Ethical Decision Making and Psychological Entitlement

• Author: Stephanie Thomason,Amy Brownlee
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/basr.12158
• Date: 01 December 2018
• Published date: 01 December 2018

Business and Society Review 123:4 631–659

© 2018 W. Michael Hoffman Center for Busi ness Ethics at Bentley Uni versity. Published by

Wiley Period icals, Inc., 350 Main St reet, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 9 600 Garsington

Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, U K. DOI: 10.1111/basr.12158

Ethical Decision Making and

Psychological Entitlement

STEPHANI E THOMASON and A MY BR OWNL EE

ABSTR ACT

Job candidates who possess characterist ics likely to

result in organizat ionally desired outcomes are va luable,

yet not always easily identified. Offeri ng validation sup-

port for selection tools that organiz ations can use to iden-

tify such ca ndidates is therefore important. The present

study examines t he construct of psychological entitle-

ment to determine if it can be used to identi fy indiv iduals

who are more likely to make sound eth ical judgments in

organizations. Speci fically, we exami ne the relationship

between psychological entitlement and eth ical decision

making, po siting that indiv iduals with h igh levels of psy-

chological entitlement are more likely to ma ke less ethical

decisions and to use less ethical upwa rd inf luence tactics

than those w ith opposing character istics. We adminis-

tered a survey to 174 participants using the

Multidimensional Eth ics Scale, the Subordinate Influence

Ethics Sca le, and the Psychological Entitlement Scale. To

test our hypotheses, we used hierarch ical multiple

Stephanie T homason is an A ssociate Dir ector of the TE CO Energy Center for L eadership,

Associate P rofessor of Management i n the Department of M anagement, John H. Sykes C ollege

of Business, The Un iversity of Tamp a, FL and Past P resident of the Nation al Society for

Experient ial Education. E-mai l: sthomason@ut.edu. Amy Brow nlee is an Associ ate Professor

of Management at t he University of Tampa, FL. E -mail: abrownlee@ ut.edu.

632 BUSINESS AND SOCIETY REVIEW

regression. Results suggest that indiv iduals with h igh

levels of psychological entitlement are more likely to con-

sider unethical actions as eth ical, given several sc enar-

ios. In addition, individuals w ith high levels of psychological

entitlement are more likely to consider self-servi ng and

maliciously-intended upward inf luence tactics as accept-

able when used to advance in an organi zation. They are

also less likely to consider pro-organi zational upward

inf luence tactics to be acceptable when used to advance

in organ izat ions.

In a recent ethics study on workplace productivity involv ing

1,946 U.S. adults, researchers found that 73% of those work-

ing had encountered ethical lapse s in the workplace—a nd 36%

were distracted by these eth ical lapses (LR N 2007). Furt hermore,

individuals who ex perienced these lapses and d istractions were

mainly younger workers between t he ages of 18 and 34. The

researchers noted that such lapses can re sult in time loss, rep-

utational damage, work qual ity problems, increased productivity

costs, and employee recruitment and retention problems (LRN

2007 ).

Such results provide support for the notion that hirin g ethical

job candidate’s benefits organizations, yet identify ing these indi-

viduals is not always easy. Hiri ng managers someti mes make poor

hiring deci sions and fail to disti nguish between eth ical and un-

ethical job candidates. Such decisions can be det rimental to a n

organi zation’s perfor mance.

Previous resea rch has shown that cert ain indiv idual charac-

teristics correspond to ethica lity in organ izations. For example,

research has found that job cand idates with lower levels of psycho-

logical entitlement were more likely to choose to work for a more

socially responsible organi zation despite the fact that they would

be working for less pay (Thomason et al. 2015). Campbell and col-

leagues (2004) found that individua ls with hig h levels of psycho-

logical entitlement scale (PE S) were more likely to feel that they

deserved to take Ha lloween candy designated for chi ldren in a de-

velopmental laboratory than les s entitled individual s. Additionally,

Campbell and colleagues (200 4) found that highly entitled i ndi-

viduals felt that they deser ved higher sala ries than t heir counter-

parts when faced wit h the hypothetica l situation of cost-cutting