IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/jbuset/v130y2015i3p705-716.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Them’s Fightin’ Words: The Effects of Violent Rhetoric on Ethical Decision Making in Business

Author

Listed:
  • Joshua Gubler
  • Nathan Kalmoe
  • David Wood

Abstract

Business managers regularly employ metaphorical violent rhetoric as a means of motivating their employees to action. While it might be effective to this end, research on violent media suggests that violent rhetoric might have other, less desirable consequences. This study examines how the use of metaphorical violent rhetoric by business managers impacts the ethical decision making of employees. We develop and test a model that explains how the use of violent rhetoric impacts employees’ willingness to break ethical standards, depending on the source of the rhetoric. The results of two experiments suggest that the use of violent rhetoric by a CEO at a competing company increases employees’ willingness to engage in ethical violations while the use of violent rhetoric by employees’ own CEO decreases their willingness to engage in unethical behavior. Furthermore, we find that participants who made less ethical decisions motivated by violent rhetoric used by a competitor’s CEO did not view their decisions as less ethical than the other participants in the experiments. The results of these studies highlight potentially harmful unintended consequences of the use of violent rhetoric, providing knowledge that should be useful to managers and academics who want to increase employee motivation without increasing a willingness to engage in unethical behavior. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015

Suggested Citation

  • Joshua Gubler & Nathan Kalmoe & David Wood, 2015. "Them’s Fightin’ Words: The Effects of Violent Rhetoric on Ethical Decision Making in Business," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 130(3), pages 705-716, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:130:y:2015:i:3:p:705-716
    DOI: 10.1007/s10551-014-2256-y
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10551-014-2256-y
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10551-014-2256-y?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kaplan, Steven E. & Samuels, Janet A. & Thorne, Linda, 2009. "Ethical norms of CFO insider trading," Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 28(5), pages 386-400, September.
    2. Berinsky, Adam J. & Huber, Gregory A. & Lenz, Gabriel S., 2012. "Evaluating Online Labor Markets for Experimental Research: Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(3), pages 351-368, July.
    3. Mayer, David M. & Kuenzi, Maribeth & Greenbaum, Rebecca & Bardes, Mary & Salvador, Rommel (Bombie), 2009. "How low does ethical leadership flow? Test of a trickle-down model," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 108(1), pages 1-13, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. König, Andreas & Fehn, Angela & Puck, Jonas & Graf-Vlachy, Lorenz, 2017. "Primary or complex? Towards a theory of metaphorical strategy communication in MNCs," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 270-285.
    2. Joshua R. Gubler & Skye Herrick & Richard A. Price & David A. Wood, 2018. "Violence, Aggression, and Ethics: The Link Between Exposure to Human Violence and Unethical Behavior," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 147(1), pages 25-34, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Valeria Ciampa & Moritz Sirowatka & Sebastian C. Schuh & Franco Fraccaroli & Rolf Dick, 2021. "Ambivalent Identification as a Moderator of the Link Between Organizational Identification and Counterproductive Work Behaviors," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 169(1), pages 119-134, February.
    2. An-Chih Wang & Jack Ting-Ju Chiang & Wan-Ju Chou & Bor-Shiuan Cheng, 2017. "One definition, different manifestations: Investigating ethical leadership in the Chinese context," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 34(3), pages 505-535, September.
    3. Pan, Jing Yu & Liu, Dahai, 2022. "Mask-wearing intentions on airplanes during COVID-19 – Application of theory of planned behavior model," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 32-44.
    4. Takuma Kimura & Mizuki Nishikawa, 2018. "Ethical Leadership and Its Cultural and Institutional Context: An Empirical Study in Japan," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 151(3), pages 707-724, September.
    5. Michele Cantarella & Chiara Strozzi, 2021. "Workers in the crowd: the labor market impact of the online platform economy [An evaluation of instrumental variable strategies for estimating the effects of catholic schooling]," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 30(6), pages 1429-1458.
    6. Robbett, Andrea & Matthews, Peter Hans, 2018. "Partisan bias and expressive voting," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 107-120.
    7. Muel Kaptein, 2015. "The Effectiveness of Ethics Programs: The Role of Scope, Composition, and Sequence," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 132(2), pages 415-431, December.
    8. Park, JungKun & Ahn, Jiseon & Thavisay, Toulany & Ren, Tianbao, 2019. "Examining the role of anxiety and social influence in multi-benefits of mobile payment service," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 140-149.
    9. S. Hansen & Bradley Alge & Michael Brown & Christine Jackson & Benjamin Dunford, 2013. "Ethical Leadership: Assessing the Value of a Multifoci Social Exchange Perspective," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 115(3), pages 435-449, July.
    10. Kishwar Sultana & Muhammad Nadeem Iqbal & Bilal Shabir & Nadia Batool, 2022. "Ethical Leadership and Teachers’ Job Performance at Secondary Level," Journal of Policy Research (JPR), Research Foundation for Humanity (RFH), vol. 8(4), pages 411-415, December.
    11. Yidong Tu & Xinxin Lu & Yue Yu, 2017. "Supervisors’ Ethical Leadership and Employee Job Satisfaction: A Social Cognitive Perspective," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 18(1), pages 229-245, February.
    12. Chunhao Wei & Han Chen & Yee Ming Lee, 2022. "COVID-19 preventive measures and restaurant customers’ intention to dine out: the role of brand trust and perceived risk," Service Business, Springer;Pan-Pacific Business Association, vol. 16(3), pages 581-600, September.
    13. Karianne Kalshoven & Deanne Den Hartog & Annebel De Hoogh, 2011. "Ethical Leader Behavior and Big Five Factors of Personality," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 100(2), pages 349-366, May.
    14. Masha Shunko & Julie Niederhoff & Yaroslav Rosokha, 2018. "Humans Are Not Machines: The Behavioral Impact of Queueing Design on Service Time," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(1), pages 453-473, January.
    15. Giles Hirst & Fred Walumbwa & Samuel Aryee & Ivan Butarbutar & Chin Jeffery Hui Chen, 2016. "A Multi-level Investigation of Authentic Leadership as an Antecedent of Helping Behavior," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 139(3), pages 485-499, December.
    16. Tu Yidong & Lu Xinxin, 2013. "How Ethical Leadership Influence Employees’ Innovative Work Behavior: A Perspective of Intrinsic Motivation," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 116(2), pages 441-455, August.
    17. Abel Brodeur, Nikolai M. Cook, Anthony Heyes, 2022. "We Need to Talk about Mechanical Turk: What 22,989 Hypothesis Tests Tell Us about Publication Bias and p-Hacking in Online Experiments," LCERPA Working Papers am0133, Laurier Centre for Economic Research and Policy Analysis.
    18. Lude, Maximilian & Prügl, Reinhard, 2021. "Experimental studies in family business research," Journal of Family Business Strategy, Elsevier, vol. 12(1).
    19. Mattozzi, Andrea & Snowberg, Erik, 2018. "The right type of legislator: A theory of taxation and representation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 54-65.
    20. Jasper Grashuis & Theodoros Skevas & Michelle S. Segovia, 2020. "Grocery Shopping Preferences during the COVID-19 Pandemic," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(13), pages 1-10, July.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:130:y:2015:i:3:p:705-716. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.