PSYC 644 Week 2 DB Forum 2 Example

Discussion Board Forum 2: Thread and Two Replies

PSYC 644 Organizational Ethics, Discussion Board Forum 2 (thread and two replies)

Thread by [Student Name]

The prompt, the clerk described and the classmates' posts are composites standing in for the course's own forum; Scripture, the textbook and the journal articles are real and described from their published sources; the requirements follow Liberty's public course guide for PSYC 644.

Thread

Marcus processes invoices for a mid-sized construction firm. Last spring, a friend who runs a small drywall company called in a panic: payroll was due and a payment was late. Marcus noticed that an earlier invoice from the friend's company had been submitted twice and approved the duplicate, telling himself it was a loan that would even out. It never did. Over the next eight months, he approved eleven more duplicates, each a little larger, until an auditor flagged more than $40,000 in overpayments.

Johnson (2019) describes ethical decision making as a process that can break down at several points, from failing to recognize a moral issue to failing to act on a sound judgment. Marcus did not decide one morning to steal $40,000. He took a first small step that felt like kindness and then a series of steps that each felt only slightly worse than the last. By the sixth invoice, he no longer checked whether the work had been done twice; he simply approved what his friend sent, and he stopped mentioning the arrangement to his wife.

Welsh et al. (2015) tested this slippery slope in four experiments, finding that participants who faced gradually increasing opportunities to cheat were more likely to commit a large transgression later than participants who faced the same large opportunity all at once. The gradual path worked through moral disengagement: each small act made the next seem acceptable, because people adjusted their standards to justify what they had already done. A sudden offer to take a large sum, by contrast, triggered alarm, because the distance from the person's normal behavior was obvious. The gradual path never produced that jolt.

Bandura's mechanisms of moral disengagement, which Johnson (2019) discusses, explain how Marcus kept his self-image intact. He used euphemistic labeling when he called the payments a loan, distorted the consequences when he told himself that a large company would never miss the money and displaced responsibility onto the managers who signed off without looking. None of these thoughts were dramatic; that is what made them effective. He also leaned on advantageous comparison, telling himself that executives padded expense reports far more than he ever took.

Song of Solomon 2:15 asks for the little foxes to be caught because they spoil the vineyards (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016). The image fits the research closely. Serious misconduct rarely begins as a decision to do serious harm. It begins with small permissions that no one notices or challenges, including the person granting them. The vineyard is lost a few vines at a time, and the owner notices only at harvest.

For organizations, the lesson is to take small lapses seriously, not to punish harshly but to interrupt the slope early. Regular audits of small transactions, clear rules about vendor relationships and managers who ask about minor irregularities before they grow would have caught Marcus at the first duplicate rather than the twelfth. A simple rule that any employee with a personal tie to a vendor must disclose it and step away from that vendor's invoices would have removed the temptation entirely.

Have you seen a workplace where small shortcuts gradually became normal?

Reply to Jessica

Jessica, you wondered why some employees in Marcus's position would never have approved even the first duplicate. Detert et al. (2008) studied the antecedents of moral disengagement and found that individual differences matter. People higher in empathy were less likely to disengage, while those higher in trait cynicism, who assume others act from self-interest, were more likely to. Disengagement in turn predicted unethical decisions. Johnson (2019) emphasizes that ethical competencies can be developed, and empathy is one that organizations can cultivate, for example by helping employees see the people harmed by seemingly victimless acts. Marcus thought of his employer as a faceless company, but the overpayments came out of project margins that funded raises for the crews in the field. Philippians 2:4 asks believers to keep other people's concerns in view alongside their own (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016). That verse describes the opposite of disengagement, which works by pushing other people's interests out of view. An employee who keeps others' interests in view finds it much harder to rename theft as a loan, because the people who would pay for it never fade from view. Training that tells the stories of those affected by fraud could make that perspective more common across the accounting staff. Pairing that training with rotation of duties, so no clerk handles the same vendors for years, would add a structural check to the personal one. Cynicism deserves attention too, since a workplace where leaders appear self-serving may teach employees to assume that everyone takes what they can.

Reply to Tyrone

Tyrone, you proposed screening job applicants for their tendency to morally disengage. Moore et al. (2012) built a brief scale of how readily people morally disengage and, across several studies, linked high scores to self-reported misconduct, to choosing fraud in decision tasks and to unethical acts noticed by coworkers and supervisors. That makes your idea plausible. Still, Johnson (2019) cautions that organizational culture shapes behavior as much as individual character, so screening alone would leave the duplicate-invoice problem in place for the next clerk. Applicants can also learn what answers employers want, which limits any self-report tool, especially when a job offer depends on the score. A balanced approach would use such a measure as one input alongside structured interviews about past ethical dilemmas, while strengthening controls that catch small irregularities. First Corinthians 15:33 warns that bad company ruins good morals (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016). Hiring people less prone to disengagement improves the company employees keep, but the surrounding culture is company too, and it needs as much attention as the selection process. Even well-chosen employees can drift if the slope is left unguarded. Marcus had a clean record and good references when he was hired, which suggests that his tendency to disengage only emerged under a particular mix of friendship, pressure and weak oversight. A screening score taken at hiring could not have predicted that mix with any confidence. Regular conversations about ethical gray areas, led by supervisors who model honesty about their own temptations, may do more over the long run than any test given once at the door.

References

Detert, J. R., Treviño, L. K., & Sweitzer, V. L. (2008). Moral disengagement in ethical decision making: A study of antecedents and outcomes. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(2), 374-391. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.93.2.374

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)

Johnson, C. E. (2019). Organizational ethics: A practical approach (4th ed.). SAGE.

Moore, C., Detert, J. R., Treviño, L. K., Baker, V. L., & Mayer, D. M. (2012). Why employees do bad things: Moral disengagement and unethical organizational behavior. Personnel Psychology, 65(1), 1-48. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2011.01237.x

Welsh, D. T., Ordóñez, L. D., Snyder, D. G., & Christian, M. S. (2015). The slippery slope: How small ethical transgressions pave the way for larger future transgressions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 100(1), 114-127. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0036950