The consequences of ethical voice inside the organization: An integrative review.

To better understand the consequences of ethical voice in organizations, we have brought together multiple relevant literatures that focus on behaviors that fit our definition of ethical voice but have previously not been studied together, including internal reporting, social issue selling, ethical voice (in groups), moral objection, and confronting prejudice. Research across them has found both positive and negative responses to ethical voice. Further, emerging evidence suggests ambivalent attitudes and emotions toward ethical voice and voicers, hinting at more complex outcomes. However, a systematic understanding of when and why positive, negative, and more complex outcomes occur has remained elusive and is much needed. Building on empirical evidence, theory and research on ethical decision-making, self-enhancement/protection, and ambivalence, we offer an integrative theoretical framework to understand when and why ethical voice leads to targets'/observers' support for, undermining of, and inaction/disengagement from ethical voice and the voicer. We propose a morally motivated process, an instrumentally motivated process, and emotional ambivalence to explain these different responses. We also propose boundary conditions. We discuss our contributions and propose future directions for ethical voice research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Promotive and prohibitive ethical voice: Coworker emotions and support for the voice.

Despite the importance of ethical voice for advancing ethics in organizations, we know little about how coworkers respond to ethical voice in their work units. Drawing on the fundamental approach/avoidance behavioral system and the promotive and prohibitive distinction in the voice literature, we distinguish between promotive and prohibitive ethical voice and propose that they engender different emotions-elevation (an approach-oriented moral emotion) and feelings of threat (an avoidance-oriented emotion), respectively, in coworkers. We propose that these emotions differentially influence coworker subsequent responses to the ethical voice behavior. In a time-lagged critical incident survey and two experimental studies, we consistently found support for our hypothesis that promotive ethical voice elicits moral elevation in coworkers with subsequent coworker verbal support for the ethical voice (an approach-oriented response). However, results for prohibitive ethical voice were more complex because prohibitive ethical voice leads to mixed emotions in coworkers. It sometimes leads to feelings of threat, with indirect negative effects via threat on coworker support. But surprisingly, it also leads to coworker elevation and hence can have positive indirect effects via elevation on coworker support. We will discuss the research and practical implications of these findings. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Ethical champions, emotions, framing, and team ethical decision making.

Research has offered a pessimistic (although limited) view regarding the effectiveness of ethical champions in teams and the social consequences they are likely to experience. To challenge this view, we conducted two multimethod (quantitative/qualitative) experimental studies in the context of entrepreneurial team decision-making to examine whether and how an ethical champion can shape team decision ethicality and whether ethical champions experience interpersonal costs. In Study 1, we found that confederate ethical champions influenced team decisions to be more ethical by increasing team ethical awareness. Focusing on the emotional expressions of ethical champions, we found that sympathetic and angry ethical champions both increased team decision ethicality but that angry ethical champions were more disliked. Analysis of team interaction videos further revealed moral disengagement in team discussions and the emergence of nonconfederate ethical champions who used business frames to argue for the ethical decision. Those emergent phenomena shifted our focus, in Study 2, to how ethical champions framed the issues and the mediating processes involved. We found that ethical champions using ethical frames not only increased team ethical awareness but also consequently reduced team moral disengagement, resulting in more ethical team decisions. Ethical champions using business frames also improved team decision ethicality, but by increasing the perceived business utility of the ethical decision. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).