Constituency Norms Facilitate Unethical Negotiation Behavior Through Moral Disengagement

Abstract

While organizations strive for ethical conduct, the activity of negotiating offers strong temptations to employ unethical tactics and secure benefits for one’s own party. In four experiments, we examined the role of constituency communication in terms of their attitudes towards (un)ethical and competitive conduct on negotiators’ willingness and actual use of unethical tactics. We find that the mere presence of a constituency already increased representatives’ willingness to engage in unethical behavior (Experiment 1). More specifically, a constituency communicating liberal (vs. strict) attitudes toward unethical conduct helps negotiators to justify transgressions and morally disengage from their behavior, resulting in an increased use of unethical negotiation tactics (Experiment 2–3). Moreover, constituents’ endorsement of competitive strategies sufficed to increase moral disengagement and unethical behavior of representative negotiators in a similar fashion (Experiment 4ab). Our results caution organizational practice against advocating explicit unethical and even competitive tactics by constituents: it eases negotiators’ moral dilemma towards unethical conduct.