mentality on these relationships. We test this two-path (...) model using a sample of MBA students in China. The results indicate that both organizational identification and perceived supervisor moral decoupling mediate the relationship between CSR and cheating, and employee bottom-line mentality moderates the effect of CSR on perceived supervisor moral decoupling. Specifically, for employees low in bottom-line mentality, CSR has a significantly negative impact on perceived supervisor moral decoupling, but the same relationship is insignificant for employees with a strong bottom-line mentality. Overall, our results uncover the relationship between CSR and employee cheating and extend the understanding of the influence of CSR on employees. (shrink)

Employees frequently engage in job crafting to better match their jobs with their personal abilities and skills. Compared with its benefits, the potential detrimental consequences of job crafting have received less attention from researchers. Drawing on relative deprivation theory, we examined employees’ potential negative reactions to coworkers’ job crafting. We proposed that coworkers’ job crafting is positively related to employees’ feelings of relative deprivation, thus reducing prosocial behaviors and giving rise to social undermining. We further argued that employees’ zero-sum mindset (...) moderates the relationship between coworkers’ job crafting and employees’ feelings of relative deprivation, such that the relationship is more positive when the zero-sum mindset is high rather than low. Our hypotheses were generally supported by time-lagged data collected from a sample of 313 employees and their leaders from 85 teams. Our findings advance the understanding of the unintended consequences of job crafting in organizations. (shrink)

Accountability is of universal interest to the business ethics community, but the emphasis to date has been primarily at the level of the industry, organization, or key individuals. This paper unites concepts from relational and felt accountability and team dynamics to provide an initial explanatory framework that emphasizes the importance of social interactions to team accountability. We develop a measure of team accountability using participants in the USA and Europe and then use it to study a cohort of 65 teams (...) of Irish business students over three months as they complete a complex simulation. Our hypotheses test the origins of team accountability and its effects on subsequent team performance and attitudinal states. Results indicate that initial team accountability is strongly related to team trust, commitment, efficacy, and identifying with the team emotionally. In established teams, accountability increases effort and willingness to continue to collaborate but did not significantly improve task performance in this investigation. (shrink)

This paper contributes to the contemporary business ethics narrative by proposing an approach to corporate ethical decision making (EDM) which serves as an alternative to the imposition of codes and standards to address the ethical consequences of grand challenges, like COVID-19, which are impacting today’s society. Our alternative approach to EDM embraces the concept of reflexive thinking and ethical consciousness among the individual agents who collectively are the corporation and who make ethical decisions, often in isolation, removed from the collocated (...) corporate setting. We draw on the teachings of the Canadian philosopher and theologian, Fr. Bernard Lonergan, to conceptualize an approach to EDM which focuses on the ethics of the corporate agent by nurturing the universal and invariant structure that is operational in all human beings. Embracing Lonergan’s dynamic cognitive structure of human knowing, and the structure of the human good, we advance a paradigm of EDM in business which emboldens authentic ethical thought, decision making, and action commensurate with virtuous living and germane to human flourishing. Lonergan’s philosophy guides us away from the imposition of over-arching corporate codes of ethics and inspires us, as individual agents, to attend to the data of our own consciousness in our ethical decision making. Such cognitional endowment leads us out of the ethics of the ‘timeless present’ (Islam and Greenwood in Journal of Business Ethics 170: 1–4, 2021) towards ethical authenticity in business, leaving us better placed to reflect upon and address the ethical issues emanating from grand challenges like COVID-19. (shrink)

Integrating research on empowering leadership with the literature on power in social psychology, we examine how empowering leaders affect the propensity of followers to engage in deviance. Across a multi-source, multi-wave field study and a controlled laboratory experiment, we find that, compared to the followers of less-empowering leaders, the followers of more empowering leaders feel subjectively more powerful and engage in more deviant behaviors. Moreover, we find that the propensity of empowered followers to engage in more deviance depends on their (...) prosocial attributes. Specifically, empowered followers engage in the highest levels of deviance when they have a weak moral identity and a strong desire for dominance. We further find that empowering leadership does not increase follower deviance when followers either have a strong moral identity or a weak desire for dominance. In sum, although past research suggests that empowering leadership may facilitate productivity and employee engagement, our work demonstrates that it can also cultivate harmful effects, such as increased deviance among certain types of followers. We discuss our theoretical contributions as well as practical implications for practicing empowering leadership. (shrink)

We investigated the significance of an economic crisis for organizations’ ethical behavior, employees’ unethical behavior, and association. To capture the effect of the “2008’ World economic crisis,” we compared the behaviors of organizations and employees’ unethical behavior during a crisis with their behavior in more favorable circumstances before and after the crisis. We used structural equation modeling to analyze answers collected from 2024 employees in Slovenian organizations between 2006 and 2016. The results showed significant growth of organizational engagement in ethical (...) behavior, despite the crisis in the middle of the observed period. The employees’ unethical behavior was significantly less acceptable in crisis compared to before the crisis, while after the crisis, its acceptability increased again, despite not significant. The aggregate sample revealed a significantly negative influence of employee’s unethical behavior on organizations’ ethical behavior that was not significantly different across the considered periods. The research suggests the need to manage the organization’s ethical behavior in times of economic downturn, like in the present COVID 19. Additionally, managers need to devote more attention to prevent employees’ unethical behavior and its influence on organizations’ ethical behavior. (shrink)

AbstractEnduring unethical behavior in trading has generated much research interest, and scholars disagree on the reasons for this situation. According to MacIntyre (2015), this has to do with the personal traits of traders, whereas Rocchi and Thunder (2019) argue this is due to permissive work environment that can potentially be changed to favoring ethical trading. We contribute to this debate by exploring how interactions between organizational culture and management control systems (MCSs) may affect the enduring unethical behaviors of traders. We (...) conceptualize this with the concepts of organized hypocrisy (Brunsson 1986, 1989, 1993) and decoupling (Meyer and Rowan 1977). An in-depth case study of fraud (Jerome Kerviel at Societe Generale), informs the empirical inquiry. We develop the concept of organized decoupling to characterize how the MCSs are articulated with the organizational culture favoring unethical behavior, while being used as a ‘safety mechanism’ to manage the legal and reputational risk of the bank. The analysis highlights three key features of the organized decoupling of MCS: physical distance, technical distance and social distance. The study contribution lies in showing that decoupling is not only emergent but might be intended and therefore organized. The findings also raise doubts on the role of MCSs in monitoring trading activities as presented by investment banking institutions and regulators, suggesting more organized hypocrisy, and raising significant concerns regarding the creation of tolerable work environment welcoming ethical behaviors in the investment banking sector. (shrink)

Research on unethical leadership has predominantly focused on interpersonal and high-intensity forms of harmful leader behavior such as abusive supervision. Other forms of harmful leader behavior such as excessively pressuring subordinates or acting in self-centered ways have received less attention, despite being harmful and potentially occurring more frequently. We propose a model of four types of harmful leader behavior varying in intensity and orientation : Intimidation, Lack of Care, Self-Centeredness, and Excessive Pressure for Results. We map out how these relate (...) to other constructs in the unethical leader behavior field in order to integrate the existing work on how leaders can cause harm to followers. Next, in five studies, we develop and test a new survey instrument measuring the four proposed types of perceived HLB. We provide initial validity evidence for this new measure, establish its psychometric properties, and examine its nomological network by linking the four types of HLB to related leadership constructs and soft and hard outcome correlates at the individual and team level. We find that HLB is negatively related to constructive forms of leadership and positively to unethical ones. HLB is also related in the expected direction to job satisfaction, engagement, psychological safety, knowledge sharing, knowledge hiding, deviance, and objectively recorded team-level stress-related absenteeism. (shrink)

The history of ethics often presupposes rationalist thinking on moral issues. An alternative to rationalism has been proposed by the social intuitionist model. This model suggests the bulk of our moral decisions are ‘gut reactions’ or intuitions. Unlike the rationalists, which support reasons and deliberation to draw moral conclusions, intuitionists argue such reasoning is used to support preconceived ethical decisions. This paper provides the first investigation to determine if intuitionism has any validity within business ethics. Using data from the Defining (...) Issues Test and individual journal entries, results indicate discussion-based pedagogy improved the moral reasoning of participants but had very little influence over their beliefs. In short, the social intuitionist model is supported by this study. Most importantly, ethics education that focuses on peer-to-peer discussion can change how students’ reason about moral problems and should be heavily incorporated into classrooms. (shrink)

Employees’ may view prohibitive voice—that is, expressing concerns about harmful practices in the workplace—as a moral yet interpersonally risky behavior. We, thus, predict that prohibitive voice is likely to be influenced by variables associated with moral and relational qualities. Specifically, we hypothesize that employees’ moral identity internalization—i.e., the centrality of moral traits in their self-concept—is positively associated with their use of prohibitive voice. Furthermore, we hypothesize that this association is stronger when employees enjoy a higher quality relationship with their leader. (...) In addition, drawing on the literature on moral symbolism, we hypothesize that workgroup moral identity symbolization—i.e., the extent to which workgroup members symbolically display moral traits—moderates the relationship between moral identity internalization and prohibitive voice in a compensatory manner. That is, workgroup moral identity symbolization enhances employees’ use of prohibitive voice when employees’ moral identity internalization is low. Data collected from hospital employees and their supervisors and coworkers support these hypotheses. These findings suggest new ways to promote prohibitive voice and, thereby, protect organizational stakeholders from harmful behaviors. (shrink)

Drawing on social exchange theory, we examine the conditions under which employees’ good intentions motivate them to engage in unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB) and the psychological mechanism behind this behavioral decision. Findings from a time-lagged field study and a scenario study indicate (1) an interactive effect between perceived organizational support and employee performance on UPB; (2) that low performers who perceive high levels of organizational support are more likely to engage in UPB; and (3) that feelings of indebtedness to the (...) organization mediate the interactive effect on UPB. Therefore, the paper highlights the importance of conditional factors in motivating UPB by combining employee ‘good intentions’ and ‘disadvantageous situations’ to understand the UPB decision process. The paper concludes with theoretical and practical implications. (shrink)

Persistent and pervasive rudeness and lack of respect are unfortunately common in workplaces today. The deleterious effects of this incivility at work may be even worse than previously demonstrated, impacting not only employee victims but also trickling down to those who employees contact. However, we propose that leaders who prioritize their followers’ needs above their own, also known as servant leaders, may be a critical preventative mechanism to reduce group-level incivility through promoting a virtuous climate. Applying social learning theory and (...) social information processing theory, we argue that servant leaders role model virtuous character that contributes to a virtuous climate that influences group members to reduce incivility and, in turn, treat others well. We utilize the healthcare setting to support this hypothesized process across multi-source measures of incivility from coworkers and team supervisors and three indicators of quality of patient care. Specific findings and implications for managers in healthcare settings and beyond are discussed. (shrink)

Perceived supervisor support is widely studied in terms of its positive outcomes. This paper, in contrast, investigates employees’ unethical pro-supervisor behavior as a negative consequence of perceived supervisor support. Drawing upon the multifoci approach of social exchange theory and the reciprocity principle, we hypothesized that perceived supervisor support can engender unethical pro-supervisor behavior via employees’ feelings of reciprocity towards the supervisor. Building on the instrumental reasons that underlie social exchanges, we further hypothesized that this mediation relationship is stronger for employees (...) high in Machiavellianism. We collected data for three experimental studies from full-time MBA students of a European business school and from U.S. working professionals, and the results provided consistent support for our proposed model. Taken together, the current study highlights the “dark side” of perceived supervisor support, in that it can lead to unethical behavior and that this effect can be accentuated by employees’ Machiavellianism. (shrink)

Humility is increasingly recognized as an essential attribute for individuals at top management levels to build successful organizations. However, research on CEO humility has focused on how humble chief executive officers (CEOs) shape collective perceptions through their interactions and behaviors with other organizational members while overlooking CEOs’ critical role in making strategic decisions. We address this unexplored aspect of CEO humility by proposing that humble CEOs influence decision-making decentralization at the top management team (TMT) and subsequently promote an organizational ethical (...) culture. Using a sample of CEOs and TMT members from 120 small- and medium-sized enterprises, we find strong support for our hypotheses. We discuss important implications for research on CEO humility and strategic leadership. (shrink)

Organizational leaders are eager to unlock the creative potential of followers. Yet, there is growing evidence that creativity can also have a dark side within organizations. Building on research linking creativity and unethical behavior, we develop the construct of creative unethicality—behavior that is both unethical and novel. We draw on social exchange theory to develop a model that identifies both why and when creative unethicality emerges within organizations. Specifically, we investigate the exchange dynamics through which creative support provided by empowering (...) leaders facilitates creative unethicality under conditions of high performance pressure. Across two multi-wave, multi-source field studies with employee-coworker and leader-subordinate dyads and an experimental study with a novel unethicality measure in a business simulation, we find convergent support for our theoretical model. These findings have important theoretical and practical implications for fostering creativity in organizations without simultaneously facilitating creative unethicality. (shrink)

Ethical work climate, introduced by Bart Victor and John Cullen, plays a central role in the business ethics literature due to its influence on employee’s ethical decision-making. Yet, the often-used framework is limited as a descriptive and prescriptive model because it lacks a normative focus and does not allow for organizations guided by universal ethical principles. We revisit Victor and Cullen’s original conceptualization of ethical climate and propose a reformulation of the ethical criteria to be conceptually consistent with Kohlberg’s theory (...) of cognitive moral development and to accommodate principled climates. We also describe how the locus of analysis dimension can be simplified to allow for a more parsimonious and potentially more valid theory. In doing so, we eliminate redundancy noted in the original model and clarify normative preference among the ethical climate types. We discuss implications for research, teaching, and practice. (shrink)

This research shows how business students’ disciplinary specializations can affect their sense of personal responsibility by providing rationalizations for moral disengagement. It thereby conceptualizes business students’ disciplinary specializations as a key dimension of the business school responsibility learning environment. Students use four main rationalizations to displace responsibility variously away from their own disciplinary specializations, to claim responsibility as the prerogative of their specialization, and to shiftirresponsibility onto disciplinary out-groups. Yet despite their disciplinary identifications, students largely rationalized that their sense of (...) responsibility was an individual matter that was unlikely to be affected by contextual influences, and they attributedirresponsible behavior to incorrigible ‘bad apples.’ A theoretical model is offered which illustrates these dynamics by combining Bandura’s social cognitive theory with social identity theory. The research is based on secondary data, specifically focus-group interviews conducted with undergraduate students at a major Scandinavian business school in connection with the implementation of the UN Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) initiative. The implications for management education include the need to strengthen students’ ‘disciplinary reflexivity,’ and to explicitly address the tension between students’ disciplinary solidarities and their faith in their own individual moral infallibility. (shrink)

Deception is pervasive in negotiations and organizations, and emotions are critical to using, detecting, and responding to deception. In this article, we introduce a theoretical model to explore the interplay between emotional intelligence (the ability to perceive and express, understand, regulate, and use emotions) and deception in negotiations. In our model, we propose that emotional intelligence influences the decision to use deception, the effectiveness of deception, the ability to detect deception, and the consequences of deception (specifically, trust repair and retaliation). (...) We consider the emotional intelligence of both deceivers and targets, and we consider characteristics of negotiators, their interaction, and the negotiation context that moderate these relationships. Our model offers a theoretical foundation for research on emotions, emotional intelligence, and deception and identifies a potential disadvantage of negotiating with an emotionally intelligent counterpart. Though prior work has focused on the advantages of being and interacting with people high in emotional intelligence, we assert that those most likely to deceive us may also be those highest in emotional intelligence. (shrink)

ABSTRACT By integrating theories of social learning and moral judgment, we developed a theoretical model on whether and when peers imitate employees’ unethical pro-organizational behavior in the workplace. The study, which involved 256 employees in a large manufacturing company in China, revealed that employees’ UPB positively predicted peers’ vicarious learning of UPB, with the effect strengthened by employees’ organizational tenure but weakened by peers’ deontic injustice. Moreover, the positive effect of employees’ UPB on their peers’ vicarious learning was mitigated, and (...) even turned negative when employees’ organizational tenure was low, but peers’ deontic injustice was high. (shrink)

Drawing on conservation of resources theory, we contribute to the behavioral ethics literature by examining how and why organizational socialization processes can affect newcomers’ adoption of unethical behaviors. Specifically, we contend that quality peer coaching provides newcomers with enhanced self-resources that diminishes emotional exhaustion and thus indirectly reduces newcomer unethical conduct. Conversely, peer coach unethical conduct increases newcomers’ emotional exhaustion, and thus indirectly increases newcomers’ own unethical acts. Our research also identifies newcomers’ goal orientations as important individual differences that moderate (...) the proposed mediation effects. Newcomers with high mastery orientations respond to high emotional exhaustion by harnessing more resources and identifying new work strategies, thereby engaging in less unethical conduct. Conversely, newcomers with high performance orientations give into emotional exhaustion and engage in unethical conduct as a way of outperforming others while conserving resources. We tested our theoretical model using a sample of peer coaches and newcomers from the Real Estate industry, using objective reporting of peer coaches’ and newcomers’ unethical conduct over a nine-month period. (shrink)

This paper aims to integrate insights from psychoanalytic theory into business ethics research on the sources of ethical failures within organizations. We particularly draw from the analysis of sources and outcomes of neurotic processes that are part of human development, as described by the psychoanalyst Karen Horney and more recently by Manfred Kets de Vries; we interpret their insights from a stakeholder theory perspective. Business ethics research seems to have overlooked how “neurotic management styles” could be the antecedents of unethical (...) behavior within organizations. After showing the connection between five managerial neuroses and the corresponding potential ethical failures within organizations that have been already identified within business ethics research, we suggest three organizational strategies to counteract these failures. First, we argue that managers should pay greater attention at the complexity of human motivation, avoiding the simplistic view of compliance‐based approaches. Second, we discuss the importance of developing a conversation around values within organizations, enabling healthy individual growth and limiting the emergence of neurotic processes. Finally, we discuss the role of the business ethicist in facilitating such a process, suggesting a parallel between the role of the business ethicist and that of the psychoanalytic therapist. (shrink)

While a corporate ethics program is expected to reduce employees’ unethical behavior, understanding the effects of the ethics program elements on reducing the unethical behavior is a crucial issue. This study aims to explore how a corporate ethics program with multiple control elements, including punishment, monitoring, internal reporting, code of ethics, ethics support service and ethics training, influence employees’ threat appraisal process, coping appraisal process and unethical behavior at workplaces. The data to verify proposed research hypotheses were collected by administering (...) questionnaire survey on four autonomous government organizations in Bangladesh. Research findings show that only punishment and monitoring have significantly negative relationships with unethical behavior. Monitoring and internal reporting have significantly positive relationships with threat appraisal. The code of ethics, ethics support service and ethics training are associated positively with coping appraisal. The mediation results reveal that coping appraisal mediates the relationship between ethics program elements and unethical behavior; but the mediation effects of threat appraisal are not significant. This study provides valuable insights into how a corporate ethics program with multiple control elements reduces employees’ unethical behavior as well as how employees’ threat and coping appraisal processes are related to the corporate ethics program and unethical behavior in organizations. (shrink)

Machiavellianism is a popular construct in research on ethics and organizational behavior. This research has demonstrated that Machiavellianism predicts a host of counterproductive, deviant, and unethical behaviors. However, individuals high in Machiavellianism also adapt to their organizational surroundings, engaging in unethical behavior only in certain situations. Nevertheless, the utility of Machiavellianism has been questioned. Meta-analyses have demonstrated that psychopathy out-predicts Machiavellianism for most antisocial outcomes. Thus, many researchers assume Machiavellianism is a derivative and redundant construct. However, researchers examining the utility (...) of Machiavellianism may be asking the wrong question about how Machiavellianism is unique. In our review, we find it less informative to ask about what antisocial behaviors Machiavellianism predicts. Instead, we find it more informative to ask when Machiavellianism predicts antisocial behaviors. Drawing on Field Theory and Trait Activation Theory, we argue that Machiavellianism is a trait that is associated with person × environment interactions. Their adaptive nature is made possible through the presence of impulse control and environmental sensitivity to punishment, two characteristics that individuals high in psychopathy lack. Consequently, individuals high in Machiavellianism constrain their antisocial behavior to environments when the benefits outweigh the costs. Thus, environmental context, especially the risk of external punishment, moderates Machiavellian misbehavior more than it does for those high in psychopathy. These behavioral constraints align with Lewin’s argument that behavior is a function of the person, environment, and interaction between the two. From this discussion, we arrive at recommendations pertaining to the future of Machiavellianism research in organizational and other applied settings. (shrink)

Building from an interactionist view of ethics, this study sought to integrate individual and contextual factors for understanding ethical perceptions in teams. Given the proximal nature of team members, this study specifically explored how individuals comparatively evaluate their own ethical behaviors and team members’ ethical behaviors to arrive at a perception of ethical person–group fit within a team. Grounding our theoretical arguments in relational schemas theory, we demonstrate that interpersonal ethical perceptions can have distal impacts on perceptions of team functioning. (...) The results support the hypotheses that a perceived ethical incongruence between the self and other team members negatively influenced perceptions of relationship conflict and ultimately information sharing. By exploring individual and team level aspects of ethics concurrently, we contribute to a deeper understanding of contextual forces in ethics through an interactionist approach. (shrink)

This article theorizes and analyzes how two aspects of the increasing accountingization of academia in the form of evaluative pressures and group identification, independently and interactively, work to cultivate academics’ self-interest for their social interactions with the scientific community, forming them to adopt more competitive orientations and cynical attitudes. Using data of a large number of faculty members from the 17 universities in Sweden, it is shown that evaluative pressures and group identification perceived by academics jointly reinforce each other in (...) affecting their competitive orientation, and that group identification strengthens the positive relation between evaluative pressures and academics’ rivalry notions and cynical attitudes. It is shown, contributing further to research on performance evaluation and the cultivation of self-interest and an egoistic ethical climate in academia, that it is evaluative pressures from peers rather than from performance measurements that are the major driver of an individual’s competitive orientation and cynical attitudes. It is also concluded that while evaluative pressures are related to an increase in academics' competitive orientations, which may be viewed as an intended effect from control designers in universities, such an orientation is inversely related to cooperativeness and openness toward others and goes hand in hand with an increase in having cynical attitudes about peers and the work environment. Control designers in universities may thus not be able to have the one without the other, something that raises ethical concerns for academic leaders to reflect upon when aiming at cultivating self-interest orientations of academics. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Studies on bottom-line mentality suggest that an exclusive focus on bottom-line outcomes has detrimental consequences; however, it is not clear when this leads to negative outcomes. This study examines the role of supervisors’ BLM in fostering workaholism in subordinates. These supervisors, by creating a bottom-line driven environment, may intensify workaholism, leading to workplace cheating behavior. However, not all subordinates react in the same manner. We theorize that the positive relationship between supervisor BLM and workplace cheating behavior through workaholism is (...) strengthened when the psychological entitlement is high. The moderation-mediation model was tested with data from 193 employees working in various industries. Our findings demonstrate that under conditions of high psychological entitlement, workaholism resulting from supervisor BLM leads to workplace cheating behavior. Implications of these findings have been discussed. (shrink)

Organisational culture is assumed to be a key factor in large-scale and avoidable institutional failures. Whilst models such as “ethical culture” and “safety culture” have been used to explain such failures, minimal research has investigated their ability to do so, and a single and unified model of the role of culture in institutional failures is lacking. To address this, we systematically identified case study articles investigating the relationship between culture and institutional failures relating to ethics and risk management. A content (...) analysis of the cultural factors leading to failures found 23 common factors and a common sequential pattern. First, culture is described as causing practices that develop into institutional failure. Second, and usually sequentially related to causal culture, culture is also used to describe the problems of correction: how people, in most cases, had the opportunity to correct a problem and avert failure, but did not take appropriate action. It was established that most of the cultural factors identified in the case studies were consistent with survey-based models of safety culture and ethical culture. Failures of safety and ethics also largely involve the same causal and corrective factors of culture, although some aspects of culture more frequently precede certain outcome types. We propose that the distinction between causal and corrective culture can form the basis of a unified and generalisable model of organisational failure. (shrink)

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

Drawing on theoretical work on humans’ adaptive capacity, we propose that supervisors’ perception of top management’s high bottom-line mentality (BLM) has a dysfunctional effect on their ethical leadership practices. Specifically, we suggest that these perceptions hinder supervisors’ empathy, which eventuates in less ethical leadership practices. We also investigate, in a first-stage moderated mediation model, how supervisors high in trait mindfulness are resistant to the ill effects of perceptions of top management’s high BLM. Supervisors high (versus low) in this trait are (...) less likely to respond to perceptions of top management’s high BLM with reduced empathy that then hinders ethical leadership. Results from a multi-wave, multi-source sample of working adults from the Chinese high technology industry provide general support for our theoretical model. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The authors argue that individual psychologists have an obligation to understand, review, and comment on upcoming revisions of the Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct. Psychologists may want to consider several factors as they review and prepare comments on these revisions. Among other things, commenting psychologists should consider the purposes of ethics codes and how the writing of a code can meet or balance these often-conflicting purposes; the overarching ethical theory or theories that should form the basis (...) of the APA Ethics Code; and the extent to which individual standards are useful and comprehensive, and avoid unnecessary harm to both the public and psychologists. The authors provide examples from the current and recent APA Ethics Codes to illustrate the types of decisions that psychologists must make when evaluating revisions to the APA Ethics Code. (shrink)

Unethical pro-organisational behaviour is an ongoing concern, prompting the need for more nuanced understanding of the workplace environment most likely to inhibit it. This study considers the role of risk climate, sometimes referred to as risk culture, as well as ethical climate, for reducing UPB. The study investigates whether four risk climate factors can, by focusing on the long-term consequences of UPB to the organisation, and providing guidance on behavioural norms, reduce UPB misconduct. Surveying employees in three financial institutions we (...) found that only one of the risk climate factors, avoidance, is consistently associated with UPB. On the other hand, a self-interested, ethical climate significantly increases UPB in all samples. In multi-climate analysis, we found that risk climate factors interacted with ethical climate to predict UPB. That is, when employees perceive that the workplace ethos is not self-interested, three factors of risk climate—avoidance, proactive and manager—significantly predict UPB. UPB is least likely when self-interest is low, avoidance risk climate is low, proactive risk climate is high and manager risk climate is high. Implications for leaders are discussed. (shrink)

Ethical leadership is an important construct in the literature on behavioral ethics in organizations, given its link with employee attitudes and behaviors. What remains unclear, however, is what leader characteristics are associated directly with ethical leader perceptions and indirectly with employee unethical behavior. In this paper, we use a socio-cognitive lens to integrate goal orientation theory with the literature on ethical behavior in organizations. Specifically, we propose that certain patterns of managers’ goal-oriented behavior provide signals and cues to employees about (...) their managers’ ethical leadership, which then relates to employee displays of more unethical behavior. Using a sample of 265 manager–employee dyads, our findings largely support our claims. We found that leader performance-avoid goal orientation was negatively related to perceptions of ethical leadership and positively related to employee unethical behavior. Moderated mediation tests indicated that the positive indirect effect of leader performance-avoid goal orientation on employee unethical behavior through perceptions of ethical leadership was attenuated by higher levels of leader learning goal orientation. Taken together, these findings suggest that when leaders emphasize avoiding failure while downplaying the importance of personal learning and development, employees perceive them as less ethical and are more willing to engage in ethical misconduct. We discuss implications of our findings for both theory and practice. (shrink)

It would seem, on the surface, logical that entrepreneurs would treat stakeholders with honesty and respect. However, this is not always the case—at times, entrepreneurs lie to stakeholders in order to take a step closer to achieving legitimacy. It is these legitimacy lies that are the focus of the current work. Overall, while we know that legitimacy lies are told, we know very little about the psychological processes at work that may make it more likely for someone to tell a (...) legitimacy lie. Thus, we theorize about the pressure to pursue legitimacy, the situational and individual factors that affect this pursuit, as well as how this context can lead to moral disengagement and the telling of legitimacy lies. Our theorizing advances the existing literature and provides a dynamic framework by which future research can delve more deeply into the nuanced context that breeds the escalation of legitimacy lies. (shrink)

Current advances in research, development and application of artificial intelligence systems have yielded a far-reaching discourse on AI ethics. In consequence, a number of ethics guidelines have been released in recent years. These guidelines comprise normative principles and recommendations aimed to harness the “disruptive” potentials of new AI technologies. Designed as a semi-systematic evaluation, this paper analyzes and compares 22 guidelines, highlighting overlaps but also omissions. As a result, I give a detailed overview of the field of AI ethics. Finally, (...) I also examine to what extent the respective ethical principles and values are implemented in the practice of research, development and application of AI systems—and how the effectiveness in the demands of AI ethics can be improved. (shrink)