TY - JOUR
T1 - Implicit Morality Theories
T2 - Employees’ Beliefs About the Malleability of Moral Character Shape Their Workplace Behaviors
AU - Feng, Zhiyu
AU - Keng-Highberger, Fong
AU - Li, Hu
AU - Savani, Krishna
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by fund for building world-class universities (disciplines) of Renmin University of China (Project No. KYGJC2021007) to Zhiyu Feng, a grant from the National Natural Science Foundation of China to Zhiyu Feng (Project No. 72102225) and Hu Li (Project No. 71572076), and a Nanyang Assistant Professorship grant awarded by Nanyang Technological University to Krishna Savani. We thank Andrea Low, Sylvia Chin, Qianqian Xu, and Xiuxia Huang for assistance with this research, and Kai Chi Yam for feedback on earlier drafts.
Funding Information:
This research was supported by fund for building world-class universities (disciplines) of Renmin University of China (Project No. KYGJC2021007) to Zhiyu Feng, a grant from the National Natural Science Foundation of China to Zhiyu Feng (Project No. 72102225) and Hu Li (Project No. 71572076), and a Nanyang Assistant Professorship grant awarded by Nanyang Technological University to Krishna Savani. We thank Andrea Low, Sylvia Chin, Qianqian Xu, and Xiuxia Huang for assistance with this research, and Kai Chi Yam for feedback on earlier drafts.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V.
PY - 2023/4
Y1 - 2023/4
N2 - Implicit morality theories refer to people’s beliefs about whether individuals’ moral character is fixed or malleable. Drawing on the social cognitive theory of morality, we examine the relationship between employees’ implicit morality theories and their organizational citizenship behaviors toward coworkers (OCBC) and coworker-directed deviance (CDD) through a moral self-regulatory mechanism. A laboratory experiment (Study 1), an online experiment (Study 2), and a multi-wave, multi-source field survey (Study 3) found that the more employees held a fixed belief about morality, the lower their sense of moral control, especially when their moral identity was lower. This perceived lack of moral control, in turn, predicted decreased OCBC, particularly when the workgroup ethical climate was weak. However, this relationship did not hold for CDD. Overall, our research highlights implicit morality theories as a novel antecedent of employees’ workplace behaviors, and identifies the underlying moral self-regulatory process, along with individual and situational boundary conditions.
AB - Implicit morality theories refer to people’s beliefs about whether individuals’ moral character is fixed or malleable. Drawing on the social cognitive theory of morality, we examine the relationship between employees’ implicit morality theories and their organizational citizenship behaviors toward coworkers (OCBC) and coworker-directed deviance (CDD) through a moral self-regulatory mechanism. A laboratory experiment (Study 1), an online experiment (Study 2), and a multi-wave, multi-source field survey (Study 3) found that the more employees held a fixed belief about morality, the lower their sense of moral control, especially when their moral identity was lower. This perceived lack of moral control, in turn, predicted decreased OCBC, particularly when the workgroup ethical climate was weak. However, this relationship did not hold for CDD. Overall, our research highlights implicit morality theories as a novel antecedent of employees’ workplace behaviors, and identifies the underlying moral self-regulatory process, along with individual and situational boundary conditions.
KW - Ethical climate
KW - Implicit morality theories
KW - Moral control
KW - Moral identity
KW - Organizational citizenship behavior
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85127936042&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s10551-022-05113-1
DO - 10.1007/s10551-022-05113-1
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85127936042
SN - 0167-4544
VL - 184
SP - 193
EP - 216
JO - Journal of Business Ethics
JF - Journal of Business Ethics
IS - 1
ER -