IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/jbuset/v200y2025i4d10.1007_s10551-024-05880-z.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How Identity Work Drives Ethical Conduct in Organizations: The Case of Organizational Citizenship Behavior

Author

Listed:
  • Michaela Driver

    (The University of Texas at El Paso)

Abstract

The study examines how identities in general and moral identities in particular are related to ethical behavior in organizations and what aspects of such identities might drive actual ethical conduct versus only the appearance of such conduct. The study develops a psychoanalytic, specifically Lacanian, framework with which to explore such dynamics and illustrates this empirically by analyzing how employees from a range of organizations narrate their identities as good organizational citizens. The findings reveal that how individuals position themselves regarding common struggles with self and desire affects how much they are confined to appearing to be ethical rather than to act ethically. The study discusses the implications of these findings offering new avenues for understanding organizational citizenship behavior, how ethical conduct in organizations can be explored from an identity perspective and how psychoanalysis may be foundational for the study of ethics.

Suggested Citation

  • Michaela Driver, 2025. "How Identity Work Drives Ethical Conduct in Organizations: The Case of Organizational Citizenship Behavior," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 200(4), pages 897-909, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:200:y:2025:i:4:d:10.1007_s10551-024-05880-z
    DOI: 10.1007/s10551-024-05880-z
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-024-05880-z
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10551-024-05880-z?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

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:200:y:2025:i:4:d:10.1007_s10551-024-05880-z. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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.