Moral Intensity Research Articles

HOW DOES MORAL INTENSITY MODERATE THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT AND MARKETING PERFORMANCE? EVIDENCE FROM STOCK EXCHANGE OF THAILAND

ABSTRACT This paper explored the relationship between organizational commitment and marketing performance via moral intensity as the moderator. In the content of Thailand as the firm in stock exchange of Thailand are used as the sample. The regression was used to test hypothesis. Keywords Organizational Commitment, Marketing performance, Moral intensity

A social cognitive explanation of situational and individual effects on moral sensitivity

AbstractModels of moral decision making describe the process as beginning with the recognition of moral content in the decision environment. This recognition ability, or moral sensitivity, represents a key input to moral decision making. Adopting a social cognitive perspective, this paper studies the degree to which moral sensitivity is explained in terms of moral schema activation. In a single experiment, two situational factors (moral content priming and issue moral intensity) and two individual characteristics (moral identity and need for cognition) are tested for their effects on moral sensitivity. Results support the social cognitive explanation of moral sensitivity. The moral schema's propensity for activation, development, and accessibility significantly influence the ability to recognize moral issues in the decision environment.

Are There Gender Differences When Professional Accountants Evaluate Moral Intensity for Earnings Management?

Gender differences in ethical evaluations may vary across types of behaviors. This controlled experiment explores gender differences in ethical evaluations, moral judgment, moral intentions, and moral intensity evaluations by surveying a group of professional accountants to elicit their views on a common earnings management technique. We find that there are no significant differences between male and female professional accountants when they make an ethical evaluation involving earnings management by shipping product early to meet a quarterly bonus. Both male and female professional accountants made a similar moral judgment that this action should not be completed and indicated similar moral intentions to report this type of behavior. Further, we find that male and female professional accountants made similar moral intensity evaluations when product is shipped early to meet a quarterly bonus.

To blow or not to blow the whistle: the effects of potential harm, social pressure and organisational commitment on whistleblowing intention and behaviour

This study uses a rational ethical decision‐making framework to examine the influence of moral intensity (potential harm and social pressure) on whistleblowing intention and behaviour using organisational commitment as a moderator. A scenario was developed, and an online questionnaire was used to conduct an empirical analysis on the responses of 533 participants. The mean age and years of work experience of the respondents were 31 and 8.2 years, respectively. The results show, first, that while moral intensity is correlated with whistleblowing intention, only the potential harm is positively correlated with such intention. Second, potential harm and social pressure differentially affect whistleblower choice of using an internal or external channel. Third, organisational commitment has a moderated mediation effect among moral intensity, whistleblowing intention and behaviour. Fourth, whistleblowers may be grouped into four conceptual types: indifferent, rebel, mature and spoil. Finally, theoretical and managerial implications of the findings are discussed.

When idealists evade taxes: the influence of personal moral philosophy on attitudes to tax evasion – a Lebanese study

This paper explores attitudes regarding tax evasion and the relationship between personal moral philosophy and such attitudes in a weak tax environment. The results confirm the multidimensionality of tax evasion attitudes. Idealism was negatively related to self‐interest tax evasion attitudes while relativism was positively related to such attitudes. Idealism was also positively related to tax evasion attitudes stemming from concerns about the justice of the tax system. Idealists in a weak tax environment seemingly go through a cognitive reframing process where they recognize that the tax system is unfair, and accordingly tax evasion is a way to serve a different moral absolute, that is of equity, rather than another different moral absolute, which is fulfilling obligations to governments. The results are also explained in light of the suggested low moral intensity of tax evasion among respondents. Policy implications are presented.

Three-Level Mechanism of Consumer Digital Piracy: Development and Cross-Cultural Validation

Digital piracy as a continuing problem significantly impacts various stakeholders, including consumers, enterprises, and countries. This study develops a three-level mechanism of determinants of consumer digital piracy behavior, with personal risk as an individual factor, susceptibility to interpersonal influence as an inter-personal factor, and moral intensity as a broad societal factor. Further, it explores the role of rationalization and future piracy intent as outcomes of past piracy behaviors. The authors use survey data from four countries in the European Union to test the system of structural relationships. With an exception of the effect of consumers’ susceptibility to interpersonal influence on piracy behavior, the conceptual model receives remarkably consistent support across the four countries. Specifically, perception of personal risk and moral intensity negatively affected the reported piracy behavior in all four countries. The results further support the negative influence of moral intensity and the positive influence of past digital piracy behavior on consumers’ use of rationalization. Lastly, personal risk, rationalization, and past digital piracy behavior directly influenced consumers’ intention to engage in digital piracy in the future. The study also discusses implications of the findings and identifies areas of future research.

Judgment Difficulty and the Moral Intensity of Unethical Acts: A Cognitive Response Analysis of Dual Process Ethical Judgment Formation

This study analyzes cognitive responses to explore a dual processing perspective of ethical judgment formation. Specifically, the study investigates how two factors, judgment task difficulty and moral intensity, influence the extent of deontological and teleological processing and their effects on ethical judgments. A single experiment on 110 undergraduate research participants found that judgment task difficulty affected the extent of deontological and teleological processing. Although moral intensity affected ethical judgments, it did not produce effects on either deontological or teleological cognitive responses. Results did not support the hypotheses that deontological and teleological cognitive responses would mediate the relationships between the experimental factors and ethical judgments. Overall, the results support continued research of factors that affect the nature of information processing in ethical decision situations and the use of cognitive response analysis as a tool for conducting this research.

Unethical Managerial Behavior: The Moderating Roles of Moral Intensity and Situational Strength

Despite recent calls for research that examines person-situation interactionist models of ethical workplace behavior, little is known about how managers’ personal characteristics and contextual factors combine and interact to influence unethical managerial behavior (UMB) in organizations. Adopting a multiple-set perspective, we examine the individual, situational, organizational, and institutional factors that are associated with UMB as well as two key moderating influences, moral intensity and situational strength. The findings of a survey of 52 real-world cases on UMB reveal that several individual and organizational variables are significant influences, whereas aspects of the ethical issue at hand and the wider institutional context do not seem to be associated with unethical conduct. As predicted, the case survey findings indicate that moral intensity and situational strength moderate the relationships between individual characteristics and managers’ propensity to engage in UMB.

The Positive Role Of Negative Emotions In Ethical Decision Making

This study examines the effect of negative and positive incidental emotional states on both harmful behavior and prosocial behavior. We hypothesized that negative emotions will reduce harmful behaviors, whereas positive emotions will increase prosocial behaviors. The findings of two empirical studies confirm that negative incidental emotions reduce the likelihood that people would engage in behavior with harmful consequences for others, an effect that is found to be partly mediated by higher-level cognitive processes, such as perceived moral intensity of the issue (Jones, 1991). Contrary to our predictions, we found no evidence for an influence of positive emotional state on prosocial behavior; instead the emotion sadness seemed to induce “compensatory” prosocial behavior. The implications for the role of incidental emotions in influencing ethical decision making and these two types of ethical behavior in a business context are discussed.

An interactionist model of punishment severity: The effects of moral intensity and moral identity

Business ethics researchers have long focused on identifying the individual and situational antecedents of organizational misconduct. More recently, researchers have begun to investigate what happe...

A Cognitive–Intuitionist Model of Moral Judgment

The study of moral decision-making presents to us two approaches for understanding such choices. The cognitive and the neurocognitive approaches postulate that reason and reasoning determines moral judgments. On the other hand, the intuitionist approaches postulate that automated intuitions mostly dominate moral judgments. There is a growing concern that neither of these approaches by itself captures all the key aspects of moral judgments. This paper draws on models from neurocognitive research and social-intuitionist research areas to propose an integrative cognitive–intuitive model of moral decision-making. The model suggests that moral decision-making includes five interdependent, yet functionally distinct steps, issue framing, pre-processing, moral judgment, moral reflection, and moral intent. The model proposes a cognitive–intuitive view of moral judgment and it describes how emotion regulation, perceived moral intensity, and perceived ethical climate constructs impact the formation of moral intent. The paper discusses the theories that link emotions to moral judgment and implications of the model for future research and its implication for managers.

Towards an understanding of consumer recycling from an ethical perspective

AbstractRecycling is a post‐purchase consumer activity where the consumer usually considers not only individual but also social goals, ideas and ideologies. Accordingly, ethics is an inherent part of recycling; however, very few studies have explored this behaviour from an ethical point of view. The purpose of this paper is to explain consumer recycling by taking a multifaceted ethical approach. The conceptual model builds on theoretical underpinnings related to ethical consumption by exploring the extensions of the theory of planned behaviour, Jones' ethical decision‐making model and Holbrook's conceptualization of ethical consumption. Thus, the attitude‐intention framework incorporates three ethics‐related concepts: (1) moral obligation, i.e. the level of guilt to perform the behaviour, (2) moral intensity, i.e. the moral issue characteristics, and (3) collectivism, i.e. an individual‐level value orientation. The data were collected from a sample of Slovenian consumers, using an online consumer panel. The sample reflected the Slovenian population in terms of gender and age. The proposed conceptual model was tested using structural equation modelling. The results suggest the proposed ethical concepts play a significant role in the attitude‐intention framework. The more collectivistic individuals have more positive attitudes towards recycling. Moreover, the more consumers perceive recycling as morally intense, the more favourable their attitudes are. In turn, attitudes positively affect intentions to recycle. In addition, higher levels of moral obligation positively influence intentions to recycle. The only hypothesis that is not supported in this study refers to the influence of moral intensity on intentions to recycle. The implications for public policymakers and social marketers stem from a complex interplay of the antecedents of recycling behaviour. Future studies could go in several directions by extending the model to other moral issues, conducting a study in a cross‐cultural setting or taking a longitudinal approach.

Transformational Leadership Ethical Dilemma: To Comply or Not to Comply with Organization's Unethical Practices

Drawing on social psychology, cognitive psychology, and personality theories, I argue that transformational leaders do not engage in unethical decision-making process despite pressures toward unethical practices. I show that moral intensity and conformity, moral reasoning, and ego strength are associated with ethical decision by transformational leaders.

Consumer recycling: An ethical decision‐making process

ABSTRACTAlthough recycling is often experienced as a moral dilemma, studies that systematically approach this issue from an ethical perspective are scarce. Moreover, previous studies have explored recycling by mainly using single ethical constructs, such as moral norms, values or obligations, rarely approaching it as an ethical decision‐making process. Our study takes a more holistic approach and integrates the recycling literature with business ethics theory in order to develop a conceptual model of ethical decision making involved in recycling. The model is based on Jones' issue‐contingent model and its key concept, that is, moral intensity, which we extend by adding altruism as an important personality trait that influences pro‐social behaviour. The data were collected from a sample of 367 adult consumers, representative of the Slovenian population by gender and age. The hypotheses were tested using structural equation modelling. The results of our study confirmed the relationships between three key facets of ethical decision making: moral recognition, moral judgment and moral intention. Higher levels of moral recognition were found to lead to more positive moral judgments, which in turn positively influenced the formation of intentions to recycle. Moreover, moral intensity was found to be a significant predictor of moral recognition and moral judgment, while altruism was found to be a significant predictor of moral recognition. These findings hold important implications for public policy makers and social marketers who have to consider not only the consumer characteristics but also the issue characteristics in seeking to understand and influence consumer recycling. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Cheat and you Lose! Don’t Cheat and you Lose! Reflections and Analysis of Accounting Student Data

During 2012 students enrolled in a Master’s management accounting unit were invited to complete a compulsory class quiz, which was arranged to include a mild form of deception allowing them an opportunity to cheat. Prior to the test students were coached concerning the importance of the ICMA code of ethical conduct, which formed the basis of the quiz. Following the test, students were made aware of the deception and asked to judge the propriety of their actions using a research instrument based on moral intensity theory (Jones in The Academy of Management Review, 16(2), 366–395, 1991). Academic dishonesty, in its many forms is endemic in universities and in this study a significant number of students take advantage of an opportunity to maximise test scores and earn an advertised reward by cheating. Others adopted a virtuous position and opted not to use the information. As reported from an earlier investigation, Woodbine and Amirthalingam (2013) again demonstrate the effect of cognitive dissonance (Festinger 1957) although previously the research instrument did not clearly differentiate between respondent types. A logistic regression of subsequent data establishes that high achievers (in terms of their test scores) are more likely to take advantage of the disclosed information to maximise scores and that this is somewhat offset by aspects of their moral character. Immediately following the field experiment, students met to reflect on their actions. A summary of their responses is provided, which tends to support prior evidence that many are somewhat blase in their attitude to this form of opportunistic behaviour. These findings have ramifications in terms of the way tertiary institutions emphasise academic excellence before moral development, while acting to manage the incidence of misbehaviour.

Toward an Analytical Model of Ethical Decision Making in Plagiarism

Plagiarism by students is a common and worldwide phenomenon with a significant impact on our society. Numerous studies on the pervasive nature of plagiarism among students have focused on the behavioral aspects of plagiarism and how to prevent it. Based on an empirical study of a sample of 463 eighth graders in Hong Kong, this article offers an analytical model to understand the ethical decision-making process in plagiarism among students. Using this model, students' plagiaristic behavior can be analyzed in terms of their moral judgment, moral intensity, and perceived risks.

Do You Need a Receipt? Exploring Consumer Participation in Consumption Tax Evasion as an Ethical Dilemma

The paper focuses on the consumer side of consumption tax evasion (CTE), a subcategory of the shadow economy. The ethical dimensions of tax evasion have been effectively captured by the existent literature on tax morale, yet it fails to address the role consumers can play in CTE. Further, there is a shortage of tax morale studies that explore ethical decision making as a process composed of multiple steps and determinants. To bridge these gaps, we turned to the consumer ethics literature and Jones’ issue-contingent model of ethical decision making. We developed the conceptual model of consumer ethical decision making for CTE by incorporating four key elements from the issue-contingent model, i.e. moral recognition, moral judgement, moral intention and moral intensity, while personal moral philosophies were introduced as an antecedent to the consumer ethical decision-making process. The study was conducted on a sample of consumers from Slovenia, where CTE is a widespread phenomenon. The findings confirm that consumers’ recognition of CTE as a moral issue is influenced by their moral philosophy and perceptions regarding the magnitude of CTE’s consequences, their visibility, probability, and temporal immediacy. These perceptions also play an important role in determining consumers’ moral judgements and intentions regarding CTE. Moreover, through the process of moral recognition and moral judgement, consumers form intentions to participate in, or avoid CTE. The study holds important implications for public policy makers who are trying to reduce the tax gap in times of economic instability and fiscal crisis.

The Software Piracy Decision-Making Process of Chinese Computer Users

Drawing on Jones's ethical model and Ajzen's theory of planned behavior, this study proposes and tests an integrative model for the decision-making process underlying software piracy. Survey data collected from computer users in Guangzhou, China, in accordance with two software piracy scenarios under study—end user piracy and software counterfeiting—provide general support for the model. Consistent with major propositions of the theory of planned behavior, the findings show that Chinese computer users’ perceived moral intensity of software piracy significantly affects their corresponding moral recognition, judgment, and intention in both scenarios. Moreover, a direct influence of moral judgment on attitude toward software piracy is found in both scenarios. With regard to end-user piracy specifically, the findings further echo the theory of planned behavior by demonstrating a direct influence of attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control on intention to pirate. As in the case of software counterfeiting, the findings, however, show that only attitude and subjective norm but not perceived behavioral control significantly influence this intention. Implications derived from this study suggest the potential to synthesize ethical and general social psychological concepts to explain software piracy behavior, and also furnish insights on how to deter software piracy in China.

A Cognitive Elaboration Model of Sustainability Decision Making: Investigating Financial Managers’ Orientation Toward Environmental Issues

This empirical paper examines individual-level cognitive factors associated with developing an orientation to sustainable development issues among a population of business practitioners from France. Across two studies, we survey 180 financial managers and 83 finance students, as well as 144 managers from other business disciplines and 117 non-finance business students. We consider ability and motivation variables integrated and adapted into a cognitive elaboration model for sustainable decision making. Specifically, we examine the degree of influence of two factors on the ethical sensitivity to sustainability: the moral maturity of the individual, and the perceived moral intensity of a sustainability issue. Our investigation offers insights into how financial managers perceive the importance of sustainability for corporate strategy.

What Would I Do? Civilians' Ethical Decision Making in Response to Military Dilemmas

This research explored the ethical decision-making process of civilians in response to real-world military dilemmas. Results revealed the complexity of these dilemmas, with about equal proportions of civilians choosing each of two response options. The moral intensity dimension of social consensus significantly predicted moral judgment in both dilemmas, whereas that of magnitude of consequences did so in only one dilemma, partially supporting our hypothesis. Both dimensions were significant predictors of moral intent in both dilemmas as was moral judgment, also supporting our hypotheses. We conclude with suggestions for future research questions in this compelling area.