Many organizations offer their employees the opportunity to voice their opinions about work-related issues because of the positive consequences associated with offering such an opportunity. However, little attention has been given to the possibility that offering voice may have negative effects as well. We propose that negative consequences are particularly likely to occur when employees perceive the opportunity to voice opinions to be “pseudo voice”—voice opportunity given by managers who do not have the intention to actually consider employee input (i.e., (...) managerial disregard). The effects of this kind of deception were examined by means of a survey among employees ( N = 137) and managers ( N = 14) of a Dutch healthcare organization. We hypothesized and found that perceived pseudo voice led to reduced voice behavior and, as a result, increased intragroup conflict. These results imply that while offering voice opportunity is mostly seen as an effective management strategy, negative effects are likely to occur when a manager is perceived to try to deceive employees by pretending to be interested in their points of view. (shrink)

The literature on organizational ethicality to date has focused primarily on elements of the cultural, social, and political factors that enhance positive behaviors, interspersed with isolated accounts of malfeasance and wrongdoing. This treatise defines the anatomy of organizational dysfunction as a matter of ethicality, reframing the relationship from individual transgression to the organization itself. It is argued that the structure of an organization predisposes in large part whether it is itself conducive or prohibitive to unethical acts. Our approach allows for (...) a new stream of ethics research whose focus is how an organization functions rather than on the specific acts of those within it. (shrink)

We view an individual’s legitimacy judgment as an attitude. It is influenced by a personal belief system composed of global values and domain-specific beliefs, consistent with the value–attitude system in marketing. Our context is the legitimacy of the Canadian oil sands industry. We hypothesize that an individual’s legitimacy judgment may be influenced by three domain-specific beliefs: the credibility of the industry, environmental non-government organizations, and the mass media. We also examine two global values associated with sustainable development: concern for the (...) environment and concern for economic development. These are expected to have negative and positive effects, respectively, on an individual’s legitimacy judgment and on industry credibility. We also examine if these relationships are influenced by proximity to the oil sands. We test our theory using a mixed methods research design and a structural equation analysis on a survey of 853 residents of Edmonton and Toronto, Canada. We find support for most of our hypotheses. (shrink)

The issue of damaged relationships and of repairing them is very important, especially in recent years with reports of organizations which damage relationships with various stakeholders. Many studies have investigated how individuals react to damaged relationships after perceiving injustice or receiving offense in organizations. A part of this research has been focused on revenge or other types of negative responses. However, individuals can choose to react in other ways than revenge, willing to repair relationships through reconciliation. Recently, the effectiveness of (...) reconciliation to repair damaged relationship in organizations has been linked to restorative justice. For the purpose of this article we are interested in understanding how restorative justice can be effective in repairing damaged or broken relationships in organizations, as inspired by principles of compassion or mercy. In this sense, we look for a convincing philosophical foundation for restorative justice, proposing Levinas’ ethics as a way to justify it. (shrink)

Many organizations offer their employees the opportunity to voice their opinions about work-related issues because of the positive consequences associated with offering such an opportunity. However, little attention has been given to the possibility that offering voice may have negative effects as well. We propose that negative consequences are particularly likely to occur when employees perceive the opportunity to voice opinions to be “pseudo voice”—voice opportunity given by managers who do not have the intention to actually consider employee input (i.e., (...) managerial disregard). The effects of this kind of deception were examined by means of a survey among employees (N = 137) and managers (N = 14) of a Dutch healthcare organization. We hypothesized and found that perceived pseudo voice led to reduced voice behavior and, as a result, increased intragroup conflict. These results imply that while offering voice opportunity is mostly seen as an effective management strategy, negative effects are likely to occur when a manager is perceived to try to deceive employees by pretending to be interested in their points of view. (shrink)

Drawing from research on person–organization fit, work engagement, and emotional intelligence, this study investigates the mediating role of work engagement in the link between goal congruence and organizational deviance, as well as how this mediating effect might be moderated by emotional intelligence. Data captured from 272 employees of four IT companies show that the goal congruence between employees and their supervisor negatively affects the former’s organizational deviance, though this effect disappears when controlling for the intermediate role of work engagement. Further, (...) emotional intelligence moderates both the positive relationship between goal congruence and work engagement and the negative relationship between work engagement and organizational deviance, such that these relationships become invigorated at higher levels of emotional intelligence. The findings also reveal that the indirect effect of goal congruence on organizational deviance through work engagement is more pronounced at higher levels of emotional intelligence, which offers evidence of moderated mediation. These findings have significant implications for research and practice. (shrink)

Business schools play an instrumental role in laying the foundations for ethical behavior and socially responsible actions in the business community. Drawing on social learning and identity theories and using data collected from undergraduate business students, we found that ethical climate was a significant predictor of unethical behavior, such that students with positive perceptions about their business school’s ethical climate were more likely to refrain from unethical behaviors. Moreover, we found that high moral and institutional identities strengthened the effect of (...) ethical climate on unethical behavior. In addition to novel theoretical contributions to the business ethics and socio-psychology literature, this study offers practical pathways through which business schools can nurture and instill the values and behaviors that ultimately help shape positive organizational ethics. Directions for future research are provided. (shrink)

This paper examines the effects of employees’ sense that they work for a purpose-driven company on their workplace sustainability behaviors. Conceptualizing corporate purpose as an overarching, relevant, shared ethical vision of why a company exists and where it needs to go, we argue that it is particularly suited for driving employee sustainability behaviors, which are more ethically complex than the types of employee ethical behaviors typically examined by prior research. Through four studies, two involving the actual employees of construction companies, (...) we demonstrate that purpose drives the sustainability behaviors of employees by causing them to take psychological ownership of sustainability. In addition, we show that the sustainability-enhancing effect of purpose is stronger when employees perceive that they have higher autonomy in enacting their sustainability actions and for those employees for whom being moral is more central to their sense of self. (shrink)