Drawing from a social predicament and identity management framework, we argue that procedural unfairness on the part of decision makers places messengers in a dilemma where they attempt to protect their professional image or legitimacy by engaging in refusals and exhibiting distancing behaviors when delivering bad news. Such behaviors however, violate key tenets of fair interpersonal treatment. The results of two experiments supported our hypotheses in samples of experienced managers. Specifically, we found that levels of messengers’ distancing and refusals were (...) greater when the procedures used by decision makers were unfair rather than fair. Additionally, messengers’ perceptions of a predicament mediated these relationships. Implications and future research directions regarding the ethical delivery of bad news in the workplace are discussed. (shrink)

In business ethics, there is a large body of literature focusing on the conditions, factors, and influences in the ethical decision-making processes. This work builds upon the past critical reviews by updating and extending the literature review found in Craft’s :221–259, 2013) study, extending her literature review to include a total of 141 articles. Since past reviews have focused on categorizing results based upon various independent variables, we instead synthesize and look at the trends of these based upon the four (...) ethical decision making categories: Awareness, Behavior, Judgment, and Intention. We focus on the moderation and mediation effects found within these studies and provide an in-depth analysis of future trends. Furthermore, we also highlight key statistical and methodological concerns, outline overarching trends, and directions of future research in empirical ethical decision making. (shrink)

Bargaining games typically involve two players distributing a specific payoff (usually money), and will be our focus here, as they are especially helpful for examining the moral psychology of justice. Examples include the ultimatum game and dictator game. We will also look at a novel twist on the dictator game by the psychologist Daniel Batson, which has fostered a large experimental literature on what he calls ‘moral hypocrisy.’ Finally we will connect this discussion of economic games to the virtue of (...) justice and to other personality traits such as agreeableness, honesty-humility, and justice sensitivity. (shrink)

Setting out to understand the effects of positive moral emotions in leadership, this research examines the consequences of leaders’ expressions of gratitude and pride for their followers. In two experimental vignette studies and a field study, leaders’ gratitude expressions showed a positive effect and leaders’ pride expressions showed a negative effect on followers’ ascriptions of leader selfishness. Thereby, leaders’ gratitude expression indirectly led to higher follower satisfaction with and OCB towards the leader, while leaders’ pride expressions indirectly reduced satisfaction with (...) and OCB towards the leader. Furthermore, leaders’ expressions of gratitude indirectly reduced followers’ intentions to leave the leader, while leaders’ expressions of pride indirectly fuelled them. Although ascriptions of selfishness consistently influenced these leader outcomes more strongly than comparable organizational outcomes, results on organizational outcomes were mixed. While leaders’ expressions of gratitude led, as expected, to higher job satisfaction and lower turnover intentions, leaders’ expressions of pride showed positive relations with both OCB towards the organization and intentions to leave the organization. We discuss the theoretical implications of leaders’ expressions of positive moral emotions as signals of outcome attributions, as well as leaders’ selfishness and practical implications that help leaders build followers’ satisfaction and positive leader–follower relationships. (shrink)

Despite the ongoing need for managers to fire employees and the wide prevalence of downsizing and layoffs, little research has examined how the conduct of termination interviews affects employee reactions. The current research was designed to explore reactions to several commonly used termination interview practices. Two scenario-based experiments examined the effectiveness of having a third party (an HR manager or a security guard) present, mentioning the employee's positive characteristics and contributions, and using alone, discrete escort, or public escort modes of (...) exit from the interview. Perceptions of being treated with respect and empathy, levels of anger, and the likelihood of complaining to others and taking legal action were assessed. Support for the effectiveness of specific termination interview practices was mixed. Specifically, in Experiment 1, third party presence was viewed as demonstrating a lack of respect, whereas mentioning positive characteristics was generally viewed favorably. Experiment 2 showed the favorable effects of mentioning positive characteristics were eroded by a security guard escort from the interview, and actually reversed and became negative when that escort was public in nature. A public escort also produced the highest levels of anger. These results suggest that multiple aspects of the termination interview process should be considered carefully when developing managerial policies. (shrink)