The purpose of this article is to explain the differences between neo-Aristotelian virtue and positive organizational virtuousness from the virtue ethics perspective. Most studies use virtues and virtuousness interchangeably. A few others try to explain their differences from the positive organizational science perspective. Although closely related, we believe that these two notions are not identical. If we understand neo-Aristotelian virtue correctly, then it cannot be judged exclusively on what is externally verifiable, as is the case with virtuousness. For these reasons, (...) we attempt our own differentiation, highlighting the gains and losses realized in the migration from neo-Aristotelian virtue to positive organizational virtuousness, and establishing guideposts to meaningfully combine the strengths of both concepts. (shrink)

Responsible leadership is rare. It is not that most leaders are irresponsible, but responsibility in leadership is frequently defined so that an important connotation of responsible leadership is ignored. This article equates responsible leadership with virtuousness. Using this connotation implies that responsible leadership is based on three assumptions—eudaemonism, inherent value, and amplification. Secondarily, this connotation produces two important outcomes—a fixed point for coping with change, and benefits for constituencies who may never be affected otherwise. The meaning and advantages of responsible (...) leadership as virtuous leadership are discussed. (shrink)

This paper seeks to establish whether the categories of MacIntyrean virtue ethics as applied to business organizations are meaningful in a non-western business context. It does so by building on research reported in Moore : 363–387, 2012) in which the application of virtue ethics to business organizations was investigated empirically in the UK, based on a conceptual framework drawn from MacIntyre’s work. Comparing these results with an equivalent study in Sri Lanka, the paper finds that the categories are meaningful but (...) that there are both similarities to and considerable differences in the content of these categories from the UK study. The paper draws on aspects of institutional theory to explore and explain these findings. Overall, there is supportive evidence that the categories of MacIntyrean virtue ethics are generalizable, and so can be used to characterize problems of organizational virtue and vice around the world, while providing evidence that there may be polities which are more conducive to the ‘practice-like conduct of production’ : 77–91, 2008). (shrink)

Despite the expansion of the regulatory state, we continue to witness widespread unethical practices across society. This paper addresses these challenges of ethical failure, misalignment, and dissonance by developing a conceptual framework that provides an explicit basis for understanding virtuousness and the common good directed toward the goal of eudaimonia or human flourishing. While much of the literature on virtuousness has focused on the organization, this paper uses a more comprehensive understanding that also incorporates the agent and the economy examined (...) through their relational order. The common good provides direction for guiding behavior of all the various stakeholders and the context for understanding virtuousness, while it is through virtuousness that the common good is effectively realized. Virtuousness and the common good are therefore in effect ‘two sides of the same coin.’ This paper develops a virtuousness–common good conceptual framework which explores the basis for harmonizing the goals of the individual, organization, and the economy. (shrink)

This study aims to examine how service employees’ perceptions of corporate social responsibility affect their creativity at work and its mediated link through compassion at work and their intrinsic motivation. Working with a sample of 250 hotel employees in South Korea, structural equation modeling is employed to test research hypotheses. The results of this research suggest that employees’ perceptions of CSR are positively related to employee creativity. Second, compassion at work mediated the positive relationship between employees’ perceptions of CSR and (...) creativity. Third, employees’ intrinsic motivation also mediated the positive relationship between employees’ perceptions of CSR and employee creativity. Finally, the relationship between employees’ perceptions of CSR and employee creativity is sequentially and fully mediated by compassion at work and their intrinsic motivation. The theoretical and managerial implications of the results and limitations of the study are discussed, and future research directions are suggested. (shrink)

A multidimensional measure of ethical culture was examined for its relationship to person–organization fit, ethical intent and organizational citizenship behavior, using a sample of 525 employees from the financial industry in Spain. As hypothesized, relative to studies using unidimensional assessments, our measure of EC was more strongly related to ethical intent and organizational citizenship. Also, significant differences were found in the degree to which each the EC dimensions related to both ethical intent and OCB. Finally, in a first for the (...) literature, we demonstrated the important role of overall P–O fit in connection with EC, ethical intent, and organizational citizenship. Specifically, as hypothesized, P–O fit moderated positively the association between EC and ethical intent, but mediated the EC–OCB relationship. (shrink)

Ethics are of interest to business scholars because they influence decisions, behaviors, and outcomes. While scholars have increasingly shown interest in business ethics as a research topic, there are a mounting number of studies that examine ethical issues at the organizational level of analysis. This manuscript reports the results of a systematic review of empirical research on organizational ethics published in a broad sample of business journals over a 33-year period. A total of 184 articles are analyzed to reveal gaps (...) in the literature and, subsequently, lead to suggestions for future research; this is done in an effort to stimulate and perpetuate high quality research that more broadly impacts business scholars and practitioners. (shrink)

Authentic leadership has become increasingly important in the literature, attracting the attention of many scholars in the last decade. This study adopted an employee-centered perspective to guide its examination of the relationship between authentic leadership and individual performance and investigation of the sequential mediation of employees’ affective commitment and individual creativity. An analysis was conducted of data collected from 214 employees working in different business sectors. The results reveal a statistically significant positive relationship between authentic leadership and employees’ workplace performance, (...) which are both directly connected and indirectly linked through the two proposed psychosocial mechanisms. The findings thus indicate that authentic leadership reinforces workers’ emotional connection with their organizations, thereby increasing their individual creativity and, subsequently, promoting better on-the-job performance. This study presents new and significant results since, on the one hand, it relied on a sequential mediation analysis of variables and, on the other hand, integrated the four main constructs into a single model. The proposed model displays the chain of effects between authentic leadership, affective commitment, individual creativity, and employee workplace performance. Implications for organizational management are discussed. (shrink)

Since time immemorial, the phenomenon of leadership and its understanding has attracted the attention of the business world because of its important role in human groups. Nevertheless, for years efforts to understand this concept have only been centred on people in leadership roles, thus overlooking an important aspect in its understanding: the necessary moral dimension which is implicit in the relationship between leader and follower. As an illustrative example of the importance of considering good morality in leadership, an empirical study (...) is conducted in which a good performance of the “leader–follower” relationship is reflected when individuals perceive ethical leadership in higher hierarchical managerial levels. To be precise, findings of this study demonstrate that follower job response is improved through an ethics trickle-down partial effect from the Top Manager to the immediate supervisor, and also reveal both key aspects and managerial level on which the practice of ethical leadership should rest upon to have a stronger effect on the follower positive job response. Practical implications of these findings and directions for future research are finally presented. (shrink)

This paper introduces ‘Virtue and Virtuousness: When will the twain ever meet?’ a special edition of Business Ethics: A European Review. The Call for Papers invited contributions that could inform the relationship between organisational virtuousness, as conceptualised by positive organisation studies, and the classical conception of virtues pertaining to individual women and men. While the resources of particular virtue traditions – Aristotelian, Catholic, Confucian, and the like – could inform their own debates as to whether virtue extends beyond individuals, the (...) debate between virtue traditions and positive organisation studies has a different dimension. The question is whether the claims of positive social sciences as such are compatible with those of any virtue tradition. We argue that positive social science and virtue traditions are indeed rivals such that adherence to the claims of the one precludes adherence to the other. Resolution to such conflicts requires that one tradition is able to resolve questions that exhaust the resources of the other. This paper suggests that at least one area of incoherence in the findings of positive social sciences can be resolved by virtue traditions, and introduces the remaining papers in the special edition. (shrink)

So far, the field of business ethics lacks validated measures for assessing virtues at the organizational level. The aim of this study is to investigate the measurement invariance of a shortened Corporate Ethical Virtues scale. In this manner, we contribute to validating an instrument that is both psychometrically sound and efficient to use. We conducted two survey studies of two independent groups (managers and school psychologists). Confirmatory factor analysis supported the eight‐factor model of the scale, and we found it to (...) be invariant in two different occupational groups. The managers gave higher appraisals of ethical culture than the psychologists did in seven out of the eight dimensions. We found that despite the contextual differences, the shortened scale measures the eight dimensions of organizational ethical virtues, as intended. Thus, the use of this more compact scale can be recommended for future studies, which will hopefully stimulate more research on ethical culture in various work contexts. (shrink)

Examination of the application of virtue ethics to business has only recently started to grapple with the measurement of virtue frameworks in a practical context. This paper furthers this agenda by measuring the impact of virtue at the level of the organisation and examining the extent to which organisational virtue impacts on moral attentiveness and the perceived role of ethics and social responsibility in creating organisational effectiveness. It is argued that people who operate in more virtuous organisational contexts will be (...) expected to be more attentive to ethical issues and in turn perceive a greater role for ethics and social responsibility in business. Analysis of results based on a sample of 137 HR professionals shows that where people report that their organisation provides meaningful work, they are more likely to display reflective MA and the belief that ethics and social responsibility are compatible with business objectives, suggesting that organisations who are interested in promoting an ethical culture should focus on their work structures and practices. More generally, OV is shown to have a more complex relationship with PRESOR than hypothesised pointing towards a more nuanced view of OV. The paper examines the implications of the results for organisations and research. (shrink)

This study examined the relationships of perceived ethical leadership, workplace jealousy, and organizational citizenship behaviors directed at individuals and organizations. Survey responses were collected from 491 employee-coworker pairs from 33 hospitals in Taiwan. The employees provided assessments of their perceived ethical leadership and the workplace jealousy they experienced, while the coworkers provided information about the employees’ OCBI and OCBO. In the hypotheses testing, perceived ethical leadership was found to be negatively related to employees’ workplace jealousy and jealousy was negatively related (...) to their OCBI and OCBO. Workplace jealousy partially mediated the effect of ethical leadership on OCBI and OCBO. In addition, perceived ethical leadership was found to have a moderation effect on the jealousy-OCBI/ocbo relationship. This study contributes to the literature of ethical leadership as well as to the literature of OCB by relating workplace jealousy to OCB and by making sense of the effects of ethical leadership on OCB through the mediation of jealousy and through the moderation of ethical leadership on the jealousy-OCB relationship. (shrink)

Dimensions of character are often overlooked in professional practice at the expense of the development of technical competence and operational efficiency. Drawing on philosophical accounts of virtue ethics and positive psychology, the present work attempts to elevate the role of ‘good’ character in the professional domain. A ‘good’ professional is ideally one that exemplifies dimensions of character informed by sound judgement. A total of 2340 professionals, from five discrete professions, were profiled based on their valuation of qualities pertaining to character (...) and judgement. Profile differences were subsequently examined in the self-reported experience of professional purpose towards a wider societal ‘good’. Analysis of covariance, controlling for stage of career, revealed that professionals valuing character reported higher professional purpose than those overweighting the importance of judgement or valuing neither character nor judgement, F = 7.92, p <.001. No differences were found between the two groups valuing character, irrespective of whether judgement was valued simultaneously. This profiling analysis of entry-level and in-service professionals, based on their holistic character composition, paves the way for fresh philosophical discussion regarding what constitutes a ‘good’ professional and the interplay between character and judgement. The empirical findings may be of substantive value in helping to recognise how the dimensions of character and judgement may impact upon practitioners’ professional purpose. (shrink)

Sixty-eight stores of a retail chain were used for testing a model in which perceived authentic leadership predicts stores’ sales achievement through the mediating role of perceived store virtuousness and perceived store potency. Employees reported AL, store virtuousness, and store potency. Sales achievement over a period of four consecutive months subsequent to data collection was considered as dependent variable . The main findings are the following: AL predicts store potency through the mediating role of store virtuousness; store virtuousness predicts sales (...) achievement through the mediating role of store potency; AL predicts sales achievement via the mediating role of both store virtuousness and store potency. By focusing on three positive constructs, whose interrelations have scarcely been explored, and relating them to store performance, the study enriches the Positive Organizational Scholarship movement, and suggests that AL and virtuousness are good in themselves and also potential facilitators of group success. (shrink)

Time theft is a costly burden on organizations. However, there is limited knowledge about why time theft occurs. To advance this line of research, this conceptual paper looks at the association between organizational injustice and time theft from identity, moral, and equity perspectives. This paper proposes that organizational injustice triggers time theft through decreased organizational identification. It also proposes that moral disengagement and equity sensitivity moderate this process such that organizational identification is less likely to mediate among employees with high (...) moral disengagement and more likely to mediate among employees who are equity sensitives and entitleds. (shrink)

Theoretical arguments suggest that organizational virtuousness makes individuals surpass their exchange concerns sparking their prosocial motives. This paper focuses on the examination of this issue incorporating two field studies. The first field study examines prosocial motives and social exchange as parallel mediators of the relationship between organizational virtuousness’ perceptions and three employee outcomes. The second field study examines prosocial motives, personal sacrifice and impression management motives as parallel mediators of the examined relationships. Both field studies indicated that only prosocial motives (...) can mediate the relationship between organizational virtuousness’ perceptions and employee outcomes. (shrink)

Traditionally, research focused on determining the causes of employee pay satisfaction has investigated the influence of job-related inputs, both extrinsic and intrinsic to the job itself. Together with these inputs, pay-related fairness issues have played an important role in explaining the phenomenon. However, few studies consider the factors linked to fairness issues, such as ethical leadership. Because ethical leadership necessarily entails the concept of fairness, it seemingly should have a positive effect. Furthermore, because the presence of supervisor ethical leadership (SEL) (...) offers strong chances for employees to achieve moral accomplishments and excel in the practice of their jobs, SEL should enhance the effects of intrinsic job inputs. Whereas high job motivating potential (JMP) makes it easier for employees be self-actualized, moral fulfillment is necessary for them to obtain authentic self-actualization at work and minimize the impact of pay deficiencies. Along with SEL, JMP should be shaped to increase positive experiences of job meaningfulness, responsibility for job outcomes, and knowledge of results at work, which can lead to enjoyment in doing the job in itself, not just for compensation-related motives. Hierarchical regression analysis with a sample of 151 employees in a diverse set of Spanish organizations supports the direct effects of JMP and SEL and shows that higher levels of SEL increase the positive effects of JMP on pay satisfaction. The practical implications of these findings and further research directions conclude this article. (shrink)

This paper critically reviews and discusses the concept of organizational virtuousness as presented in positive organizational scholarship. It identifies Kim S. Cameron, David S. Bright, and Arran Caza as the most influential researchers within this field and portrays commonalities, differences, and inconsistencies among the various notions of organizational virtuousness offered in positive organizational literature throughout the last 15 years. While the commonalities refer to attributes, levels of analyses, outcomes, and methodology, the variances concern the locus of residence, the priority of (...) outcomes, indicators, supporting features and the virtues included in positive organizational virtuousness. The analysis further discusses the strengths and weaknesses of these differences and stresses the challenges which the POS movement needs to face in order to clarify its definition of organizational virtuousness and, maybe, converge on one unified meaning. Finally, these challenges are summarized and linked to future research proposals which offer potential ideas on how to further develop the concept of positive organizational virtuousness. (shrink)

A key issue in the business ethics field is the design of effective measures for assessing the ethical culture of organizations. The Corporate Ethical Virtues Model (CEV), developed by Kaptein in 2008, is an instrument for measuring ethical culture, and has been applied, adapted and validated in different contexts. In 2013, DeBode, Armenakis, Field and Walker developed the CEV–S, a shortened version of the original scale. Both the CEV and CEV–S assess eight dimensions based on corporate ethical virtues: clarity, congruency (...) of supervisors, congruency of senior management, feasibility, supportability, transparency, discussability and sanctionability. The objective of this study is to present a Spanish version of the CEV–S and its validation process. The scale was applied to two samples of 114 and 193 Colombian employees from two companies operating in the services sector. The confirmatory factor analyses revealed a good fit for the eight-factor structure of the Spanish CEV–S and the statistical tests applied showed good levels of reliability and validity for this scale. The adequate psychometric properties shown by the Spanish CEV–S may support its use in future research to measure organizational ethical culture in Spanish-speaking settings. (shrink)

Virtue ethics is generally recognized as one of the three major schools of ethics, but is often waylaid by utilitarianism and deontology in business and management literature. EBSCO and ABI databases were used to look for articles in the Journal of Citation Reports publications between 1980 and 2011 containing the keywords ‘virtue ethics’, ‘virtue theory’, or ‘virtuousness’ in the abstract and ‘business’ or ‘management’ in the text. The search was refined to draw lists of the most prolific authors, the most (...) cited authors, the most cited articles, and the journals with the most virtue ethics publications. This information allows one to chart how virtue ethics articles have evolved through the decades and to establish ‘schools’ or clusters of authors as well as clusters of themes. The results of this quantitative analysis of authors, ‘schools’, themes, and publications provide a foundation for the future study of virtue ethics in business and management, identifying its achievements and potentials. (shrink)

What can be learned from a small scale study of managerial work in a highly marginal and under-researched working community? This article uses the ‘goods–virtues–practices–institutions’ framework to examine the managerial work of owner–directors of traditional circuses. Inspired by MacIntyre’s arguments for the necessity of a narrative understanding of the virtues, interviews explored how British and Irish circus directors accounted for their working lives. A purposive sample was used to select subjects who had owned and managed traditional touring circuses for at (...) least 15 years, a period in which the economic and reputational fortunes of traditional circuses have suffered badly. This sample enabled the research to examine the self-understanding of people who had, at least on the face of it, exhibited the virtue of constancy. The research contributes to our understanding of the role of the virtues in organizations by presenting evidence of an intimate relationship between the virtue of constancy and a ‘calling’ work orientation. This enhances our understanding of the virtues that are required if management is exercised as a domain-related practice. (shrink)

Six cardinal leadership virtues based on Aristotelian and Confucian typology were advanced through this study by developing a measurement instrument and examining its predictive validity by studying the causal association with perceived leader happiness. Based on a sample of 183 school principals engaged in various types of schools, the results of both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses generated satisfactory empirical outcomes by finding adequate support for the overall leadership virtue scale and the constituent subscale elements. The paper concluded with the (...) theoretical and practical implications for this developed instrument of leadership virtue especially in the context of school education. The major contribution of the paper lies in developing a measurement scale of virtues for school leaders. (shrink)

A Thai company organizes a weekly sermon and meditation session for its clients and members. We hypothesized that vipassana meditation's positive effects in work would be manifested in peace of mind, loving kindness, and organizational citizenship behavior, that peace of mind would predict OCB, and that loving kindness would mediate the relationship of peace of mind to OCB. Peace of mind is operationally defined as the experience of inner peace and harmony; loving kindness as the thoughts, words, and acts of (...) kindness extended to all creatures; and OCB as individual behavior that involves courtesy, civic virtue, sportsmanship, conscientiousness, and altruism. We conducted a study among 147 vipassana meditation participants; the results supported the hypotheses. Participants’ peace of mind predicted OCB and loving kindness significantly mediated the peace of mind-OCB relationship. The beneficial effects of vipassana meditation suggest its adoption by organizations to foster efficient functioning. (shrink)

Informed by religion and psychology literature, this study reviews the literature on religiosity, spirituality, and psychology to support existing theory development in the current emergence of “Management, Spirituality, and Religion” field of study, encourage new contextual thinking and develop a framework to guide businesses on the integration of spirituality and religiosity at work given their documented benefits in relation to personal well-being and productivity. Using the Web of Science (WoS) database, the paper reviews and synthesizes recent research in a systematic, (...) transparent, and reproducible manner. In addition, to verify and include the state-of-the-art of high-quality scientific articles, we refer to the Chartered Association of Business Schools list leading to the adoption of the following criteria: (a) journals listed in the ABS ranking as 3- and 4-star class, (b) indexed under the field of ethics (i.e., ETHICS-CSR-MAN), (c) articles published between 2000 and 2021, and (d) topical relevance. The review extends the existing literature by developing a framework for organizations that helps in identifying possible linkages between religiosity, spirituality, and employee well-being. This was done by (1) extending the six indicators of Ryff's well-being framework, (2) highlighting potential spiritual practices for individuals and organizations and their implications, and (3) presenting a framework that is contextualized to the extent possible and that can serve as a useful guide for organizations. Insights from our review yield in turn two key propositions: (1) workplace spirituality and individual spirituality are both important for employees' well-being, and (2) individual religiosity is an important factor for personal well-being. This offers in turn reinvigorated awareness and new insights into the topic under study. The study highlights in closing an array of future possible research directions. (shrink)

This study examined whether it was possible to classify Australian public sector employees as either whistleblowers or non-reporting observers using personal and situational variables. The personal variables were demography (gender, public sector tenure, organisational tenure and age), work attitudes (job satisfaction, trust in management, whistleblowing propensity) and employee behaviour (organisational citizenship behaviour). The situational variables were perceived personal victimisation, fear of reprisals and perceived wrongdoing seriousness. These variables were used as predictors in a series of binary logistic regressions. It was (...) possible to identify whistleblowers on the basis of individual initiative, whistleblowing propensity (individual and organisational), fear of reprisals, perceived wrongdoing seriousness and perceived personal victimisation. It was concluded that whistleblowers are not markedly dissimilar to non-reporting observers. Based on the two most influential variables (perceived personal victimisation and perceived wrongdoing seriousness), the average Australian public sector whistleblower is most likely to be an ordinary employee making a good faith attempt to stop what they perceived to be a serious wrongdoing that was initially identified through personal victimisation. (shrink)

We build on limited research concerning the mediation processes associated with the relationship between ethical culture and employee outcomes. A multidimensional measure of ethical culture was examined for its relationship to overall Person-Organization (P–O) fit and employee response, using a sample of 436 employees from social economy and commercial banks in Spain. In line with previous research involving unidimensional measures, ethical culture was found to relate positively to employee job satisfaction, affective commitment, and intention to stay. New to the literature, (...) ethical culture was also found to be associated positively with employee willingness to recommend the organization to others. These effects were observed even when perceptions of P–O fit were controlled. Importantly, ethical culture was also positively related to overall P–O fit, which in turn, partially mediated the relationship between ethical culture and employee outcomes. Our findings add to studies that focus on the importance of the degree of ethical congruence between the individual employee and the organization. They suggest that ethical culture, with its expected impact on virtuousness and emotional well-being, will positively influence outcomes independently of the degree to which there is a match between employee and organizational values. (shrink)