My Boss is Morally Disengaged: The Role of Ethical Leadership in Explaining the Interactive Effect of Supervisor and Employee Moral Disengagement on Employee Behaviors

Abstract

The popular press is often fraught with high-

Bluffs, Lies, and Consequences: A Reconceptualization of Bluffing in Buyer–Supplier Negotiations

“…Moral disengagement theory has recently been applied, for instance, in investigations of questionable behavior at the workplace (Bonner, Greenbaum & Mayer, 2016), with calls for further research examining the role of moral disengagement in decision making in general business (Shepherd, Williams & Patzelt, 2014) and supply chain management contexts (Eriksson & Svensson, 2016). Moral disengagement theory is an appropriate lens for investigating bluffs and lies for two reasons: First, MDT constitutes a predictive rather than a normative theory.…”

(A)moral Agents in Organisations? The Significance of Ethical Organisation Culture for Middle Managers’ Exercise of Moral Agency in Ethical Problems

“…The results of this study on the significance of the virtues of discussability, transparency and sanctionability lead us to posit that both middle and upper managers prefer to avoid public talk about ethics, or visible rewards and sanctions, possibly to sustain their and others' organisational "face", and organisational harmony (Martin et al 2014). We now propose, consistently with Moberg (2006), Kaptein (2011Kaptein ( , 2015 and Bonner et al (2016), that if employees are left without any encouragement (from their superiors) to behave ethically, this will lead to cynicism and less commitment to the organisation's objectives and a reduction in moral behaviour, thus contributing to low supportability. Low supportability, for its part, can discourage middle managers from exercising moral agency, as a vicious circle of compartmentalised middle management roles (shared expectations of not getting involved in problems) and moral muteness (Bird and Waters, 1989;Detert et al 2008) undermine ethical behaviour (see also Macintyre, 2006;Rozuel, 2011).…”

“…Secondly, the congruent behaviour of upper management was seen to set a standard for middle managers on how to solve ethical issues in the organisation in the future, and so it supported learning and developed their capacity for self-regulation. Also, middle managers wanted to reciprocate leaders' supportive treatment (Trevino et al 2006;Bonner et al 2016), and get their social approval (Bandura, 1991). Thirdly, congruent executives took authority (and responsibility) in the most complex situations, which greatly supported middle managers' decisionmaking and self-belief, as we shall now see.…”

Multi‐source research designs on ethical leadership: A literature review

“…Understanding the antecedents of EL is critical to prevent the occurrence of unethical behaviors, but this is still a less explored research area. Only few studies address antecedents of (un)ethical leadership, such as leaders' personality traits (Kalshoven, Den Hartog, & De Hoogh, ; Walumbwa & Schaubroeck, ), ethical values (Groves & LaRocca, ), moral identity (Mayer, Aquino, Greenbaum, & Kuenzi, ; Zhu & Treviño, ), supervisors' ethical ideologies (Letwin et al, ), and moral disengagement (Bonner, Greenbaum, & Mayer, ).…”

“…Mayer, Aquino, Greenbaum, and Kuenzi (), focusing on the concept of moral manager implicit in the EL construct, found support for the idea that both symbolization and internalization dimensions of moral identity (Aquino & Americus, ) were positively associated with EL. Bonner et al, () studied the influence on employees' perceptions of EL of the interactive effect of supervisor and employee moral disengagement, finding that supervisor moral disengagement is negatively related to employees’ perceptions of EL.…”