Exuding Moral Character or Rocking the Boat? Observers’ Reactions Towards Displays of Moral Courage

Abstract

Recognizing the organizational and social benefits of moral courage, management researchers and practitioners alike encourage business students and employees to engage in morally courageous behaviors (Comer & Sekerka, 2018; Sekerka & Godwin, 2010). However, we lack the understanding of how others perceive and react to organizational members’ acts of moral courage (Detert & Bruno, 2017). Utilizing an experimental vignette design (N = 329), we demonstrate that engaging in acts of moral courage is associated with being perceived by observers as having stronger moral character and more leader-like. Observers also preferred to interact with courageous actors in both work-based and personal domains compared to non-courageous actors. However, such positive reactions from observers depended on certain factors. Drawing from theories of stereotypes (Rudman & Phelan, 2008) and social dominance orientation (SDO) theory (Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth, & Malle, 1994), we further examined the influence of actor gender and observer SDO on observer reactions to acts of moral courage. While actor gender did not influence observer reactions, SDO emerged as a crucial factor such that observers with high-levels of SDO rewarded acts of moral courage less compared to those with low-levels of SDO.