The Unwitting Accomplice: How Organizations Enable Motivated Reasoning and Self-Serving Behavior
Laura J. Noval () and
Morela Hernandez ()
Additional contact information
Laura J. Noval: Imperial College of London
Morela Hernandez: University of Virginia
Journal of Business Ethics, 2019, vol. 157, issue 3, No 8, 699-713
Abstract:
Abstract In this article, we demonstrate that individuals use motivated reasoning to convince themselves that their self-serving behavior is justified, which in turn affects the distribution of resources in business situations. Specifically, we explore how ambiguous contextual cues and individual beliefs can jointly form motivated reasoning. Across two experimental studies, we find that whereas individual ideologies that endorse status hierarchies (i.e., social dominance orientation) can strengthen the relationship between contextual ambiguity and motivated reasoning, individual beliefs rooted in fairness and equality (i.e., moral identity) can weaken it. Our findings contribute to person–situation theories of business ethics and provide evidence that two ubiquitous factors in business organizations—contextual ambiguity and social dominance orientation—give rise to motivated reasoning, enabling decision makers to engage in self-serving distributions of resources.
Keywords: Behavioral business ethics; Moral identity; Motivated reasoning; Resource allocation; Self-serving behavior; Situational strength; Social dominance orientation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)
Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-017-3698-9 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:157:y:2019:i:3:d:10.1007_s10551-017-3698-9
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10551/PS2
DOI: 10.1007/s10551-017-3698-9
Access Statistics for this article
Journal of Business Ethics is currently edited by Michelle Greenwood and R. Edward Freeman
More articles in Journal of Business Ethics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().