Confronting and Defending Unethical Behavior: Communication and Ethical Sensegiving

Abstract

The purpose of this two-study dissertation was to investigate the role of communication in confronting and defending unethical organizational behavior. Utilizing two language production experimental designs, results reveal how working adults communicate in two different, unethical organizational situations.

In the first study, 326 working adults were asked to respond to an unethical actor who presented the working adults' ideas as his/her own. Participants were randomly assigned to one of nine hypothetical scenarios--scenarios differed by hierarchical relationship (subordinate responding to supervisor, coworker to coworker, or supervisor to subordinate) and interpersonal relational closeness (troublesome other, acquaintance, or friend) with the unethical actor. Workers' responses were content analyzed using a continuous coding scheme, which measured communicative confrontationality, a variable unique to and created for this study. It was hypothesized that supervisors responding to subordinates would engage in the most contemptive confrontationality, as compared to coworkers responding to coworkers, whose responses would be more confrontational as compared to subordinates responding to supervisors. Additionally, it was hypothesized that workers responding to a troublesome-other offender would engage in the most contemptive confrontationality, as compared to acquaintances, whose responses would be more confrontational as compared to friends. Finally, interaction effects between hierarchical and relational closeness contexts were also posited. Results revealed that coworkers engaged in significantly more contemptive confrontationality than both supervisors and subordinates; supervisors utilized significantly more contemptive confrontationality than subordinates. Neither a main effect for interpersonal relational closeness nor an interaction effect was found.

In the second study, 318 working adults were asked to respond to an organizational outsider who inquired about a recent gender discrimination lawsuit filed against the participant's current employer. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions, which presented the guilt of the organization as either ambiguous or certain. Participants' organizational identification (i.e., feelings of oneness with or belongingness to their current organization) was also measured. The linguistic defensiveness--a variable unique to and created for this study--of workers' responses was measured. Responses were content analyzed using a continuous coding scheme, which assessed the frequency of linguistic defense mechanisms. Participants were also asked to rate their felt intensity when crafting their responses. It was hypothesized that highly identified workers would engage in relatively more frequent linguistic defensiveness and feel more intensely when responding to an outsider who inquired about the lawsuit, after controlling for the certainty of organizational wrongdoing. It was also hypothesized that those workers in the ambiguous condition would use more linguistic defense mechanisms in their responses and report greater intensity than those in the certain condition. A moderating effect of organizational identification on the relationship between certainty of organizational wrongdoing and linguistic defensiveness was also predicted. Lastly, predictions were made about workers' organizational tenure; specifically, veteran employees would report higher levels of organizational identification, would incorporate more linguistic defense mechanisms in their responses, and would also report stronger feelings of intensity when crafting their responses. Results revealed that highly identified workers were significantly more likely to use a greater frequency of linguistic defense mechanisms and report significantly higher feelings of intensity, even after controlling for the certainty of organizational wrongdoing. Additionally, participants in the ambiguous condition used a greater amount of linguistic defense mechanisms than those in the certain condition; however, results could not confirm differences between these groups' feelings of intensity. Organizational identification was not found to serve as a moderating variable. Finally, veteran employees reported higher levels of organizational identification and used a greater frequency of linguistic defense mechanisms. Results did not confirm that veteran employees reported greater feelings of intensity, when responding to the organizational outsider.

This dissertation expanded the current literature on organizational ethics in five, important ways. New variables relating to the role of communication in organizational ethics were introduced. First, the notion of communicative confrontationality was established. Second, the variable of linguistic defensiveness--both workers' frequency of defense mechanism usage and the intensity felt when responding about an organizational wrongdoing--was introduce. Third, this dissertation introduced two new coding schemes for analyzing organizational ethics discourse. Furthermore, during the course of these investigations, these coding schemes were validated and ought to be used in future investigations of organizational ethics talk. Fourth, this study provided empirical support for the potency of the hierarchical context in communicative confrontationality when responding to unethical behavior, to the degree that hierarchical relationships may overshadow feelings of relational closeness in the workplace. Similarly, these results provide further support for the hierarchical mum effect (Ploeger, Kelley, & Bisel, in press). Finally, this study suggested the potential maladaptive power of organizational identification, to the extent that high levels of identification could inhibit workers from admitting organizational wrongdoing and could serve as a barrier to organizational learning. In sum, this dissertation illustrated the potential for communication to enable and constrain unethical behaviors in the workplace in two major ways. First, if workers do not confront unethical behaviors in the workplace, those behaviors may accumulate, and over time, produce a culture where unethical behavior not only occurs, but is accepted. Second, the usage of linguistic defense mechanisms may produce ethical blind spots, so to speak, such that their frequent usage comes to prevent critical, yet ethically-instructive self-reflection and questioning.