Editing Diffusion of responsibility (section)

=== Moral disengagement ===
Diffusion of responsibility can negatively affect personal morals. With diffusion of responsibility, it has been found that people feel less accountable for their work. This lack of accountability can be because labour is divided amongst members in a group and so no one member feels an overwhelming amount of responsibility for their organisation or their overall project. It has been found that many members get narrowed into focusing on their individual work, that they eventually forget about any moral aspects. Purely focusing on the functional aspects of their jobs is a result of division of labour, which is a mechanism for diffusion of responsibility.<ref name=Bandura1999/> This can be highly concerning for organisations since division of labour is a common practice amongst many.

[[Moral disengagement]] is likely to be particularly important in organisations because bureaucratic structures and the division of labour seem to lend themselves to moral disengagement mechanisms such as the diffusion and displacement of responsibility.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Bandura |first1=Albert |title=Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory |title-link=Social Foundations of Thought and Action |date=1986 |publisher=Prentice-Hall |isbn=978-0-13-815614-5 }}{{page needed|date=January 2023}}</ref> Euphemistic labelling is also common in organisations, such as when managers refer to layoffs as “rightsizing.” Also, with victims out of sight, [[globalization]] makes it easier to ignore or distort the harmful consequences of business actions. Thus, moral disengagement seems highly relevant to understanding unethical behaviour in 21st century organizations.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Detert |first1=James R. |last2=Treviño |first2=Linda Klebe |last3=Sweitzer |first3=Vicki L. |title=Moral disengagement in ethical decision making: A study of antecedents and outcomes. |journal=Journal of Applied Psychology |date=2008 |volume=93 |issue=2 |pages=374–391 |doi=10.1037/0021-9010.93.2.374 |pmid=18361639 }}</ref>