The study sought to determine whether impression management tactics by an employee could effectively lessen the recommended punishment for an ethical rule infraction by this individual. Subjects read a vignette in which an employee violated the confidentiality of personnel records. The employee was presented as either having had a history of previous infractions or no such historical information was provided. Additionally, the employee was described as using either no impression management tactics, an apology, or a justification for his behavior. Result (...) show that in the case of a history of multiple offenses, the employee''s use of justifications effectively mitigated others'' judgments of the wrongfulness of the employee''s action, while apologies did not. Similarly, the justification appeared to lessen respondent recommendations for punishment, prevention of promotion, and demotion/firing, but only when there is a history of multiple offenses. In most cases, apologies tended to exacerbate the problem when previous offenses had been committed. The data are discussed in terms of their implications for the study of employee use of impression management tactics. (shrink)

Certain critical accounts of conventional research practices in business and the social sciences are explored in this essay. These accounts derive from alternative social paradigms and their underlying assumptions about appropriate social inquiry and knowledge construction. Among these alternative social paradigms, metatheories, mindscapes, or worldviews are social constructionist, critical, feminist, and postmodern or poststructural thinking. Individuals with these assumptions and values for knowledge construction are increasingly challenging conventional scholarship in what has been referred to as paradigm debates or wars. Issues (...) of incommensurability or cross-paradigmatic communication potentials, as well as reflexivity, are raised in terms of moral education and development potentials for applied social science fields. Barriers and suggestions for increased moral development in academic and professional communities are discussed. In particular, moral forums in which participants have enhanced intrapersonal and interpersonal communication skills appear to be needed to surface and share often taken-for-granted assumptions concerning moral knowledge construction. (shrink)