Fulfilling moral duty or prioritizing moral image? The moral self-regulatory consequences of ethical voice

Previous research on the consequences of ethical voice has largely focused on the performance or social relational consequences of ethical voice on multiple organizational stakeholders. The present research provides an important extension to the ethical voice literature by investigating the distinct intrapersonal and interpersonal moral self-regulatory processes that shape ethical voicers' own psychological experiences and their subsequent purposeful efforts to maintain a positive sense of moral self. On one hand, we argue that ethical voice heightens voicers' sense of responsibility over ethical matters at work (i.e., moral ownership), which motivates them to refrain from violating moral norms (i.e., disengaging from unethical behaviors). On the contrary, we argue that ethical voice generates psychological pressure for voicers as they become anxious about preserving their moral social image (i.e., moral reputation maintenance concerns), which motivates them to signal their moral character to others through symbolic acts (i.e., engaging in moral symbolization behaviors). Further, we expect gender differences in the moral consequences of ethical voice. Across two studies that varied in temporal focus (a multisource, time-lagged field study and a within-person weekly experience sampling study), we found support for most of our predictions. The results suggest that while potentially psychologically uplifting (for both men and women), ethical voice also generates psychological pressure for the voicer to preserve their favorable moral social image and thus motivates them (more so in the case of women voicers at the between-person level) to explicitly symbolize their moral character in the workplace. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).