An Empirical Investigation of the Relationship Between Moral Character, Character Strengths, Virtues, Moral Personality and Individual Ethical Decision-Making in the Workplace

Abstract

The importance of understanding factors leading to unethical behaviour in organisations cannot be overstated and many scholars have sought to understand the antecedents of unethical decisions in organisations. This thesis examines the extent to which character strengths and virtues, the honesty/humility domain from HEXACO, and moral foundations (moral foundations theory), predict individual responses to a situational judgement test (SJT) of workplace ethical decision-making (EDM). It contributes to the understanding of individual level antecedents by considering morally relevant psychological traits and dispositions. The literature concerning virtue ethics, morally relevant behavioural traits, ethical decision- making models and SJTs is reviewed, and gaps identified. A SJT containing workplace ethical dilemmas was developed from data obtained in interviews and focus groups of subject matter experts. The SJT-EDM was administered to a sample of 320 participants. Participants were obtained through professional and personal contacts of the researcher and recruited through Prolific. Participants completed the VIA-IS-M, measure of character strengths and virtues, The Honesty/Humility scale from HEXACO-PI-R and the MFQ30 measure of moral foundations. Results demonstrate that the SJT-EDM discriminated between individuals who endorsed the unethical, ethical and avoidance response options. The virtues of practical wisdom (phronesis) and courage combined with a concern for fairness and avoidance of harm were found to be significant predictors of unethical, ethical and avoidance SJT-EDM response options. All three of the measures used included variables that contributed to the prediction of ethical/unethical choices of individuals. This research demonstrates that SJTs can be a useful tool for exploratory research in EDM and potentially used by organisations in assessment, selection, learning and development. The research also contributes to an understanding of what SJTs measure and questions concerning their psychometric properties and underlying structure. Explanatory models are offered which contribute to the understanding of the role of individual differences in workplace EDM. These have relevance for future academic consideration of morally relevant dispositional traits in EDM models, organisational practices concerning assessment and selection, business ethics education in Business Schools and in organisations.