The Role of Ethical Ideology in Workplace Deviance

Abstract

Ethical ideology is predicted to play a role in the occurrence of workplace deviance. Forsyth's (1980) Ethics Position Questionnaire measures two dimensions of ethical ideology: idealism and relativism. It is hypothesized that idealism will be negatively correlated with employee deviance while relativism will be positively related. Further, it is predicted that idealism and relativism will interact in such a way that there will only be a relationship between idealism and deviance when relativism is higher. Results supported the hypothesized correlations and idealism and relativism interacted to predict organizational deviance. Idealism was a significant predictor of interpersonal deviance, but no interaction was found.

Reducing Deviant Behavior through Workplace Spirituality and Job Satisfaction

“…Previously, studies on deviant behaviour have focused on personality or dispositional factors (e.g., Ng & Feldman, 2008;O'Neill & Hastings, 2011), organizational factors (e.g., Henle, 2005), work-related factors (e.g., Ferguson, 2007), and ethical ideology (e.g., Henle, Giacalone, & Jurkiewicz, 2005) as antecedents or predictors of deviant behaviour at the workplace. However, only a few studies have focused on workplace spirituality as a key factor that could influence employee deviant behaviour, despite evidence from previous studies demonstrating spirituality as an important element in the lives of individuals (James, Miles, & Mullins, 2011).…”

Ethical Antecedents of Dysfunctional Behaviour in Performance Measurement and Control System

“…Henle et al (2005) 2013 system of ethics used to make moral judgments, which offers guidelines for judging and resolving behaviour that may be ethically questionable" (p. 219). As such, given the same information, two persons who are in agreement over political or religious issue, might reach opposite conclusion regarding a moral judgment.…”

“…As such, given the same information, two persons who are in agreement over political or religious issue, might reach opposite conclusion regarding a moral judgment. As one proposed cognition under cognitive dissonance theory (Rudolph, 2006), personal EI has been proven to give considerable impact regarding when and how an individual decides to engage in DB (Forsyth, 1992;Henle et al, 2005). DB, like information manipulation, involves ethically questionable activities, and might sometimes be considered as a cushion in the case of a hard fall, and there might be a possibility that these kinds of behaviour can, in fact, be considered as a norm to protect the employees from unexpected events ( Van der Stede, 2000), and as such, ethical.…”

“…DB, like information manipulation, involves ethically questionable activities, and might sometimes be considered as a cushion in the case of a hard fall, and there might be a possibility that these kinds of behaviour can, in fact, be considered as a norm to protect the employees from unexpected events ( Van der Stede, 2000), and as such, ethical. Hence, judging whether to engage in it varies as a function of a person's EI (Barnett et al, 1994;Barnett, Bass, Brown, & Hebert, 1998;Davis, Andersen, & Curtis, 2001;Forsyth, & Berger, 1982;Henle et al, 2005). As such, behaviour engaged would mirror the personal EI adopted, making it a potential predictor of DB.…”

“…It has been discovered to have influenced deviant workplace behaviour (Henle et al, 2005), earning management (Greenfield, Norman, & Wier, 2008), and ethical judgment and moral behaviour (Barnett et al, 1994;Fernando, Dharmage, & Almeida, 2008;Forsyth, 1992;Forsyth, & Berger, 1982;Marques, & Azevedo-Pereira, 2009). Majority of the findings revealed that differences in EI, along the dimension of idealism to relativism, would be significantly associated with differences in individual's ethical judgement and moral behaviour.…”