Corporate Transgressions Through Moral Disengagement, Albert Bandura, Gian Vittorio Caprara and Laszlo Zsolnai

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Corporate Transgressions Through Moral Disengagement
The significance of businesses is to engage in lawful interests for the benefit of the parties involved within the legal framework provided to protect the involved parties as well as to protect the interests of the public, the country, and the country’s regulatory agencies. According to Bandura, Caprara, and Zsolnai, corporate transgressions cause critical socio-political challenges around the world (80). The authors define corporate transgressions as “the exercise and abuse of power that is closely linked to the legitimate conduct of business” (80). Additionally, the authors note that corporations use their immense power and resources to manipulate the rules and guidelines governing their conduct to actively protect their interests (81). Notably, it is the most outstanding members of the business community that engage in the corporate transgression, within the aim of defending the rights of their businesses as well as their own. In this article, Bandura et al. interrogate why morally upright managers participate in foul business practices with a clean conscience, using the following empirical findings of moral psychology.
Social Cognitive Theory of Moral Agency
The framework of moral agency works by exercising self-regulatory mechanisms. Dirty business practices and conducts are regulated by social and personal sanctions. While social sanctions work based on the fear of external punishment, personal sanctions are based on the reactions of self-condemnation for engaging in misconduct. However, these self-regulatory controls can be selectively engaged or completely disengaged from dirty business practices thus making responsible managers engage in transgressive business conducts.
Moral Justification
The authors note that individuals engage in detrimental business acts by first justifying to themselves that the actions they are right and justifiable. Consequently, individuals engage in damaging business conducts that they have already deemed as both socially and personally acceptable.
Euphemistic Labeling
Through euphemistic labeling, individuals can mask otherwise blameworthy acts and even bestow the devious business acts a reputable status. Therefore, engaging in these detrimental acts is made more convenient for business managers who engage in them without their conscience bothering them.
Advantageous Comparison
Individuals contrast various activities and behaviors and use this judgment to quantify which activity or behavior is better than the other. In business, managers can use advantageous comparison to justify their reprehensible activities as less injurious, and hence, proceed to engage in them. Managers are likely to continually contrast activities that they regard as obvious for their own interests.
Displacement of Responsibility
Bandura et al. argue that people tend to blame their actions on social pressures and the influence of ...