Mechanisms of Moral Disengagement in Police Unethical Behaviour

Abstract

Recently there were a lot of police unethical behaviour reported in Indonesia which became concern of law enforcement agency and abused of public trust. One of the reason of this phenomena is varied depend on the reason of the perpetrators. Moral disengagement is the ability to use cognitive mechanism to excuse unethical decision making. Moral disengagement can contribute to unethical behaviour depends on the mechanism used. Moral disengagement is divided by eight mechanism. The eight mechanisms are moral justification, euphemestic labelling, advantageous comparison, displacement of responsibility, diffusion of responsibility, distortion of consequences, dehumanization, and attribution of blame. This research purpose to examine the descriptive data of moral disengagement in Police Officer. The instrument of this research was moral disengagement scale developed based on socio-cognitive theory by Albert Bandura. Data collected from 150 police officers from traffic division, criminal investigation division, vital object division, operation division, and ethical profession division. Result of this study indicate that the level of moral disengagement on the subject is low and the mechanism used is varied.

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Author Information
Annisa Prameswari Kesumaningrum, University of Tarumanagara, Indonesia
Yohanes Budiarto, University of Tarumanagara, Indonesia

• Category: Organizational Learning and Change

Posted by James Alexander Gordon

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