Moral character in the workplace.

Abstract

Using two 3-month diary studies and a large cross-sectional survey, we identified distinguishing features of adults with low versus high levels of moral character. Adults with high levels of moral character tend to: consider the needs and interests of others and how their actions affect other people (e.g., they have high levels of Honesty-Humility, empathic concern, guilt proneness); regulate their behavior effectively, specifically with reference to behaviors that have positive short-term consequences but negative long-term consequences (e.g., they have high levels of Conscientiousness, self-control, consideration of future consequences); and value being moral (e.g., they have high levels of moral identity-internalization). Cognitive moral development, Emotionality, and social value orientation were found to be relatively undiagnostic of moral character. Studies 1 and 2 revealed that employees with low moral character committed harmful work behaviors more frequently and helpful work behaviors less frequently than did employees with high moral character, according to their own admissions and coworkers' observations. Study 3 revealed that adults with low moral character committed more delinquent behavior and had more lenient attitudes toward unethical negotiation tactics than did adults with high moral character. By showing that individual differences have consistent, meaningful effects on employees' behaviors, after controlling for demographic variables (e.g., gender, age, income) and basic attributes of the work setting (e.g., enforcement of an ethics code), our results contest situationist perspectives that deemphasize the importance of personality. Moral people can be identified by self-reports in surveys, and these self-reports predict consequential behaviors months after the initial assessment.

Development, reliability, and validity of the Moral Identity Questionnaire

“…Moral Integrity was not related to Loyalty or Respect for Authority. These results are consistent with those reported by Cohen, Panter, Turan, Morse, and Kim (2014) in a study of moral character in the workplace. Cohen and colleagues found that whereas the moral foundations of Harm and Fairness, and the IRI empathy and perspective-taking subscales, were relevant to moral character (which predicted moral behavior), Loyalty, Respect for Authority, and Purity were not.…”

The dimensionality of the Brief Self-Control Scale—An evaluation of unidimensional and multidimensional applications

“…We were interested in the question of which scale conceptualization performs best, particularly in these settings, since a growing body of studies uses the BSCS to investigate the role of TSC at school (Duckworth & Seligman, 2005), in university (Tangney et al, 2004), in vocational training (e.g., Baay et al, 2014), and in the company (e.g., Cohen, Panter, Turan, Morse, & Kim, 2014). To this end, we used confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to compare the factor structure of the different models and the usefulness of the facet scores with the total score in predicting educational and job-related outcomes hypothesized to be related to TSC.…”

Relational attachment and ethical workplace decisions: The mediating role of emotional burnout

“…Nevertheless, future research can examine how attachment orientation and emotional exhaustion are related to more objective measures of performance and ethical behavior, like supervisor ratings (Simmons et al, 2009). Future research can examine other individual difference constructs and broaden the number of mediators in explaining unethical workplace behavior across different cultural and stressful contexts (Cohen, Panter, Turan, Morse, & Kim, 2014). These limitations notwithstanding, the associations between attachment orientation and workplace decision-making found in the current studies highlight the utility of examining organizational issues through a relational lens.…”