Antecedents of moral disengagement: Preliminary empirical study in Malaysia

This study, conducted in Malaysia is part of the pilot study carried out as a pre-test procedure to a main study on moral disengagement. According to social cognitive theory, moral disengagement is the key to deactivate individual self- regulatory process. Once it is deactivated an individual will b...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Saidon, I., Galbreath, Jeremy, Whiteley, Alma
Other Authors: Ass Prof Bruce Gurd
Format: Conference Paper
Published: ANZAM 2010
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/38871
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author Saidon, I.
Galbreath, Jeremy
Whiteley, Alma
author2 Ass Prof Bruce Gurd
author_facet Ass Prof Bruce Gurd
Saidon, I.
Galbreath, Jeremy
Whiteley, Alma
author_sort Saidon, I.
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description This study, conducted in Malaysia is part of the pilot study carried out as a pre-test procedure to a main study on moral disengagement. According to social cognitive theory, moral disengagement is the key to deactivate individual self- regulatory process. Once it is deactivated an individual will be freed from any psychological feeling of discomfort in performing unethical behaviour. Hence, based on social cognitive theory this study aims to identify the antecedents of moral disengagement by investigating the individual differences (gender and personality) and environmental influence (organizational ethical climate). ANCOVA and hierarchical regression were applied to test the hypotheses. There was a moderate gender difference in the level of moral disengagement between male and female employees. As predicted, conscientiousness and extraversion were found to have a negative significant relationship with moral disengagement. Further, organizational ethical climate was found to be negatively and modestly related to moral disengagement.
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format Conference Paper
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institution Curtin University Malaysia
institution_category Local University
last_indexed 2025-11-14T08:56:17Z
publishDate 2010
publisher ANZAM
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spelling curtin-20.500.11937-388712017-01-30T14:27:14Z Antecedents of moral disengagement: Preliminary empirical study in Malaysia Saidon, I. Galbreath, Jeremy Whiteley, Alma Ass Prof Bruce Gurd moral disengagement Malaysia social cognitive theory ethics This study, conducted in Malaysia is part of the pilot study carried out as a pre-test procedure to a main study on moral disengagement. According to social cognitive theory, moral disengagement is the key to deactivate individual self- regulatory process. Once it is deactivated an individual will be freed from any psychological feeling of discomfort in performing unethical behaviour. Hence, based on social cognitive theory this study aims to identify the antecedents of moral disengagement by investigating the individual differences (gender and personality) and environmental influence (organizational ethical climate). ANCOVA and hierarchical regression were applied to test the hypotheses. There was a moderate gender difference in the level of moral disengagement between male and female employees. As predicted, conscientiousness and extraversion were found to have a negative significant relationship with moral disengagement. Further, organizational ethical climate was found to be negatively and modestly related to moral disengagement. 2010 Conference Paper http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/38871 ANZAM fulltext
spellingShingle moral disengagement
Malaysia
social cognitive theory
ethics
Saidon, I.
Galbreath, Jeremy
Whiteley, Alma
Antecedents of moral disengagement: Preliminary empirical study in Malaysia
title Antecedents of moral disengagement: Preliminary empirical study in Malaysia
title_full Antecedents of moral disengagement: Preliminary empirical study in Malaysia
title_fullStr Antecedents of moral disengagement: Preliminary empirical study in Malaysia
title_full_unstemmed Antecedents of moral disengagement: Preliminary empirical study in Malaysia
title_short Antecedents of moral disengagement: Preliminary empirical study in Malaysia
title_sort antecedents of moral disengagement: preliminary empirical study in malaysia
topic moral disengagement
Malaysia
social cognitive theory
ethics
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/38871