Building an Ethical Backbone: Leadership and Virtue as Antecedents of Moral Courage and the Moderating Effects of Ethical Disengagement

Building an Ethical Backbone: Leadership and Virtue as Antecedents of Moral Courage and the Moderating Effects of Ethical Disengagement

Tom Morris | 2020

Abstract

Because of the current ethical and moral pressures facing contemporary organizations and leaders (ECI, 2018), this dissertation was designed to add to the empirical research surrounding the area of moral courage. According to Detert and Bruno (2017), little is understood by both practitioners and researchers about the antecedents of moral courage. However, because of the potential professional and personal threats that may come with making individual ethical decisions, training opportunities remain a challenging target for Human Resource and Development (HRD) professionals. In order for individuals to make the best moral decisions in their daily work environment, they will need to possess a moral backbone developed through authentic leaders and virtuous organizations. Using Detert and Bruno’s (2017) classification of antecedents, the following research argues for the antecedents of authentic leadership and virtuous organizations, along with the moderator of the propensity to morally disengage as predictors of moral courage. Participants consisted of 213 adults who have enrolled in a leadership development seminar through a U.S. non-profit training organization. A cross-sectional, quantitative, nonexperimental research design was used to perform hierarchical multiple regression analysis on the hypotheses while controlling for age and gender. Findings indicated partial support for authentic leadership and organizational virtue as antecedents of moral courage with the propensity to morally disengage behaving as a moderator. Implications for HRD professionals, along with suggestions for future research, are included.