Journal
ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR AND HUMAN DECISION PROCESSES
Volume 139, Issue -, Pages 30-49Publisher
ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2017.01.002
Keywords
Power; Status; Hierarchy; Ethics; Principled dissent; Identification
Categories
Funding
- Haas Behavioral Lab at the University of California, Berkeley
- Wharton Behavioral Lab
- Zicklin Center for Business Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania
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When unethical practices occur in an organization, high-ranking individuals at the top of the hierarchy are expected to stop wrongdoing and redirect the organization to a more honorable path this is, to engage in principled dissent. However, in three studies, we find that holding high-ranking positions makes people less likely to engage in principled dissent. Specifically, we find that high-ranking individuals identify more strongly with their organization or group, and therefore see its unethical practices as more ethical than do low-ranking individuals. High-ranking individuals thus engage less in principled dissent because they fail to see unethical practices as being wrong in the first place. Study 1 observed the relation between high-rank and principled dissent in an archival data set involving more than 11,000 employees. Studies 2 and 3 used experimental designs to establish the causal effect of rank and to show that identification is one key mechanism underlying it. (C) 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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