Ethical Climates: The Joint Effect of Caring and Rules on Work Experiences of Senior Managers

Abstract

This study investigates a new approach to conceptualizing ethical climates by proposing and testing a framework that considers the joint or interactive combination of two ethical climates from the literature: caring and rules. Four concepts are proposed based on different combinations of caring and rules: Principle benevolence (high in both climates), people-focused (high in caring, low in rules climates), rules-focused (low in caring and high in rules climates) and passive (low in both climates). The study also considers levels of analysis by providing a way to distinguish organizational and group levels of analysis from a psychological climate or individual differences perspective. The ethical climate framework and levels of analysis were tested with a sample of 122 senior managers from a state social services agency in the United States. Specific dependent variables in the study included role conflict, role ambiguity and organizational commitment. Support was obtained for the proposed framework including a psychological climate interpretation. Key findings include a need for both caring and rules climates for understanding organizational commitment. Different predictions were obtained for role ambiguity and role conflict with people-focused interpretations of the climate having lower role conflict and principle benevolent interpretations of the climate experiencing lower role ambiguity. The results are discussed in terms of how caring and rules ethical climates can serve as enablers to lower dysfunctional features of a job and increase a job incumbent’s organizational commitment.