Journal of Business Ethics 56: 219–230, 2005.

2005 Springer
The Role of Ethical
Ideology in Workplace
Deviance
ABSTRACT. Ethical ideology is predicted to play a role
in the occurrence of workplace deviance. Forsyth’s (1980)
Ethics Position Questionnaire measures two dimensions
of ethical ideology: idealism and relativism. It is
hypothesized that idealism will be negatively correlated
with employee deviance while relativism will be posi-
tively related. Further, it is predicted that idealism and
relativism will interact in such a way that there will only
Christine (Chris) A. Henle, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of
Management at the University of North Carolina at Char-
lotte. Her research interests include counterproductive em-
ployee behaviors, employment law, and organizational
justice. Her current research focuses on cyberloafing at work,
religious discrimination in employment, and the role of su-
pervisor and coworker norms in predicting counterproductive
work behaviors. She has provided consulting services in the
areas of job analysis, recruiting, selection, and performance
management.
Robert A. Giacalone, Ph.D. (State Univeristy of New York-
Albany) is Professor of Human Resource Management at the
Fox School of Business and Management, Temple Uni-
versity, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Dr. Giacalone is co-
editor of five books, co-author of two books and has authored
over 90 articles on ethics, employee sabotage, impression
management and exit interviewing, appearing in journals
such as Human Relations, Business and Society Review,
Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of the Organizational
Behavior, and the Journal of Social Psychology. His current
research focuses on the impact of materialism/postmaterialism
and workplace spirituality on business ethics.
Carole L. Jurkiewicz, Ph.D. is the John W. Dupuy Endowed
Professor and the Women’s Hospital Distinguished Professor
of Healthcare Ethics at Louisiana State University. Her
publications include a wide array of scholarly articles, books,
and the general press. She maintains an active consulting
practice in the areas of organizational psychology, ethics, and
leadership.
Christine A. Henle
Robert A. Giacalone
Carole L. Jurkiewicz
be a relationship between idealism and deviance when
relativism is higher. Results supported the hypothesized
correlations and idealism and relativism interacted to
predict organizational deviance. Idealism was a significant
predictor of interpersonal deviance, but no interaction
was found.
KEY WORDS: ethical ideology, idealism, relativism,
workplace deviance
Introduction
Researchers have long studied what makes individ-
uals engage in morally proscribed behavior (e.g.
Kohlberg, 1983, 1984; Rest, 1990). The outcomes
of these studies have revealed much about what
motivates or inhibits ethical behavior, what impacts
its judgment, and how individuals respond to ethi-
cally questionable requests and behaviors. Although
there are many factors influencing when and how an
individual decides to engage in socially disapproved
behavior, it is now recognized that personal ethical
ideology has a considerable impact upon such
decisions (Forsyth, 1992). Ethical ideology refers to a
system of ethics used to make moral judgments,
which offers guidelines for judging and resolving
behavior that may be ethically questionable. For
example, individuals with an ethical ideology char-
acterized by a belief in preserving the personal well-
being of others would refrain from any actions or
decisions that could potentially harm others.
One type of unethical or socially disapproved
behavior that ethical ideology can be used to predict is
workplace deviance. Workplace deviance refers to
voluntary behaviors that violate significant company
220 Christine A. Henle et al.
norms, policies, or rules and threaten the well-being
of the organization and/or its employees (Robinson
and Bennett, 1995). Bennett and Robinson (2000)
proposed two types of workplace deviance and con-
firmatory factor analyses conducted by the authors
support this two-factor structure. The first type,
organizational deviance, refers to deviant behaviors
targeting the organization such as theft, sabotage,
coming to work late without permission, or putting
little effort into work. Conversely, interpersonal
deviance pertains to deviant acts directed toward
individuals in the workplace such as coworkers,
supervisors, and subordinates and includes behaviors
like making fun of others, playing mean pranks, act-
ing rudely, arguing, and physical aggression.
Workplace deviance is an important issue for
researchers and organizations alike due to its preva-
lence and potential consequences. For example, it
has been estimated that three quarters of employees
steal at least once from their employer (Coffin, 2003)
and that 95% of all organizations experience
employee theft (Case, 2000). The prevalence of
workplace deviance is especially disturbing when the
costs to both affected organizations and individuals
are considered. For instance, the financial costs
associated with theft by employees in the U.S. have
been estimated at $50 billion annually (Coffin,
2003). Further, employees who are targets of
workplace deviance are more likely to turnover
(Giacalone et al., 1997) and have stress related
problems, decreased productivity, low morale, lost
work time (O’Leary-Kelly et al., 1996), damaged
self-esteem, increased fear and insecurity at work, and
psychological and physical pain (Griffin et al., 1998).
The purpose of this study is to contribute to the
ethics literature by empirically examining the rela-
tionship between employees’ ethical ideology and
the occurrence of deviant work behaviors. Because
workplace deviance involves ethically questionable
activities, employees will vary in their decision to
engage in it as a function of differences in their
personal ethical ideology. In the case of employee
deviance, understanding how ethical ideology
influences morally questionable behaviors will help
managers identify, predict, and explain when
employees are likely to behave in ethical and
unethical ways at work (Forsyth, 1992). Below we
discuss ethical ideology and its potential relationship
to workplace deviance in more detail.
Ethical ideology and workplace deviance
Much research on workplace deviance has focused
on identifying individual difference variables that
predict deviant behavior in the workplace. This
body of literature suggests that personality traits such
as conscientiousness, impulsivity, negative affectiv-
ity, agreeableness, trait anger, and socialization are
related to employee participation in deviant work
behaviors (Skarlicki et al., 1999; Douglas and
Martinko, 2001; Salgado, 2002; Henle, in press).
However, there is a paucity of research investigating
the relationship between workplace deviance and
individual differences in moral thought or philoso-
phy. Many theories have been proposed relating to
individual differences in ethical ideology. For
example, Kohlberg’s (1983) stages of moral devel-
opment emphasize the reasons individuals use to
justify moral decisions (e.g. consequences, moral
standards of others, self generated moral standards).
Likewise, Hogan (1973) believes ethical ideologies
can be categorized as ethics of responsibility (use of
societal rules and norms when making ethical deci-
sions) or ethics of personal conscience (use of self-
generated rules and norms when making ethical
decisions). Although many different models of eth-
ical ideology have been offered, research by Forsyth
and colleagues argues that most of these different
conceptualizations can be parsimoniously distin-
guished in terms of two general dimensions: idealism
and relativism.
Forsyth (1980) developed the Ethical Position
Questionnaire (EPQ) to measure ethical ideology,
which impacts ethical perceptions and explains
individual differences in ethical decision making.
The first dimension, idealism, refers to an inherent
interest in the welfare of others and the degree that
the intrinsic rightness of behavior determines which
behaviors to engage in. Idealists believe harming
others is universally wrong and are committed to
avoid harming others, even in cases of situational
urgency. Further, idealists optimistically assume
desirable outcomes can be obtained by engaging in
moral actions. Conversely, those low in idealism
recognize that moral actions do not always lead to
desirable outcomes and that harm to others is
sometimes necessary to produce the greatest good
for the greatest number affected by a decision
(Forsyth, 1992).