Constituency Norms Facilitate Unethical Negotiation Behavior Through Moral Disengagement
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Constituency Norms Facilitate Unethical Negotiation Behavior Through Moral Disengagement Hillie Aaldering1 · Alfred Zerres2 · Wolfgang Steinel3
© The Author(s) 2020
Abstract While organizations strive for ethical conduct, the activity of negotiating offers strong temptations to employ unethical tactics and secure benefits for one’s own party. In four experiments, we examined the role of constituency communication in terms of their attitudes towards (un)ethical and competitive conduct on negotiators’ willingness and actual use of unethical tactics. We find that the mere presence of a constituency already increased representatives’ willingness to engage in unethical behavior (Experiment 1). More specifically, a constituency communicating liberal (vs. strict) attitudes toward unethical conduct helps negotiators to justify transgressions and morally disengage from their behavior, resulting in an increased use of unethical negotiation tactics (Experiment 2–3). Moreover, constituents’ endorsement of competitive strategies sufficed to increase moral disengagement and unethical behavior of representative negotiators in a similar fashion (Experiment 4ab). Our results caution organizational practice against advocating explicit unethical and even competitive tactics by constituents: it eases negotiators’ moral dilemma towards unethical conduct. Keywords Negotiation · Unethical behavior · Representatives · Constituency · Experiment · Competition
1 Introduction Ethicality and ethical conduct are important values of modern organizations (Ardichvili et al. 2009; Spiller 2000) and a growing body of research is dedicated to investigate antecedents of unethical conduct (Kish-Gephart et al. 2010). Particularly
* Hillie Aaldering [email protected] 1
Work and Organizational Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Nieuwe Achtergracht 129B, 1018 WT Amsterdam, The Netherlands
2
Amsterdam Business School, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
3
Social, Economic and Organisational Psychology, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands
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important for studying (un)ethical business conduct are negotiations, the most consequential forms of interactions within and between organizations (De Dreu and Gelfand 2007), in which organizations task employees such as managers to represent their interests. In negotiations, both parties are simultaneously motivated to compete (i.e., secure own interests) and cooperate, because they can only achieve their goals together with the other party (Walton and McKersie 1965). This mixedmotive dynamic provides ample opportunities for ethical transgressions and negotiators constantly face the dilemma between upholding ethical values versus securing their direct constituents’ performance interest (cf. Kaufman 2002). This latter temptation is additionally fueled by a fear of losing one’s position in the negotiation (Dees and Cramton 1991; Lewicki and Stark 1996). Indeed, the use of unethical tactics is not uncommon among negotiators (Bazerman
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