TY - JOUR
T1 - Ethical champions, emotions, framing, and team ethical decision making
AU - Chen, Anjier
AU - Treviño, Linda Klebe
AU - Humphrey, Stephen E.
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported in part by a grant from the Smeal College of Business. We thank Kisha Lashley for consultation on development of experimental materials, Daniel McNulty, Matthew Andrews, Bako Ekoko, and Emily Akers for their assistance with data analysis and study administration, and Carolyn Dang, Aparna Joshi, Jennifer Kish-Gephart, and Marie Mitchell for their valuable comments on earlier versions of the manuscript. An earlier version of the article was presented at the 78th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, Chicago, IL 2018.
PY - 2020/3
Y1 - 2020/3
N2 - Research has offered a pessimistic (although limited) view regarding the effectiveness of ethical champions in teams and the social consequences they are likely to experience. To challenge this view, we conducted two multimethod (quantitative/qualitative) experimental studies in the context of entrepreneurial team decision-making to examine whether and how an ethical champion can shape team decision ethicality and whether ethical champions experience interpersonal costs. In Study 1, we found that confederate ethical champions influenced team decisions to be more ethical by increasing team ethical awareness. Focusing on the emotional expressions of ethical champions, we found that sympathetic and angry ethical champions both increased team decision ethicality but that angry ethical champions were more disliked. Analysis of team interaction videos further revealed moral disengagement in team discussions and the emergence of nonconfederate ethical champions who used business frames to argue for the ethical decision. Those emergent phenomena shifted our focus, in Study 2, to how ethical champions framed the issues and the mediating processes involved. We found that ethical champions using ethical frames not only increased team ethical awareness but also consequently reduced team moral disengagement, resulting in more ethical team decisions. Ethical champions using business frames also improved team decision ethicality, but by increasing the perceived business utility of the ethical decision.
AB - Research has offered a pessimistic (although limited) view regarding the effectiveness of ethical champions in teams and the social consequences they are likely to experience. To challenge this view, we conducted two multimethod (quantitative/qualitative) experimental studies in the context of entrepreneurial team decision-making to examine whether and how an ethical champion can shape team decision ethicality and whether ethical champions experience interpersonal costs. In Study 1, we found that confederate ethical champions influenced team decisions to be more ethical by increasing team ethical awareness. Focusing on the emotional expressions of ethical champions, we found that sympathetic and angry ethical champions both increased team decision ethicality but that angry ethical champions were more disliked. Analysis of team interaction videos further revealed moral disengagement in team discussions and the emergence of nonconfederate ethical champions who used business frames to argue for the ethical decision. Those emergent phenomena shifted our focus, in Study 2, to how ethical champions framed the issues and the mediating processes involved. We found that ethical champions using ethical frames not only increased team ethical awareness but also consequently reduced team moral disengagement, resulting in more ethical team decisions. Ethical champions using business frames also improved team decision ethicality, but by increasing the perceived business utility of the ethical decision.
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U2 - 10.1037/apl0000437
DO - 10.1037/apl0000437
M3 - Article
C2 - 31343203
AN - SCOPUS:85077157138
VL - 105
SP - 245
EP - 273
JO - Journal of Applied Psychology
JF - Journal of Applied Psychology
SN - 0021-9010
IS - 3
ER -