Ethical Climates in Organizations: A Review and Research Agenda

By Alexander Newman, Heather Round, Sukanto Bhattacharya, Achinto Roy. Business Ethics Quarterly, 2017

232 citations recorded by the source corpus.

ABSTRACT: Since seminal meta-analytical work in 2006 we have witnessed burgeoning research on ethical climates. This article offers a comprehensive review of literature examining the antecedents and outcomes of ethical climates over the last decade, as well as moderators of the relationship between ethical climates and other variables. Based on the review, an agenda for future research is also presented. In addition to highlighting the potential for incorporating alternative theoretical perspectives such as situational strength theory, trait-activation theory, social information processing theory, and institutional theory to better our understanding of ethical climates, this article highlights the need for future research to incorporate a dynamic perspective to study ethical climates, examine the curvilinear effects of ethical climates on work outcomes, extend the study of ethical climates to different levels of the organization, and examine the effects of culture on ethical climates.

Subfields: Information Systems and Management, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/123a560f42db0a27e0c8828f2ceeaa39fcff73e8

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Citations in the corpus

Collective Efficacy: Linking Paternalistic Leadership to Organizational Commitment (2018, background): “Third, our result related to moral leadership contributes to literature on business ethics (Newman et al. 2017).”
The role of moral decoupling in the causes and consequences of unethical pro-organizational behavior (2019, background): “Temporarily-accessible moral decoupling might develop due to the language an organization uses in its everyday interactions, the culture and climate of the organization, or the organization’s training programs (Newman et al., 2018).”
Creating an ethical organizational environment: The relationship between ethical leadership, ethical organizational climate, and unethical behavior (2020, background): “Although there is considerable interest and research on the topic (i.e., more than 100 empirical articles from 2006 to 2016; Newman et al., 2017), much of the research has been critiqued on theoretical, empirical, methodological, and operational grounds (see Arnaud & Schminke, 2007; Mayer, Kuenzi, &”