Search results

A proposed typology of moral exemplars in business highlights instances selected to illustrate standards for inclusion. The typology distinguishes among champions, heroes, and saints as different kinds of business exemplars. The typology reflects variations in both specific decision conditions and moral value emphases of business actors. The typology also differentiates moral exemplars from moral neutrals (i.e., amoral actors) and moral sinners (i.e., moral value scofflaws). The objective is to advance understanding of moral character and moral courage in business settings.

The methodology combines original conceptual argument and brief case summaries taken from available literature. The chapter is not a systematic survey of literature but cites key works. Construction of the typology involved iteration between conceptual development and case interpretation.

The chapter separates business cases into private business and public business, and applies Adam Smith’s distinction between citizenship and good citizenship. An additional distinction is made between extreme conditions and normal conditions. Moral heroism in business is restricted to life-and-death or strongly analogous situations in extreme conditions such as hazardous whistleblowing. Moral sainthood in business involves extreme maximization of a single value going far beyond simple compliance with legal requirements and typical ethical norms – Smith’s definition of citizenship. Moral championing in business concerns some degree of lesser self-sacrifice in defense of important values reflecting Smith’s definition of good citizenship.

The chapter is a selection of literature undertaken in iteration with the conceptual development effort. The original research aspect of the chapter is thus quite limited. The author is not positioned to judge the accuracy of published information, for or against a particular instance. The classifications thus depend on whether the instance would, if the generally reported facts are basically accurate, serve as a reasonable illustration of standards for inclusion. Criticisms have been made concerning some of the instances discussed here.

The emphasis is on providing standards for defining moral exemplars for business to suggest how much can be accomplished in business through moral influence.

The conceptual contribution is original, although drawing on the philosophical literature debate about saints and heroes. The chapter treats exemplar as the overarching construct, separated into three kinds: heroes, saints, and champions. Sinner is implicit in the notion of saint. The chapter adds moral champions and moral neutrals to isolate moral heroism. The cases exist in the literature, but have been combined together here for the first time.

We argue that Oskar Schindler is a moral exemplar. Oskar Schindler and other moral exemplars should, according to Mayo, be emulated. Emulating Schindler when he acted as a moral exemplar could have led to others’ being helped during truly terrible times. Yet, had officialdom at that time known what Schindler was doing, he would have lost his life, and the lives of the many others he was able to save – as well as their progeny – would also have been lost. Thus, we underscore that it can be extraordinarily difficult for someone to be recognised as a moral exemplar when a moral exemplar is so desperately needed.

Whom should we consider a moral saint or exemplar? This chapter looks at the relationship between the virtue of courage and the concept of a moral saint in an organisational context, apart from war and religion. It seeks to show that careful consideration of the nature of saints and heroes and of the response of the wider population to them will help us to understand the purpose of moral exemplars and the impact they can have on our lives. Thomas Carlyle’s description of the changing relationship between people and hero since the time of the ancient Greek and Scandinavian gods provides a central core for the analysis.

This study aims to identify the archetypes, moral foundations and plots associated with veganism through the stories told by vegan bloggers and the effect on mainstreaming of this ideology.

Narrative data was collected from 15 publicly available vegan blogs. Underlying archetypes, morals and story plots were identified and presented as a “story re-told,” highlighting the context and content of what was being said by the protagonists and associated meanings.

The analysis revealed three moral foundations on which vegan ideology is built: sanctity of life, enacting the authentic self and freedom. A universal hero archetype was also unearthed; however, the moral orientation of the storyteller (agency vs communal) dictated how these morals and archetypes were expressed.

Through the use of common story archetypes, master plots and moral foundations, a deeper understanding of vegans and the choices they make is facilitated, thus making vegan ideology appear less threatening. Storytelling plays an important role in establishing connections through commonality.

This study applies cultivation theory, storytelling analysis and archetype theory to reveal how vegan bloggers counteract mass media cultivation of vegan stereotypes through the stories they tell. We offer a more robust description of vegans, moving beyond stereotypes, and the morals driving behavior. Moreover, a unique mechanism of mainstreaming is exposed that shows vegans connect with people by tapping into universal archetypes and morals that anyone can relate to and relive.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate heroism as an embodied system of leadership and well-being. Heroic leadership is presented as a baseline for sustainable futures and global health.

This paper presents an embodied reading of heroic leadership and its sustainable development across five stages. It outlines its core functions, its grounding in self-leadership through physical and mental trauma and its holistic benefits, resulting in the development of the Heroic Leadership Embodiment and Sustainable Development (HLESD) model. The efficacy of HLESD is demonstrated in an empirical case study of heroism promotion and education: the Hero Construction Company and the Heroic Imagination Project.

Heroic leadership is revealed as an emergent, dynamic and distributed form of sustainable development.

This paper demonstrates the critical connections between heroism, sustainability, embodied leadership and well-being and how they stand to benefit from each other, individuals and communities at large.

The implementation of HLESD in educational, counselling and broader contexts in consultation with a wide range of professionals stands to offer significant benefits to pedagogies, clinical practice, holistic therapies and twenty-first-century societies, at both the community and policy level.

The emerging field of heroism science and the use of heroic leadership as an interdisciplinary tool is a novel approach to well-being, which holds immense potential for the imagining and fostering of sustainable personal and collective futures.

The management of children′s literature is a search for value and suitability. Effective policies in library and educational work are based firmly on knowledge of materials, and on the bibliographical and critical frame within which the materials appear and might best be selected. Boundaries, like those between quality and popular books, and between children′s and adult materials, present important challenges for selection, and implicit in this process are professional acumen and judgement. Yet also there are attitudes and systems of values, which can powerfully influence selection on grounds of morality and good taste. To guard against undue subjectivity, the knowledge frame should acknowledge the relevance of social and experiential context for all reading materials, how readers think as well as how they read, and what explicit and implicit agendas the authors have. The good professional takes all these factors on board.

For centuries, Brer Rabbit stories have communicated the values and experiences of enslaved Africans and of indigenous African American culture (Abrahams, 1985; Brewer, 1968; Levine, 1977). According to Blassingame (1972, p. 127), Brer Rabbit stories are “a projection of the slave's personal experiences, dreams and hopes.” Dunn (1979, p.183) explained that the stories are “paradigms dictating how to act and how to live,” and Stuckey (1977, p.xuii) observed that they “revealed more about slave culture than… whole books on slavery by experts. Levine (1977) maintaned that Brer Rabbit stories survived the experiences of slavery and urban poverty because they were a vehicle by which African American cultural values could be shared by the masses of African American people, and Leslie (forthcoming) observed that urban Black mothers continue to share in these values by teaching their children that Brer Rabbit's tricks demonstrate the importance of “protecting the physically small and weak against the physically big and powerful.”

Employee boredom is of concern to organizations because of its impact on employees’ quality of work life and productivity. This study aims to test the regulation of workplace boredom through meaning in life by workplace heroes to contribute to theory by examining the relationships between the variables and to practice by uncovering the potential of workplace heroes in alleviating state boredom.

Using online surveys and structured interviews for a mixed-method study, data were collected for state boredom, meaning in life and hero affirmation at work for a quantitative study, and data from the open-ended questions provided further insights regarding hero affirmation at work for a qualitative study.

Spearman rank-order correlations concluded correlations between state boredom and meaning in life. However, unlike personal heroes that influence meaning in life, workplace heroes were found not to. The qualitative analysis revealed three prime differences between workplace and personal heroes: proximity, symbolic representation of ideologies and qualities admired in the heroes. These reasons entailed that state boredom was not regulated by workplace heroes.

The model of Coughlan et al. (2019) explored trait boredom regulation through meaning in life by personal heroes. This study tested for the regulation of state boredom through meaning in life by workplace heroes; thus, contributing to theory through a nuanced model with enhanced usefulness in practice. The study also further dissects the concept of heroes by uncovering differences between workplace and personal heroes that perpetrated the differences in the findings.

Moral exemplarity is a desirable but complex achievement. The chapter discusses the meaning of moral exemplarity and examines how the self, as a psychological and spiritual centre within a Jungian perspective, contributes to fostering moral commitment.

A narrative study was conducted amongst ten spiritual healers in New Zealand and France. Stories were collected and analysed interpretively to uncover meaningful patterns about spiritual healers’ moral stance and apprehension of the self.

Spiritual healers demonstrated a deep commitment to the self which clearly sustained a commitment to serve or help others. Commitment to the self was articulated around five core values: self-work, self-reflection, humility, self-integrity and love.

The chapter highlights the moral value of inner work. The self, in its archetypal sense, carries as potential an ‘innate morality’ that resonates in the heart and nurtures integrity and authenticity. To commit to the self requires undertaking a long and painful exploration of the psyche and integrating unconscious material into ego-consciousness. The participating spiritual healers, who had committed to their self and were well advanced on their psychological exploration journey, displayed moral qualities akin to exemplarity.