Assignment task:
Background
O'Connor et al. (1995) defined a destructive leader as an individual whose decisions "clearly harmed his or her society or organization" (p. 536). Because leadership occurs in ill-defined, ambiguous situations (Mumford & Connelly, 1991), leaders are commonly faced with decisions and problems that have potentially destructive outcomes (Sims, 1994). Typically, the cause behind the motivation to behave unethically includes some combination of individual characteristics and situational factors (Trevino, 1992). An individual characteristic that has been studied often is the motivation to pursue self-interests over the good of the many. Leaders motivated by self-interests often are described as having a destructive personality. A destructive personality is comprised of the need for power and the tendency to view others as objects that can be used to attain personal goals, and has been shown to be positively related to unethical leader behavior (Illies & Reiter-Palmon, 2008; Mumford et al., 1993).
Business leaders with destructive personalities are more likely to act unethically if they are in an environment that promotes unethical activity (Mumford et al., 1993). One situational variable thought to play an influential role in unethical behavior is organizational climate. An organization's climate reflects the shared perceptions of employees concerning the characteristics of their organization (Landy & Trumbo, 1980). A climate will convey to employees whether or not their organization is supportive of certain activities, such as unethical behaviors (for example, doing whatever is necessary to earn a profit). Several authors have argued that unethical decision making is facilitated if employees perceive their organization's climate as supportive of that behavior (e.g., Darley, 2001).
The data provided on the 202 D2L site are from a study that explored the effects of destructive personality and climate on unethical behavior in leadership situations. In this study, participants were placed in five fictitious leadership situations and asked to report how they would behave in each situation. Participants' unethical behavior score was the total number of times they chose an unethical course of action over the five leadership situations (or a score between 0 and 5 with a higher score indicating more unethical behavior).
As part of the study, half of the randomly selected participants were randomly assigned to an unethical climate condition and the other half to an ethical climate condition (representing the organizational climate variable). Those in the unethical climate condition were given a description of their organization that depicted it as supporting "shady" activities. Those in the ethical climate condition were given a description that indicated their organization promoted behaving responsible and ethically. Destructive personality was measured using a questionnaire. Based on responses, participants were classified as either having a high or low destructive personality. We hypothesized that the highest unethical behavior would be shown the by the combination of (1) a high destructive personality and (2) being in the unethical climate condition (in other words, both conditions would have to be present).
Question #1. Was the influence of climate a manipulated or non-manipulated variable? How do you know?
Question #2. What was the operational definition of unethical behavior used in this study?