Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of contributors
- Foreword
- 1 The imbalances and limitations of theory and research on organizational wrongdoing
- 2 On taking the theoretical substance of outcomes seriously: a meta-conversation
- 3 Wrong paths to right: defining morality with or without a clear red line
- 4 From market enablers to market participants: redefining organizational and political-legal arrangements and opportunities for financial wrongdoing,1930s–2000
- 5 Wrongdoing and market development: an examination of the distinct roles of trust and distrust
- 6 Bad apples, bad barrels and bad cellars: a “boundaries” perspective on professional misconduct
- 7 S/he blinded me with science: the sociology of scientific misconduct
- 8 Social networks and organizational wrongdoing in context
- 9 Falling stars: celebrity, infamy, and the fall from (and return to) grace
- 10 Compensation and employee misconduct: the inseparability of productive and counterproductive behavior in firms
- 11 Beware of organizational saints: how a moral self-concept may foster immoral behavior
- 12 “Is it me? Or is it me?” The role of coactivated multiple identities and identifications in promoting or discouraging workplace crimes
- 13 Consequences of organizational misconduct: too much and too little punishment
- 14 Who bears the brunt? A review and research agenda for the consequences of organizational wrongdoing for individuals
- 15 Organizational wrongdoing and media bias
- 16 Ethical learning: releasing the moral unicorn
- Index
- References
12 - “Is it me? Or is it me?” The role of coactivated multiple identities and identifications in promoting or discouraging workplace crimes
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2016
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of contributors
- Foreword
- 1 The imbalances and limitations of theory and research on organizational wrongdoing
- 2 On taking the theoretical substance of outcomes seriously: a meta-conversation
- 3 Wrong paths to right: defining morality with or without a clear red line
- 4 From market enablers to market participants: redefining organizational and political-legal arrangements and opportunities for financial wrongdoing,1930s–2000
- 5 Wrongdoing and market development: an examination of the distinct roles of trust and distrust
- 6 Bad apples, bad barrels and bad cellars: a “boundaries” perspective on professional misconduct
- 7 S/he blinded me with science: the sociology of scientific misconduct
- 8 Social networks and organizational wrongdoing in context
- 9 Falling stars: celebrity, infamy, and the fall from (and return to) grace
- 10 Compensation and employee misconduct: the inseparability of productive and counterproductive behavior in firms
- 11 Beware of organizational saints: how a moral self-concept may foster immoral behavior
- 12 “Is it me? Or is it me?” The role of coactivated multiple identities and identifications in promoting or discouraging workplace crimes
- 13 Consequences of organizational misconduct: too much and too little punishment
- 14 Who bears the brunt? A review and research agenda for the consequences of organizational wrongdoing for individuals
- 15 Organizational wrongdoing and media bias
- 16 Ethical learning: releasing the moral unicorn
- Index
- References
Summary
While corporate crime is unfortunately not a new phenomenon, high-profile abuses in the last decade have led to a renewed urgency in understanding the precursors of wrongdoing in organizations. In this vein, academic research has recently begun to adopt an identity perspective, especially from social identity theory, to explore the antecedents of ethical misconduct in organizations. Apart from looking at one's moral identity (see Ashforth and Lange, this volume), recent research suggests that organizational identification (i.e., viewing one's role in the organization as self-defining) will influence a person's propensity to engage in workplace crimes (May, Chang, and Shao 2015; Umphress, Bingham, and Mitchell 2010; Vadera and Pratt 2013). Common to these social identity-based perspectives on wrongdoing is a focus on a single identity or identification (e.g., moral identity or organizational identification). However, scholars have long understood that in addition to social identities, any given individual may have a multitude of role identities – tied to various internalized roles he or she plays in society (e.g., parent, accountant, soccer player) – which may be brought to bear in a given social situation (Burke 2003; Stryker and Serpe 1994). In organizational studies, research further suggests that individuals do bring to and express these different identities (e.g., religious, kinship) at work (Ashforth and Pratt 2003; Creed, DeJordy, and Lok 2010; Fitzsimmons 2013; Kreiner, Hollensbe, and Sheep 2006; Pratt and Rafaeli 1997; Ramarajan and Reid 2013). There have even been recent and urgent calls in the popular press for organizations to allow people to bring more of their “whole self” (the self is comprised of multiple identities) to work (e.g., backwest.com/life-back-west-may-2012-bring-your-whole-self/). But how might these multiple identities and identifications influence decisions about whether or not to engage in workplace crimes?
In this chapter, we build off research that ties organizational attachments to workplace crime by articulating how the activation of nonorganizational role identities may function in conjunction with organizational identification to influence a person's propensity to commit workplace crimes. We argue that the activation of multiple identities (or identification with multiple social groups and roles) and identity content (i.e., the type of social group or role activated) play a role in either mitigating or strengthening the relationship between someone's identification with the organization and his/her propensity to engage in illegal or unethical behaviors at work.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Organizational WrongdoingKey Perspectives and New Directions, pp. 337 - 369Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2016
References
1988. The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Labor. Chicago: University of Chicago.
and
1989. “Social identity theory and the organization,” Academy of Management Review
14: 20–39.Google Scholar
and
2003. “Institutionalized spirituality: An oxymoron,” in and (eds.), Handbook of Workplace Spirituality and Organizational Performance: 93–107. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.
, , and
2010. “Choice, free will, and religion,” Psychology of Religion and Spirituality
2(2): 67–82.Google Scholar
and
2014. “When group memberships are negative: The concept, measurement, and behavioral implications of psychological disidentification,” Self and Identity
13(3): 294–321.Google Scholar
and
1994. The Ford Pinto Case: A Study in Applied Ethics, Business, and Technology. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
1989. “Exposure and affect: Overview and meta-analysis of research, 1968–1987,” Psychological Bulletin
106(2): 265–289.Google Scholar
1989. “Gender identity, sex, and school performance,” Social Psychology Quarterly
52(2): 159–169.Google Scholar
2003. “Relationships among multiple identities,” in , , , and (eds.), Advances in Identity Theory and Research: 195–214. New York: Kluwer Academic/ Plenum Publishers.
and
2009. Identity Theory. New York: Oxford University Press.
and
2012. “When does feeling moral actually make you a better person? Conceptual abstraction moderates whether past moral deeds motivate consistency or compensatory behavior,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
38(7): 907–919.Google Scholar
, , and
2010. “Being the change: Resolving institutional contradiction through identity work,” Academy of Management Journal
53(6): 1336–1364.Google Scholar
and
2012. “The return to innocence: Nursery rhymes, soft toys, and everyday morality,” Unpublished manuscript.
, , and
1998. “The dark side of organizational identification,” in and (eds.), Identity in Organizations: Building Theory Through Conversations: 245–256. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
, , and
1994. “Organizational images and member identification,” Administrative Science Quarterly
39: 239–263.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , and
2014. “Transformational leadership and follower's unethical behavior for the benefit of the company: A two-study investigation,” Journal of Business Ethics
120(1): 81–93.Google Scholar
1992. “Are religious people nice people? Evidence from the national survey of black Americans,” Social Forces
71(2): 411–430.Google Scholar
1999. “An expanded model of identification,” Research in Organizational Behavior
21: 163–200.Google Scholar
and
2008. “The physical environment in organizations,” The Academy of Management Annals
1(1): 181–224.Google Scholar
and
2004. “Liking is for doing: The effects of goal pursuit on automatic evaluation,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
87: 557–572.Google Scholar
2013. “Multicultural employees: A framework for understanding how they contribute to organizations,” Academy of Management Review
38(4): 525–549.Google Scholar
and
2000. Reducing Intergroup Bias: The Common Ingroup Identity. Philadelphia, PA: The Psychology Press.
, , , , and
1993. “The common ingroup identity model: Recategorization and the reduction of intergroup bias,” in and (eds.), European Review of Social Psychology, vol. 4: 1–26. New York: John Wiley and Sons.
2012. “Does religious belief promote prosociality? A critical examination,” Psychological Bulletin
138(5): 876–906.Google Scholar
, 2013. State of the Global Workplace. Washington, DC: Gallup, Inc.
and
2012. “Memory lane and morality: How childhood memories promote prosocial behavior,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
102(4): 743–758.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
1992. “Pinto fires and personal ethics: A script analysis of missed opportunities,” Journal of Business Ethics
11(5–6): 379–389.Google Scholar
, , and
2009. “Liberals and conservatives rely on different sets of moral foundations,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
96(5): 1029–1046.Google Scholar
and
2007. “When morality opposes justice: Conservatives have moral intuitions that liberals may not recognize,” Social Justice Research
20(1): 98–116.Google Scholar
, , , and
2012. “Religiosity and adolescent empathy and aggression: The mediating role of moral identity,” Psychology of Religion and Spirituality
4(3): 237–248.Google Scholar
2012. “8 Tasteless items to remove from your desk,” U.S. News and World Report.
, , , , and
2004. “Developing a more inclusive social identity: An elementary school intervention,” Journal of Social Issues
60(1): 35–55.Google Scholar
, , and
1998. Theorizing Childhood. Oxford, England: Blackwell.
and
1979. “An ambivalence-amplification theory of behavior toward the stigmatized,” in and (eds.), Psychology of Intergroup Relations: 103–117. Chicago: Nelson-Hall.
1995. How Good People Make Tough Choices. New York: William Morrow.
, , and
2006. “Where is the ‘me’ among the ‘we’? Identity work and the search for optimal balance,” Academy of Management Journal
49(5): 1031–1057.Google Scholar
, , , , and
2012. “Different hats, different obligations: Plural occupational identities and situated moral judgments,” Academy of Management Journal
55(6): 1316–1333.Google Scholar
, , and
2015. “Identity work within and beyond the professions: Toward a theoretical integration and extension,” in and (eds.), International Handbook about Professional Identities: 11–37. Rosemead, CA: Scientific and Academic Publishing.
2007. “What happens when an employee's freedom of religion crosses paths with a company's interests?” The Conference Board Review September/October: 42–48.
, , and
2015. “Does ethical membership matter? Moral identification and its organizational implications,” Journal of Applied Psychology
100(3): 681–694.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , and
2008. “The dishonesty of honest people: A theory of self-concept maintenance,” Journal of Marketing Research
45(6): 633–644.Google Scholar
and
1978. Identities and Interaction. New York: Free Press.
and
2009. “Religion, self-regulation, and self-control: Associations, explanations, and implications,” Psychological Bulletin
135(1): 69–93.Google Scholar
1983. “A research note on religion and morality: Are religious people nice people?” Social Forces
61: 683–692.Google Scholar
2005. Adolescent Psychological Development: Rationality, Morality, and Identity. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
2011. “When good people do wrong: Morality, social identity, and ethical behavior,” in , , and (eds.), Social Psychology and Organizations (Series in Organization and Management): 353–369. New York, NY: Taylor and Francis Group.
and
2000. “Owning up or opting out: The conditions for issue ownership in organizations,” in , , and (eds.), Emotions in the Workplace: Research, Theory, and Practice: 103–129. Westport, CT: Quorum Books.
1998. “To be or not to be: Central questions in organizational identification,” in and (eds.), Identity in Organizations: Developing Theory Through Conversations: 171–207. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
2000. “The good, the bad, and the ambivalent: Managing identification among Amway distributors,” Administrative Science Quarterly
45: 456–493.Google Scholar
2001. “Social identity dynamics in modern organizations: An organizational psychology/organizational behavior perspective,” in and (eds.), Social Identity Processes in Organizational Contexts: 13–30. Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press.
and
2007. “Managing multiple organizational identities: On identity ambiguity, identity conflict, and members’ reactions,” in , , and (eds.), Identity and the Modern Organization: 99–118. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
, and
1997. “Organizational dress as a symbol of multilayered social identities,” Academy of Management Journal
40(4): 862–898.Google Scholar
and
2016. “The nonconscious at work,” Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior
3: 321–347.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and
2013. “Shattering the myth of separate worlds: Negotiating non-work identities at work,” Academy of Management Review
38(4): 621–644.Google Scholar
and
2009. “Checking your identities at the door? Positive relationships between nonwork and work identities,” in and (eds.), Exploring Positive Identities and Organizations: Building a Theoretical and Research Foundation: 125–148. New York: Psychology Press.
, , , and
2016. “Religious priming: A meta-analysis with a focus on prosociality,” Personality and Social Psychology Review
20(1): 27–48.Google Scholar
, , and
2011. “Dishonest deed, clear conscience: When cheating leads to moral disengagement and motivated forgetting,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
37(3): 330–349.Google Scholar
1992. Sabotage in the American Workplace: Anecdotes of Dissatisfaction, Mischief, and Revenge. San Francisco: Pressure Drop Press.
1987. “Identity theory: Developments and extensions,” in and (eds.), Self and Identity: Psychological Perspectives: 89–103. New York: Wiley.
and
2000. “The past, present, and future of an identity theory,” Social Psychology Quarterly
63(4): 284–297.Google Scholar
and
1994. “Identity salience and psychological centrality,” Social Psychology Quarterly
57: 16–35.Google Scholar
2009. “Religious expression often frowned on at work: Bias claims on the rise; fitting into company culture also important,” nbcnews.com.
and
1979. “An integrative theory of intergroup conflict,” in and (eds.), The Social Psychology of Group Relations: 33–47. Monterey, CA: Brooks-Cole.
1983. “Multiple identities and psychological well-being: A reformulation and test of the social isolation hypothesis,” American Sociological Review
48: 174–187.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2012. “Difficult decoupling: Employee resistance to the commercialization of personal settings1,” American Journal of Sociology
118(2): 380–419.Google Scholar
, , and
2010. “Unethical behavior in the name of the company: The moderating effect of organizational identification and positive reciprocity beliefs on unethical pro-organizational behavior,” Journal of Applied Psychology
95(4): 769–780.Google Scholar
and
2013. “Love, hate, ambivalence, or indifference? A conceptual examination of workplace crimes and organizational identification,” Organization Science
24: 172–188.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , , , and
2007. “Spontaneous altruism by chimpanzees and young children,” PLoS Biology
5: 1414–1420.Google Scholar
and
2003. “Affective forecasting,” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology
35: 345–411.Google Scholar
1999. “Revisiting images of the child in early childhood education: Reflections and considerations,” Australian Journal of Early Childhood
24: 7–12.Google Scholar
, , and
1979. “Child rearing and children's prosocial initiations towards victims of distress,” Child Development
50: 319–330.Google Scholar
- 3
- Cited by