"More Than Just a ""Thing"": The Development and Sustainment of Object Moralization"

Abstract

Despite decades of research on the ethics of employees’ relationships with their peers and organizations, the moral importance of person-object relationships has been largely overlooked. In this paper we present a multilevel model of object moralization, the process through which objects are imbued with moral relevance. In the moralization phase, we explore the antecedents of object moralization with a focus on characteristics of both objects and the people that perceive them. In the stewardship phase, we examine the processes through which object moralization drives employees to care for the objects that they moralize. In the governance phase, we examine the consequences of object moralization and stewardship for object governance and supply chain structure. We conclude with a discussion of our model’s contributions and implications for future research.