Follower propensity to commit crimes of obedience: the role of leadership beliefs.

Organizations and society are concerned about unethical behavior. One type of unethical behavior is crimes of obedience, where followers are influenced by a leader to engage in behavior they would otherwise consider unethical. In this article, the author proposes that people who see themselves as leadership material and hold leaders in high esteem are more likely to view leaders as having more responsibility for ethical decisions and behaviors than followers. Consequently, such persons when placed in a follower position may be more susceptible to commit crimes of obedience through the process of moral disengagement by displacing responsibility for their behavior onto the leader.

Keywords: obedience; leadership; followers; moral responsibility; moral disengagement

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Incidents of corporate fraud such as those involving Enron, Arthur Anderson, Tyco, and MCI and the Abu Ghrave prison abuse scandal have once again highlighted the importance of ethical behavior in organizations (Bandura, Caprara, & Zsolnai, 2000; Mintzberg, Simons, & Basu, 2002). Of particular concern is the willingness of persons in follower positions to unquestioningly obey an unethical leader. In several of the more publicized recent scandals, followers engaged in unethical behavior at the direction of a leader, then excused their actions by arguing that they were merely following orders. These followers apparently believed that given their position in their organization's hierarchy, they were not completely responsible for their own ethical behavior.

This article addresses the problem of follower obedience to unethical orders from the perspective of the follower by focusing on follower characteristics that might contribute to some people being more likely than others to obey a leader's unethical directives. In this article, I propose that over the course of their lives, people receive a range of feedback regarding their leadership potential. This feedback affects their perceptions of leadership and their place in the leader-follower relationship. These perceptions combine to influence an individual's beliefs regarding the relative moral responsibility of leaders versus followers. The model presented in this article proposes that susceptibility to the influence of an unethical leader is related to leadership perceptions through beliefs regarding the relative moral responsibility of leaders versus followers.

There are unique ethical problems embedded in the leader--follower relationship (Hollander, 1995). Leaders can order followers to engage in unethical behavior and often obtain compliance because of the power imbalance. Through this process, the unethical behavior of a person in a leadership position can be amplified throughout an organization (Lord & DeZoort, 2001; Meeus & Raaijmakers, 1986). This dynamic, where subordinates succumb to the influence of a leader and the pressures of the leader-follower relationship and behave in ways they would otherwise deem unethical, is termed crimes of obedience. Crimes of obedience does not refer to instances where the leader and follower are partners in crime but rather refers to follower behaviors that absent a leader's influence, the follower would not engage in (Beu & Buckley, 2004).

The importance of situational variables on a person's likelihood to obey unethical orders is often associated with Milgram's studies (Blass, 1991). However, situational factors alone could not explain obedience in Milgram's experiments as, regardless of the situational manipulation, some people refused to obey. Overall, about 65% of the participants in Milgram's obedience studies were obedient to authority, whereas 35% were not (Blass, 1999). Although Milgram emphasized the importance of the situation on obedience, he believed personality variables were also a factor and noted, "I am certain that there is a complex personality basis to obedience and disobedience. But I know we did not find it" (Milgram, 1974, p. 205).

Milgram (1974) believed that the tendency to obey the orders of a superior is not instinctive. He offered three possible explanations for why some people obey and some do not (Browning, 1992): (a) Over the course of time, evolution may have favored those who adapted to the pressures of hierarchical systems, (b) people may have been socialized to obey through systems that reward obedience and punish disobedience, and (c) when people voluntarily enter hierarchical systems they believe to be legitimate, they may develop a sense of obligation to adopt the perspective of those in authority and consequently feel less responsible for their behaviors. Subsequent studies have identified some relationships between obedience and individual differences, such as moral development, social intelligence, authoritarianism, hostility, locus of control, and demographic variables, such as education level, religious orientation, and national culture (see Blass, 1991, for a detailed review).

More recently, researchers who have explored the phenomena of crimes of obedience have examined leader characteristics that would make a leader prone to issuing unethical directives and that would predict success at influencing followers to obey those directives (Bandura, 1999a; Beu & Buckley, 2004). This approach suggests that crimes of obedience could be reduced through selection techniques designed to keep certain people out of leadership positions or by altering the ethical behavior of those in leader positions through training. Very seldom is the focus placed on nonleaders, and in most leader-focused studies, followers are generally depicted as a homogenous group.

The primary contention of this article is that followers who see themselves as less responsible for moral decisions than leaders are more susceptible to the influence of an unethical leader. Beyond that, certain beliefs about leadership, specifically, the estimation of one's ability to perform as a leader (leadership self-efficacy), the degree to which one desires to be in a leadership position (motivation to lead), and the extent to which one attributes organizational success to leadership (romance of leadership beliefs), may predict the likelihood of viewing leaders as more responsible for ethical decisions than followers.

Leadership Beliefs and Follower Propensity to Commit Crimes of Obedience

A key concept in the study of crimes of obedience is moral responsibility (Meeus & Raaijmakers, 1986). Milgram (1974) noted, "The essence of obedience consists in the fact that a person comes to view himself as the instrument for carrying out another person's wishes, and he therefore no longer sees himself as responsible for his actions" (p. xii). To be morally responsible is to be called on to answer for what one has done (Hamilton & Sanders, 1992). Because of status and power differences, a leader may be viewed as having more moral responsibility than a follower (Emler & Hogan, 1991; Hamilton & Hagiwara, 1992), and in practice, particularly in retrospect, followers are often held to a lesser standard. For example, enlisted personnel who had participated in the Mai Lai massacre were not punished as harshly as the officers who had participated (Hamilton, 1986; Kelman & Hamilton, 1989).

From a prospective view however, organizations certainly want both leaders and followers to behave ethically. Ideally, followers should possess a strong sense of moral responsibility (Meeus & Raaijmakers, 1986). They should be able to cooperate with an ethical leader yet recognize and resist a leader's attempt to get them to comply with unethical orders (Chaleff, 1995; Howell & Costley, 2006; Kelley, 1992; Trevino, 1986). In this article, I assume that it is desirable that followers view themselves as being morally responsible for their own actions and, when comparing their level of moral responsibility to that of their leaders, view themselves as equally morally responsible. Figure 1 presents a model of the relationship between leadership beliefs and follower propensity to commit crimes of obedience. Following are propositions regarding the specific relationships depicted in the model.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Moral Responsibility Beliefs and Propensity to Commit Crimes of Obedience

According to social cognitive theory, moral agency is embedded in self-regulatory mechanisms such as personal standards and self-sanctions, and ethical behavior requires that these self-regulatory mechanisms be activated to work (Bandura, 1999b). The selective disengagement of the internal self-regulatory standards that prevent people from committing inhumane acts is termed moral disengagement (Bandura, 1999b). According to Bandura (1999b), there are three ways for moral disengagement to occur: (a) by cognitively reconstructing the questionable behavior through advantageous comparisons, euphemistic labeling, or moral justification; (b) by minimizing one's involvement in the behavior through the displacement or diffusion of responsibility or by distorting the consequences; and (c) by dehumanizing or blaming the victim.