Despite urgent calls for more research on the integration of business ethics and the meaning of work, to date, there have been few corresponding efforts, and we know surprisingly little about this relationship. In this study, we address this issue by examining when and for whom ethical leadership is more effective in promoting a sense of work meaningfulness among employees, and their subsequent work attitudes. Drawing on the contingency theories of leadership and work meaningfulness literature, we speculate that both employees’ (...) core self-evaluation and perceived organizational support moderate the relationship, but in different ways, and these associations carry over to employees’ subsequent work attitudes in terms of job satisfaction, organizational commitment and turnover intention. We test our hypotheses with two-wave survey data collected from 377 employees. Results indicate that ethical leadership is effective in eliciting work meaningfulness and attitudes for employees higher in CSE or when POS is lower, and ineffective for those lower in CSE or when POS is higher. A supplementary analysis reveals a three-way interaction between ethical leadership, CSE and POS in predicting a sense of work meaningfulness and subsequent work attitudes. Our research cautions that ethical leadership is not a universally positive practice; it can be ineffective or even have a negative impact under some circumstances. (shrink)

The interest in meaningful work has significantly increased over the last two decades. Much of the associated managerial research has focused on researching ways to 'provide and manage meaning' through leadership or organizational culture. This stands in sharp contrast with the literature of the humanities which suggests that meaningfulness does not need to be provided, as the distinct feature of a human being is that he or she has an intrinsic 'will to meaning'. The research that has been done based (...) on the humanistic paradigm has been quite fragmented. This article aims to address these gaps through an action research project that actively involved participants in the process of affirming and uncovering the meaningfulness of their work. Our findings contribute to current organizational scholarship and practice as they enable scholars to clearly distinguish 'meaningful work' from 'the management of meaning', bring together the various sources of meaningful work in one framework and show their relationship with each other, clearly show the importance of engaging with both the inspiration towards the ideal as well as the often less than perfect self and the organizational reality in which meaning gets expressed and contribute to our understanding of how to engage individuals in conversations about meaningful work that are not prescriptive or exclusive, but that also show where meanings are commonly held. (shrink)

Instructors of business ethics now have a wealth of cases and other pedagogical material to draw on to contribute to achieving ethics learning goals now required at most business schools. However, standard ethics case pedagogy seems to provide more guidance regarding the form and process for getting to a good answer than on the ethical content of the answer itself. Indeed, instructors often withhold their own judgments on what is a good answer so as not to indoctrinate students with the (...) instructor’s views. To answer our question on what is a good answer to an ethical question, we asked three master teachers of business ethics to share their perspectives on a good answer. Their answers revealed stark differences—regarding the starting point of business ethics, the purpose of business, prioritization of analytical disciplines, and research methods—but also a common thread demanding that a good answer articulates a student's own moral voice. Moral voice is a genuine expression of an individual’s considered moral judgment that is reflective of personal values and cognizant of professional expectations. Cultivating the expression of moral voice goes beyond formal and theoretical proficiency to overcome human tendencies toward idealism, insincerity, and rationalization. Moral voice does not by itself fill the gap in business ethics pedagogy on the content of a good answer, but it demands that students support an answer that they can genuinely believe in while encouraging instructors to cultivate in their students sincerity and engagement, conscience, and a sense of self that are indispensable to genuine ethical commitment. (shrink)

In the human quest for meaning, work occupies a central position. Most adults spend the majority of their waking hours at work, which often serves as a primary source of purpose, belongingness, and identity. In light of these benefits to employees and their organizations, organizational scholars are increasingly interested in understanding the factors that contribute to meaningful work, such as the design of jobs, interpersonal relationships, and organizational missions and cultures. In a separate line of inquiry, scholars of business ethics (...) have examined meaningful work as a moral issue concerning the management of others and ourselves, exploring whether there are definable characteristics of meaningful work to which we have moral rights, and whether there are moral duties to ourselves and others to fulfill those rights. In this article, we examine contemporary developments in both disciplines about the nature, causes, and consequences of meaningful work; we explore linkages between these disciplines; and we offer conclusions and research opportunities regarding the interface of ethical and organizational perspectives on performing and providing meaningful work. (shrink)

Despite increasing the presence of ‘ethics talk’ in business and management curricula, the ability of business ethics educators to question the system and support the development of morally responsible agents is debatable. This is not because of a lack of care or competence; rather, this situation points towards a more general tendency of education to become focused on economic growth, as Nussbaum claims. Revisiting the nature of ethics education, I argue that much moral learning occurs through the imagination, and not (...) solely through the rational mind. Individuals are complex, and a great part of what we are lies below the threshold of consciousness. In this respect, ethics education must take into account the psyche and its influence on conscious behaviour, which can best be apprehended through the imagination. Echoing Jung’s concerns about unconscious and indiscriminate masses, I thus explore how imagination and creative material contribute to enhancing both self-knowledge and ethical reflection in the context of organisational life and business education. I especially consider how moral development and social awareness are tied up with individual psychological understanding, and argue that Jung’s analytical psychology offers insightful tools to explore our individuality. (shrink)

Leo Tolstoy was on to behavioral ethics before there was such as a thing as behavioral ethics. Three scenes from his magnum opus, War and Peace, demonstrate that Tolstoy diagnosed some of the same problems that occupy modern behavioral ethics: confirmation bias, slippery-slope reasoning, and illusions of control. However, whereas modern behavioral ethics has done more to diagnose problems than to prescribe solutions, Tolstoy’s theories of moral psychology and leadership provide direction for human moral self-cultivation. This analysis of War and (...) Peace also suggests that literary fiction can depict worlds at least as fertile as the real world for studying business ethics. Building upon this example, in an age and field which seems too often to prioritize scientific wisdom over that of the humanities, I speculate about how literary fiction can expand our research into more diverse actors and worlds of modern capitalism. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:This article deploys Alasdair MacIntyre’s Aristotelian virtue ethics, in which meaningfulness is understood to supervene on human functioning, to bring empirical and ethical accounts of meaningful work into dialogue. Whereas empirical accounts have presented the experience of meaningful work either in terms of agents’ orientation to work or as intrinsic to certain types of work, ethical accounts have largely assumed the latter formulation and subjected it to considerations of distributive justice. This article critiques both the empirical and ethical literatures from (...) the standpoint of MacIntyre’s account of the relationship between the development of virtuous dispositions and participation in work that is productive of goods internal to practices. This reframing suggests new directions for empirical and ethical enquiries. (shrink)