Role of Psychological Contract Violation in Reducing Moral Voice: The Moderating Role of Moral Disengagement
Violation of psychological contracts may have a drastic effect on ethical conduct on the part of employees in an organization. This paper explores the connection between the psychological contract violation and the moral voice with the moderator action of moral disengagement. The proposed study is based on the Social Exchange Theory and Social Cognitive Theory that psychological contract violation decreases the willingness of employees to voice morals and enhance the likelihood of moral disengagement. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data on employees who work in two large banks in Iraq in the public sector. The purposive sampling method was used, and the analysis of the responses was conducted with Structural Equation Modeling using SmartPLS on 300 sample size. The findings show that the violation of psychological contract causes a strong negative impact on moral voices and a positive impact on moral disengagement. Moreover, the relationship between psychological contract violation and moral voice is also moderated by moral disengagement considerably, with the negative relation being stronger when moral disengagement is high.