Should I do this? Incongruence in the face of conflicting moral and role expectations

Jigyashu Shukla, Christopher Stein, John T. Bush and Niranjan S. Janardhanan

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Moral incongruence—a misalignment between professional role expectations and personal moral values—is an important phenomenon in modern organizations. Though scholarly work has provided us with insights into broad forms of role incongruence, much less is known about the distinct characteristics of moral incongruence. Moreover, we lack understanding of how moral incongruence may shape employee attitudes and behaviors. Drawing on deonance theory and socio-cognitive theory, we develop a model explaining the role of moral incongruence in promoting employee prohibitive voice, withdrawal, and unethical role behavior through the mechanisms of moral outrage and moral disengagement. Examining potential boundary conditions, we also consider the roles of moral identity, self-interest, moral intensity, unethical climate, ethical leadership, and organizational identification. Given the ethical implications of moral incongruence and the significance of the phenomenon for organizations, this work has implications for both theory and practice.

Keywords: moral disengagement; moral incongruence; moral outrage; unethical behavior (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 13 pages
Date: 2024-06-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Human Resource Management Review, 1, June, 2024, 34(2). ISSN: 1053-4822

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/121462/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

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:ehl:lserod:121462

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().