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The impact of team moral disengagement composition on team performance: the roles of team cooperation, team interpersonal deviance, and collective extraversion

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Abstract

In the past few decades, significant research has accumulated on the importance of moral disengagement (Bandura, American Psychologist, 44, 1175–1184, 1989) for understanding why individuals engage in misconduct. The current research extends this work by exploring the implications of moral disengagement at the team level. Specifically, we examine how and under what conditions composing teams with morally disengaging members (i.e., team moral disengagement composition) affects team performance. In a time-lagged study of newly formed teams (N = 94), we show that team moral disengagement composition is positively associated with team-level interpersonal deviance and negatively related to team cooperation and team performance. We further show that team moral disengagement composition adversely affects team performance primarily through (low) team cooperation. However, this negative, indirect effect dissipates in teams that exhibit strong (versus weaker) collective extraversion—an emergent state that captures team sociability norms and behavioral regularities indicative of positive social interaction among team members. We discuss the implications of our findings for moral disengagement theory in team contexts.

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Notes

  1. In a separate, pilot study of 523 undergraduate business students nested in 100 teams, we similarly found that team mean MD composition was negatively related to team performance, over and above team minimum, maximum, and variance MD composition variables and the six team HEXACO personality composition variables. These results are reported in the online supplement.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary, 2500 University Drive, NW, Calgary, AB, T2N 1N4, Canada

    Babatunde Ogunfowora

  2. Bryan School of Business and Economics, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC, USA

    Madelynn Stackhouse

  3. Smith School of Business, Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada

    Addison Maerz

  4. Lazardis School of Business and Economics, Wilfred Laurier University , Waterloo, Canada

    Christianne Varty & Christine Hwang

  5. Department of Psychology, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada

    Julie Choi

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  1. Babatunde Ogunfowora
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Ogunfowora, B., Stackhouse, M., Maerz, A. et al. The impact of team moral disengagement composition on team performance: the roles of team cooperation, team interpersonal deviance, and collective extraversion. J Bus Psychol 36, 479–494 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-020-09688-2

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