Moral Courage: The Essence of Ethical Leadership and Followership (original) (raw)
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Facing Ethical Challenges in the Workplace: Conceptualizing and Measuring Professional Moral Courage
Journal of Business Ethics, 2009
Scholars have shown renewed interest in the construct of courage. Recent studies have explored its theoretical underpinnings and measurement. Yet courage is generally discussed in its broad form to include physical, psychological, and moral features. To understand a more practical form of moral courage, research is needed to uncover how ethical challenges are effectively managed in organizational settings. We argue that professional moral courage (PMC) is a managerial competency. To describe it and derive items for scale development, we studied managers in the U.S. military and examined prior work on moral courage. Two methods were used to measure PMC producing a five dimensional scale that organized under a single second-order factor, which we termed overall PMC. The five dimensions are moral agency, multiple values, endurance of threats, going beyond compliance, and moral goals. Convergent and discriminant validity are analyzed by use of confirmatory factor analysis procedures. We conclude by presenting a framework for proactive organizational ethics, which reflects how to support PMC as a management practice.
Leadership, Courage, and Ethical Behavior: An Executive Approach
Journal of Business, Technology and Leadership
Organizations constitute morally complex environments, requiring organization members to possess levels of moral courage sufficient to promote their ethical action, while refraining from unethical actions when faced with temptations or pressures. Courageous leadership requires a true understanding of organizational structure and pressures. In terms of methodology, this study will examine the moderating and mediating variables of courage, leadership and ethics on leadership in contemporary organizations. This study will be a qualitative study utilizing the 2007 Woodard and Pury Courage Scale, a 23-item survey measuring two dimensions, courage as the ability to act and the fear factor involved with the action. The sample will consist of graduate students working in global corporations located in the South and Central Florida region of the USA. Relevance of the professions of the participants studied will be considered. The importance of this study is that preconceived notions of wheth...
International Review of Management and Business Research, 2020
In the overriding context of massive risk, leaders are faced with the tough decision of making ethically sound decisions. By acting with moral courage, leaders couple managerial decisions with ethical principles, bringing long-term benefits for the organization. Researchers proposed that leaders with moral courage will be seen as ethical role models by their followers, who as a result, will be increasingly motivated to replicate their behavior, ensuring they do the right thing for their organization in due time. Bandura's Social learning theory has been deployed to explain the proposed theoretical framework. The theoretical framework of this study was tested by collecting data from the employees of education sector (Both Public and Private), all located within twin cities. Results indicated mediation effects of moral attentiveness and moderation of moral courage in the relationship of ethical leadership and helping behavior.
PROFESSIONAL MORAL COURAGE TO COMBAT ETHICAL CHALLENGES IN THE WORKPLACE
" Ethics " has been considered one of the most important and desired professional competence amongst the Workforce. The organizations prefer employees who have courage to deal with ethical issues. But unfortunately, the scams and scandals across the Globe is the loud evidence of lack of Professional moral courage (PMC) amongst employees. The lack of PMC causes moral distress due to value-conflict, impacting the employee's efficiency. The current paper intends to analyze the validity of the Professional Moral Courage scale in the Indian context and to identify the Professional Moral Courage of the Indian professionals and also the impact of Individual's Personality, age, gender and the type of organization on Professional Moral Courage. The findings reveal that the personality has impact on professional moral courage and hence to enhance it, the interventions to modify personality aspects like 'openness' is the key. The study is the first research on 'Professional Moral courage' in Indian context.
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.
Moral Identity: Linking Ethical Leadership to Follower Decision Making
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.
The effect of leader moral development on ethical climate and employee attitudes
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2005
This study examines the effect of leader moral development on the organizationÕs ethical climate and employee attitudes. Results indicate that the relationship between leader moral development and ethical climate is moderated by two factors: the extent to which the leader utilizes his or her cognitive moral development (i.e., capacity for ethical reasoning), and the age of the organization. Specifically, the influence of the leaderÕs moral development was stronger for high utilizing leaders, those whose moral actions were consistent with their moral reasoning. Additionally, the influence of the leaderÕs moral development was stronger in younger organizations. Finally, as predicted, congruence between the leaderÕs moral development and the employeeÕs moral development was positively associated with job satisfaction and organizational commitment and negatively associated with turnover intentions.
The Journal of applied psychology, 2018
There has long been interest in how leaders influence the unethical behavior of those who they lead. However, research in this area has tended to focus on leaders' direct influence over subordinate behavior, such as through role modeling or eliciting positive social exchange. We extend this research by examining how ethical leaders affect how employees construe morally problematic decisions, ultimately influencing their behavior. Across four studies, diverse in methods (lab and field) and national context (the United States and China), we find that ethical leadership decreases employees' propensity to morally disengage, with ultimate effects on employees' unethical decisions and deviant behavior. Further, employee moral identity moderates this mediated effect. However, the form of this moderation is not consistent. In Studies 2 and 4, we find that ethical leaders have the largest positive influence over individuals with a weak moral identity (providing a "saving gra...