Regret and disappointment: A conceptualization of their role in ethical decision-making

Abstract

Workplaces provide settings for the manifestation of an assortment of emotions that impact managerial decisions, ethical or otherwise, in a variety of ways. Most of the research work in this domain has concentrated on identifying and analysing the influence of positive affect on decision-making, with little work done on negative affect and its implications. To address this gap, the paper seeks to study the role of negative affect in ethical decision-making by managers. All decisions have outcomes. Post-decision affect may be negative when a decision appears to be wrong in retrospect, and/ or when the outcome of a decision is not what was expected. How does negative affect experienced by an individual as a consequence of a decision impact his/her potential ethical decision-making process? In order to develop a model that illustrates how negative affect might impact the components of an individual’s ethical decision-making process, this paper makes use of two negative emotions: • Regret • Dissappointment. Although regret and disappointment have a lot in common, they differ in ways that are relevant to decision-making. Unlike other emotions, regret is unique in its relation to decision-making and responsibility. Individuals regret an outcome when they could have taken a different decision and prevented that outcome. Being an outcome of individual choice and hence personal agency, its behavioural consequences comprise an active attempt to undo the unpleasant effects of the decision that went wrong. Disappointment on the contrary is experienced when the negative outcome is the result of a random procedure rather than choice. The behavioural consequences of disappointment might include complaining and talking about the event to others, feelings of powerlessness and a tendency to do nothing and get away from the situation. The paper discusses the possible behavioural consequences of the two emotions in terms of ethical decision-making. As numerous ethical decision-making models have succeeded in integrating person-specific, issue contingent, and organizational contributors to ethical decisions, the need now is to probe further into specific causalities. Understanding affect induced by work is important to gain further insights into the person-specific variables that impact ethical decisions. This paper is an attempt in that direction.