An advanced measure of moral sensitivity in business

Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

Authors

Moral sensitivity, understood as an individual's capability of identifying and ascribing importance to moral issues when they arise, is often considered a key competence in professional life and a precondition of ethical behavior. With a focus on business settings, this article presents a new measure to assess individual's sensitivity to moral and business values. The measure was developed using a vignette-based domain-specific approach and validated in two studies. In Study 1, we compared our instrument and various convergent and divergent scales to obtain the first evidence of the construct validity of the instrument. Study 2 provides evidence of criterion validity by comparing the sensitivity to moral and business-related issues between a sample of business managers/bankers and employees of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The results demonstrate that business managers/bankers reveal lower scores of moral sensitivity than employees of NGOs. Further directions for moral sensitivity research and limitations are discussed.

Original languageEnglish
JournalEuropean Journal of Psychological Assessment
Volume36
Issue number5
Pages (from-to)864-873
Number of pages10
ISSN1015-5759
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 01.09.2020
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

This research was supported by grants from the Swiss National Science Foundation (CR11I1-159279/1), Stiftung für wissen-schaftliche Forschung an der Universität Zürich, Stiftung Biäsch zur Förderung der Angewandten Psychologie, and Karl Schlecht Stiftung.

    Research areas

  • Assessment, Ethics training, Moral blindness, Moral intelligence, Moral sensitivity
  • Management studies