The Price Leaders Pay for Cutting Ethical Corners

Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for leaders to ask their employees to cross ethical lines. Consider the following examples from a pilot study we recently conducted: A sales representative at a retail company was asked to grant credit approval to unqualified customers who were friends of her supervisor; a field technician at a communications company was asked by management to close telephone repair tickets for elderly customers whose phones were not fixed; and an engineer in the transportation industry was asked to approve projects that he felt were at risk for structural failure.

Examples like these exist in myriad settings. In a global survey of over 13,000 employees, a median of 22% of respondents across sectors reported feeling pressure to compromise standards at work.1 In our recent research, which includes several survey-based studies as well as laboratory experiments, we found that such pressure often comes from being specifically asked to engage in behavior that is unethical or morally questionable — what we refer to as receiving an unethical request.

However, while leaders may make unethical requests in an effort to enhance short-term results, for instance, or to gain personal benefits, those who make them run the risk of negatively affecting their employees’ motivation and task performance over the long term. Here, we’ll discuss why asking people to cut ethical corners can backfire in the long run and explain how that effect played out in our research.

Why Motivation and Performance Can Suffer

Employees who receive an unethical request at work may feel trapped. On the one hand, if they comply with the request, their behavior may lead to feelings of guilt or regret. Most people have an inherent desire to view themselves as good, moral individuals, and acting in ways that violate their own values is threatening to the way they want to think about themselves.2 Complying with an unethical request can also induce a fear of getting caught and punished. On the other hand, in refusing to comply, especially on moral grounds, the employee runs the risk of offending the requester, who may feel judged and get defensive. And if the requester is a supervisor, employees who don’t comply may worry that they will be cut off from important resources under the manager’s control, like promotions, bonuses, or desirable assignments. Because people could face negative consequences no matter what they decide to do, feelings of stress, anxiety, and paralysis can set in.

While those feelings may interfere with workers’ job performance in the short run, the longer-term effects on their motivation may be even more consequential. Motivation and engagement at work — strong predictors of overall job performance — are affected by the extent to which people’s personal values match those of their workplace.3 People are more motivated and better able to sustain effort when their authentic goals, interests, and values align with those of their employer. Indeed, a large body of management and psychology research shows that when employees’ needs, abilities, and values are not a good match with their organizations’ practices, negative outcomes often follow — including lower job satisfaction, more workplace stress, and poorer psychological and physical well-being.4

When people receive work requests they deem to be unethical, they begin to associate their work (and the organization they work for) with morally questionable practices and pressures. This moral value incongruence can decrease their job satisfaction, lower their performance, and even lead them to look for a new job.5

That said, an unethical request will only decrease workers’ motivation and hurt performance if they view it as morally problematic. People differ in how they process and even recognize moral and ethical considerations. For example, some are more likely than others to morally disengage — that is, to appraise morally questionable behaviors as somehow defensible and thus decouple their personal values from their actions.6 By morally disengaging, individuals who comply with an unethical request can avoid self-censure for their behavior through a number of mechanisms, including moral justification (rationalizing that an immoral act is excusable if it serves a higher cause or purpose), advantageous social comparison (“It’s not as bad as what others are doing”), and the displacement of responsibility (“I’m just following orders”), to name a few.

At work, employees with a higher propensity to morally disengage are more likely to cognitively process unethical requests in ways that minimize the ethical or moral implications for them personally. In contrast, those with a lower propensity to morally disengage are more likely to focus on the incongruence between their personal moral values and the requested action. Our research suggests that it is this second category of employees that will suffer greater motivational and performance-related consequences.

Evidence From Our Research

To test the notion that receiving unethical requests from a leader can undermine a person’s motivation and performance at work, we conducted several studies.

First, we collected surveys from employees and their managers in a variety of industries (including services, manufacturing, and finance). We asked employees about the extent to which they receive unethical requests at work from their supervisors, as well as their overall level of motivation at work. We also asked them several questions designed to measure how likely they are to justify and rationalize morally questionable behavior. Separately, we asked their managers to rate both the job performance and the helpfulness of their employees. Perhaps not surprisingly, employees who strongly agreed that they received unethical requests at work reported lower levels of motivation than others, and their managers gave them lower performance ratings as well. Moreover, these findings were all stronger for employees who were less likely than others to morally disengage by rationalizing unethical behavior. Even when we accounted for factors such as the seriousness of the unethical requests or whether the employee complied with the requests, the results remained the same.

In a different study with a separate sample, we conducted a two-part survey of full-time employees working in multiple industries — with job titles as varied as nurse, engineer, account manager, sales representative, senior consultant, office manager, teacher, and travel agent. In an initial survey, we asked employees questions about the extent to which they received unethical requests from their supervisors, as well as how well they thought their moral values fit with the values of their organization. One week later, we measured their work motivation and their propensity to morally disengage.

As in our previous study, we found that for employees who were less likely to morally disengage, receiving more unethical requests predicted lower levels of motivation at work. (Again, these results held even when we accounted for whether the employee complied with the unethical requests and for the seriousness of the requests.) Moreover, additional statistical analysis showed that the relationship between receiving unethical requests and having a decrease in motivation was largely explained by a decrease in moral value congruence. When people received unethical requests, they felt an inconsistency between their own moral values and those of their organization, and their overall motivation at work suffered.

However, the results in these studies did not demonstrate that unethical requests cause a decrease in motivation — they showed only a correlation. So we also conducted several laboratory experiments to better isolate cause and effect.

In one experiment, we asked 236 working adults to imagine this scenario: They were employed in the public relations department of a (fictional) large clothing retailer, and they had been working closely with their boss to finalize a quarterly report to be submitted to the CEO. Study participants then responded to a series of emails from their “boss,” asking them to complete various tasks.

In one randomly assigned group (the “unethical request” condition), participants were asked by their boss via email to adjust the report to make the department’s performance look better than it really was. The original report said the department reached 63% of its quarterly goals; participants were asked to increase that number to 83%. Participants in another group (the “neutral request” condition) were asked to make the same change but were given a different reason: The department had reached more of its goals since the first draft had been written.

Both sets of participants then received an email asking them to complete an employee satisfaction survey (which included measures of work motivation and moral value congruence with the fictional organization). After completing the survey, they received yet another email from their boss asking them to proofread the introduction to a forthcoming “letter to investors” that was attached to the email. We measured their performance on this task by tracking how many of the spelling and grammatical errors they correctly reported.7 At the end of the study, when we asked participants to provide some information about themselves, we included a measure of their propensity to morally disengage.

Among participants who reported having a harder time rationalizing unethical behavior, those who had received an unethical request from their fictional boss performed worse on the proofreading task, on average, than those who had received a neutral request. Granted, the situation was a bit contrived, and the stakes were low for our study participants, but receiving the unethical request (even a fictional one) resulted in poorer performance on a later task that was unrelated to the unethical request itself. Moreover, additional statistical analyses revealed that participants’ self-reported measures of moral value congruence and work motivation largely explained the decrease in performance on the proofreading task.

Combined, our studies suggest that receiving unethical requests from leaders can reduce employees’ motivation and performance. We found that this outcome is largely driven by employees’ perceptions that their personal moral values do not align with those of their organization. We also observed these tendencies most strongly and consistently in people who were less likely than others to justify and rationalize unethical behavior.

Our findings have simple but profound implications for managers. The first, and probably most obvious, is that managers should avoid making unethical requests — not only on moral grounds, but for practical reasons as well, given the potential impact on employee motivation and performance. Second, when viewed in light of research showing that people underestimate the influence they have over others’ unethical decisions, our findings hint at the possibility that even a supervisor’s subtle and seemingly innocuous encouragement to act unethically might also have negative effects on motivation and performance.8 This is especially true for people who are less likely to morally disengage and who generally behave more ethically. So managers should also be wary of even “harmlessly” hinting that their employees could sidestep rules and regulations to get a desired result.

It is often said that businesses can do well by doing good, implying that ethical and socially responsible behavior will help performance. Our findings suggest a similar but less optimistic logic: Employees may do poorly when asked to do bad. While, like many, we condemn the practice of making unethical requests on moral grounds, the negative effects of such requests on employee motivation and performance give added reason for leaders and managers to refrain from making them. Indeed, they should exercise discretion and be careful what they ask for.