In business ethics, there is a large body of literature focusing on the conditions, factors, and influences in the ethical decision-making processes. This work builds upon the past critical reviews by updating and extending the literature review found in Craft’s :221–259, 2013) study, extending her literature review to include a total of 141 articles. Since past reviews have focused on categorizing results based upon various independent variables, we instead synthesize and look at the trends of these based upon the four (...) ethical decision making categories: Awareness, Behavior, Judgment, and Intention. We focus on the moderation and mediation effects found within these studies and provide an in-depth analysis of future trends. Furthermore, we also highlight key statistical and methodological concerns, outline overarching trends, and directions of future research in empirical ethical decision making. (shrink)

Setting out to understand the effects of positive moral emotions in leadership, this research examines the consequences of leaders’ expressions of gratitude and pride for their followers. In two experimental vignette studies and a field study, leaders’ gratitude expressions showed a positive effect and leaders’ pride expressions showed a negative effect on followers’ ascriptions of leader selfishness. Thereby, leaders’ gratitude expression indirectly led to higher follower satisfaction with and OCB towards the leader, while leaders’ pride expressions indirectly reduced satisfaction with (...) and OCB towards the leader. Furthermore, leaders’ expressions of gratitude indirectly reduced followers’ intentions to leave the leader, while leaders’ expressions of pride indirectly fuelled them. Although ascriptions of selfishness consistently influenced these leader outcomes more strongly than comparable organizational outcomes, results on organizational outcomes were mixed. While leaders’ expressions of gratitude led, as expected, to higher job satisfaction and lower turnover intentions, leaders’ expressions of pride showed positive relations with both OCB towards the organization and intentions to leave the organization. We discuss the theoretical implications of leaders’ expressions of positive moral emotions as signals of outcome attributions, as well as leaders’ selfishness and practical implications that help leaders build followers’ satisfaction and positive leader–follower relationships. (shrink)

Drawing from a social predicament and identity management framework, we argue that procedural unfairness on the part of decision makers places messengers in a dilemma where they attempt to protect their professional image or legitimacy by engaging in refusals and exhibiting distancing behaviors when delivering bad news. Such behaviors however, violate key tenets of fair interpersonal treatment. The results of two experiments supported our hypotheses in samples of experienced managers. Specifically, we found that levels of messengers’ distancing and refusals were (...) greater when the procedures used by decision makers were unfair rather than fair. Additionally, messengers’ perceptions of a predicament mediated these relationships. Implications and future research directions regarding the ethical delivery of bad news in the workplace are discussed. (shrink)

Moral hypocrisy (MH) occurs when people fail to practice what they preach. Despite the prevalence of the effect of social identity on an individual’s MH, few empirical studies have explored contextual factors that may help reduce MH. By conducting two experiments based on the research paradigm of real stranger presence, we examined how in-group and out-group strangers’ presence and moral behavior may contribute to reducing MH. The results of experiment 1 demonstrated that compared with the presence of out-group strangers, the (...) presence of in-group stranger could effectively inhibit MH (no significant difference between participants reported and actual donation proportions was obtained). The results of experiment 2 replicated and extended the results of experiment 1, first by showing that the presence of in-group strangers could effectively inhibit MH and then by revealing the influence of present strangers’ behavior (moral or hypocritical) on MH. The results indicated that strangers’ moral behavior could effectively eliminate participants’ MH, especially in the presence of in-group strangers. However, when present strangers exhibited hypocritical behavior, they exhibited no effect on participants’ MH, irrespective of the condition of in-group and out-group strangers. The current study provides empirical support for theories related to MH and moral decision making and contributes to the literature on in-group and out-group effects on MH and decision making. (shrink)

Bargaining games typically involve two players distributing a specific payoff (usually money), and will be our focus here, as they are especially helpful for examining the moral psychology of justice. Examples include the ultimatum game and dictator game. We will also look at a novel twist on the dictator game by the psychologist Daniel Batson, which has fostered a large experimental literature on what he calls ‘moral hypocrisy.’ Finally we will connect this discussion of economic games to the virtue of (...) justice and to other personality traits such as agreeableness, honesty-humility, and justice sensitivity. (shrink)