Moral awareness

According to Rest‟s conceptual model of ethical decision-making, moral awareness is considered a fundamental part of ethical decision-making. This first stage is considered critical because identifying an issue as “ethically significant “is believed to initiate the ethical decision-making process, making ethical behavior possible in the first place.

Weaver, Morse & Mitcham (2008) assert that the notion of ethical sensitivity⁷ was originally introduced to caring sciences (i.e. nursing ethics) to describe the first component of decision-making in professional practice (as the applied field of ethical decision-decision-making); that is, recognizing and interpreting the ethical dimension of a care situation. Scholars of different professional disciplines have since then conceptualized the notion in various ways. A majority of these notions are - in accordance with models on the entire ethical decision-making process - indirectly or directly derived from the cognitive moral development paradigm, as Patterson (2001) points out. However, while most scholars agree that moral awareness is vital to practice, there has been no consensus regarding its definition and its characteristics or the conditions needed to become morally aware (Weaver, Morse & Mitcham, 2008).

Rest (1986) explicitly describes the first stage of the ethical decision-making process as a conscious and reflective process. He argues that identifying a moral issue involves an interpretive process during which the individual recognizes that a moral problem exists, or that a moral standard or principle is relevant to the circumstances. Rest emphasizes that an

7Moral sensitivity was Rest‟s label for component one; Jordan (2009) on the other hand used moral awareness in her research claiming that the cognitive basis used for the main hypotheses stems from research on cognitive awareness (Fiske and Taylor, 1991) and because all other investigations within the business domain have also used this label (such as Butterfield, Treviño & Weaver, 2000; Reynolds, 2006).

This paper will use the expressions similarly.

individual must first recognize the moral component of a given situation before moving on to further processing. This is in accordance with Kohlberg‟s (1969) notion that a moral judgment requires a conscious cognitive activity that results in a qualitatively more or less complex cognitive assessment of the situation, depending on the stage of moral development (Seiler, Fischer & Ooi, 2010). This causality connection found in Rest‟s and Kohlberg‟s study is adopted by most other scholars. E.g. it is argued that moral issues are rarely equipped with

“red flags” identifying them as morally questionable, but must be recognized first (Butterfield, Trevino & Weaver, 2000). When lacking moral awareness, such as in the famous Ford Pinto case, individuals - in the words of Rest - do not interpret situations in ethical terms and do not engage in further ethical decision-making stages.

Rest‟s assumption of moral awareness as recognition of ethical problems that objectively exist made him believe that its‟ intensity can be measured and ranked by scoring on predefined questions on ethical dilemmas, since individuals do recognize the ethical content “to different extents”. His approach could thereby be applied to Kohlberg‟s theory of moral development, although Rest denied the strict stage division of Kohlberg. The importance of the individual‟s moral cognitive development on ethical awareness has also been analyzed by various other scholars. Shaub (1989) for example finds the relation to be insignificant. Other studies, such as the investigation of Treviño & Youngblood (1990), report that individuals with higher levels of moral development are more likely to identify and report unethical behavior.

Jones‟ (1991) issue-contingent model of ethical decision-making in organizations builds upon Rest‟s model and includes other social cognition research. Jones argues that the characteristics of the ethical issue, the moral intensity, increase the social-cognitive encoding process. This is according to him in line with social-cognitive theory, as he argues, which states that decision-makers easier perceive and encode information that is vivid, salient, accessible and emotionally interesting (as claimed by e.g. Fiske & Taylor, 1991). Consequently Jones theorized that the recognition of moral problems is not only influenced by the individuals level of cognitive development but also by the multi-dimensional construct “moral intensity”, which incorporates the amount of “moral imperative” attached to an issue or situation (Jones, 1991). Moral intensity is conceptualized as a characteristic of the issue, and not of the moral agent confronting the issue. According to Jones, moral issue recognition has two main elements: First, a person recognizes that a decision or action has consequences for other human beings or constructs; and second, the person has some choice and volition to deal with

the issue. Jones (1991) identified six dimensions of moral intensity: 1) magnitude of consequences 2) concentration of effect 3) probability of effect 4) temporal immediacy 5) social consensus and 6) proximity.

Since Jones‟ issue contingent research the recognition of ethical issues has been engrained in the moral intensity construct, as Jordan (2009) recently noted. In line with Jones approach, Rhode (2006) summarizes exemplarily that moral awareness reflects both personal and situational factors, where one perceives the moral intensity of the issue at stake. Intensity, in turn, is affected by both a social consensus on the ethical status of the acts in question and the social proximity of their consequences, as he further asserts. For example, magnitude of consequences of the issue concerns the amount of harm (or benefit) that could be caused by a particular decision or action. In addition to consequences, moral intensity is in his view concerned with the social consensus, or “the degree of social agreement that a proposed act is evil (or good)” and with proximity, “the feeling of nearness” that the moral agent has for victims. According to this understanding, when issues arise in the context of work, it is mainly the degree of perceived consensus (e.g. of coworkers and the problem environment) in these settings that has a great influence on moral awareness. Also Jones (1991) explicitly suggested that the “feeling of nearness” (social, cultural, psychological, or physical) that the decision maker has for victims or beneficiaries of the act in question affects moral intensity.

Individuals‟ capacity for empathy and their sense of human or group solidarity was therefore considered important and understood to positively affect moral awareness, which encourages altruistic action and receptiveness to principles of justice, equality and fairness. Conversely, peoples‟ capacity to distance, devalue or dehumanize victims leads to moral disengagement and denial of moral responsibility, as Rhode (2006) argues. Rhode (2006) sees these moral capabilities (i.e. part of the moral competence) to be strongly influenced by childhood socialization, religious and political commitments, direct exposure to injustice, and educational approaches that build awareness of others‟ needs.

Butterfield, Treviño & Weaver (2000) go somewhat “beyond” issue characteristics by suggesting that other contextual factors influence moral awareness. They hypothesize that moral awareness is influenced by both issue-related factors (such as the magnitude of consequences) as well as social context-related factors (as e.g. the perceived social consensus that an issue is ethically problematic). Their scenario-based study finds that both the existence of a competitive framework as well as the use of moral language can influence moral

awareness (the latter by triggering a moral issue schema), along with the earlier mentioned issue characteristics (such as magnitude of consequences and social consensus).

To summarize, Rest‟s understanding of moral awareness is somewhat different from how other scholars conceive of this component, despite the fact that they mostly build on his theory. Some scholars define moral awareness solely as a recognition-based ability of the individual, conceptualizing the construct as the ability to detect moral issues within a broader, amoral context. However, as elaborated by the above mentioned moral intensity concept and as asserted by Sparks and Hunt (1998), even if moral issues are recognized and elicit an affective-response, if an individual places little or no importance on them, it is “doubtful that they will be factored into the decision-making process”.

Taking this critique into consideration, other definitions of moral awareness emphasized awareness as both the recognition that a decision-making situation has ethical content and, in addition, sensitivity as interpretation and ascription of importance to ethical issue (Sparks &

Hunt, 1998). This highlights an agreement on two different but related aspects that influence moral awareness. First - as highlighted correctly by Jordan (2009) - theoretically, if one does not recognize a moral issue, he or she will be unable to factor the issue into the judgment process, leading to a poor prognosis for the likelihood of later moral action. Secondly, if the moral intensity of a stimulus is high, the stimulus is more vivid and salient and therefore attracts the individual‟s attention. Agreement on this view led the conception of moral awareness which is still often referred to: Moral awareness as consisting of two elements;

“moral sensitivity” referring to an individual‟s capability to identify relevant moral aspects in a morally ambiguous situation; and “moral intensity” to the salience of moral aspects in a given context, which influences the ability to ascribe importance to these issues.

The above mentioned distinction has led to the more recent definition of moral awareness of Butterfield, Treviño and Weaver (2000) defined as “a person‟s recognition that his or her potential decision or action could affect the interests, welfare, or expectations of the self or others in a fashion that may conflict with one or more ethical standards”.

Reynolds (2006) however argues that despite this definition being more precise than earlier ones, it is overstated on several accounts. First, he claims that “the need for a decision often is not apparent until after the issue has been identified as a moral issue”. Consequently, he argues that the requirement that the individual has first to identify the magnitude of the

consequences of his decisions “limits the number of issues that could possibly be recognized as moral issues”. Secondly, the comparison if a personal decision is in conflict with certain ethical standards “requires an analysis of how the decision compares against standards of moral behavior”. This process “threatens to confound the constructs of moral awareness and moral judgment”, as he correctly asserts, since what is needed for being aware of a moral issues is “merely an acknowledgment that such comparisons are appropriate”. Reynolds (2006) refers to Baier (1958) claiming that decision makers must barely acknowledge that “a moral point of view is a valid point of view”. He thereby illustrates a point which also in this thesis is found to be central: moral awareness in the traditional conception also involves a moral judgment in itself and cannot be as strictly divided into components as claimed by Rest.

Including this elementary claim into his definition, Reynolds writes that moral awareness shall be understood as “a person‟s determination that a situation contains moral content and legitimately can be considered from a moral point of view”.

Apart from the presented theoretical conceptual contributions, there are also some empirical contributions to the notion of moral awareness, despite the fact that this has been largely neglected in research. Most research on moral awareness is, as the theoretical approaches, grounded in the moral intensity construct and has generated a certain amount of knowledge about the characteristics of moral issues that are believed to facilitate moral awareness. A majority of the empirical studies mentioned in a review by Loe, Ferrell & Mansfield, (2000) utilize student samples (nine) and the corresponding findings - which are very diverse - are mostly based upon the goals of the studies. Several evaluate the role of codes of conduct in generating awareness of ethical problems. Others consider individuals‟ awareness of their own ethical behavior relative to others‟. The main findings of the empirical research of ethical decision-making in business suggest that (1) individuals perceive their own behavior to be more ethical than that of others, (2) “ethical orientation” influences moral awareness, (3) awareness of codes of conduct does not necessarily have a significant impact on ethical decision-making or behavior and (4) individuals with higher levels of cognitive moral development are more likely to identify unethical behavior (Loe, Ferrell & Mansfield, 2000).