The support of the John Templeton Foundation (grant #5110) is gratefully acknowledged. We also express appreciation to Loren Dyck, Ryan Falcone, Richard Teo and Erica Freedman for assistance in data collection.
Virtuousness refers to the pursuit of the highest aspirations in the human condition. It is characterized by human impact, moral goodness, and unconditional societal betterment. Several writers have recently argued that corporations, in addition to being concerned with ethics, should also emphasize an ethos of virtuousness in corporate action. Virtuousness emphasizes actions that go beyond the ''do no harm'' assumption embedded in most ethical codes of conduct. Instead, it emphasizes the highest and best of the human condition. This research empirically examines the buffering and amplifying effects of virtuousness in organizations. The study hypothesizes that virtuousness has a positive effect on organizations because amplifying dynamics make subsequent virtuous action more likely, and buffering dynamics reduce the harmful effects of downsizing. The study reveals that two types of virtuousness -tonic and phasic -are associated with these effects.
Participatory action research~PAR! has long been an important area of interest in community psychology as a mechanism for intervening in and developing community social systems. The key concerns in such efforts are many: how to get buy-in from community members, how to involve multiple stakeholders, how to take into account potential consequences to a whole community system, how to develop a sense of empowerment among participants, etc. These concerns are studied and relevant, not
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