Abstract
Unethical behavior of entrepreneurs in the use of social media can have detrimental effects, both for the own entrepreneurial firm and also on competitors. In order to understand why entrepreneurs show unethical behavior a conceptual framework is developed in this paper, linking motives for financial gains, moral awareness, moral disengagement, and the tendency to make unethical decisions in the use of social media. This paper offers therewith insights into the cognitive processes of entrepreneurial decision-makers with respect to moral reasoning and ethical decision-making.
Keywords
1 Introduction
In a business context, decision-makers are continuously and increasingly challenged to find solutions to moral dilemmas where demands of different stakeholders have to be considered although they hold opposing moral beliefs and standards [1, 2]. This is especially the case in marketing, where a bridging function between the company and its environment is fulfilled. Hence, a balance between organizational demands on the one side and demands from customers and the broader public on the other side has to be found. Decision-makers in companies have often been criticized to disproportionally prioritize the demands of the company leading to the application of deceptive advertisements, the manipulation of consumers, or the usage of inferior materials in products affecting its durability negatively. While those examples can be clearly detected as morally wrong, there exists a wide spectrum of decisions where ambiguity is given. Is it for instance morally acceptable to use non-informative appeals during broadcast periods in which the largest proportion of the audience are children, who may not be aware of the persuasion tactics of marketers or are too young to resist them [3]?
Within the last decade, social media enlarged the toolkit of decision-makers in marketing. In that context, social media represents a paradigm shift in the way companies interact with their customers. Despite its relative newness, social media channels and related monitoring activities have become essentials for the communication and brand strategy of organizations [4–6]. Researchers and practitioners alike agree that social media applications, such as Facebook or Twitter, have changed the nature of marketing and brand management dramatically [5].
Social media is especially attractive for entrepreneurial firms [7], as it is less expensive than traditional marketing tools [8], offering the opportunity to reach a large audience by maintaining a close relationship at the same time [9]. A panel study among 1,972 entrepreneurial firms in North America showed that more than 90 % used Facebook, more than 70 % Twitter, nearly 60 % LinkedIn, more than 50 % video sharing, about a quarter photo sharing services, more than 30 % review sites and almost 25 % location-based services [10]. Given the importance of social media for entrepreneurial firms, a focus is given to entrepreneurs in this study.
Due to the impact of social media on marketing and marketers, it is necessary to gain insights into the cognitive processes of entrepreneurs with respect to moral reasoning and ethical entrepreneurial decision-making. In order to better understand these aspects, a theoretical framework is developed in this paper that integrates moral awareness and moral disengagement to provide a profound basis to explore the use of social media by entrepreneurs.
2 Theoretical Background
2.1 Social Media and Unethical Behavior
Based on the collaborative and interactive components of the Internet, social media can be defined as “a group of Internet-based applications […] that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content” [11, p. 61]. The rapid technological developments in communication technologies in the last decades represent a drastic change of familiar social patterns and lead to altered beliefs and motivators for action [12]. Social media has democratized information and now allows almost unlimited interactivity. This is why the borders between message creators and message receivers became blurred with the result that consumers are able make their voices heard more easily.
Social media has experienced tremendous growth in recent years. It is estimated that almost one third of the world’s population is already using social media applications [13], which underlines the huge potential that social media holds for businesses from all fields and industries. Companies can now quite literally reach a worldwide audience at the push of a button. The fact that social media applications offer the possibility to interact with a specific target audience in a very cost-effective way allows especially entrepreneurs with limited financial resources to grow their business and maintain their competitiveness [8].
The sheer unlimited connectivity and the at least theoretical anonymity in the World Wide Web in conjunction with unanswered legal questions, offer many possibilities for ethically questionable or wrong behavior [14]. However, not only consumers can display morally or ethically questionable behavior on social media, but also corporate employees or even entrepreneurs. In order to avoid possible legal consequences, Elefant [15, p. 1], for instance, proposes therefore several best practices and guidelines for US utilities engaging in social media. She argues that the “naturally free-flowing world of social media” offers several possibilities to negatively impact codes of conduct, regulations or compliance issues.
Research has discussed the disclosure of personal information on social networking sites (SNS) as one possible way to engage in an unethical way on social media [16, 17]. Customers’ or employees’ exposed private information on SNS could be used in an immoral manner [18]. Moreover, due to an increasing number of linked online services (e.g. Facebook and the photo sharing platform Instagram), social media users could lose control over their private content (e.g. private pictures), because companies might gain access to it more easily [19]. Another form of misconduct on social media stems from improper use of anonymity. The New York Times reports the case of John Mackey, one of the founders of Whole Foods Market, who used an online pseudonym to anonymously praise his own company and to discredit a competitor [20]. So-called “flogs” (fake blogs) represent further corporate unethical behavior on social media. In the case of flogs, companies instruct an advertising agency to create a fictitious blog of a supposedly independent character, who writes about a product or a company in a very positive way. Various cases of fake blogs have been discovered and have put corporate officials under pressure [21].
The literature overview revealed that there are plenty of ways that firms can behave unethically on social media. The fact that particularly entrepreneurs can benefit from opportunities arising from social media creates a major dilemma for them: On the hand, social media offers wide-ranging opportunities to boost their business. On the other hand, many of these opportunities can include ethically questionable business practices. This raises the question of how unethical behavior of entrepreneurs on social media can be explained. The next section therefore builds on that and offers a solid theoretical basis to explain entrepreneurial moral misconduct in a social media setting.
2.2 Moral Disengagement
Based on the criticism that psychological theories of moral agency rather tend to focus on the moral thought to the neglect of the moral conduct, researchers started to focus on the exploration of why individuals show unethical behavior, e.g. [22–26].
The behavior of people who are confronted with moral issues are usually guided and regulated by their moral agency [23]. In this vein, moral agency refers to being “embedded in a broader socio-cognitive self-theory encompassing self-organizing, proactive, self-reflective, and self-regulatory mechanisms rooted in personal standards and linked to self-sanctions” [23, p. 193]. Individuals can, however, detach themselves from certain moral problems they face in certain situations “by selectively disengaging their moral self-sanctions from detrimental social policies and practices” [24, p. 10]. Having said that, people in such situations are able to act in an unethical, detrimental, and harmful manner and pursue related activities with freedom from the restriction of self-censure [24–26].
Bandura [22] argued that eight psychosocial mechanisms enable individuals to morally disengage from own moral standards that lead to a destructive and unethical behavior: namely moral justification, euphemistic labeling, advantageous comparison, displacement of responsibility, diffusion of responsibility, disregarding or distortion of consequences, dehumanization, and attribution of blame.
The concept of moral disengagement already found its entrance in management, and particularly, in entrepreneurship research. Recent research of Baron et al. [26] focus on the causes for unethical decision making amongst entrepreneurs that might have destructive effects on their companies, involved stakeholders, and themselves. Results show that the entrepreneurs’ motivation for financial gains is positively related to moral disengagement. Moreover, the findings show that moral disengagement is positively related to the tendency to make unethical decisions amongst their sample of founding entrepreneurs [26].
2.3 Regulatory Focus Theory
Self-regulation, and in particular, the regulatory focus theory are increasingly in the center of interest in entrepreneurship research to gain an in-depth understanding of behavioral patterns amongst entrepreneurs and founders. Self-regulation, in general, refers to “the psychological processes by which individuals exercise control over their cognitive, emotional, and behavioral processes” [27, p. 622]. This means that individuals control their own actions and behavior by focusing on both strategies for goal setting and achievement.
The regulatory focus theory is based on the hedonic principle, which states that individuals try to avoid pain and seek contentment [27–30], and the self-discrepancy theory, which distinguishes the ideal self, the ought self, and the actual self [31]. The regulatory focus theory suggests that individuals try to fulfill their duties and try to achieve their goals at the same time [29, 30] in order to bring the actual self in alignment with the ideal and the ought selves. Two generic modes govern, therein, own behavior. An emphasis is either placed on the minimization of the discrepancy between actual and the ought self or on reducing the difference between the actual and the ideal self [30–32]. Whereas individuals with a promotion focus are motivated by growth and advancement needs, individuals with a prevention focus are rather motivated by security- and safety-related needs [27–30]. These two foci and the related diverging motives form the basis on which each individual builds its objectives and standards. As a consequence, promotion-focused individuals concentrate on their ideals (e.g. hopes, wishes) they aim to achieve. These individuals emphasize the existence of positive outcomes when they strive for their ideals. On the other side, prevention-focused individuals concentrate on and view their goals by means of duties or responsibilities that should be attained. Thus, these individuals emphasize the absence of negative outcomes [27–30]. Promotion and prevention pride are, however, typically not correlated with each other and are not mutually exclusive [33]. Entrepreneurs’ behavior can, hence, be guided by a promotion and a prevention pride [34, 35].
3 Propositions and Framework Development
Previous research has uncovered a multitude of motives why individuals pursue self-employment as a career choice, e.g. [36–40]. Scheinberg and MacMillan [41] conducted a study in eleven countries and found that individuals were motivated by “need for approval”, “need for independence”, “need for personal development”, “welfare considerations”, and “perceived instrumentality of wealth”. Birley and Westhead [38] confirmed these findings in their study with 405 managers of entrepreneurial firms, but added “tax reduction and indirect benefits” and “follow role models” as further reasons. Robichaud et al. [40] differentiate between “independence and autonomy”, “family security”, “intrinsic rewards”, and “extrinsic rewards”. Gatewood et al. [42] explored cognitive factors of potential entrepreneurs. Based on their findings, they argue that an identification of a market need, independence and autonomy, the perception of a high reward (e.g. financial), the desire to use knowledge and experience, the enjoyment of being self-employed, and the desire to prove that it can be realized are main motives for starting a business. Another line of research distinguishes in the search for entrepreneurial motivation between necessity-driven and opportunity-driven motivation. While it is argued that necessity-driven entrepreneurs are motivated by push factors (especially unemployment), pursue opportunity-driven entrepreneurs this career path for pull factors such as social status and profit [43].
Within the identified motives, the motive for financial gains is a recurrent and fundamental element in explaining why individuals have chosen an entrepreneurial career. Baron et al. [26] argue, therefore, that financial gains are a primary motive for entrepreneurship and that this motive is suitable to explain the conduct of entrepreneurial behavior. In line with this notion, we focus in our paper solely on motivation for financial gains.
Concerning the relationship of motive for financial gains and moral disengagement, Litzky et al. [44] argue that financial gains can cause different types of unethical behavior in a general business context. Employees purchase or damage, for instance, organizational property without authorization, they show hostile and aggressive behavior towards co-workers and other individuals, they violate existing standards in ensuring product consistency, or they put other individuals intentionally at a disadvantage. Baron et al. [26] examined the relationship of motive for financial gains and moral disengagement in an entrepreneurial setting and found they are positively related. As general and entrepreneurial findings indicate a general interdependence between financial gains and moral disengagement, we propose that this effect also exists in the use of social media as marketing tool by entrepreneurs.
Proposition 1:
Entrepreneurs’ motive for financial gains is positively related to moral disengagement in the use of social media.
Rogers et al. [45] argue that the Internet has created a new space where unique possibilities for deviant and malign behavior can be found reaching from criminal to misbehaving. The focus of this article is set on misbehaving behavior and defines unethical behavior as something that is “quasi legal and [does] not “constitute serious criminal acts but nevertheless [constitutes] nonconformance to a given set of norms that are accepted by a significant number of people in society” [46, p. 447]. Anonymity [47] reducing the chances of being detected and held accountable [47], and the remote nature of online behavior leading to a sense of disinhibition [46, 48] are seen as the base for deviant conduct. A phenomenon where deviant online behavior can frequently be observed is online firestorms. Pfeffer et al. [49, p. 118] define online firestorms “as the sudden discharge of large quantities of messages containing negative [Word-of-Mouth] and complaint behavior against a person, company, or group in social media networks”. Firestorms are especially suitable to illustrate unethical behavior because of the nature of messages in such occurrences. These are predominantly expressed opinions, often not based on facts, and highly emotional [49].
Deviant behavior is, in general, not limited to a specific group with socio-demographic or psychographic characteristics. DeMarco [50] argues, for instance, that the Internet is increasing the chances that even ‘good kids’ show deviant or even criminal behavior. In order to misbehave from an ethical standpoint, people have to disengage at least to some extent from their normally occurring self-regulatory process that impedes them to act in a way that is contradicting and maybe violating their own moral standards [25]. Based on these general findings and the findings of Baron et al. [26] that moral disengagement is given in the tendency to show unethical behavior among entrepreneurs, it can be assumed that moral disengagement is in play also when entrepreneurs conduct deviant behavior in the use of social media.
Proposition 2:
Entrepreneurs’ moral disengagement is positively related to the tendency to make unethical decisions in the use of social media.
Together, Propositions 1 and 2 suggest an influence of moral disengagement on the relationship between motive for financial gains and the tendency to unethical behavior in the use of social media.
Proposition 3:
Moral disengagement mediates the relationship between entrepreneurs’ motive for financial gains and the tendency to make unethical decisions in the use of social media.
Following the regulatory focus theory, two regulating modes (promotion focus, prevention focus) serve as the motivational base for behavior [30, 31].
Entrepreneurs with a promotion focus are motivated by factors relating to ideal self-states and are more inclined to potential gains [35]. Because of that motivation, these factors can be more easily accessed and reach consciousness faster [32]. Individuals with a promotion focus pay, therewith, greater attention to moral issues impacting the achievement of ideal-self states and future benefits [35]. The more promotion focus regulates the behavior of an entrepreneur, the greater is the influence on moral awareness.
Proposition 4:
Promotion focus influences the moral awareness of an entrepreneur in the use of social media.
When entrepreneurs are driven by a prevention focus, they will be more attentive to factors, which are related to ought self-states and potential losses [35]. In such cases, entrepreneurs are more vigilant towards moral issues that bear the risk of violating ought self-states and future losses. This motivation affects furthermore the accessibility of information and the speed with which stimuli reach consciousness [32]. The more prevention focus is distinguished in an entrepreneur, the more moral awareness is influenced.
Proposition 5:
Prevention focus influences the moral awareness of an entrepreneur in the use of social media.
Butterfield et al. [51, p. 982] define moral awareness as “a person’s recognition that his or her potential decision or action could affect the interests, welfare, or expectations of the self or others in a fashion that may conflict with one or more ethical standards”. Moral awareness is, therewith, not fixed and outside of the sphere of influence of situational and motivational factors.
The motive for financial gains illustrates such a factor. A study by Pittarello et al. [52] provides evidence that the motive for financial gains influences awareness via the perception accuracy. In their study, perception tasks were given to participants. In cases where self-interest in the form of financial gains could be served, the perception accuracy decreased; especially when participants could use ambiguity as an excuse to justify dishonest behavior.
Proposition 6:
Entrepreneurs’ motive for financial gains is negatively related to the moral awareness of entrepreneurs in the use of social media.
The core element of Bandura et al. [25] concept of moral disengagement highlights the distorting effect of moral justification, euphemistic labeling, advantageous comparison, displacement of responsibility, diffusion of responsibility, disregarding or distortion of consequences, dehumanization, and attribution of blame on perceiving the consequences of conduct morally adequately. Barsky [53] argues, therefore, that moral awareness is compromised by moral disengagement by reducing or neglecting the consequences of unethical conduct.
Proposition 7:
Moral disengagement is negatively related to the moral awareness of entrepreneurs in the use of social media.
As moral awareness enables individuals to become aware of and recognize moral issues [54], moral awareness serves as a moral compass. The higher moral awareness, the higher the likelihood to detect moral issues and to act in line with own existing moral standards. At the same time, low moral awareness decreases the sensitivity to unethical conduct and consequences. Hence, entrepreneurs with a low level of moral awareness are less concerned with moral implications and choose the options that are serving their goals to a greater extent. Where ethical implications are completely overlooked, Palazzo et al. [55] use the term “ethical blindness”.
The interdependency of the level of moral awareness determines the moral behavior of entrepreneurs especially where moral dilemmas or moral ambiguity is given. Recent research by Pittarello et al. [52] was able to show that ambiguity was used to justify morally wrong conduct in order to keep a feeling of moral behavior when people have to choose between honesty and self-interest. In their experiments, participants showed a misperception of presented information in favor of tempting information, which enabled them to improve their outcome in the experiment.
The existence of prior knowledge about the consequences of unethical behavior affects the intention to behave ethically positive [56]. Studies by Scheiner et al. [7] and Agnihotri et al. [57] indicate that the general knowledge about the use of social media is rather limited. Agnihotri et al. [57] showed, for instance, that social media is still not fully accepted and established in the area of sales. They found, for instance, that only 9 % of salespeople reported a social media-concerned focus in their company. Reasons were control, cost and time concerns, a lack of knowledge on senior management level, and missing valid and reliable measures for success. When the general knowledge about social media is rather limited, it can be assumed that knowledge about ethical concerns is also rather narrow, which in turn influences moral awareness.
Proposition 8:
Entrepreneurs’ moral awareness is negatively related to the tendency to make unethical decisions in the use of social media.
Together, Propositions 6 and 8 suggest an influence of motive for financial gains on the relationship between moral awareness and the tendency to make unethical decisions in the use of social media.
Proposition 9:
Moral awareness mediates the relationship between entrepreneurs’ motive for financial gains and the tendency to make unethical decisions in the use of social media.
Together, Propositions 7 and 8 suggest an influence of moral disengagement on the relationship between moral awareness and the tendency to make unethical decisions in the use of social media.
Proposition 10:
Moral awareness mediates the relationship between moral disengagement and the tendency to make unethical decisions in the use of social media.
Figure 1 summarizes the propositions linking motive for financial gains, moral disengagement, moral awareness, regulatory focus theory, and the tendency to make unethical decisions in the use of social media by entrepreneurs.
4 Conclusion
The main goal of our study was to provide a comprehensive framework that explains unethical behavior of entrepreneurs in the use of social media. Therefore, we developed a set of propositions, linking for the first time motives for financial gains, moral disengagement, moral awareness, promotion and prevention focus, and entrepreneurs’ tendency to make unethical decisions in a social media setting.
Motivated by the increasing importance of social media and the expanding possibilities to utilize social media for entrepreneurial purposes, the theoretical framework provides causal relationships between these basic constructs. Thus, our framework builds on existing research while extending its explanatory power to the field of entrepreneurship and social media research.
The framework offers a solid foundation for further studies empirically testing our proposed relationships and thus contributes to the development of a theory of unethical behavior in social media.
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Scheiner, C.W., Krämer, K., Baccarella, C.V. (2016). Cruel Intentions? – The Role of Moral Awareness, Moral Disengagement, and Regulatory Focus in the Unethical Use of Social Media by Entrepreneurs. In: Meiselwitz, G. (eds) Social Computing and Social Media. SCSM 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9742. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39910-2_41
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