Morality

About: Morality is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 22623 publications have been published within this topic receiving 545733 citations. The topic is also known as: moral & morals.

Ethical Leadership and Employee Moral Voice: The Mediating Role of Moral Efficacy and the Moderating Role of Leader–Follower Value Congruence

Abstract: Despite the general expectation that ethical leadership fosters employees’ ethical behaviors, surprisingly little empirical effort has been made to verify this expected effect of ethical leadership. To address this research gap, we examine the role of ethical leadership in relation to a direct ethical outcome of employees: moral voice. Focusing on how and when ethical leadership motivates employees to speak up about ethical issues, we propose that moral efficacy serves as a psychological mechanism underlying the relationship, and that leader–follower value congruence serves as a boundary condition for the effect of ethical leadership on moral efficacy. We tested the proposed relationships with matched reports from 154 Korean white-collar employees and their immediate supervisors, collected at two different points in time. The results revealed that ethical leadership was positively related to moral voice, and moral efficacy mediated the relationship. Importantly, as the relationship between ethical leadership and moral efficacy depended on leader–follower value congruence, the mediated relationship was effective only under high leader–follower value congruence. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

The role of emotions for moral judgments depends on the type of emotion and moral scenario.

Abstract: Emotions seem to play a critical role in moral judgment. However, the way in which emotions exert their influence on moral judgments is still poorly understood. This study proposes a novel theoretical approach suggesting that emotions influence moral judgments based on their motivational dimension. We tested the effects of two types of induced emotions with equal valence but with different motivational implications (anger and disgust), and four types of moral scenarios (disgust-related, impersonal, personal, and beliefs) on moral judgments. We hypothesized and found that approach motivation associated with anger would make moral judgments more permissible, while disgust, associated with withdrawal motivation, would make them less permissible. Moreover, these effects varied as a function of the type of scenario: the induced emotions only affected moral judgments concerning impersonal and personal scenarios, while we observed no effects for the other scenarios. These findings suggest that emotions can play an important role in moral judgment, but that their specific effects depend upon the type of emotion induced. Furthermore, induced emotion effects were more prevalent for moral decisions in personal and impersonal scenarios, possibly because these require the performance of an action rather than making an abstract judgment. We conclude that the effects of induced emotions on moral judgments can be predicted by taking their motivational dimension into account. This finding has important implications for moral psychology, as it points toward a previously overlooked mechanism linking emotions to moral judgments.

Values, Authenticity, and Responsible Leadership.

Abstract: The recent financial crisis has prompted questioning of our basic ideas about capitalism and the role of business in society. As scholars are calling for “responsible leadership” to become more of the norm, organizations are being pushed to enact new values, such as “responsibility” and “sustainability,” and pay more attention to the effects of their actions on their stakeholders. The purpose of this study is to open up a line of research in business ethics on the concept of “authenticity” as it can be applied in modern organizational life and more specifically to think through some of the foundational questions about the logic of values. We shall argue that the idea of simply “acting on one’s values” or “being true to oneself” is at best a starting point for thinking about authenticity. We develop the idea of the poetic self as a project of seeking to live authentically. We see being authentic as an ongoing process of conversation that not only starts with perceived values but also involves one’s history, relationships with others, and aspirations. Authenticity entails acting on these values for individuals and organizations and thus also becomes a necessary starting point for ethics. After all, if there is no motivation to justify one’s actions either to oneself or to others, then as Sartre has suggested, morality simply does not come into play. We argue that the idea of responsible leadership can be enriched with this more nuanced idea of the self and authenticity.

When does self-control matter? The interaction between morality and self-control in crime causation

Abstract: In this paper we will test one of the key assumptions of Situational Action Theory: that individuals’ (law-relevant) morality is more fundamental to their crime involvement than their ability to exercise self-control. We specifically hypothesize that, for individuals with a strong morality, their capability to exercise self-control plays less of a role in their crime involvement than it does for individuals with a weak morality, whose capability to exercise self-control may substantially influence their engagement in crime. To test this hypothesis we use data from the Peterborough Youth Study (PYS), a cross-sectional survey of 1957 adolescents aged 14—15 from the UK city of Peterborough. The findings support the main hypothesis: young people with a strong (law-relevant) morality do not engage in crime, regardless of their ability to exercise self-control. However, among those with a weaker (law-relevant) morality, their ability to exercise self-control is an important factor in their crime involvement.

Fairness as Moral Virtue

Abstract: Morality includes fairness as a notable virtue. This chapter contrasts fairnessas-morality (ethical conduct) with the fairness of social and organizational studies. The fairness that those disciplines portray only faintly resembles fairness-as-morality. Their legacy-an anorexic fairness-instead reduces fairness to selfishness. Despite noble efforts to break the stranglehold of economic rationality and self-interest maximization, their version of fairness remains closer to greed and envy than to the moral virtue that can sustain the commonweal.