Ethically adrift: How others pull our moral compass from true North, and how we can fix it

By Celia Moore, Francesca Gino. 2013

252 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract This chapter focuses on the social nature of morality. Using the metaphor of the moral compass to describe individuals’ inner sense of right and wrong, we offer a framework that identifies social reasons why our moral compasses can come under others’ control, leading even good people to cross ethical boundaries. Departing from prior work on how individuals’ cognitive limitations explain unethical behavior, we focus on socio-psychological processes that facilitate moral neglect, moral justification, and immoral action, all of which undermine moral behavior. In addition, we describe organizational factors that exacerbate the detrimental effects of each facilitator. We conclude by advising organizational scholars to take a more integrative approach to developing and evaluating theory about unethical behavior and by suggesting further study of interventions that might disempower these social triggers of unethical behavior, allowing us to regain control of our moral compasses. A solitary organism has no need for moral rules, nor does a creature living among others without mutual dependency. ( Hogh-Oleson, 2010 , p. 3).

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

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/cc296ffe4b0ff79342b1c979a7c7a40c9335208a

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Citations in the corpus

Approach, Ability, Aftermath: A Psychological Process Framework of Unethical Behavior at Work (2015, methodology): “As we have noted elsewhere (Moore & Gino, 2013), this is entirely appropriate, given Cicero coined the Latin term moralis (proper behavior of a person in society) as a direct translation of the Greek ethicus.”
Blind forces (2014, background): “…decent people who sometimes behave unethically due to the inevitable fallibility that comes from being human (see Gino, Moore, & Bazerman, 2009; C. Moore & Gino, 2013; Tenbrunsel & SmithCrowe, 2008, for reviews), then perhaps it is time to similarly recognize that even in those organizations…”
Moral Symbols: A Necklace of Garlic against Unethical Requests (2017, background): “Second, this work adds to the small but growing body of research which considers the role of interpersonal influence in behavioral ethics (Moore & Gino, 2013).”