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 Review123:4 631–659

© 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

STEPHANIE THOMASON and AMY BROWNLEE

ABSTRACT

Job candidates who possess characteristics likely to

result in organizationally desired outcomes are valuable,

yet not always easily identified. Offering validation sup-

port for selection tools that organizations can use to iden-

tify such candidates is therefore important. The present

study examines the construct of psychological entitle-

ment to determine if it can be used to identify individuals

who are more likely to make sound ethical judgments in

organizations. Specifically, we examine the relationship

between psychological entitlement and ethical decision

making, positing that individuals with high levels of psy-

chological entitlement are more likely to make less ethical

decisions and to use less ethical upward influence tactics

than those with opposing characteristics. We adminis-

tered a survey to 174 participants using the

Multidimensional Eth ics Scale, the Subordinate Influence

Ethics Scale, and the Psychological Entitlement Scale. To

test our hypotheses, we used hierarchical multiple

Stephanie Thomason is an Associate Director of the TECO Energy Center for Leadership,

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

of Business, The University of Tampa, FL and Past President of the National 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 individuals with high

levels of psychological entitlement are more likely to con-

sider unethical actions as ethical, given several scenar-

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

entitlement are more likely to consider self-serving and

maliciously-intended upward influence tactics as accept-

able when used to advance in an organization. They are

also less likely to consider pro-organizational upward

influence tactics to be acceptable when used to advance

in organizations.

In a recent ethics study on workplace productivity involving

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

ing had encountered ethical lapses in the workplace—and 36%

were distracted by these ethical lapses (LRN 2007). Furthermore,

individuals who experienced these lapses and distractions were

mainly younger workers between the ages of 18 and 34. The

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

utational damage, work quality problems, increased productivity

costs, and employee recruitment and retention problems (LRN

2007).

Such results provide support for the notion that hiring ethical

job candidate’s benefits organizations, yet identifying these indi-

viduals is not always easy. Hiring managers sometimes make poor

hiring decisions and fail to distinguish between ethical and un-

ethical job candidates. Such decisions can be detrimental to an

organization’s performance.

Previous research has shown that certain individual charac-

teristics correspond to ethicality in organizations. For example,

research has found that job candidates with lower levels of psycho-

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

socially responsible organization despite the fact that they would

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

leagues (2004) found that individuals with high levels of psycho-

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

deserved to take Halloween candy designated for children in a de-

velopmental laboratory than less entitled individuals. Additionally,

Campbell and colleagues (2004) found that highly entitled indi-

viduals felt that they deserved higher salaries than their counter-

parts when faced with the hypothetical situation of cost-cutting