Download 1 Investigating the Effects of Moral Disengagement and

Investigating the Effects of Moral Disengagement and Participation on Unethical Work Behavior
Autoria: Adam Barsky, Gazi Islam, Michael J. Zyphur, Emily Johnson
ABSTRACT
With massive corruption uncovered in numerous recent corporate scandals, investigating
psychological processes underlying unethical behavior among employees has become a critical
area of research for organizational scientists. This paper seeks to explain why people engage in
deceptive and fraudulent activities by focusing on the use of moral disengagement tactics or
rationalizations to justify egregious actions at work. Additionally, participation in goal-setting is
argued to attenuate the relationship between moral disengagement and unethical behavior through
reducing the usefulness of these rationalizations. Across two studies, a lab simulation and field
survey, a measure of moral disengagement was developed for use with working adults. The
hypothesized main and interactive effects of moral disengagement, participation, and unethical
behavior were tested and largely confirmed.
TEXT BODY
The literature linking individual difference and organizational factors to ethical decision
making processes has developed substantially in the past two decades. Research has implicated
individual differences (e.g., personality factors, demographics, values and beliefs) as well as
contextual factors (e.g., codes of conduct, ethical climate/culture, and rewards and sanctions) as
explanatory factors in individual wrongdoing (see O’Fallon & Butterfield [2005] for a recent
review). However, a number of important gaps in the literature remain. First, the individual
difference research has not provided a compelling window into the cognitive processes employed
when people choose to lie, cheat, and steal. In attempting to fill this void, this paper takes an
alternate approach to understanding unethical behavior, by focusing on breakdowns in selfregulation as a common factor underlying the perpetration of deceitful or otherwise unethical acts
at work. In particular, we draw on Bandura’s (1999) social cognitive theory moral
disengagement, which suggests that individuals’ selectively disengage their moral self-sanctions,
which generally operate to keep behavior in line with moral norms, as a means of allowing
themselves to act in deviant ways. The mechanisms of moral disengagement are rationalizations
such as justifying the morality of a behavior and displacing responsibilities for ones actions.
These mechanisms have shown promise as factors underlying misbehavior among juveniles (e.g.,
Bandura, Barbaranaelli, Caprara & Pastorelli, 1996), and are growing in popularity in the social
psychological literature on wrongdoing. However, moral disengagement has yet to be integrated
into mainstream business ethics research.
A second important gap in psychologically focused business ethics research is the relative
under-emphasis on the interaction between the person and the situation as a cause of corruption
(Loe, Ferrell, & Mansfield, 2000). Organizational practices designed to promote productivity
illustrate the ways in which situations might influence unethical behavior. For instance, popular
cases of employee misconduct have been tied to organizational goal-setting practices (e.g.,
overcharging in Sears’ automotive centers, Stevenson, 1992), and experimental research has
suggested that goal-setting may cause individual’s to engage in deception and other
counterproductive behaviors (e.g., Schweitzer, Ordonez & Douma, 2004; Umphress, See, Barsky,
Gogus, Ren & Coleman, 2005). In this paper, we will extend that literature as well, by suggesting
1
that the manner in which goal-setting is conducted (extent to which individuals participate in the
process) has implications for self-regulatory failures among employees, and ultimately for
unethical behavior. Therefore, this manuscript contributes to the understanding of unethical
behavior at work by (1) integrating the concept of moral disengagement into current business
ethics theory, and (2) demonstrating how individuals’ moral disengagement and participative
goal-setting practices may interact to influence the perpetration of unethical behavior.
To this end, the paper will unfold as follows. First, the nature of moral disengagement
and how it relates to unethical behavior at work is discussed. Here, we focus on how two
mechanisms of moral disengagement are independently related to ethical behavior during the
pursuit of performance goals. The theoretical reasoning is then extended to link participation in
setting performance goals to unethical behavior, and participation is argued to attenuate the
effects of moral disengagement on the perpetration of unethical behavior. We then describe two
empirical studies, a laboratory based business simulation and a field survey, designed to test the
relevant study hypotheses. Study 1 develops a measure of moral disengagement and establishes
an empirical relationship between moral disengagement and unethical behavior. Study 2 both
extends the findings from Study 1 to a field setting, and demonstrates the interactive relationship
between moral disengagement and participative goal-setting.
Ethical Decision Making During Goal Pursuit
While numerous definitions of unethical behavior exist in the literature, Jones’ (1991)
broad conceptualization of unethical behavior as reflecting any action that is “either illegal or
morally unacceptable to the larger community” (p. 367) has become increasingly popular. Using
this definition, we attempt to contextualize unethical behavior in the current manuscript by
focusing on deception/fraudulent behaviors to which people may engage while pursuing
performance goals at work. The rationale for focusing on deception is due to the high frequency
and cost of such behaviors to organizations (Grover, 1997), and the generality in which such
behaviors are considered unethical. we have concentrated on explaining unethical behavior in the
context of goal pursuit due to increasing evidence that performance objectives set a context
where deceptive behavior is likely due to high self-interested motivation to misbehave
(Schweitzer et al, 2004) and the availability of rationalizations to do so (Lewicki, 1983).
Moral Disengagement and the Use of Rationalizations
This manuscript presupposes that most wrongdoers in organizations are psychologically
“normal,” in the sense that they see themselves as fair, moral, and honest (Allison, Messick, &
Goethals, 1989). Given that individuals typically imagine themselves as moral people, one would
expect that, if a moral issue were recognized, then individuals would always attempt to act
ethically to maintain a consonant self-image. However, this reaction is often not the case, as
ethical recognition is often a necessary but insufficient condition for ethical behavior. A further
process is also required, whereby individuals judge their behavior as acceptable and form an
intention to behave in a given way (Bersoff, 2001).
In attempting to explain deviant behavior among juvenile delinquents, Sykes and Matza
(1957) asserted that most delinquents possess conventional values and are able to commit
delinquent acts by subscribing to certain rationalizations that define such acts as situationally
appropriate. Similarly, Bandura (1999) suggested, “the self-regulatory mechanisms governing
moral conduct do not come into play unless they are activated, and that there are many
psychosocial maneuvers by which moral self-sanctions are selectively disengaged from inhumane
conduct” (p. 193). In other words, moral disengagement is predicated on the use of
“psychological maneuvers,” which are consistent with the rationalizations described by Sykes
and Matza (1957). Below, we will briefly discuss two rationalizations (i.e., moral justification
2
and displacement of responsibility), and review evidence suggesting that rationalizations disrupt
moral behavior by providing justification to morally disengage, and therefore, to act in an
unethical manner. Although people may use a variety of rationalizations (see Ashforth & Anand,
2004 for examples), moral justification and displacement of responsibility are focused on here as
both have been widely researched and have the clearest links to goal-directed work behavior.
Moral justification. Rationalizations facilitate moral disengagement by articulating
reasons why the specific unethical acts are justifiable or excusable exceptions to the general
normative rules (Ashforth & Anand, 2004). The first rationalization, moral justification, involves
cognitive reconstruction of the behavior itself. That is, people often do not intend to engage in
unethical behavior until they have justified to themselves the morality of their actions (Bandura,
1999). In this process, unethical behavior is made personally and socially acceptable by
portraying it in the service of valued or moral purposes. This concept is similar to Sykes and
Matza (1957) idea that people neutralize their wrongdoing by appealing to higher loyalties. That
is, people construe that ethical norms have to be sacrificed for more important causes.
Experimentally, Bandura et al. (1996) found that “moral reconstrual of harmful conduct by
linking it to worthy purposes” (p. 364) was the most powerful predictor of detrimental activities
(e.g., violence, lying). Even the decision makers at Enron were quoted as justifying their
fraudulent behavior in terms of creating a deregulated and ultimately better energy market (see
Eichenwald, 2005). To the extent that individuals access moral justifications for their behavior,
they are more likely to engage in behavior that would otherwise be considered normatively
harmful or unethical.
Hypothesis 1: Moral disengagement through moral justification is positively related to
engagement in unethical behavior.
Displacement of responsibility. A second commonly identified rationalization is
displacement of responsibility (Ashforth & Anand, 2004). Researchers argue that people are most
likely to form ethical intentions when they acknowledge that they have an agentive role in the
ethical behavior in which they engage (Bandura, 1999). Thus, people may disengage their moral
controls if they deny responsibility of their actions due to circumstances beyond their control.
The circumstances may include such things as management orders, peer pressure, dire financial
straits, existing precedent, that everyone else is doing it, or that they play a small part (e.g.,
Greenberg, 1998). Empirical studies have demonstrated that, in fact, displacement of
responsibility can interfere with individual’s intention to act ethically. For instance, in a
laboratory study, Bersoff (2001) found that people were likely to take an “accidental”
overpayment by an experimenter, unless a displacement of responsibility “neutralization” was
made unavailable. This neutralization was made unavailable by asking subjects explicitly if they
had received correct payment. Thus, to the extent that individuals displace responsibility for their
actions away from themselves, they will be more likely to engage in questionable behavior at
work.
Hypothesis 2: Moral disengagement through displacement of responsibility is positively
related to engagement in unethical behavior.
Thus far, we have reviewed theory and research suggesting that unethical behavior may
be the result of decision-making processes that involves rationalizing away the need to act
morally. In the next section, the reasoning is extended to the performance management domain,
where some preliminary evidence has suggested that goal-setting and reward initiatives may have
an impact on ethical work behavior (Schweitzer et al., 2004). Here we argue that the way in
which goals are set (i.e., the extent to which they are set participatively) may have an impact on
3
wrongdoing directly, and also may attenuate the relationship between moral disengagement and
unethical behavior.
Participation and Unethical Behavior
Worker participation in decision-making, such as the setting of organizational or work
related task goals, has historically been an important variable in the organizational behavior and
human resource management literatures. The particular method of goal-setting that has received
the majority of research interest is whether goals are set in a top-down or “autocratic” manner, or
made with subordinate participation (e.g., Erez, Earley, & Hulin, 1985; Latham, Erez, & Locke,
1988; Latham & Marshall, 1982; Latham, Steele, & Saari, 1982; Latham, Winters, & Locke,
1994; Leana, Locke, & Schweiger, 1990). Participation is defined as joint decision-making
(Locke & Schweiger, 1979) or as influence-sharing between hierarchical superiors and their
subordinates (Mitchell, 1973).
One problematic issue with assigning performance goals is the likelihood that the goal
recipient will engage in behavior based on goal-related criteria (i.e., that the behavior will help
achieve the goal), while other criteria (e.g., ethicality) is potentially disregarded. However, the
likelihood that individuals will pay attention to ethical considerations may be affected by whether
they are involved in the decision-making process. Specifically, when a person is simply assigned
a goal, evaluation of the available behavioral options is focused primarily on goal achievement.
That is, since the goal has already been set, all subsequent consideration of behaviors is made
through the lens of the preexisting-goal. Although, when an individual is involved in setting the
goal, the consideration of behavioral options likely begins before the goal is set, and therefore
may include other aspects besides effectiveness for goal attainment. Consistent with Latham and
Steele’s (1983) assertion that participation in decision-making can lead to the development of
strategies to accomplish the task, involvement in the decision-making process allows individuals
to think more broadly and strategically about behavioral options before an objective is specified.
This additional consideration, specifically towards ethical issues, would otherwise have been
ignored or minimized if the performance goal was simply assigned. Therefore, individuals who
participate in goal-setting should be more likely than those who are assigned performance goals
to recognize the ethicality of their behaviors, thereby decreasing the likelihood that unethical
behavior will occur.
At least two studies can be considered supportive of this position. First, Latham et al.
(1994) found that allowing for participation in goal-setting had the function of increasing the
amount of task strategizing in which participants engaged. Thus, instead of the tunnel vision
produced by assigned goal-setting, participation can encourage active evaluation of the process
by which the goal may be accomplished, and thereby enhance ethical recognition. Secondly,
Ludwig and Geller (1997), in a fascinating study on injury control among pizza delivery drivers,
found that participative goal-setting produced increases in behaviors such as turn signal and
safety belt us, targeted by the intervention as well as increases in behaviors not directly targeted
by the goal-setting. The authors concluded that participative goal-setting can function to activate
internal or personal norms governing behavior, thereby activating behaviors that are functionally
related to goal achievement, even if not specified by the goal. Consistently, the activation of
internal or personal norms can have an additional effect of enhanced ethical consideration of
behaviors not specified by a performance goal. Taken together, the Latham et al. (1994) and
Ludwig and Geller (1997) findings suggest that participation may directly impact an employee’s
engagement in unethical behavior during goal pursuit.
4
Hypothesis 3: Participation in goal setting will be negative related to unethical behavior,
such that increased opportunity to participate in setting task goals will lead to less
unethical behavior on the part of the goal recipient.
Participation and Moral Disengagement
In addition to the impact of participation on ethical behavior at work, participative goalsetting may have a substantive effect on the relationship between moral disengagement and
unethical behavior. This reasoning is predicated on two arguments. First, participation in the
goal setting process may interfere with individuals’ disengagement of their internal moral
controls by limiting the availability/usefulness of rationalizations for wrongdoing. In particular,
moral disengagement is limited through participation by increasing an individual’s accountability
for their actions. That is, assigning performance goals for employees may be perceived as an
implicit order to act in an unethical manner, thus displacing the responsibility from the individual
to the superior or organization. Simon (1945) asserted that “‘authority’ may be defined as the
power to make decision which guides the actions of another” (p. 125). The superior exercises his
or her authority by framing and transmitting decisions with the expectation that the subordinate
will accept the decision. However, Simon noted that the implementation of authority requires no
a priori command. Instead, the “rule of anticipated reactions” holds, whereby subordinates may
and are expected to ask themselves “what would my superior wish me to do in these
circumstances” (e.g., Friedrich, 1937). An individual on the receiving end of an assigned
performance goal may feel that he/she was ordered to engage in immoral behavior, even if no
explicit order was given. If individuals feel “ordered,” they may simply displace the
responsibility for their actions on their superior, thus freeing them to act in whatever way they see
fit. In contrast, when a goal is participatively set, the employee takes on some amount of
accountability for the decision, and can no longer simply attribute the goal to his/her boss. By
extension, the responsibility for the actions employees take to achieve their performance goals
cannot be easily displaced to superiors, given that the employee was partially responsible for the
level and/or type of performance goal set.
Second, as discussed above, participation may have the effect of increased task
strategizing (Latham et al., 1994). The increased use of strategizing with regard to behavioral
options to achieve the goal may attenuate the impact of rationalizations such as moral
justification and displacement of responsibility on behavior. Specifically, to the extent that an
individual derives behavioral options through being involved in the decision making process,
they may use less personal discretion in deciding what behaviors to engage in to achieve their
performance goal. Thus, while an individual may rationalize wrongdoing, the previously
participatively derived (and presumably legitimate) behavioral strategies may override an
individual’s likelihood to choose an illegitimate course of action. Given the previous arguments,
we propose the following two hypotheses:
Hypothesis 4a: Participation in goal setting and moral justification will interact to
predict Unethical Behavior, such that participation will attenuate the relationship
between moral justification and unethical behavior.
Hypothesis 4b: Participation in goal setting and displacement of responsibility will
interact to predict Unethical Behavior, such that participation will attenuate the
relationship between displacement of responsibility and unethical behavior.
The next section describes Study 1, which is designed to develop a measure of moral
disengagement, and link the construct to unethical behaviour in a controlled setting. Then, we
describe a second study (Study 2) intended to extend the reasoning and generalize the findings to
a field setting.
5
Study 1 Method
Participants
One hundred and sixty-four undergraduates were recruited from business (n =65) and
psychology classes (n=99) at a private, Southern U.S. university. The sample was 61% female,
with an average age of 19.2 years. While the stimulus materials used in the current study required
individuals to assume the role of a business person, previous studies using the current in-basket
exercise (e.g., Trevino & Youngblood, 1991) and similar exercises (e.g., Umphress, 2003) used
psychology students successfully.
Stimulus Material and Measures
Participants were asked to play the role of “Pat Mason,” the National Sales Manager of
Micrometer Electronics Inc., an electronics components manufacturing firm. First, participants
were given background information in order to facilitate their role-playing exercise. Next,
participants were presented with the first of three sections. The first section of the in-basket
contained 16 items, including an organization chart, a company newsletter, and 14 letters,
memos, or phone messages. Two of these decisions (placed 14th and 16th among the items) were
ethical in nature. The other 11 decisions were included to mask the ethics focus of the study.
Subjects were given 45 minutes to read through the in-basket and make decisions using a
response form to record decisions after each message.
Unethical Behavior. Unethical behavior was measured through two decision
opportunities. The first decision was taken directly from the in-basket developed by Trevino and
Youngblood (1990). In the first ethical decision opportunity, the parts decision, subjects
responded to a memo from William Wyley, Vice-President of Production, in which he stated that
he had decided to change the material used in a particular product component to save on
production costs. He advised that customers should not be informed despite potential problems.
Mason was informed that sales revenues would likely suffer a $500,000 loss if customers were
informed of the change. Participants decided what to do, if anything, in response. The second
ethical decision situation was adapted from an in-basket developed by Brief and Motowidlo
(1996). Mason was asked to decide whether or not he/she wished to recognize the impending
sales of a wiring system on this quarter’s financial statement even though the sale had not been
completed.
For each decision, participants were provided a response form that listed a number of
options and instructed to choose one. The available options were coded a priori as ethical or
unethical (an equivalent number of each) on the basis of criteria developed by Trevino and
Youngblood (1990). In the first situation regarding product components, a decision not to inform
customers was coded as unethical. In the financial reporting decision, participants could choose
either to record the $750,000 gain on the current quarter, or wait for the sale to be completed
before reporting the gain. A decision to record the gain in the current quarter was unethical
because it entailed dishonestly reporting the company’s current financial situation (i.e., recording
the sale of a wiring system before the sale actually occurred). Thus, each participant received a
score of 0, 1, or 2, indicating the number of unethical decisions made.
Unethical behavior scale/DV check. We checked the unethical behavior dependent
measure to ensure that individuals were aware of the behaviors in which they had engaged (i.e.,
independent of judging the ethicality of the behaviors). That is, one manner of arguing for the
validity of a measure is to show convergence in findings across operational definitions (Cook &
Campbell, 1979). Specifically, a stronger case could be made that the decisions to deceive
customers about new parts (i.e., the parts decision) and to fraudulently report financial
information (i.e., the financial reporting decision) actually represent unethical behavior if a
6
correspondence exists between making these decisions and a separate operational definition of
unethical behavior such as self-reported behavior. Therefore, participants were given an
unethical behavior scale which included 12 items measured on a one to seven scale (1 = Never
and 7 = More Than Ten Times) and indicated how often they had performed each behavior while
in the role of Pat Mason. Five of the 12 unethical behavior items were taken from an unethical
behavior scale originally developed and used by Umphress (2003). Examples of these unethical
behaviors were “conceal information from the public that could be damaging to your
organization” and “withhold negative information about your company’s product or services to
customers and clients.”
In the current study, the unethical behavior scale showed high internal consistency (α =
.90). The unethical behavior scale showed validity as a measure of unethical behavior, as the
number of unethical decisions made by participants was significantly correlated with responses to
the unethical behavior scale (r = .43, p < .01). The fact that individuals who made unethical
decisions in the simulation received higher scores on the unethical behavior scale, indicated that
people were aware of the behaviors they engaged in, even if they did not recognize the ethicality
of their behaviors. This implies that the unethical behavior scale could be acceptable to use in a
non-experimental design as well, given that the scale appeared to represent recall of actual
behavior.
Moral Disengagement. Using a priori theoretical categories of rationalizations, Bandura et
al. (1996) developed a moral disengagement scale that measured the propensity to use
rationalizations for violence and delinquency among schoolchildren. Items in the original
measure tapped eight mechanisms (e.g., rationalizations) of moral disengagement: (a) readiness
to construe injurious conduct as serving righteous purposes, (b) rendering harmful activities
benign by advantageous comparison, (c) using morally neutral language to describe harmful
activities, (d) disowning responsibility for harmful effects by displacement or (e) diffusion of
responsibility, (f) minimizing the harmful effects of one's detrimental conduct, (g) devaluing
those who are maltreated, and (h) attributing blame to them (Bandura, 1999; Bandura et al.,
1996). To cite some examples, “If people are careless where they leave things it is their own fault
if they get stolen” was one of the items measuring attribution of blame to the victims. The item
“Kids cannot be blamed for misbehaving if their friends pressured them to do it” measured
displacement of responsibility. “Some people deserve to be treated like animals” measured
proclivity for dehumanization (Bandura et al., 1996).
For the purposes of the current study, a modified version of the moral-disengagement
scale was created. The current scale includes items exclusively pertaining to the rationalizations
discussed in the introduction regarding moral justifications and displacement of responsibility. In
addition, the detrimental activities and social context embedded in each item were modified to be
relevant for working adults and to refer to activities in which the individual could have engaged
during the course of the in-basket. For example, an original moral justification item stated “It is
alright to fight to protect your friends,” and the modified item read: “It is alright to stretch the
truth to protect your company.” An original displacement of responsibility item stated “Kids
cannot be blamed for misbehaving if their friends pressured them to do it,” and was modified to
state “Employees cannot be blamed for wrongdoing if they feel that their boss pressured them to
do it.”
The moral disengagement scale consisted of 13 items rated on a 7-point Likert-type scale
(1 = Strongly Disagree to 7 = Strongly Agree) indicating the degree to which participants had the
following thoughts while in the role of Pat Mason. As discussed above, moral disengagement was
conceptualized to be a construct composed of rationalizations that allow an individual to
7
disengage their internal moral controls by (a) justifying unethical behavior in moral terms as
moral justification and (b) displacing responsibility for the behavior to an external agent,
displacement of responsibility.
Study 1 Results
Descriptive statistics and intercorrelations are presented in Table 1. As predicted, both
moral disengagement through moral justification and displacement of responsibility were
significantly related to unethical behavior. However, the magnitude of the relationships was quite
different, with moral justification strongly related (r = .34, p < .01) and displacement of
responsibility only weakly related (r = .15, p < .05) to unethical behavior. When both variables
were simultaneously entered into a regression equation predicting unethical behavior, the effect
of moral justification on unethical behavior changed very little (β = .33, t = 4.12, p <.01), while
the effect of displacement of responsibility dropped to near zero (β = .01, t = .12, ns). Thus, the
sub-dimensions do not explain independent variance, as moral justification appears to account for
virtually all of the variability in unethical behavior. The significance of this finding is discussed
in the following section.
Study 1 Discussion
Consistent with previous theorizing on the subject (Bandura, 1999), moral disengagement
through moral justification and displacement of responsibility was significantly related to
individuals’ propensity to make unethical decisions. However, while moral disengagement
through the use of rationalizations is implicitly (e.g., Rest, 1986) or explicitly (e.g., Bandura et
al., 1996; Sykes & Matza, 1957) central to most models of ethical decision-making, this study
represents the first empirical demonstration of the relationship in the orgnizational literature.
Therefore, this paper may provide some important findings regarding the nature of moral
disengagement in organizational behavior. First, the factor structure of the moral disengagement
scale corresponded to the theoretical dimensions specified in the original scale developed by
Bandura et al. (1996). That is, items tapping moral justification, or rationalizations that construe
misbehavior as moral, tended to cluster together, and items related to displacement of
responsibility tended to cluster together. Second, we suggested that moral disengagement may
represent a unitary construct, with moral justification and displacement of responsibility as
alternate mechanisms through which this may take place. However, given the results of Study 1,
treating moral disengagement as a general factor does not appear to be appropriate. Instead,
moral disengagement though moral justification and moral disengagement though displacement
of responsibility, appear to operate differently, and should be assessed independently. This is,
consistent with studies suggesting that individuals seek to appear “moral” (Batson, Thompson, &
Seuferling, 1997), justifying the morality of a harmful or deceitful act seems to be substantially
more important, in terms of releasing an individual to engage in the behavior, than simply
appearing “not responsible.”
Given the demonstrated a link between moral disengagement and unethical behavior in
the simulation study described above, a number of important questions must be addressed. First,
to what extent do the results generalize to a working population? As with all simulation based
studies using college students, the issues of external validity is an important one. Second, what
are the boundary conditions for the relationship? Specifically, what contextual factors may limit
the availability of rationalizations, or attenuate the force of peoples’ disengagement on their
tendency to engage in unethical behavior at work? These questions are addressed in a second
field study, described below.
Study 2 Method
Sample
8
For the current study, 111 participants were recruited from two sources: (a) professional
MBA (PMBA) and executive MBA (EMBA) classes at a private, Southern U.S. university, and
(b) a professional association of purchasing managers. One requirement for inclusion in this
study was that individuals were employed at the time of the survey administration. Of the 111
initial participants, 83 reported that they were currently employed. One individual reported only
working 3 hours per week, and therefore, was dropped from analysis. The remainder of the
participants worked at least 15 hours per week, with an average of 44.4 hours/week. Individuals
were told specifically that their participation was completely voluntary. Given the nature of the
sample for the current study, participants held a variety of different jobs. The sample was
primarily male (64%), with 42% identifying themselves as supervisors or managers, and 6
individuals identifying themselves as business owners. In addition, all responses were
confidential and only utilized for research purposes.
Measures
Participation in Goal-setting. The participation in goal-setting scale (hereafter referred to
as the participation scale) was designed to assess the extent to which people participated in
setting their performance goals at work. The items for the goal-setting method scale were taken
from the GSQ (Locke & Latham, 1984) and contained items related to choice of goals (i.e., item
2: “My boss lets me have some say in deciding what my performance objectives will be”; and
item 3: “I do not have any input in deciding what my performance goals will be [reverse
coded]”), involvement or voice in the process of setting goals (i.e., “My boss works with me to
come up with my performance goals”; and item 5: “My boss tells me what my performance
objectives are without consulting me [reverse coded]”).
The measurement properties of the scale were assessed in the current study, and indicated
that the scale was highly reliable (α = .83) and a single factor solution was extracted from a
principle axis exploratory factor analysis (eigenvalue = 3.29) explaining 65.87% of the variance.
A second factor had an eigenvalue of only 0.61, far below the second factor eigenvalue of 1.09
estimated by parallel analysis. Consequently, all 5 items were retained and averaged to form a
scale where higher scores indicated greater participation in goal-setting.
Moral Disengagement. The moral disengagement scale used in the current study is
described in detail in Study 1. In the current study, the instructions were altered such that
participants were asked to report the extent to which they experienced a list of thoughts while in
their current job. Consistent with Study 1, moral disengagement items were subjected to a
principle axis exploratory factor analysis with varimax rotation to assess factor structure, and
once again a two factor solution emerged. Therefore, given the similar pattern of results, and to
remain consistent across studies, a 4 item moral justification subscale (α = .72) and a 6 item
displacement of responsibility subscale (α = .77) was created using the items specified in Study 1.
Unethical Behavior. The same 12-item unethical behavior scale used as a dependent
measure check in Study 1 was used as the DV in Study 2. Participants were asked to indicate on a
scale from one to seven (where 1 = Never and 7 = More Than Ten Times) how often they had
performed a list of behaviors since they began their current job. Consistent with Study 1 results,
the scale displayed acceptable internal consistency (α = .78), and a single factor solution using
principle axis factor analysis.
Study 2 Results
Descriptive statistics and correlations are reported in Table 1. Hypotheses 1 and 2 were
tested by examining the bivariate relationship between the mechanisms of moral disengagement,
moral justification and displacement of responsibility, and unethical behavior. As evident in
Table 2, both mechanisms were significantly related to self-reported fraudlent and deception,
9
although moral justification showed a slightly stronger effect (r = .36, p < .01) than displacement
of responsibility (r = .29, p < .05). However, consistent with Study 1, when unethical behavior
was regressed on moral justification and displacement of responsibility together, the independent
effects were drastically different. That is, while moral justification remained a strong predictor of
reported unethical behavior (β = .29, p<.05), the independent effect of displacement of
responsibility on unethical behavior, was substantially diminished (β = .11, ns). Therefore, once
again, when individuals disengage their moral and social controls through moral justifications,
the use of alternate rationalizations to morally disengage by displacing responsibility to one’s
supervisor does not appear to elicit more unethical behavior. Support for the third hypothesis
was inferred by examined the bivariate relationship between the participation scale and the
unethical behavior scale. This analysis was conducted only with the sub-sample of participants
who were exposed to goal-setting at work. The null hypothesis was rejected, as a significant
correlation (r = -.34, p < .05) was observed between paticipation and unethical behavior,
indicating that individuals who responded more affirmatively to items asking if they were
allowed to participate in setting performance goals, were less likely to report engaging in
unethical behaviors at work.
To test the fourth hypotheses, a moderated regression analysis (Cohen & Cohen, 1983)
was conducted to assess whether the magnitude of the relationship between moral disengagement
and unethical behavior varied across levels of participation. Moderated regression analysis is
conducted by comparing a reduced regression model composed of an equation regressing
unethical behavior on moral justification and displacement of responsibility and the moderator
participation, with a complete model that includes the independent and moderator variables and a
cross-product term representing the interaction of IV and the moderator. As shown in Table 2,
participation significantly moderated the moral justification → unethical behavior relationship,
but did not moderate the displacement of responsibility → unethical behavior relationship.
Therefore, hypothesis 4a was supported, while hypothesis 4b was not. To elucidate the
significant findings, a plot of the significant interaction is presented in Figure 1.
Study 2 Discussion
The results from Study 2 replicate the findings from study 1 to a working field sample,
and extend the reasoning to incorporate the influence of contextual factors as well. As predicted,
both moral justification and displacement of responsibility were significant predictors of
unethical behavior. However, once again, displacement of responsibility does not appear to add
much additional information. In addition, participation in goal-setting was shown to decrease the
likelihood of unethical behavior, which represents the first such finding in the organizational
literature. Perhaps most interesting, while moral justifications tended to increase in the reported
incidences of unethical behavior, this was only true when employees did not feel that they had the
opportunity to participate in setting their performance goals at work. As such, participation may
have value as both a predictor and buffer for individuals to act ethically at work.
The second study was not without its limitations. First, while cross-sectional data does
not provide adequate control for causal or directional statements, the link between moral
disengagement and reported unethical behavior is provocative. In the general discussion, we will
return to this point, but for now it is worth recognizing that mechanisms for moral disengagement
and unethical behavior may have a reciprocal relationship. That is, while rationalizing
wrongdoing may make unethical behavior more likely, engaging in unethical behavior may entice
individuals to justify their actions to make their behavior more palatable (Bandura, 1999). As
long as unethical behavior is conducted without repercussions, this cycle may continue unabated.
Second, the measurement of unethical behavior was generic and, therefore, may not have applied
10
equally across occupations. For example, an unethical behavior measure for car salespeople may
look different than an unethical behavior measure for project managers, given that each group has
more or less opportunity to engage in a given set of behaviors. One potential solution would be to
study a single occupation and develop an idiosyncratic measure composed of unethical behaviors
specific to that occupation. Alternatively, a measure of unethical behavior based on a welldeveloped construal of the unethical behavior construct would have much greater utility.
Unfortunately, the organizational and psychological literatures lack even a generally accepted
taxonomic structure for domains of unethical behavior. While Warren (2003) and other
researchers have attempted to specify the domains of employee deviance, unethical behavior
remains a rather amorphous construct, embodying a variety of socially unacceptable behaviors.
However, the consistency in the findings across studies is at least encouraging that the measures
tapped the appropriate constructs.
General Discussion
The results regarding the mechanisms moral disengagement are provocative for future
research, both as in terms of conceptualizing the variables and understanding how disengaging
one’s moral controls may influence one’s propensity to act unethically. The findings related to
the differential impact of moral disengagement facets on unethical behavior has important
implications for understanding why (a) an individual might engage in an egregious act, and (b)
where an organization seeking to reduce such acts may target an intervention. For instance, as
the world is stunned by images of soldiers brutalizing prisoners in recent conflicts (e.g., Glanz,
2004), many question whether the soldiers engaged in their criminal behavior because they felt
that their superiors were ultimately responsible (although they were apparently not given specific
orders to abuse the prisoners) or because they felt that their brutality had a just and moral
rationale given the potential to eventually save lives. If the former is the case, then investigators
should look to a breakdown in accountability in the chain of military command. However, if the
latter is the case, then one must look to the ideological climate that would allow for such acts to
be morally justified.
In addition, given that organizational researchers have shown that providing
justifications for wrongdoing can influence other types of organizationally undesirable behaviors
such as discriminatory behaviors (e.g., Brief et al., 2000), establishing a connection between
rationalizations for moral disengagement and unethical conduct is a reasonable next step. Indeed,
the availability of rationalizations may be amenable to change, thereby providing an avenue for
combating unethical behavior at work. For example, moral justifications such as “If an employee
needs to stretch the truth to do their job, they cannot be blamed for lying” (item 8) could be
countered by executives who emphasize the priority of honest business dealing over increasing
revenue.
Finally, if rationalizations cannot be changed, at least the impact of moral disengagement
on future behavior can be minimized. Consistent with the emerging trend in organizational
research to study outcomes other than employee productivity and organizational effectiveness
(see Griffin & O’Leary-Kelly, 2004), the widespread organizational practice of participative
goal-setting is studied through the lens of workplace ethics rather than the lens of employee
productivity. As such, we further demonstrated that the method of managing performance
through participatively setting goals may limit the effect of individuals’ rationalizations on their
willingness to act unethically. Taken together, the findings suggest that individual reasoning and
judgment are central to, but not solely responsible for, misbehavior in the workplace. While this
paper may raise more questions than it answers, we see it as a step in the right direction. As
widespread corporate and political corruption is uncovered on an almost daily basis,
11
understanding the individual, contextual, and interactive predictors of unethical behavior at work
has become, more than ever, an important agenda for organizational scientists.
12
References
Allison, S. T., Messick, D. M., & Goethals, G. R. (1989). On being better but not smarter than
others: The Muhammad Ali effect. Social Cognition, 7, 275-295.
Ashforth, B.E., & Anand, V. (2004). The normalization of corruption in organizations. Research
in Organizational Behavior, 25, 1-52.
Bacon, D. R. (2001). An evaluation of cluster analytic approaches to initial model specification.
Structural Equation Modelling, 8, 397-429.
Bandura, A. (1999). Moral disengagement in the perpetration of inhumanities. Personality and
Social Psychology Review, 3< 193-209.
Bandura, A., Barbaranaelli, C., Caprara, G. V., & Pastorelli, C. (1996). Mechanisms of moral
disengagement in the exercise of moral agency. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 71, 364-374.
Batson, C. D., Thompson, E. R., & Seuferling, G. (1999). Moral hypocrisy: Appearing moral to
oneself without being so. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 77, 525-537.
Bersoff, D. M. (2001). Why good people sometimes do bad things: Motivated reasoning and
unethical behavior. In J. Dienhart, D. Moberg, and R. Duska (Eds.), The next phase of
business ethics: Integrating psychology and ethics (Vol. 3, pp. 239-262). New York: JAI
Press.
Brief, A. P., Dietz, J., Cohen, R. R., Pugh, S. D., & Vaslow, J. B. (2000). Just doing business:
Modern racism and obedience to authority as explanations for employment
discrimination. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 81, 72-97.
Brief, A. P., & Motowidlo, S. J. (1986). Prosocial organizational behaviors: Academy of
Management Review, 11, 710-725.
Colman, J.W. (1987). The criminal elite: Understanding white-collar crime (4th ed.). New York:
St. Martin’s Press.
Cook, T. D., & Campbell, D. T. (1979). Quasi-experimentation: Design & analysis for field
settings. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
Cohen, J. & Cohen, P. (1983). Applied multiple regression/correlation analysis for the behavioral
sciences. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Eichenwald, K. (2005). A conspiracy of fools: A true story. New York: Random House.
Erez, M., Earley, P. C. & Hulin, C. L. (1985). The impact of participation on goal acceptance and
performance: A two-step model. Academy of Management Journal, 28, 50-66.
Friedrich, C. J. (1937). Constitutional government and politics. New York: Harper & Bros.
Glanz, J. (2004, May 9). Torture Is Often a Temptation and Almost Never Works. The New York
Times, A4.
Greenberg, J. (1998). The cognitive geometry of employee theft: Negotiating “the line” between
taking and stealing. In R. W. Griffin, A. O’Leary-Kelly, & J. M. Collins (Eds.),
Dysfunctional behavior in organizations (Vol 2, pp. 147-193). Stamford, CT: JAI Press.
Griffin, R. W. & O'Leary-Kelly, A. (Eds). The Dark Side of Organizational Behavior. New
York: Wiley.
Jones, T.M. (1991). Ethical decision-making by individuals in organizations: An issue contingent
model. Academy of Management Review, 16, 366-395.
Kaufman, J. D., & Dunlap, W. P. (2000). Determining the number of factors to retain: A
Windows-based FORTRAN-IMSL program for parallel analysis. Behavior Research
Methods, Instruments & Computers, 32, 389-395.
13
Latham, G. P. (2001). The reciprocal effects of science on practice: Insights from the practice and
science of goal-setting. Canadian Psychology, 42, 1-11.
Latham, G. P., Erez, M. & Locke, E. A. (1988). Resolving scientific disputes by the joint design
of crucial experiments by the antagonists: Application to the Erez-Latham dispute
regarding participation in goal setting. Journal of Applied Psychology, 73, 753-772.
Latham, G. P. & Marshall, H. A. (1982). The effects of self-set, participatively set and assigned
goals on the performance of government employees. Personnel Psychology, 35, 399-404.
Latham, G. P. & Steele, T. P. (1983). The motivational effects of participation versus goal setting
on performance. Academy of Management Journal, 26, 406-417.
Latham, G. P., Steele, T. P. & Saari, L. M. (1982). The effects of participation and goal difficulty
on performance. Personnel Psychology, 35, 677-686.
Latham, G. P., Winters, D. C. & Locke, E. A. (1994). Cognitive and motivational effects of
participation: A mediator study. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 15, 49-63.
Leana, C. R., Locke, E. A., & Schweiger, D. M. (1990). Fact and fiction in analyzing
participation research: A critique of Cotton, Vellrath, Froggatt, Lengnick-Hall, and
Jennings. Academy of Management Review, 15, 137-147.
Lewicki, R. J. (1983). Lying and deception: A behavioral model. In M. H. Bazerman & R. J.
Lewicki (Eds.), Negotiating in organizations (pp. 68-90). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (1984). Goal setting: A motivational technique that works.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Locke, E. A. & Schweiger, D. M. (1979). Participation in decision-making: One more look. In B.
M. Staw (Ed.), Research in organizational behavior (Vol. 1, pp. 265—339). Greenwich,
CT: JAI Press.
Loe, T.W., Ferrell, L., & Mansfield, P. (2000). A review of empirical studies assessing ethical
decision-making in business. Journal of Business Ethics, 25, 185-204.
Ludwig, T. D., & Geller, E. S. (1997). Assigned versus participative goal setting and response
generalization: Managing injury control among professional pizza deliverers. Journal of
Applied Psychology, 82, 253-261.
Mitchell, T. R. (1973). Motivation and participation: An integration. Academy of Management
Journal, 16, 670 – 679.
O’Fallon, M. J., & Butterfield, K. D. (2005). A review of the empirical ethical decision-making
literature: 1996–2003. Journal of Business Ethics, 59, 375–413.
Rest, J. R. (1986). Moral development: Advances in research and theory. New York: Praeger.
Schweitzer, M., Ordonez, L. D., & Douma, B. (2004). The dark side of goal setting: The role of
goals in motivating unethical behavior. Academy of Management Journal, 47(3), 422432.
Simon, H. A. (1945). Administrative behavior. New York: The Free Press
Smith-Crowe, K., Umphress, E. E., Brief, A. P., Tenbrunsel, A. E., & Chan, S. (2003), August.
Social dominance orientation and accountability: A field study of corporate corruption.
Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Academy of Management, Seattle, WA
Street, M. D., Douglas, S. C., Geiger, S. W., & Martinko, M. J. (2001). The impact of cognitive
expenditure on the ethical decision-making process: The cognitive elaboration model.
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 100, 29-57.
Stevenson, R. W. (1992, June 17). Sears ducks, then tries to cover. The New York Times, D1.
Sykes, G., & Matza, D. (1957). Techniques of neutralization: A theory of delinquency. American
Sociological Review, 22, 664-670.
14
Trevino, L. K. (1986). Ethical decision-making in organizations: A person-situation interactionist
model. Academy of Management Review, 11, 601-617.
Trevino, L. K., & Youngblood, S. A. (1990). Bad apples in bad barrels: A causal analysis of
ethical decision-making behavior. Journal of Applied Psychology, 75, 378-385.
Umphress, E. (2003). In the name of the company: Unethical behaviors perpetrated by employees
in response to fair treatment and accountability. Dissertation Abstracts International
Section A: Humanities & Social Sciences, 64, 989.
Umphress, E., See., K., Barsky, A., Gogus, C., Ren, L., & Coleman, A. (2005). Be careful what
you wish for: Goals influencing ethical behavior in organizations. Symposium Presented at
the 65th Annual Conference of the Academy of Management, Honolulu, Hawaii.
Warren, D.E. (2003). Constructive and destructive deviance in organizations. Academy of
Management Review, 28, 622 – 632.
15
Table 1
Means, Standard Deviations and Intercorrelations of Variables Used in Study1 and Study 2
Mean
Study 1
Mean
Study 2
SD
Study 1
SD
Study 2
1
2
3
4
0.62
1.49
0.69
0.67
(.78)
-
.34**
.15*
-
5.54
-
1.16
-.34* a
(.83)
-
-
3. Moral Justification
2.74
2.24
1.17
0.95
.36** b
-.14 a
[.82]
(.72)
.44**
4. Displacement of
Responsibility
2.92
2.64
.93
1.04
.29* b
-.15 a
.63** b
[.71]
(.77)
Variable
1. Unethical Behavior
2. Participation in GoalSetting
Note. Study 1 correlations are above the diagonal. N = 164 for all Study 1 correlations. Study 2 correlations are
below the diagonal. N= 59 – 80 for all Study 2 correlations. Reliabilities for Study 1 are in brackets on the diagonal,
reliabilities for Study 2 are in parentheses on the diagonal.
a
= correlations computed on N = 59; b = correlations computed on N = 80.
* = p < .05; ** = p < .01.
Table 2
Summary of Moderated Regression Analysis Predicting Unethical Behavior
∆R2
Variable
β
Reduced Model
.23**
Participation
.34**
Moral Justification
-.29*
Complete Model
.08**
Participation
.33**
Moral Justification
-.33**
Participation X Moral
-.31**
Justification
Reduced Model
SE
.08
.07
.07
.06
.06
.24**
Participation
Displacement of
Responsibility
Complete Model
-.28*
.07
.36**
.07
-.28*
.06
.32**
.07
-.21
.05
.04
Participation
Displacement of
Responsibility
Participation X
Displacement of
Responsibility
Note. N = 59. Moderation is evidenced by significant change in R2 in the complete model, or a significant parameter
estimate for the interaction term in the complete model.
* p < .05; ** p < .01.
16
Figure 1. Plot of Interaction between Moral Disengagement and Participation Predicting
Unethical Behavior.
Participation X Moral Justific
2.50
Unethical Behavior
2.00
1.50
Participation
high
med
low
1.00
0.50
0.00
low
•
med
high
Moral Justification
17