Organizational Morality and Misconduct: a mixed-method approach to stakeholders’ condemnation of organizational misconduct
Some organizations choose to maximize profit at the expense of stakeholders in society, often prompting stakeholder backlash as a response to the perceived misconduct of the organization. Interestingly, while organizational misconduct can be considered widespread, not all organizations experience comparable stakeholder backlash for comparable organizational misconduct. The question arises why some organizations are punished disproportionally harshly by stakeholders, while other organizations experience less severe consequences. Acknowledging the parallels between interpersonal relationships and stakeholder-organization relationships, the present dissertation turns to literature on the fundamentals of impression formation and proposes organizational morality as a driver of stakeholder backlash in response to different types of organizational misconduct. In three empirical chapters, I examine the impact of organizational morality on the relationship between organizational misconduct and stakeholder backlash on the micro-and macro-levels of analysis. Specifically, chapter 2 examines misconduct on the micro-level and considers the effect of organizational morality stereotypes on the punishment of individual employees’ misconduct. Chapter 3 examines multiple forms of organizational misconduct on the macro-level of analysis, taking the moderating role of organizational morality into account. Chapter 4 examines organizational misconduct on both the micro-and macro-level and sheds light on shareholder and consumer backlash as a response to organizations not fulfilling their own claims, considering the interactive effect of misconduct and organizational morality. In sum, this interdisciplinary dissertation contributes to an integrative understanding of organizational misconduct, organizational morality and stakeholder backlash.
https://pure.rug.nl/ws/files/634313976/Title_and_contents.pdf
https://pure.rug.nl/ws/files/634313978/Chapter_1.pdf
https://pure.rug.nl/ws/files/634313980/Chapter_2.pdf
https://pure.rug.nl/ws/files/634313986/Chapter_5.pdf
https://pure.rug.nl/ws/files/634313988/Chapter_6.pdf
https://pure.rug.nl/ws/files/634313990/Chapter_7.pdf
https://pure.rug.nl/ws/files/634313992/Acknowledgements.pdf
https://pure.rug.nl/ws/files/634313996/Propositions.pdf
https://research.rug.nl/en/publications/73037c84-991c-414d-b308-dbfe22ec87cb