Acceptable finger pointing: How evaluators judge the ethicality of blame shifting

IF 3.4 3区管理学 Q2 MANAGEMENT

European Management Review Pub Date : 2024-09-09 DOI:10.1111/emre.12678

Paolo Antonetti, Ilaria Baghi

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Research shows how blame shifting deemed unethical by evaluators leads to a damaging reputational backlash. Yet, scholars have not determined how evaluators judge if blame‐shifting messages are ethical. To fill this gap, we develop a conceptual model of evaluators' judgments of blame‐shifting ethicality, integrating insights from ethical decision‐making and the ethics of blame. The ethical evaluation of blame shifting is based on perceptions of target blameworthiness, the motives of the blamer, and message fairness. These three perceptions explain the evaluators' judgment of whether blame shifting is ethical. Furthermore, the model explains why at times evaluators fail to develop a detailed ethical evaluation of the message. Organizational blame shifting in these circumstances can be effective and yet unethical because evaluators do not cognitively process the relevant ethical factors. This article contributes to research on blame shifting by explaining how evaluators judge ethicality and examining the conditions for ethical blame shifting.

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可接受的指责：评估人员如何判断推卸责任的道德性

研究表明，评估人员认为不道德的推卸责任行为会导致声誉受损。然而，学者们尚未确定评估人员如何判断推卸责任的信息是否合乎道德。为了填补这一空白，我们结合伦理决策和推卸责任伦理的观点，建立了一个评估者判断推卸责任是否合乎伦理的概念模型。对推卸责任的道德评价是基于对目标责任感、推卸责任者的动机和信息公平性的认知。这三种认知解释了评价者对推卸责任是否合乎道德的判断。此外，该模型还解释了为什么评价者有时无法对信息进行详细的道德评价。在这种情况下，组织推卸责任可能是有效的，但也可能是不道德的，因为评价者没有对相关的道德因素进行认知处理。本文通过解释评价者如何判断道德性以及研究道德性推卸责任的条件，为有关推卸责任的研究做出了贡献。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

European Management Review MANAGEMENT-

CiteScore

7.20

自引率

13.50%

发文量

期刊介绍： The European Management Review is an international journal dedicated to advancing the understanding of management in private and public sector organizations through empirical investigation and theoretical analysis. The European Management Review provides an international forum for dialogue between researchers, thereby improving the understanding of the nature of management in different settings and promoting the transfer of research results to management practice. Although one of the European Management Review"s aims is to foster the general advancement of management scholarship among European scholars and/or those academics interested in European management issues.