The Effect of Delegation, Moral Justification, and Ethical Climate on Misreporting: A Study of the Financial Services Sector

This study examines the effect of delegation of decision rights, moral justification (MJ), and ethical climate (EC) on managers’ misreporting in the financial services sector. We employed an online research panel called Qualtrics, to collect data based on a sample of 127 middle-level managers from various US financial services firms. We find that MJ mediates the relation between delegation and misreporting, suggesting delegation of decision rights increases employees’ misreporting indirectly by increasing MJ. We also find that EC significantly moderates the relationship between MJ and misreporting. Furthermore, our test of the moderated-mediation effect reveals that the indirect effect of the delegation of decision rights on misreporting through MJ is stronger when there is a higher level of instrumental climate (IC) and a lower level of principle climate (PC).