Religiosity and Moral Identity: The Mediating Role of Self-Control

The ethics literature has identified moral motivation as a factor in ethical decision-making. Furthermore, moral identity has been identified as a source of moral motivation. In the current study, we examine religiosity as an antecedent to moral identity and examine the mediating role of self-control in this relationship. We find that intrinsic and extrinsic dimensions of religiosity have different direct and indirect effects on the internalization and symbolization dimensions of moral identity. Specifically, intrinsic religiosity plays a role in counterbalancing the negative impact of extrinsic religiosity on the internalization of moral identity. Further, intrinsic religiosity also counterbalances the negative and indirect impact of extrinsic religiosity on symbolization of moral identity via self-control. Lastly, self-control does not play a mediating role in the impact of religiosity on the internalization dimension of moral identity. We conclude that this study presents important findings that advance our understanding of the antecedents of moral identity, and that these results may have implications for the understanding of ethical decision-making.     

Exploring how and when ethical conflict impairs employee organizational commitment: A stress perspective investigation

Previous studies demonstrate the detrimental effect of ethical conflict (i.e., incompatibility between ethical values of employees and organizations) on employee organizational commitment. However, few studies have assessed the underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions that may contribute to a deeper understanding of how and when the detrimental effect manifests. Drawing on the transactional model of stress and literature on the moral self, our study examines the psychological strain as a key intermediate mechanism that channels the negative relationship between the ethical conflict and organizational commitment. Furthermore, we posit that employees with different levels of moral identity and moral efficacy may suffer differently from ethical conflict. We tested our research model with two-wave lagged data obtained from 265 healthcare employees and found that the indirect, negative effect of ethical conflict on organizational commitment via psychological strain is strongest among employees with high moral identity and low moral efficacy. Interestingly, results show that employees with low moral identity and high moral efficacy do not suffer from ethical conflict. These findings suggest that ethical conflict is differentially harmful to employees and that a more nuanced understanding of its contingent effects is needed.     

To Avenge or Not to Avenge? Exploring the Interactive Effects of Moral Identity and the Negative Reciprocity Norm

Across three studies, the authors examine the interactive effects of moral identity and the negative reciprocity norm in predicting revenge. The general argument is that moral identity provides the motivational impetus for individuals’ responses, whereas the normative framework that people adopt as a basis for guiding moral action (e.g., negative reciprocity norm) influences the direction of the response. Results indicated that moral identity and the negative reciprocity norm significantly interacted to predict revenge. More specifically, the symbolization dimension of moral identity interacted with the negative reciprocity norm to predict revenge when individuals were the targets of mistreatment, whereas the internalization dimension of moral identity interacted with the negative reciprocity norm to predict revenge when individuals were the observers of mistreatment. Theoretical implications related to the differences between the symbolization and internalization dimensions of moral identity, the importance of examining normative frameworks, and the functionality of revenge are discussed.     

What Have I Done to Deserve This? Effects of Employee Personality and Emotion on Abusive Supervision

Drawing on victim precipitation theory, we propose that certain employees are more likely to perceive abusive supervision because of their personality traits. Specifically, we hypothesize that subordinates’ emotional stability, conscientiousness, and agreeableness will be negatively related to perceived abuse from their supervisor and that negative emotions at work will mediate these relationships. We surveyed 222 employees and found that emotional stability and conscientiousness negatively predicted employees’ self-reports of abusive supervision and that this relationship was mediated by negative emotions. Thus, employees lower in emotional stability or conscientiousness are more likely to experience negative emotions, which in turn is related to higher levels of abuse.     

The Influence of Business Ethics Education on Moral Efficacy,Moral Meaningfulness,and Moral Courage: A Quasi-experimental Study

The research described here contributes to the extant empirical research on business ethics education by examining outcomes drawn from the literature on positive organizational scholarship (POS). The general research question explored is whether a course on ethical decision-making in business could positively influence students’ confidence in their abilities to handle ethical problems at work (i.e., moral efficacy), boost the relative importance of ethics in their work lives (i.e., moral meaningfulness), and encourage them to be more courageous in raising ethical problems at work even if it is unpopular (i.e., moral courage). Specifically, the study used a rigorous quasi-experimental pretest–posttest research design with a treatment (N = 30) and control group (N = 30) to investigate whether a graduate-level course in business ethics could influence students’ levels of moral efficacy, meaningfulness, and courage. Findings revealed that participants in the business ethics treatment course experienced significant positive increases in each of the three outcome variables as compared to the control group. The largest increase was in moral efficacy, followed by moral courage, and finally, moral meaningfulness. These findings are discussed in the context of the current research on business ethics education and POS. Implications for future research are discussed.     

Impact of employees’ perceived threat of market competition on unethical marketing and selling practices: Moral disengagement and ethical leadership

This study draws on the social cognitive theory to examine the effect of perceived market competition on employees’ unethical marketing and selling practices. The boundary conditions associated with this relationship were examined, and we posit that perceived market competition is related to unethical marketing and selling practices through the mediating mechanism of moral disengagement. We further propose that ethical leadership moderates the relationship between the perceived threat of market competition, moral disengagement, and tendency toward unethical marketing and selling practices. We tested our hypotheses with a sample of 387 employees working in the banking sector in Pakistan. Our results suggest that moral disengagement had a full mediation effect between the perceived threat of market competition and tendency of employees toward unethical marketing and selling practices. Moreover, ethical leadership moderated the relationship between moral disengagement and the tendency of employees toward unethical marketing practices. The research findings indicate that when field employees encounter threat perceptions due to market competition, they have a propensity toward engaging in unethical marketing and selling practices when they can activate moral disengagement. This study also found that ethical leadership negatively moderates the relationship of moral disengagement with employees’ tendency toward unethical marketing and selling practices.     

Host Country National Employees’ Prosocial Behavior toward Expatriates in Foreign Subsidiaries: A Common Ingroup Identity Model Perspective

Social categorization is predominately assumed to have negative effects on the prosocial behavior of host country national (HCN) employees toward expatriates in foreign subsidiaries. Challenging this assumption, I draw on the common ingroup identity model to propose that dual identity – simultaneous identification with membership in a subgroup and in a superordinate group – reduces HCNs’ intergroup biases and facilitates prosocial behavior. More specifically, I hypothesize that HCNs’ organizational identity has a moderating effect on the positive relationship between HCNs’ expatriate outgroup categorization and dual identity, such that this relationship is weaker when organizational identity is low. Furthermore, I hypothesize that dual identity mediates the relationship between expatriate outgroup categorization and two prosocial behaviors: information sharing and affiliative citizenship behavior. Results from the data collected from 1,290 HCN employees in Japan provide support for these hypotheses and the moderated mediation model.     

Antecedents to the Justification of Norm Violating Behavior Among Business Practitioners

This study investigates the role that moral identity, religiosity, and the institutionalization of ethics play in determining the extent of justification of norm violating behavior among business practitioners. Moral justification is where a person, rather than assuming responsibility for an outcome, attempts to legitimize ethically questionable behavior. Results of the study indicate that both the internalization and symbolization dimensions of moral identity as well as intrinsic religiosity and the explicit institutionalization of ethics within the organization are significant determinants of the moral justification of unethical behaviors.     

You May Not Reap What You Sow: How Employees’ Moral Awareness Minimizes Ethical Leadership’s Positive Impact on Workplace Deviance

Although a growing body of research has shown the positive impact of ethical leadership on workplace deviance, questions remain as to whether its benefits are consistent across all situations. In this investigation, we explore an important boundary condition of ethical leadership by exploring how employees’ moral awareness may lessen the need for ethical leadership. Drawing on substitutes for leadership theory, we suggest that when individuals already possess a heightened level of moral awareness, ethical leadership’s role in reducing deviant actions may be reduced. However, when individuals lack this strong moral disposition, ethical leadership may be instrumental in inspiring them to reduce their deviant actions. To enhance the external validity and generalizability of our findings, the current research used two large field samples of working professionals in both Turkey and the USA. Results suggest that ethical leadership’s positive influence on workplace deviance is dependent upon the individual’s moral awareness—helpful for those employees whose moral awareness is low, but not high. Thus, our investigation helps to build theory around the contingencies of ethical leadership and the specific audience for whom it may be more (or less) influential.     

Promoting employees’ pro-environmental behaviour through empowering leadership: The roles of psychological ownership,empowerment role identity,and environmental self-identity

This study develops a theoretical model to investigate when and why empowering leadership promotes employees’ pro-environmental behaviour (PEB). Synthesising psychological ownership theory and role identity theory, we propose that empowering leadership positively affects the employees’ PEB and that this relationship is mediated by psychological ownership. Furthermore, we examine the moderating roles of empowerment role identity and environmental self-identity in this relationship. By employing 203 leader–follower dyads as a sample, we find that empowering leadership is positively related to employees’ PEB and that employees’ psychological ownership mediates this relationship. Besides, we find that empowerment role identity plays a moderating role in the relationship between empowering leadership and employees’ psychological ownership such that the relationship is positive and significant when empowerment role identity is high but not significant when it is low. Finally, we observe that environmental self-identity moderates the relationship between employees’ psychological ownership and PEB such that the relationship is positive and significant when environmental self-identity is high, but not significant when it is low. Practically, we offer new insight into how and when organisations can leverage the positive effect of empowering leadership in the pursuit of promoting employees’ PEB.     

Victim and Culprit? The Effects of Entitlement and Felt Accountability on Perceptions of Abusive Supervision and Perpetration of Workplace Bullying

Although workplace bullying is common and has universally harmful effects on employees’ outcomes, little is known about workplace bullies. To address this gap in knowledge, we draw from the tenets of social exchange and displaced aggression theories in order to develop and test a model of workplace bullying that incorporates the effects of employees’ individual differences (i.e., entitlement), perceptions of their work environments (i.e., felt accountability), and perceptions of supervisory treatment (i.e., perceptions of abusive supervision) on their tendencies to bully coworkers. The results of mediated moderation analyses that examine responses from two samples of working adults (n _{Sample 1} = 396; n _{Sample 2} = 123) support our hypotheses. Specifically, we find evidence of an indirect relationship between entitlement and coworker bullying through perceptions of abusive supervision that is stronger for employees who report lower levels of felt accountability than employees who report higher levels of felt accountability. This study makes important theoretical and practical contributions to abusive supervision research, bullying research, and organizational efforts to promote ethical work environments devoid of interpersonal mistreatment by providing novel insight into how employees’ entitlement and felt accountability combine to influence their tendencies to perceive themselves as victims of abusive supervision and culprits of coworker bullying.     

Supervisor Role Modeling,Ethics-Related Organizational Policies,and Employee Ethical Intention: The Moderating Impact of Moral Ideology

The moral ideology of banking and insurance employees in Spain was examined along with supervisor role modeling and ethics-related policies and procedures for their association with ethical behavioral intent. In addition to main effects, we found evidence supporting that the person–situation interactionist perspective in supervisor role modeling had a stronger positive relationship with ethical intention among employees with relativist moral ideology. Also as hypothesized, formal ethical polices and procedures were positively related to ethical intention among those with universal beliefs, but the relationship was much weaker among relativists. Thus, firms wishing to optimally promote ethical attitudes and behavior must tailor their organization-based initiatives to the individual characteristics of their employees.     

Procedural Justice and Employee Engagement: Roles of Organizational Identification and Moral Identity Centrality

Workplace procedural justice is an important motivator for employee work attitude and performance. This research examines how procedural justice affects employee engagement. We developed three propositions. First, based on the group engagement model, we hypothesized that procedural justice enhances employee engagement through employee organizational identification. Second, employees with stronger moral identity centrality are more likely to be engaged in their jobs. Third, procedural justice compensates for the effect of moral identity centrality on employee engagement. Specifically, when procedural justice is higher, employee moral identity centrality plays a less significant role in employee engagement; whilst when procedural justice is lower, the effect of moral identity centrality on employee engagement is stronger. Research findings based on an employee survey in a leading financial service organization provide support for the above propositions.     

Moral Identity as Leverage Point in Teaching Business Ethics

This paper examines whether appealing to learners’ moral identity makes a significant contribution to improving their ethical decision making beyond traditional, rule-based teaching. In response to criticisms leveled at rule-based ethics teaching by alternative approaches, we identify moral identity theory and experiments in moral psychology as useful sources to draw on for the creation of a new, identity-based ethics teaching approach. We develop and apply a set of regular self-reflection focused writing tasks added to the traditional teaching program over a one-semester period, and assess the outcomes of an overall sample of 149 postgraduate business school students, who were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: exposure to both identity-based tasks and rule-based teaching, exposure to rule-based teaching only, and the control condition (i.e., no exposure to ethics teaching). Our findings show that, while the three groups reported the same level of ethical decision making at the beginning of the semester, at the end of the semester the students who were exposed to both identity-based and rule-based teaching reported higher level of ethical decision making compared to those who were only exposed to rule-based education. In addition, the students who received rule-based teaching reported higher ethical decision making compared to those in the control condition. These results suggest that a teaching approach which appeals to the learner’s moral identity can act as an effective leverage point when complementing rule-based teaching. This simple approach should be widely adopted as common practice in graduate business schools.     

Do employees value strategic CSR? A tale of affective organizational commitment and its underlying mechanisms

Virtually all studies that focus on the relationship between CSR perceptions and employees’ organizational commitment have not taken into consideration the fit between social and environmental activities and a firm’s business‐unit strategy. This is essential to inquire because scholars have argued that when companies ingrain CSR activities into their strategy‐making process (i.e., in their vision, mission, and overall business model), this might send a more compelling message that resonates closer to workers’ personal standards, and actually enhance employee‐level outcomes. Nevertheless, there is no certainty “if” and “how” these evaluations could affect employees’ organizational commitment. To address this issue, we use cue consistency theory and social identity theory as overarching frameworks to develop a model where we conceptually link perceptions of strategy‐CSR fit with a particular type of organizational commitment: affective. In addition, we posit and test three mediators to understand the underlying psychological mechanisms of this relationship: perceived external prestige, organizational identification, and work meaningfulness. Through structural equation modeling, and using a heterogeneous final sample of 579 employees, we find compelling evidence to support the fact that strategy‐CSR fit enhances employees’ affective organizational commitment through the proposed mediators. Academic contributions and practical implications are then discussed.     

Identity, Moral, and Equity Perspectives on the Relationship Between Experienced Injustice and Time Theft

Time theft is a costly burden on organizations. However, there is limited knowledge about why time theft occurs. To advance this line of research, this conceptual paper looks at the association between organizational injustice and time theft from identity, moral, and equity perspectives. This paper proposes that organizational injustice triggers time theft through decreased organizational identification. It also proposes that moral disengagement and equity sensitivity moderate this process such that organizational identification is less likely to mediate among employees with high moral disengagement and more likely to mediate among employees who are equity sensitives and entitleds.     

员工道德认同与任务绩效：基于人际交换关系视角

区别于道德决策理论对道德认同影响个体行为的解释,本研究基于人际交换关系视角,探究领导-部属交换和团队-同事交换在道德认同影响任务绩效过程中的中介作用,并考察员工自我效能在以上关系中的调节作用。通过对343名企业员工开展两轮问卷调查,统计分析结果表明：（1）领导部属交换和团队-同事交换在道德认同与任务绩效之间起部分中介作用;（2）自我效能显著调节了领导-部属交换/团队-同事交换与任务绩效的关系;（3）自我效能显著调节了领导-部属交换/团队-同事交换在道德认同与任务绩效之间的中介作用。     

The Influence of Moral Philosophy on Retail Salespeople's Ethical Perceptions

The relatively minimal literature on ethics in a retail selling context indicates that retail sales personnel perceive that their job creates ethical dilemmas. However, what drives those beliefs is virtually unknown. Investigations in non‐retailing venues have found that employees’ moral philosophy (or ideology) influences whether they view a particular situation, action, or behavior as unacceptable (ethically inappropriate). The present study extends previous retail sales ethics research by examining the impact of retail salespersons’ moral philosophy on their perceptions of situations that are potentially ethically troublesome. Findings reveal some evidence that moral philosophy does indeed have an effect on retail salespeople's ethical beliefs. The impact of these results on the consumer is brought out through a discussion of the various implications from the vantage point of consumer welfare.     

辱虐管理对员工建言行为影响:组织自尊和个性控制点的作用

文章通过问卷调查和上下级之间的配对样本,探讨上级的辱虐管理对下级员工建言行为的影响及机制,尤其是研究组织自尊在其中的中介作用及员工个性控制点的调节作用.实证结果表明:辱虐管理对员工抑制性建言行为和促进性建言行为均有显著的负向影响,组织自尊在两者之间起到了完全中介的作用;员工个性控制点对辱虐管理和员工组织自尊之间的关系具有显著的调节作用,也就是说员工个性控制点水平越高(越内控),辱虐管理对组织自尊的负面影响就越小;当员工的个性控制点水平越低(越外控),辱虐管理对组织自尊的负面影响就越大.     

Moral Stress: Considering the Nature and Effects of Managerial Moral Uncertainty

To better illuminate aspects of stress that are relevant to the moral domain, we present a definition and theoretical model of “moral stress.” Our definition posits that moral stress is a psychological state born of an individual’s uncertainty about his or her ability to fulfill relevant moral obligations. This definition assumes a self-and-others relational basis for moral stress. Accordingly, our model draws from a theory of the self (identity theory) and a theory of others (stakeholder theory) to suggest that this uncertainty arises as a manager faces competing claims for limited resources from multiple stakeholders and/or across multiple role identities. We further propose that the extent to which the manager is attentive to the moral aspects of the claims (i.e., moral attentiveness) moderates these effects. We identify several consequences of managerial moral stress and discuss theoretical, empirical, and practical implications of our approach. Most importantly, we argue that this work paves an important path for considering stress through the lens of morality.