Search results

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of both supervisory abuse and moral efficacy in the weakening or strengthening of moral courage. The study also tests how the interaction between both could influence moral courage.

Cross-sectional data were collected from a sample of public hospital nurses in Egypt and structural equation modeling was used to analyse the data.

The study findings revealed that abusive supervision is negatively related to moral courage whereas moral efficacy is positively related to courage. Furthermore, moral efficacy moderates the abusive supervision-moral courage relationship in such a way that the negative association between abusive supervision and moral courage is reduced when moral efficacy is high.

Because of the cross-sectional design of the study, inferences regarding causality cannot be made. Furthermore, more research is needed to identify whether the results of this study apply in other contexts.

Organizations should identify abusive supervisors and offer them abuse-prevention training to circumvent their hostile behaviour. Organizations should also try to consider follower moral efficacy when matching supervisors with followers.

The study addresses calls for research on the personal factors that could mitigate the undesirable effects of abusive supervision.

How employees connect with their work organisation and how it may play a role in their moral courage and ethical behaviour remain under-explored. This study, using Psychological Contract Theory, aims to explore how employee–organisation connectedness influences employees' moral courage and ethical behaviour.

The hypotheses were tested using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) on data collected through a questionnaire survey from 212 Australian healthcare professionals.

Employee connectedness with their work organisations showed a significant and direct impact on ethical behaviour. Along with moral courage, connectedness explained over half of the variance in ethical behaviour. Furthermore, moral courage partially mediated the effect of employee connectedness on ethical behaviour.

The overall theoretical implication of this study is that psychological contracts between employees and their organisations operationalised through employee–organisation connectedness can explain the role of moral courage in ethical behaviour.

With increasing borderless management of organisations, organisational connectedness can be a critical factor in developing employees' moral courage and ethical behaviour within organisations. Socialisation interventions can be useful to promote employee–organisation connectedness.

The study developed a higher-order connectedness model and validated it with PLS-SEM. The study provides novel empirical evidence on the relationships between employee–organisation connectedness, moral courage and ethical behaviour.

The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the implications of relational cultural theory (RCT) for mentoring individuals who have enacted moral courage.

Overviews of the construct of moral courage, the nature of work-related mentoring and RCT are provided. Subsequently, the relevance and implications of RCT for understanding moral courage-related suffering, and for supporting the growth, resilience and vitality of those who have enacted moral courage are discussed.

Within RCT, moral courage-related suffering is located in disconnection, invalidation and isolation for which sufferers also feel held at fault. Self-protective behaviors, including disavowal of self, can perpetuate this suffering.

Five insights from RCT for supporting the growth, resilience and vitality of individuals following acts of moral courage are elaborated, including affirming efforts to activate supportive relationships; demonstrating “radical respect”; facilitating voice; engaging through mutuality and fluid expertise; and, reframing resilience.

The dearth of attention to ways of supporting those who suffer following acts of moral courage reflects previously documented findings about the short-shrift given to issues of human health and sustainability in organizations and organizational research. Implications for policy, practice and education are described.

This paper extends the RCT perspective in mentoring, and addresses an important gap in the moral courage literature, namely, the identification of a theoretically grounded approach through which to support the growth, resilience and vitality of individuals who have enacted moral courage.

This paper aims to develop a methodology for teaching moral courage.

Conceptual generalization.

This study uses a five-step method for teaching moral courage, together with a seven-level sliding scale for developing attitudes related to moral courage.

This paper is an aspect of systemic education for pupils and students.

This study builds aspects of a methodology for education of active bystanders in moral conflict situations.

This study builds aspects of a systemic methodology for education of moral issues.

Beers viable model (Figure 1) has been used to visualize a model for teaching moral courage.

This chapter aims to enhance understanding of the main drivers of internal auditors' moral courage to speak up about sensitive information and their cause-and-effect relationships. We use cognitive mapping method to analyze 20 chief audit executives' cognitive maps in Tunisia. A collective map was grounded through assembling the full individual maps. Using the Decision Explorer software for our analysis, we find that the state hope, whistle-blowing policy, self-efficacy, perceived supervisor support and independence of internal audit function are the main drivers for internal auditors' moral courage. Our findings are also supplemented by semi-structured interviews. Our chapter offers a novel methodological contribution to auditing literature as well as new empirical evidence (contribution to knowledge) on the drivers of internal auditors' moral courage.

This paper aims to examine the impact of two psychological drivers, namely, psychological capital (PsyCap) and moral courage on internal audit effectiveness (IAE) and whether there is a substitution effect or complementary role of these psychological factors on IAE in the Tunisian setting.

IAE is measured using managers’ perceptions of the internal audit function based on 157 responses received from managers, while the remaining variables (including PsyCap and moral courage) are based on 157 internal auditors’ responses.

Findings suggest that PsyCap has a positive and significant impact on IAE, while moral courage has an insignificant impact on the same variable. Accordingly, PsyCap and moral courage are not playing a complementary role in improving IAE, and PsyCap substitutes for moral courage in increasing IAE. A battery of checks using interaction terms between moral courage and PsyCap corroborate these findings.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study fills one of the major research gaps in the auditing literature by emphasizing the role played by PsyCap in improving IAE. The findings may have policy implications for top firm management, especially when recruiting internal auditors who should enjoy efficacy, hope, resilience and optimism to help the organization achieve its strategic objectives and increase its performance.

The current article integrates four prominent directions of modern research on workplace social courage. We (1) apply a novel framework, psychological contract theory, to identify (2) work engagement and moral disengagement as potential antecedents of social courage, (3) unethical pro-organizational behaviors as a possible duplicitous outcome of these antecedents and (4) moderating effects of moral disengagement on the relations of work engagement with these outcomes.

We perform a two-wave survey study (n = 347), wherein antecedents are measured at Time 1 and outcomes are measured at Time 2 (one week later).

We support that work engagement and moral disengagement significantly relate to both workplace social courage and unethical pro-organizational behaviors. We also support that moral disengagement moderates the relation of work engagement with unethical pro-organizational behaviors but not workplace social courage.

We highlight that work engagement can be a possible avenue to promote workplace social courage, but organizations should monitor any interventions because it may also promote unethical pro-organizational behaviors for those who are morally disengaged. We also contend that the current results support the “resiliency of courage” by discovering a nonsignificant moderating effect, providing further support for this broadly replicable aspect of workplace social courage.

We discuss how these findings support psychological contract theory as a viable lens to understand workplace social courage, and we call on future researchers to apply the theory to identify further relations of the construct.

This paper aims to offer empirical evidence about the effect of the interaction between the audit committee and the internal audit function (IAF) on the moral courage of the chief audit executive (CAE).

A mixed approach was followed. In the first stage, questionnaires were sent to CAEs of 60 listed, financial and non-financial Tunisian companies. To enhance the depth of the analysis, in the second stage, semi-directed interviews with 22 CAEs from listed financial and non-financial Tunisian companies were performed.

This paper found that the existence of private access to the audit committee has a positive effect on the moral courage of the CAE. The number of meetings between the audit committee and the CAE, the examination of internal audit programmes and results together with the contribution of the audit committee to the appointment and dismissal of the CAE do not show a significant link with the moral courage of the CAE. It also found an insignificant relationship between the audit committee’s examination of interaction between management and the IAF and the moral courage of the CAE.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this paper fills one of the major research gaps in the auditing literature by demonstrating the critical role of audit committee–internal audit interaction in promoting the CAE’s moral courage to behave ethically.

This paper aims to examine the ethical foundations of Gen Z individuals by studying the impact of helicopter parenting on moral courage and moral disengagement. In addition, this study considers the implications for Millennial generation managers that are likely to be supervising this current generational cohort.

Hypotheses were tested using a two-wave online survey of 215 undergraduate students.

Helicopter parenting was associated with lower levels of moral courage and an elevated propensity to morally disengage in a sample of Gen Z individuals. The impact of helicopter parenting on these moral foundations was mediated by the children’s increased desire for continued parental involvement in their lives.

Similar to the Gen Z students surveyed in this study, many Millennials were raised by helicopter parents, thus, it is likely that they are also prone to moral disengagement and low moral courage. Furthermore, Millennial managers will be managing Gen Z workers. Thus, many companies will need to enhance their efforts in providing Millennial managers with business ethics training aimed at developing moral courage and reducing moral disengagement.

This study examines a previously unidentified antecedent of moral courage and moral disengagement

This study aims to extend the understanding of the role of authentic leadership in encouraging subordinates to become internal whistleblowers. The current study aims to seek whether authentic leadership can encourage internal whistleblowing (IW) through employee controlled motivation for IW and moral courage.

The samples of this study were 221 employees working at 26 government organizations in one of the provinces located on Sumatera Island, Indonesia. Based on the cross-sectional survey method, this study used partial least square-structural equation modeling analysis with SmartPLS 3 software to test the hypotheses.

The result revealed that employee controlled motivation for whistleblowing and moral courage significantly mediates the effect of authentic leadership toward IW. This result also indicates that the two mediating variables in this study fully mediate the effect of authentic leadership toward IW.

This study highlights the critical role played by leaders in encouraging subordinates to IW in the workplace. The role of an authentic leader will have positively affected enhancing IW by employees, which has significant implications for the organization that particularly in manage organization wrongdoing in terms of eliminating or preventing unethical practice.

Theoretically, the current study extends the understanding of the mechanism underlying the relationship between authentic leadership and IW. This study proposes employee controlled motivation for IW and moral courage as the new mediator variables to explain how and why authentic leadership may encourage IW. Empirically, the current study chooses the Indonesian Government as a context that rarely conducts in the prior study.