Moral Disengagement in the Corporate World

Abstract

We analyze mechanisms of moral disengagement used to eliminate moral consequences by industries whose products or production practices are harmful to human health. Moral disengagement removes the restraint of self-censure from harmful practices. Moral self-sanctions can be selectively disengaged from harmful activities by investing them with socially worthy purposes, sanitizing and exonerating them, displacing and diffusing responsibility, minimizing or disputing harmful consequences, making advantageous comparisons, and disparaging and blaming critics and victims. Internal industry documents and public statements related to the research activities of these industries were coded for modes of moral disengagement by the tobacco, lead, vinyl chloride (VC), and silicosis-producing industries. All but one of the modes of moral disengagement were used by each of these industries. We present possible safeguards designed to protect the integrity of research.

An Integrative Approach to Understanding Counterproductive Work Behavior: The Roles of Stressors, Negative Emotions, and Moral Disengagement

“…Some authors highlight that the way performance objectives are set defines different contexts that are more or less favorable to deceptive or harmful behaviors, according to the degree to which they are "reframed" as serving worthy purposes, making them personally and socially acceptable (Barsky, 2008;Barky et al, 2006). Further, the management may produce organizational practices or may promote the creation of shared beliefs about the weak morality within the work context, facilitating widespread recourse to MD (see White et al, 2009).…”

“…Thus, in order to understand the process leading to CWB, it is important to also consider the role of socio-cognitive "cold" processes. As underlined in the organizational literature, as a consequence of negative emotional reaction to frustrating working conditions, workers may also enact such forms of unethical and deviant behaviors through cognitive processes that allow them to temporarily bypass the acquired collective norms, values, and models (Detert, Trevino, & Sweitzer, 2008;Moore, 2008;White, Bandura, & Bero, 2009). Base on this fact, we aim to extend the stressor-emotion model of CWB by integrating moral disengagement (MD), a social cognitive process that may facilitate the translation of negative feelings derived from perceived stressors into CWB (Fig.…”

e-Toll Roads: Analysing a Case of Collective Moral Disengagement in an e-Government Project

“…The findings in this South African case demonstrate that role players in e-government initiatives sometimes resort to systematic and collective moral disengagement strategies to justify projects that are developmentally and economically dubious (White et al, 2009). The study contributes to previous research by confirming the analytical generalisation of the moral disengagement concept (Ruddin, 2006) to a specific e-government case.…”

“…This theory assumes that people reflect on the consequences of their conduct, pursue goals in accordance with their own standards, enact actions that give them satisfaction and self-worth, and avoid behaviours that carry self-censure. Yet people can violate the principles of desirable and ethical decisionmaking behaviour despite being ethically committed, while continuing to profess the same principles without incurring any blame or guilt or feeling compelled to provide any kind of reparation (Bandura, 2007;White, Bandura & Bero, 2009). They use moral disengagement mechanisms to make their unethical conduct acceptable by convincing themselves that their questionable behaviour is morally permissible (see Figure 2 below).…”

Professional Formation of Engineers’ Conceptions of “the Public”: Early-Concept Exploratory Research

“…In this process, the public becomes a rhetorical, as opposed to an empirical, space that reinforces the engineering profession's service ideal and legitimizes engineers' work as promoting the social good, regardless of how diverse publics articulate their own visions, define their own needs, and envision the role of technological applications in their own lives. In light of psychological research establishing a link between professional distancing from those who might be affected by one's actions, moral disengagement, and unethical decision-making 23,24,25,26 we suggest that this rhetorical space comprises fertile ground for suboptimal professional decisions, unethical conduct, and ultimately public harm.…”