Psychological mechanisms linking supervisors’ moral decoupling to subordinates’ ethical voice

We used social information processing theory to examine the influence of supervisors’ moral decoupling on subordinates’ ethical voice. Full-time employees of two manufacturing enterprises in southern China completed a two-stage survey. The results revealed that supervisors’ moral decoupling negatively predicted subordinates' perceptive moral attentiveness and reflective moral attentiveness. The relationship between perceptual moral attentiveness and ethical voice was nonsignificant, but reflective moral attentiveness was positively related to ethical voice and it negatively mediated the relationship between supervisors’ moral decoupling and subordinates’ ethical voice. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.