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When are Do-Gooders Treated Badly? Legitimate Power, Role Expectations, and Reactions to Moral Objection in Organizations

February 2016
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Organization members who engage in "moral objection" by taking a principled stand against ethically questionable activities help to prevent such activities from persisting. Unfortunately, research suggests that they also may be perceived as less warm (i.e., pleasant, nice) than members who comply with ethically questionable procedures. In this article, we draw on role theory to explore how legitimate power influences observers' responses to moral objection. We argue that individuals expect those high in legitimate power to engage in moral objection, but expect those low in legitimate power to comply with ethically questionable practices. We further propose that these contrasting role expectations influence the extent to which moral objectors are perceived as warm and subjected to social sanctions (i.e., insults, pressure, unfriendly behavior). We test our predictions with 3 experiments. Study 1, which draws on participants' prior workplace experiences, supports the first section of our mediated moderation model in which the negative association between an actor's moral objection (vs. compliance) and observers' warmth perceptions is weaker when the actor is high rather than low in legitimate power and this effect is mediated by observers' met role expectations. Study 2, an online experiment featuring a biased hiring task, reveals that the warmth perceptions fostered by the Behavior × Legitimate Power interaction influence observers' social sanctioning intentions. Finally, Study 3, a laboratory experiment which exposes participants to unethical behavior in a virtual team task, replicates Study 2's findings and extends the results to actual as well as intended social sanctions. (PsycINFO Database Record

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When are Do-Gooders Treated Badly? Legitimate Power, Role

Expectations, and Reactions to Moral Objection in Organizations

Ned Wellman

Arizona State University

David M. Mayer, Madeline Ong,

and D. Scott DeRue

University of Michigan

Organization members who engage in “moral objection” by taking a principled stand against ethically

questionable activities help to prevent such activities from persisting. Unfortunately, research suggests

that they also may be perceived as less warm (i.e., pleasant, nice) than members who comply with

ethically questionable procedures. In this article, we draw on role theory to explore how legitimate power

influences observers’ responses to moral objection. We argue that individuals expect those high in

legitimate power to engage in moral objection, but expect those low in legitimate power to comply with

ethically questionable practices. We further propose that these contrasting role expectations influence the

extent to which moral objectors are perceived as warm and subjected to social sanctions (i.e., insults,

pressure, unfriendly behavior). We test our predictions with 3 experiments. Study 1, which draws on

participants’ prior workplace experiences, supports the first section of our mediated moderation model

in which the negative association between an actor’s moral objection (vs. compliance) and observers’

warmth perceptions is weaker when the actor is high rather than low in legitimate power and this effect

is mediated by observers’ met role expectations. Study 2, an online experiment featuring a biased hiring

task, reveals that the warmth perceptions fostered by the Behavior ⫻Legitimate Power interaction

influence observers’ social sanctioning intentions. Finally, Study 3, a laboratory experiment which

exposes participants to unethical behavior in a virtual team task, replicates Study 2’s findings and extends

the results to actual as well as intended social sanctions.

Keywords: ethics, legitimate power, role theory, person perception, social sanctions

Scholars have long emphasized the importance of preventing

unethical activity in organizations (Ashforth, Gioia, Robinson, &

Treviño, 2008;Donaldson & Preston, 1995;Freeman, 1984;Mar-

golis & Walsh, 2003). Numerous studies have chronicled the

suffering that organizations and their members experience as a

result of unethical practices such as workplace incivility (Ander-

sson & Pearson, 1999;Cortina, Magley, Williams, & Langhout,

2001), abusive supervision (Aryee, Chen, Sun, & Debrah, 2007;

Mitchell & Ambrose, 2007;Zellars, Tepper, & Duffy, 2002),

sexual harassment (Fitzgerald, Drasgow, Hulin, Gelfand, &

Magley, 1997;Gutek & Koss, 1993), and employee fraud (Green-

lee, Fischer, Gordon, & Keating, 2007;Kelly & Hartley, 2010). At

the individual level, exposure to unethical behavior increases psy-

chological distress and job withdrawal, while reducing job satis-

faction, commitment, and productivity (Aryee et al., 2007;Cortina

et al., 2001;Tepper, 2000). At the organizational level, studies

have documented the strategic, legal, and financial benefits of

preventing ethical misconduct (Ashforth et al., 2008;Bamberger,

2006;Karpoff, Lee, & Martin, 2008;Schnatterly, 2003). In fact, a

recent survey estimated that internal fraud alone costs organiza-

tions a staggering 5% of their annual revenue, which translates to

an annual global fraud loss of nearly $3.7 trillion (Ratley, 2014).

Scholars also agree that the willingness of employees to speak

up when they witness a practice or behavior they believe to be

morally wrong is essential in preventing unethical activity from

spreading insidiously within organizations (Leavitt, Reynolds,

Barnes, Schilpzand, & Hannah, 2012;Mesmer-Magnus & Viswes-

varan, 2005;Miceli, Near, & Dworkin, 2008;Sumanth, Mayer, &

Kay, 2011;Treviño, 1992). Indeed, approximately 20% of all

internal fraud cases in 2014 were detected as the result of proactive

employee complaints (Ratley, 2014). In this article, we focus on

these proactive complaints, which we refer to as “moral objec-

tion.” We formally define moral objection as the act of speaking up

or taking action to oppose a morally questionable practice, or

refusing to participate in the practice. Moral objection is similar to

employee voice in that it is a proactive challenge to the status quo

(Van Dyne & LePine, 1998). However, unlike most forms of

voice, it involves an explicit appeal to ethical principles, is not

necessarily constructive, and is not always directed at one’s hier-

archical superiors (Maynes & Podsakoff, 2014). Moral objection

Editor’s Note. Michelle K. Duffy served as the action editor for this

article.—GC

This article was published Online First February 15, 2016.

Ned Wellman, Department of Management, Arizona State University;

David M. Mayer, Madeline Ong, and D. Scott DeRue, Department of

Management and Organizations, University of Michigan.

The authors thank Lillian Chen, Kathleen Grace, Sophia Park, and

Michael Payne for help with data collection, and Samir Nurmohamed and

Nathan Pettit for assistance with study design.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Ned

Wellman, Department of Management, Arizona State University, W.P.

Carey School of Business, 400 E. Lemon St., Tempe, AZ 85287. E-mail:

edward.wellman@asu.edu

This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

2016, Vol. 101, No. 6, 793–814 0021-9010/16/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/apl0000094

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