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Organizations can benefit from identifying job candidates who make good ethical decisions, yet determining such candidates can sometimes be difficult, particularly for smaller organizations that are less likely to have formalized human resource practices or ethical codes of conduct. Such organizations may welcome low cost selection tools that they can use to distinguish ethical decision makers. Building upon agency and stewardship theories, we examine the relationships between conscientiousness, psychological entitlement (PES), and ethical decision-making by conducting two phases of surveys with 64 and 118 potential job seekers. Results suggest that more conscientious individuals are more likely to be aware of the most socially responsible choice for a promotion than their less conscientious counterparts. Participants with lower levels of psychological entitlement are additionally more likely to choose to work for a socially responsible organization, despite the fact that they would be working for less pay. Conscientious individuals could not be distinguished from their less conscientious counterparts when it came to working for less pay for a more socially responsible company. Practical and theoretical implications for small organizations are discussed.
Small businesses with fewer than 500 employees constitute 99.7% of U.S. employer firms, 64% of net new private sector jobs, and 49.2% of private-sector employment, yet only half of all new businesses survive past the first five years and only a third survive past the first decade (Small Business Administration, 2012). Despite these statistics, most of the research on workplaces focuses on factors impacting the success of large organizations (Burke & El-Kot, 2014). Within small and medium-size enterprises, previous research suggests that human resource management (HRM) practices contribute to successes (Chandler & McEvoy 2000; Hayton, 2003). HRM practices are linked to improvements in motivation, attraction, selection, development, and retention (Burke & El-Kot, 2014).
The present study focuses on selection, suggesting that organizations may benefit by identifying and placing job candidates who are more likely to make socially responsible workplace decisions. We examine two factors likely to differentially predict such decisions: psychological entitlement and conscientiousness. Both factors have been well-documented in their predictions of a variety of negative and positive behaviors, respectively; however, neither has been adequately examined with respect to making ethical decisions in the workplace. Further, very little research has focused on either of...