Business Commons^™

A Reparatory Model Of Ethical Silence, Yuanmei Qu, Mayowa Babalola, Mozzam Ali, Jennifer Harrison, Muhammad Usman

Rohrer College of Business Faculty Scholarship

Drawing from the appraisal theory of emotion and self-conscious emotions literature, this study proposes a reparatory model of ethical silence at work. We posit that when employees maintain silence on ethical issues, they experience feelings of guilt. This guilt, in turn, propels them to engage in ethical performance as reparatory behaviors. Results from a multisource, three-wave field study supported these hypotheses. Overall, this research contributes to silence literature and provides insights into how and when ethical silence may, paradoxically, facilitate more ethical performance later on.