Effects of Egalitarianism (Low SDO) on Workplace Vigilante Behavior: The Role of Moral Outrage

Workplace Vigilante Behavior refers to the monitoring of norm violation and delivering unauthorized punishment to the norm violators in the workplace. The current study attempted to uncover the antecedent of workplace vigilante behavior and proposes Egalitarianism (low SDO) as an antecedent to such behavior using Social Dominance Theory (SDT). The current study proposes that low SDO employees feel morally outraged which instigates them to display workplace vigilante behavior. Further, we also contend that low SDO employees feel more morally outraged when the norm violator is of high socio-economic status (SES), which further motivates them to display workplace vigilante behavior. Thus, the current study proposes a moderated mediation model where moral outrage is the mediator and offender status (high SES) is the moderator. Using a two-wave survey design administered on 246 employees of public sector organization in India, the current study finds empirical support of its propositions. The results lend support to our proposed moderated mediation model and the theoretical contributions, practical implications along with limitations and future research avenues are discussed in the paper.