The Antecedents of Moral Imagination in the Workplace: A Social Cognitive Theory Perspective

Journal of Business Ethics · 2013 · Volume 114 · Issue 1

Abstract

As corporate scandals proliferate, organizational researchers and practitioners have made calls for research providing guidance for those wishing to influence positive moral decision-making and behavior in the workplace. This study incorporates social cognitive theory and a vignette-based cognitive measure for moral imagination to examine (a) moral attentiveness and employee creativity as important antecedents of moral imagination and (b) creativity as a moderator of the positive relationship between moral attentiveness and moral imagination. Based on the results from supervisor–subordinate dyadic data (N= 162) obtained from employed students, hypotheses were largely supported as expected. Implications are discussed.

Keywords

Moral attentiveness, Creativity, Moral imagination

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