Workers' Moral Mum Effect: On Facework and Unethical Behavior in the Workplace

Abstract

Through this language production experiment, we demonstrate workers' tendency to avoid describing behavior in ethical terms—what we label the moral mum effect. Working adults (N = 195) responded to an unethical request from a supervisor, coworker, or subordinate. Content and contingency table analyses revealed that most workers did not label the unethical request as unethical and hierarchical relationship did not mitigate this organizational communication dynamic. Additionally, we explore how another feature of language-use in work settings—operational justifications—may take the place of moral objections, especially in the case of subordinates interacting with their supervisors. We conclude with suggestions for overcoming the moral mum effect through communication skills training.

Keywords:

• Organizational Communication
• Organizational Ethics
• Supervisor-Subordinate Communication

Notes

Note. The Holm's sequential Bonferroni method, employed to control for Type I error rate, produced the following alpha significance levels for supervisor-subordinate compared to subordinate-supervisor (.017), coworker-coworker compared to subordinate-supervisor (.025), and supervisor-subordinate compared to coworker-coworker (.050).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ryan S. Bisel

Ryan S. Bisel (Ph.D., University of Kansas) is Assistant Professor of Organizational Communication in the Department of Communication at the University of Oklahoma

Katherine M. Kelley

Katherine M. Kelley doctoral candidates.

Nicole A. Ploeger

Nicole A. Ploeger are doctoral candidates.

Jake Messersmith

Jake Messersmith (Ph.D., University of Kansas) is Assistant Professor of Management in the Department of Management at the University of Nebraska, Kearney.