Does It Pay to Be Moral? How Indicators of Morality and Competence Enhance Organizational and Work Team Attractiveness
| Published date | 01 April 2015 |
| Author | Anne‐Marie Prooijen,Naomi Ellemers |
| Date | 01 April 2015 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12055 |
Does It Pay to Be Moral? How Indicators
of Morality and Competence Enhance
Organizational and Work Team
Attractiveness
Anne-Marie van Prooijen and Naomi Ellemers1
Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management, Centre Emile
Bernheim CP114/03, Avenue F. D. Roosevelt 42, 1050 Brussels, Belgium, and 1Leiden University, Faculty of
Social and Behavioural Sciences, Social and Organizational Psychology, PO Box 9555, 2300 RB Leiden,
the Netherlands
Corresponding author email: anne-marie.van.prooijen@ulb.ac.be
Based on a social identity analysis, the authors argue that people are attracted to teams
and organizations with positive features. Such features can refer to the competence and
achievements of the organization, or to its moral values and ethical conduct. However, in
work contexts, ethics and achievements do not necessarily go together. The paper reports
three studies that examine the relative and combined impact of perceived competence vs
morality of a team or organization on its attractiveness to individuals. Study 1 (n =44)
reveals that students prefer to seek employment in a moral rather than a competent
organization, when forced to choose between these organizational features on a bipolar
scale. Study 2 (n =100) replicates these findings in a design where the competence and
morality of a fictitious organization were manipulated orthogonally. Study 3 (n =89)
examines responses to experimental task teams that systematically differed from each
other in their competence and morality. Results of all three studies converge to demon-
strate that the perceived morality of the team or organization has a greater impact on its
attractiveness to individuals than its perceived competence. The authors discuss the
theoretical and practical implications of these findings.
Introduction
In an ideal world, businesses show their compe-
tence by performing well, and their morality by
engaging in ethical business conduct. However, as
we have been reminded by recent events, these
two organizational features do not necessarily go
together (Barraquier, 2011; Clegg, Kornberger
and Rhodes, 2007; Maclagan and Snell, 1992). In
some organizations, priority is given to achieving
success, if necessary by compromising moral
considerations. In other organizations, moral
conduct is the key value, even if this implies being
less successful. Based on recent findings, we
hypothesize that, when there is a trade-off, people
will tend to attach more importance to the moral-
ity than to the competence of work teams and
organizations. That is, we predict a greater impact
of the extent to which teams or organizations are
seen to act in ways that we tend to consider as
morally ‘good’ – as they display ethical conduct
by being honest or reliable – than of the likelihood
that teams or organizations seem competent or
‘effective’ in their task performance or economic
achievements. We report three studies to examine
this, by assessing how the perceived competence
and morality of organizations and work teams
affects their attractiveness.
This research was supported by an NWO-SPINOZA
grant, awarded to Naomi Ellemers.
© 2014 British Academy of Management. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4
2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA, 02148, USA.
British Journal of Management, Vol. 26, 225–236 (2015)
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12055
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