Off-Duty Deviance in the Eye of the Beholder: Implications of Moral Foundations Theory in the Age of Social Media

Drawing from moral foundations theory, we show that differences in sensitivity to distinct moral norms help explain differences in the perceived (un)fairness of punishing employees for off-duty deviance. We used an initial study to validate realistic examples of non-criminal behavior that were perceived as violating a specific moral foundation. Participants in the main study (n = 166) evaluated scenarios in which co-workers were fired for those behaviors, which took place outside of work but were revealed via social media. The extent to which participants valued the norm violated by the co-worker positively predicted perceived fairness of the firing, and negatively predicted expressed intent to take retributive action against the responsible manager. This effect was moderated by the presence of a pre-existing organizational policy regarding off-duty conduct, which uniformly decreased negative reactions to the firing. Because social media now makes the revelation of an employee’s off-duty behavior to a broad audience increasingly likely, our results suggest the importance of developing an approach for responding to employee off-duty deviance while highlighting the relevance of moral pluralism to the study of third-party reactions.