Essays on managing moral complexity in the workplace
Embargo Date
2028-05-04
OA Version
Citation
Abstract
Morally complex situations are relatively common in organizational settings, yet they remain understudied by scholars of organizational behavior, who have largely focused on employees’ responses to clear-cut “right” versus “wrong” decisions such as lying, cheating, and stealing. This emphasis on moral transgressions, while valuable, overlooks the reality that many ethical challenges at work do not necessarily involve obvious wrongdoing, but instead require employees to navigate competing values, obligations, and perspectives, a process that is often fraught with tension, uncertainty, and risk. As a result, our understanding of how employees experience, interpret, and respond to morally complex situations is incomplete, limiting both theory development and practical guidance for organizations. This dissertation begins by introducing the concept of moral complexity in the workplace and outlining why such situations warrant greater attention in organizational research. Building on this foundation, this dissertation features two essays, eachexamining a different source of moral complexity in the workplace. The first essay investigates how employees decide which moral obligation to prioritize in a right versus right dilemma, while the second essay explores how employees respond to moral disagreements. By examining how employees navigate these forms of moral complexity, this research aims to provide a more nuanced account of ethical behavior at work, one that reflects the ambiguity inherent in organizational life and informs more effective managerial practices and organizational policies. My first essay examines the effect of ethical and business decision frames on employees’ decisions in a right versus right dilemma between complying with organizational rules and helping others. Contrary to existing research characterizingethical frames as promoting moral behavior and business frames as promoting immoral behavior, I find that both frames shape moral behavior by differentially activating distinct moral values in organizational contexts. In particular, by heightening the salience of the moral value of care, ethical frames thereby increase employees’ willingness to help others even when doing so entails violating organizational rules, an outcome that may conflict with organizational interests. In contrast, because business frames make the moral value of authority more salient, they can promote moral behavior by reinforcing rule compliance. Extending this analysis, I further examine how decision frames interact with the presence of organizational rules in right versus wrong situations, demonstrating that business frames facilitate moral behavior when paired with a relevant organizational rule. My second essay explores how employees respond to opposing moral views by examining how the moral perceptions individuals hold of targets with opposing viewpoints shape receptiveness to those perspectives. While past work has demonstrated that individuals are more open to opposing opinions when they perceive their counterparts as being competent and willing to consider others’ viewpoints, the influence of the moral qualities attributed to opposing targets remains underexplored, even though morality plays a fundamental role in how people perceive and evaluate others. To addressthis gap, I examine how the expression of opposing perspectives in moral terms shapes perceptions of opposing targets and, consequently, receptiveness to opposing viewpoints. I argue that when individuals express an opposing view as a moral mandate as opposed to in non-moral terms, they are perceived as both more self-righteous and more morally principled, leading to conflicting effects on receptiveness. I further explore whether framing an opposing view as a personal moral belief can help resolve this tension by preserving perceptions of moral principle while mitigating perceptions of self-righteousness. Together, these essays advance our understanding of moral complexity in organizations by revealing how employees navigate competing obligations and moral disagreements, paving the way for future research on the origins of moral complexity, how it affects organizations, and how it can be addressed.
Description
2026
License
Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International