Previous research has almost universally shown that forgiveness is a beneficial virtue that can generate a series of positive outcomes. We challenge this prevailing view by proposing that employee forgiveness is a mixed blessing. Setting off from distinguishing the motives behind forgiveness, we integrated the relational perspective and ego depletion theory to explore the beneficial and detrimental consequences of employee forgiveness. Specifically, our study investigated when and how employee forgiveness leads to interpersonal citizenship behaviors (ICBs) and interpersonal deviance. Using a (...) sample of 349 supervisor–employee dyads, we found that employee forgiveness driven by strong relationship-oriented motives could foster high-quality relationships with coworkers and facilitate ICBs. In contrast, employee forgiveness driven by strong self-oriented motives could cause more resource depletion and increase interpersonal deviance. Furthermore, we discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our study as well as future research directions. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to examine the moderating roles of hostile attribution bias and negative reciprocity beliefs in the relationship between workplace incivility, as perceived by employees, and their interpersonal deviance. Data were collected using a three-wave survey research design. Participants included 233 employees from a large manufacturing company in China. Hierarchical regression analyses were used to test the hypothesized relationships. Our study revealed that hostile attribution bias and negative reciprocity beliefs strengthened the positive relationship between workplace incivility (...) and interpersonal deviance. This relationship was the most positive when both hostile attribution bias and negative reciprocity beliefs were high. The findings provided evidence that directing employees to depress hostile attribution bias and negative reciprocity beliefs may attenuate the effects of workplace incivility on interpersonal deviance. Implications for theory, research, and management practice are discussed. (shrink)

Supererogation has gained attention as a means of explaining the voluntary behaviours of individuals and organizations that are done for the benefit of others and which go above what is required of legislation and what may be expected by society. Whilst the emerging literature has made some significant headway in exploring supererogation as an ethical lens for the study of business there remain several important issues that require attention. These comprise, the lack of primary evidence upon which such examinations have (...) been made, attention has been given to only singular pro-social acts of organizations, and the focus has been upon the actions of large organizations. Furthermore, Heyd’s (Supererogation, Cambridge University Press, 1982) original taxonomy of six supererogatory acts, comprising Moral Heroism, Beneficence, Volunteering, Favour, Forgiveness and Forbearance, has been considered to be complete and other forms of supererogatory acts have not yet been explored. In order to address these gaps this study poses the research questions: First, it studies how a single, contemporary SME performs multiple supererogatory acts in its attempts to address its social and environmental goals that go beyond CSR. Second, it seeks to gain a deeper theoretical understanding of Heyd’s (Supererogation, Cambridge University Press, 1982) taxonomy of six forms of supererogation through the capture of primary data. This research makes a three-year case study examination of a single SME that has been formally recognized for its work in addressing social and environmental issues at local, national and global levels. Primary data are acquired of the supererogatory acts that it performs through a three-year participant observation case study, utilizing 61 interviews and 3 focus groups with internal and external stakeholders. In doing so, it addresses the empirical limitations of the extant research, substantiates each of the forms that supererogatory acts may take, and makes a contribution to the theory of supererogation by identifying a further class of act that is ‘Sharing’. (shrink)

Despite its central position in the history of European and Christian thought on the protection of human dignity, the virtue of mercy is currently a problematic and under-developed concept in business ethics, compared to related ideas of care, compassion or philanthropy. The aim of this article is to argue for its revival as a core principle of ethical business practice. The article is conceptual in method. An overview is provided of the scope of contemporary business ethics research on related topics (...) and clarifies some of the similarities and differences between mercy and popular terms, such as compassion and prosocial behaviour. The question is then explored as to why mercy has so little traction in business ethics. Some of the history of the idea of mercy in European and Anglophone philosophy is discussed, from Anselm and Aquinas to the present day, showing how discourse on mercy came to be split into a wider concept of the prevention and alleviation of suffering (_misericordia_) and a narrower one of clemency or leniency. Aquinas’s wide concept of the virtue of _misericordia_ is developed as the basis for a principle of mercy, which is applicable directly to corporations. The practical implications of this for standards of corporate behaviour towards employees and other stakeholders are then considered through the introduction of a ‘vulnerability grid’. The grid offers a critical contrast to other analysis tools, such as stakeholder power-interest matrices. Cases drawn from empirical studies are used to illustrate application of the grid and to challenge some common assumptions of stakeholder theory. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Workplace transgressions elicit a variety of opinions about their meaning and what is required to address them. This diversity in views makes it difficult for managers to identify a mutually satisfactory response and to enable repair of the relationships between the affected parties. We develop a conceptual model for understanding how to bridge these diverging perspectives and foster relationship repair. Specifically, we argue that effective relationship repair is dependent on the parties’ reciprocal concern for others’ viewpoints and collective engagement in (...) the justice repair process. This approach enhances our understanding of the interdependency between justice and reconciliation/reintegration, while also providing theoretical insight into the processes underlying restorative conferencing, innovations that promise to help managers heal damaged organizational bonds. (shrink)

The current two-sample investigation explores the role of enactment as a boundary condition in the relationship between experienced incivility and workplace outcomes. We integrate the tenets of the transactional model of stress and sensemaking theory to explain why enactment is a psychological sensemaking capability that can neutralize the adverse effects of experienced incivility on workplace outcomes. The results across two samples of data supported the study hypotheses by demonstrating that experienced incivility had stronger adverse effects on employees’ job satisfaction, OCBs, (...) and turnover intent for employees who reported lower levels of enactment than employees who reported higher levels of enactment. This study’s results make three important contributions to theory and research. First, we make an empirical contribution by examining enactment as a psychological sensemaking capability that can neutralize the adverse effects of experienced incivility on workplace outcomes. Second, we make a theoretical contribution by integrating the tenets of the transactional model of stress and sensemaking theory in a novel way that explains why enactment is a psychological sensemaking capability that can neutralize the adverse effects of stress on strain. Third, we demonstrate that enactment is the boundary condition that explains why incivility does not have universally adverse effects on employees’ outcomes. (shrink)

Arguing that psychology and business ethics are best brought together through a multi-level, broad-based agenda, this essay articulates a vision of psychology and business ethics to frame a future research agenda. The essay draws upon work published in JBE, but also identifies gaps where published research is needed, to build upon psychological conceptions of business ethics. Psychological concepts, notably, are not restricted to phenomena “in the head”, but are discussed at the intra-psychic, relational, and contextual levels of analysis. On the (...) basis of this presentation, I discuss future directions for development in psychology and business ethics, including but not limited to studies of personality, emotion, decision making, motivation, and the biological bases of psychology and business ethics. An inclusive approach to these and related areas, it is argued, will both bring about depth of understanding on the psychological bases of business ethics, and allow dialogue across disciplinary areas within JBE. (shrink)

This study examines the conditions under which apologies help to elicit forgiveness and restore trust following trust violations between leaders and followers. The intentionality and severity of violations are examined in a critical incident study and a laboratory study. The results support a model in which forgiveness mediates the relation of apology quality and trust. More importantly, the moderation–mediation model shows that apology quality influenced forgiveness and subsequent trust following violations that were moderate in severity–intentionality combination. The effect of apologizing (...) affects trust directly without forgiveness when the severity–intentionality combination held minor or extreme intensity. The results suggest a range in which apologies are effective and enrich understanding of the conditions under which trust can be recovered through an apology–forgiveness process in leader–follower relationships. The contribution of the study lies in elucidating that the combination of severity and intentionality of leaders’ trust violations has greater importance than either one separately. (shrink)

After a transgression has occurred within an organization, a primary concern is the reintegration of the affected parties back into the organizational community. However, beyond offenders and victims, reintegration depends on the views of organizational peers and their desire to interact with these parties. In two studies, we demonstrated that offender amends and victim forgiveness interact to predict peer reintegrative outcomes. We found evidence of backlash against unforgiving victims: Peers wanted to work the least with victims who rejected appropriate amends, (...) thus penalizing them for their failure to contribute to the restoration process. This backlash effect was due to decreased liking of the victim and the perceived failure to repair the offender-victim relationship. These findings demonstrate that peers expect both offenders and victims to do their part to achieve reconciliation following transgression, and both may suffer the consequences of failing to meet peer expectations. Implications for reintegration within organizations are discussed. (shrink)

The issue of damaged relationships and of repairing them is very important, especially in recent years with reports of organizations which damage relationships with various stakeholders. Many studies have investigated how individuals react to damaged relationships after perceiving injustice or receiving offense in organizations. A part of this research has been focused on revenge or other types of negative responses. However, individuals can choose to react in other ways than revenge, willing to repair relationships through reconciliation. Recently, the effectiveness of (...) reconciliation to repair damaged relationship in organizations has been linked to restorative justice. For the purpose of this article we are interested in understanding how restorative justice can be effective in repairing damaged or broken relationships in organizations, as inspired by principles of compassion or mercy. In this sense, we look for a convincing philosophical foundation for restorative justice, proposing Levinas’ ethics as a way to justify it. (shrink)

Forgiveness has been a central issue for humankind since ancient times; it emerged in theology, but in recent decades it has received significant attention from different disciplines, such as philosophy and psychology. More recently, forgiveness has received attention also from organizational and managerial studies, particularly, in studying how individuals respond to interpersonal offenses, or perceived harm and wrongdoing in the workplace. Forgiveness is a complex concept, as it can be understood as a family of related constructs and can be analyzed (...) at different levels. Even if social sciences have widely recognized that the nature of forgiveness can be both conditional and unconditional, the notions of conditionality and unconditionality have not yet received sufficient study, especially in organizational and managerial fields. In these fields, forgiveness has been predominantly studied under a psychological approach, looking for the conditions under which it may occur in the workplace. Unconditional forgiveness has received less attention: with a few exceptions, managerial and organizational literature has limited the conceptualization of forgiveness, weakening its scope and probably not catching a relevant part of forgiving experiences in the workplace. This article proposes to follow a more comprehensive approach to forgiveness in the workplace, according to the social sciences field, which can take into account both conditionality and unconditionality. It focuses on unconditional forgiveness according to Continental philosophy, in particular, to the thought of Jacque Derrida and Paul Ricoeur. Through their contributions, the unconditionality of forgiveness is deepened, and the implications of considering both conditional and unconditional forgiveness are discussed. (shrink)

Using forgiveness theory, we investigated the effects of organizational apology and restitution on eliciting forgiveness of a transgressing organization after transactional psychological contract breach. Forgiveness theory proposes that victims are more likely to forgive offenders when victims’ positive offender-oriented emotions replace negative ones. Three pre-post laboratory experiments, using vignettes about a broken promise of financial aid, found that while apology-alone and restitution-alone each increased likelihood of forgiving, restitution-alone was the more effective of the two responses. When combined with an apology, (...) restitution boosted the effect of apology-alone. However, restitution was unnecessary if positive emotions replaced negative ones; third-party blame accomplished this negative-to-positive emotion replacement. Consistent with forgiveness theory, offender-oriented negative-to-positive emotion replacement partially mediated all effects, and negative emotion reductions were strongly correlated with positive emotion gains. We discuss implications for the repair of damaged norms and relationships within an organizational community. These include reparative effects of apology and restitution, dual-process conceptions of violation and repair, repair after psychological contract breach, and emotion replacement models of forgiveness. (shrink)

Using forgiveness theory, we investigated the effects of organizational apology and restitution on eliciting forgiveness of a transgressing organization after transactional psychological contract breach. Forgiveness theory proposes that victims are more likely to forgive offenders when victims’ positive offender-oriented emotions replace negative ones. Three pre-post laboratory experiments, using vignettes about a broken promise of financial aid, found that while apology-alone and restitution-alone each increased likelihood of forgiving, restitution-alone was the more effective of the two responses. When combined with an apology, (...) restitution boosted the effect of apology-alone. However, restitution was unnecessary if positive emotions replaced negative ones; third-party blame accomplished this negative-to-positive emotion replacement. Consistent with forgiveness theory, offender-oriented negative-to-positive emotion replacement partially mediated all effects, and negative emotion reductions were strongly correlated with positive emotion gains. We discuss implications for the repair of damaged norms and relationships within an organizational community. These include reparative effects of apology and restitution, dual-process conceptions of violation and repair, repair after psychological contract breach, and emotion replacement models of forgiveness. (shrink)