- The study highlights how organisations may unwittingly foster environments where unethical behaviours become normalised
- It introduces the concept of organisational moral disengagement
- Study draws on extensive data from thousands of employees and multiple organisations across various sectors.
New research led by teams from Aston University and University of East Anglia has revealed how organisations may unwittingly foster environments where unethical behaviours become collectively justified and normalised.
The study, The suspension of morality in organisations: Conceptualising organisational moral disengagement and testing its role in relation to unethical behaviours and silence, published in the journal Human Relations, introduces the concept of ‘organisational moral disengagement’, a novel framework developed to explain how organisations may systematically suspend moral standards to enable unethical practices that harm clients, communities and the environment.
The Volksvagen emissions scandal is a well know example, where a range of managers and engineers in the company were involved in making, implementing and concealing a device to cheat on emissions testing. Similarly, as the Grenfell Tower Inquiry found, the companies that made and sold the cladding panels and insulation products used on Grenfell Tower had manipulated testing processes, misrepresented test data and misled the market.
Led by Professor Roberta Fida, Dr Irene Skovgaard-Smith and an international team, the research involved thousands of employees and multiple organisations across various sectors. The research found that organisational moral disengagement can influence employees' likelihood of participating in or staying silent about unethical practices.
According to the study, organisational moral disengagement is not just a sum of individual attitudes, but rather a shared organisational mindset that encourages, condones or justifies morally questionable behaviours under the guise of organisational benefit.
The findings provide crucial insights for leaders, policymakers and corporate stakeholders seeking to prevent moral disengagement in their organisations. By understanding how moral disengagement can operate collectively, the researchers argue, leaders can begin to counteract these mechanisms, to instead foster an ethical culture that reinforces moral standards and accountability.
Professor Fida said:
“Organisational moral disengagement is about understanding how, at a collective level, managers and employees come to perceive unethical actions as acceptable within their corporate environment.
“For instance, use of euphemistic language is common, such as referring to price rigging as ‘stabilising prices’, thereby making unethical practices sound benign. Unethical actions may also be rationalised as comparatively harmless, for example, ‘it's not as bad as what our competitors are doing’ or ‘our products are safer than the alternatives’. Such mechanisms, she adds, "can transform morally questionable practices into behaviours perceived as acceptable or even beneficial within the organisational context.”
Dr Skovgaard-Smith highlights another core mechanism called the ‘diffusion of responsibility’:
“Complex organisational structures, systems and procedures often obscure how decisions are made and who is responsible.
“This means that unethical decisions can be attributed to the system rather than personal choice or responsibility. Complex impersonalised organisational systems also conceal or distort any harmful consequences of organisational activities, for example, through global value chains, bureaucratic procedures and technology.
“This detachment makes it easier for harmful practices to proceed unchecked.”
Professor Fida continued:
“These mechanisms can make unethical actions feel routine. For instance, behaviours like overlooking safety standards may become seen as ‘just following orders’ or ‘necessary for efficiency,’ leading employees to bypass their own moral standards. Our findings indicate that this phenomenon, while often invisible, has far-reaching implications for corporate culture and ethical accountability.
Dr Skovgaard-Smith said:
“From Facebook’s data privacy controversies to financial misreporting scandals, the study also sheds light on how organisations cultivate environments where people stay silent about unethical practices.
“When such practices are justified as being for the ‘greater good’ of the organisation, employees may feel pressure to remain silent rather than risk speaking up.
“This silence can reinforce a vicious cycle where unethical practices become normalised.”
The research found that effective internal reporting channels reduce organisational moral disengagement, while organisations that rely only on codes of conduct may unintentionally foster it if these codes are not authentically integrated into practice.
You can read the full paper, published in Human Relations, here.