Explaining transgressions with moral disengagement strategies and their effects on trust repair
Journal Title: BAR: Brazilian Administration Review - Year 2018, Vol 15, Issue 4
Abstract
When providing explanations for a transgression, the offender may use verbal statements based on moral disengagement strategies to mitigate the negative consequences of a trust violation. That is, the offender may try to reframe unethical acts to appear less harmful, or displace responsibility for the wrongdoing, or distort the consequences of his or her actions in order to address the repair of a damage of a trust violation. Based on this, we examined the effects of these explanations based on different moral disengagement strategies on trust repair. The results of a scenario-based experiment show that both the moral justification and the displacement of responsibility strategies elicited higher trusting intentions compared to the distortion of consequences strategy. This effect was mediated by trusting beliefs toward the offender. These findings suggest that reframing the unethical conduct as targeting a greater good, as well as obscuring personal agency for the detrimental conduct, may be more effective to repair trust than misrepresenting the consequences of the immoral acts.
Authors and Affiliations
Iwai, Tatiana; Carvalho, João Vinícius de França; Lalli, Victor Marson
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP40673
- DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/1807-7692bar2018180016
- Views 256
- Downloads 0
Life, Work and Sustainable Learning Practices: A Study on a Small Business Network
Knowledge and knowing processes as work and life practices are not univocal. They are not related to knowledge as an autonomous body of propositions, but permeated with new identities and action modes, which are contin...
Loyalty in the Supermarket
Loyalty has been a hot topic in marketing management, not only for academics, but also for managers. In that sense, the main goal of this paper is to identify the variables that discriminate loyalty groups. Therefore, s...
Conduits of Innovation or Imitation? Assessing the Effect of Alliances on the Persistence of Profits in U.S. Firms
This paper examines if a firm’s alliances affect the persistence of its financial performance. The literature suggests two conflicting views concerning this effect. In particular, access to resources and innovation and...
The Foreign Capital Flows and the Behavior of Stock Prices at BM&FBovespa
The main purpose of this article is to investigate alternative explanations for the impact of foreign capital flows on Ibovespa returns, including: trend chasing, information contribution and mutual feedback. Daily data...
Heterogeneity of Isomorphic Pressures: Intertwining the Resource-Based View and the Neoinstitutional Approach
The purpose of this research is to establish a conceptual framework that contributes to explaining sustained competitive advantage, forming an analytical framework that brings the resource-based view and organizational...