Losing More than Money: Organizations’ Prosocial Actions Appear Less Authentic When Their Resources are Declining

Companies often benefit from others’ attributions of moral conviction for prosocial behavior, for example, attributions that a company has a sincere moral desire to improve the environment when behaving sustainably. Across four studies, we explored how organizations’ changing resource positions infl...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of business ethics Vol. 175; no. 2; pp. 413 - 425
Main Authors Jago, Arthur S., Fast, Nathanael, Pfeffer, Jeffrey
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 2022
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Attribution
Behavior
Business and Management
Business Ethics
Companies
Corporate profits
Economic resources
Education
Ethics
Losing
Management
Money
Morality
Organizational behavior
Organizations
Original Paper
Philosophy
Profitability
Prosocial behavior
Quality of Life Research
Values
United States > US
Signaling
Moral conviction
Attribution
Impression management
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Summary:Companies often benefit from others’ attributions of moral conviction for prosocial behavior, for example, attributions that a company has a sincere moral desire to improve the environment when behaving sustainably. Across four studies, we explored how organizations’ changing resource positions influenced people’s attributions for the motivations underlying prosocial organizational behaviors. Observers attributed less moral conviction following prosocial behavior when they believed an organization was losing (vs. gaining) economic resources (Studies 1 and 2). This effect was primarily a “penalty” assessed against organizations that were losing resources, as opposed to a “reward” given to organizations gaining resources (Study 3). Finally, we found that this effect occurred because people perceive organizations that are losing resources as more situationally constrained, leading them to attribute less dispositional moral conviction (Study 4). We discuss theoretical and practical implications stemming from how changes in resource access can lead people to be more skeptical of organizations’ motivations following prosocial behavior.
ISSN:0167-4544
1573-0697
DOI:10.1007/s10551-020-04645-8