We examine the influence of individuals’ propensity to morally disengage
on a broad range of unethical organizational behaviors. First, we
develop a parsimonious, adult-oriented, valid, and reliable measure of
an individual’s propensity to morally disengage, and demonstrate the
relationship between it and a number of theoretically relevant constructs
in its nomological network. Then, in 4 additional studies spanning laboratory
and field settings, we demonstrate the power of the propensity
to moral disengage to predict multiple types of unethical organizational
behavior. In these studies we demonstrate that the propensity to morally
disengage predicts several outcomes (self-reported unethical behavior, a
decision to commit fraud, a self-serving decision in the workplace, and
supervisor- and coworker-reported unethical work behaviors) beyond
other established individual difference antecedents of unethical organizational
behavior, as well as the most closely related extant measure
of the construct. We conclude that scholars and practitioners seeking
to understand a broad range of undesirable workplace behaviors can
benefit from taking an individual’s propensity to morally disengage into
account. Implications for theory, research, and practice are discussed