MANAGEMENT & ORGANIZATIONS


JOHN ANGUS D. HILDRETH ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR


Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management


Cornell SC Johnson College of Business Cornell University


When Your Friend is My Friend: How Loyalty Prompts Support for Indirect Ties in Moral Dilemmas Organization Science, 36, 2, March-April 2025 LINK TO PAPER


Co-authors • John Angus D. Hildreth


Associate Professor, Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, Cornell University


• Zachariah Berry, Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California, Los Angeles CA


Summary How are some criminals able to get away with wrongdoing for months or even


years? Here, the authors consider the role of loyalty in facilitating networks of support for wrongdoers, examining whether the obligations of loyalty to direct ties (here, brokers) transfer through individuals’ social networks to their indi- rect ties, prompting them to support those indirect ties in moral dilemmas. In- tegrating research on brokering, loyalty, relational identity, and social norms, Hildreth and Berry propose that loyalty to a broker will prompt an individual to support an indirect tie accused of wrongdoing; loyalty activates one’s rela- tional identity with the broker, so the individual perceives the broker’s request as falling within the bounds of their loyalty-based obligations to the broker.


Specifically, these norms reveal to the actor their benevolence-based trust in the broker, their value alignment with the broker, and relational concerns for not granting the broker’s request. Te authors further demonstrate how a broker’s history of creating divisions between people moderates how the actor sees the broker and reduces their willingness to grant the request. Across 11 preregistered studies (n = 2,249)—10 experiments and a field study—they found support for their hypotheses: the obligations of loyalty to brokers did indeed transfer to indirect ties accused of wrongdoing, regardless of the type of wrongdoing or strength of evidence presented against the accused.


CONTENTS TO MAIN


| RESEARCH WITH IMPACT: CORNELL SC JOHNSON COLLEGE OF BUSINESS • 2025 EDITION


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