Desire to be ethical or ability to self-control: Which is more crucial for ethical behavior? (original) (raw)
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This qualitative study explores how business leaders narrate their personal ways of recognizing, reasoning, and resolving moral conflicts and what these stories reveal about their moral identity processes within organizational contexts. Based on interviews with 25 business leaders, 4 moral identity statuses were identified: achievement (commitment to a personally meaningful moral value framework that had been established through a period of self-exploration), moratorium (self-exploration of one’s moral value framework that was ongoing), foreclosure (commitment to a given moral value framework that was present with little or no personal self-exploration), and diffusion (neither clear commitment to nor exploration of a personal moral value framework was present). The moral identity statuses were based on how leaders approached and interpreted moral conflicts and what the influence of the organizational context was in their moral decision-making processes. Some remained steadfast in ad...
Journal of Technology Management and Business , 2019
This paper investigates the role of organizational justice and moral identity of employees on the relationship between ethical leadership and employees’ ethical behavior. It examines the mediation effect of organizational justice on the relationship between ethical leadership and ethical behavior of employees. This study also explores the moderating role of employees’ moral identity on the relationship between organizational justice and the ethical behavior of employees. Data is obtained from a sample of 230 employees from the banking industry in Iraq. The theoretical and practical contributions, as well as recommendations for further research, are also presented.
The Influence of Ethical Leadership on Moral Judgment and Moral Motivation of Employees
Promotion and inculcation of ethical decision making in the organization remains a prime concern in the fields of behavioral ethics and leadership. During the last decade, ethical leadership in the organization has been re-conceptualized in an effort to further this cause. Though, avid attention has been paid to ethical leadership style but the problems in the construct at the theoretical level has not been seen clearly, and due to this how it affects morality of employees in the organization was not studied closely. This research identified important theoretical and conceptual issues with ethical leadership construct and how it influences the moral judgment and moral identity-based moral motivation of followers in the organization. This study examined the specific ethical leadership construct, which is composed of two components: the moral person and the moral manager. Studying the construct as a whole and in parts, it was proposed that the moral person component leads employees to construct their personal moral judgment at higher levels of cognitive moral development model (CMD) while the moral manager component, and ethical leader leads employees to construct their moral judgment at low levels of CMD. In addition to explaining leader influences on employee’s CMD, it was also proposed that these components influence follower moral identity-based motivation. It was proposed that the moral person component crowds in moral identity (internalization) based moral motivation, while ethical leader and the moral manager component crowds in moral identity (symbolization) based moral motivation. Using quasi- experimental research design in educational institution setting (n = 176), it was partially supported that moral person component affects employees’ moral development positively at principled and conventional levels, as compared to moral managers and ethical leader who led employees to construct their morality at pre-conventional level. It was also supported that moral person crowds in moral motivation of employees, who are high on internalization dimension of moral identity in the absence of rewards, while ethical leader and moral manager crowds in moral motivation of employees who are high on symbolization dimension of moral identity, in the presence of rewards. The key implication of the study is that ethical leaders through moral management may affect both moral development and moral identity based moral motivation of employees negatively. Next, further implications of the findings and future research directions are discussed.
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Ethical leaders may influence the extent to which individuals establish a moral identity and make ethical decisions. Leaders integrate ethics and morality into the day-to-day work practices which in turn influence ethical choices of their followers. This chapter articulates a framework to guide future research on the mediating role of follower moral identity on the relationship between ethical leadership and follower ethical choice in both moral and amoral decisions they encounter at work. This relationship is proposed to be affected by three moderating variables based on prior research: Gender, national culture and organizational infrastructure. Propositions are presented to encourage future research that examines the role of moral identity as a key mediating process for the relationship of ethical leadership and follower decision making.
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Frontiers in psychology, 2018
The spread and publicity given to questionable practices in the corporate world during the last two decades have fostered an increasing interest about the importance of ethical work for organizations, practitioners, scholars and, last but not least, the wider public. Relying on the Social Identity Approach, we suggest that the effects of different ethical climates on employee behaviors are driven by affective identification with the organization and, in parallel, by cognitive moral (dis)engagement. We compared the effects of two particular ethical climates derived from the literature: An ethical organizational climate of self-interest, and an ethical organizational climate of friendship. Three hundred seventy-six workers completed measures of Ethical Climate, Organizational Identification, Moral Disengagement, Organizational Citizenship Behaviors (OCBs), and Counterproductive Work Behaviors (CWBs). Structural equation modeling confirmed that the two ethical climates considered were ...
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Research on ethical leadership has primarily focused on the way ethical leadership influences follower behavior. The present study extends the research by examining how ethical leadership influences employee well-being. In the scope of this it is proposed that ethical leadership positively affects employee well-being (1), and that organizational identification mediates this relationship (2). Additionally, it is argued that moral uncertainty moderates the relationship between ethical leadership and employee well-being, as well as between ethical leadership and organizational identification (3). Across-sectional self-administered online-questionnaire (N = 109) confirmed that ethical leadership has a positive effect on employee well-being, and that organizational identification mediates the relationship between ethical leadership and employee well-being. Yet, the third hypothesis was not confirmed as moral uncertainty did not appear to moderate the relationships between ethical leadership and employee well-being, as well as between ethical leadership and organizational identification. The present study extends the current literature by creating the new concept of moral uncertainty and investigating organizational identification as a mediator.
In this study, we examined psychological empowerment as an underlying influence mechanism through which ethical leadership affects followers' moral identity. Based on the data collected from 335 organizational employees across over 13 various industries, we found that psychological empowerment, in terms of competence, impact, meaning, and self-determination, mediated the effect of ethical leadership on followers' moral identity. These findings are discussed in terms of their theoretical contributions, practical implications, and future research recommendations.