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When Play at Work Can Foster Harassment-Based Norms: Exploring Moral Disengagement During Social Play.

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Title: When Play at Work Can Foster Harassment-Based Norms: Exploring Moral Disengagement During Social Play.
Authors: Samnani, Al-Karim1 (AUTHOR) asamnani@uwindsor.ca
Source: Journal of Business Ethics. Dec2025, Vol. 202 Issue 4, p765-780. 16p.
Subject Terms: *Play, *Social norms, Harassment, Implicit bias, Moral disengagement, Coworker relationships
Abstract: Play at work has received burgeoning interest in recent years. This research has largely focused on its positive outcomes despite fragmented evidence that play at work can produce behaviors such as clowning, teasing, pranking, and telling jokes at others' expense. This manuscript constructs theory highlighting the evolving nature of disclosures in explaining how social play can produce harassment norms. This theory is distilled into four broad stages. In the first stage, employees participating in social play develop greater personal comfort with their co-workers through reduced work/non-work boundaries, greater psychological safety, and increased psychosocial resources. In the second stage, employees who develop personal comfort "open up" as they loosen self-control and engage in mutual self-disclosures, particularly with those who are perceived to share similarities. In the third stage, employees who have high implicit bias make more risky disclosures by expressing biased views as jokes during play. In the fourth stage, contagion processes occur when co-workers react in perceivably supportive ways, such as laughing and repeating jokes. This model illustrates how social play can lead employees to morally disengage by using the context of play to morally justify the expression of their implicit biases, which enables harassment to go unchecked and become reinforced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Copyright of Journal of Business Ethics is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
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  Data: When Play at Work Can Foster Harassment-Based Norms: Exploring Moral Disengagement During Social Play.
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  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Samnani%2C+Al-Karim%22">Samnani, Al-Karim</searchLink><relatesTo>1</relatesTo> (AUTHOR)<i> asamnani@uwindsor.ca</i>
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  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="JN" term="%22Journal+of+Business+Ethics%22">Journal of Business Ethics</searchLink>. Dec2025, Vol. 202 Issue 4, p765-780. 16p.
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  Data: *<searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Play%22">Play</searchLink><br />*<searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Social+norms%22">Social norms</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Harassment%22">Harassment</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Implicit+bias%22">Implicit bias</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Moral+disengagement%22">Moral disengagement</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Coworker+relationships%22">Coworker relationships</searchLink>
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  Data: Play at work has received burgeoning interest in recent years. This research has largely focused on its positive outcomes despite fragmented evidence that play at work can produce behaviors such as clowning, teasing, pranking, and telling jokes at others' expense. This manuscript constructs theory highlighting the evolving nature of disclosures in explaining how social play can produce harassment norms. This theory is distilled into four broad stages. In the first stage, employees participating in social play develop greater personal comfort with their co-workers through reduced work/non-work boundaries, greater psychological safety, and increased psychosocial resources. In the second stage, employees who develop personal comfort "open up" as they loosen self-control and engage in mutual self-disclosures, particularly with those who are perceived to share similarities. In the third stage, employees who have high implicit bias make more risky disclosures by expressing biased views as jokes during play. In the fourth stage, contagion processes occur when co-workers react in perceivably supportive ways, such as laughing and repeating jokes. This model illustrates how social play can lead employees to morally disengage by using the context of play to morally justify the expression of their implicit biases, which enables harassment to go unchecked and become reinforced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
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  Data: <i>Copyright of Journal of Business Ethics is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract.</i> (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
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        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Social norms
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              Text: Dec2025
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