Search results

The purpose of this study is to examine the role of salesperson moral identity centrality in value co-creation. This study identified and tested an extended identity-based formation process of selling orientation, customer orientation and value co-creation. This was accomplished by examining the role of inclusion of others in the self and circle of moral regard in the mechanism through which moral identity centrality impacts selling orientation, customer orientation and value co-creation, taking into account the contingency role of salesperson self-construal.

An extended identity-behavior model grounded in identity theory and the social-cognitive perspective of moral identity centrality was tested. The study used survey data from business-to-business salespeople. Data collected was analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The results show that a central moral identity to a salesperson’s self-drives higher expansion of the salesperson’s circle of moral regard. This process facilitates the mechanisms for salesperson moral identity centrality to decrease selling orientation and increase customer orientation and value co-creation, leading to higher sales performance. Independent self-construal is found to deteriorate the positive effects of salesperson moral identity centrality on the inclusion of others in the self, expansion of the circle of moral regard and customer orientation.

Through the conceptualized and tested framework, the study opens the door for additional research to inspect the role of moral identity centrality in sales.

Findings have implications for the human resource side of sales organizations in the areas of recruitment, mentoring, coaching and training. Moral identity centrality plays a vital role in the interface between salespeople and customers, leading to improved behavioral and sales outcomes. Sales managers must look for their salespeople’s moral identity centrality to improve morality in the attitudes and decision-making of their salesforce.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to uncover the vital impacts of salesperson moral identity centrality on selling orientation, customer orientation and value co-creation. Through the conceptualized and tested framework, the study opens the door for additional research to inspect the role of moral identity centrality in sales.

On the basis of theories of social cognition and moral identity and the meta-theoretical principle of “too-much-of-a-good-thing,” the purpose of this study is to develop and test a model that explains when and why leader honesty/humility promotes subordinate organizational citizenship behavior directed at individuals (OCBI) as mediated through subordinate moral identity centrality.

In this field study, with online surveys, multisource data were collected from 218 United States Air Force officers and their subordinates. Data were analyzed with MEDCURVE SPSS macro tools.

A nonlinear indirect effect of leader honesty/humility on subordinate OCBI through subordinate moral identity centrality was found. This conditional indirect effect occurred through a curvilinear (inverted U-shape) relationship between leader honesty/humility and subordinate moral identity centrality and a positive linear relationship between subordinate moral identity centrality and OCBI.

Cross-sectional data were collected. Future research might replicate findings using experimental and longitudinal designs.

Recruiting and selecting leaders who possess a moderate level of honesty/humility may serve as the first step in producing prosocial behavior during social interactions with subordinates.

This study extends the literature on character and leadership by applying the too-much-of-a-good-thing principle to empirically test the complex nature of the relationship between leader honesty/humility and subordinate OCBI as mediated through subordinate moral identity centrality.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the interaction effect of moral identity and construal level on consumer green consumption and the mediating role of pro-environmental self-accountability.

The authors examined the hypotheses in two experiment studies. In study 1, the authors measured participants’ chronic individual difference of moral identity and primed construal level. In study 2, the authors primed moral identity and measured chronic individual difference of construal level. The authors also measured pro-environmental self-accountability in these two studies.

The results reveal that construal level moderates the relationship between moral identity and consumer green consumption, specifically, when consumers are induced a high construal level, moral identity has no effect on consumer green consumption, while when consumers are induced a low construal level, moral identity has a positive effect on consumer green consumption; the interaction of moral identity and construal level on green consumption is mediated by pro-environmental self-accountability.

This research enriches the literature on how to improve consumer green consumption, and thus has some managerial and public policy implications. But the authors only chose students as participants and the dependent measures are also limited. Future research can choose other type of sample and other dependent measures to test the generalization of the conclusion.

Prior literature of green consumption lacks research on mediation mechanism. Due to prior literature gaps, the authors integrate social-cognitive perspective moral identity theory, especially the in-group circle expansion of moral identity, and construal level theory to investigate the moderating effect of construal level on the relationship between moral identity and green consumption and the mediation effect of pro-environmental self-accountability.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of LEM participation on moral identity. Lateral exchange markets (LEMs) enable ordinary people to monetize idle personal resources such as cars, homes, gadgets and skills. Despite its champions portraying actors in these exchange as moral citizens of society, recent findings suggest that egoistic motives drive participation. A salient moral identity motivates behaviors that show social sensitivity to others and enable cooperative actions. Given that platform-providing firms rely on users’ cooperative behaviors to facilitate lateral exchange, understanding factors that affect moral identity can have important implications for the success of such business models.

In this research, the authors move away from the ideological discourse behind actors’ motivations, to provide a pragmatic explanation of how participation erodes moral identity. The authors apply a social cognitive framework to examine how the environment in LEMs impacts behaviors and personal factors in a recursive fashion.

Across two studies, findings reveal that prolonged participation in lateral exchange diminishes the centrality of moral identity to the working self-concept. Moreover, the results show that keeping puritan peers moral has positive business outcomes. This research also discerns a boundary condition that determines when peers remain consistent with their moral compasses. Specifically, when engagement is perceived as effortful, the behavior becomes an informative input in the inference of one’s moral disposition reinforcing moral identity.

Marketers can use this research to design business models in ways that mitigate the decay of moral identity.

This paper aims to examine how consumer moral identity (MI) affects the impact of cause-related marketing (CRM). CRM is a popular hybrid marketing tool that incorporates charitable initiatives and sales promotion. CRM has strength in simultaneously encouraging consumer purchases and doing something good for the society. Drawing on the moral identity (MI)-based motivation model, this research examines how consumer MI influences consumer behavioural response to CRM.

Two field experiments were conducted to test a series of hypotheses relating to the conditional effect of MI on behavioural response to CRM.

Brand social responsibility image and emotional brand attachment positively moderated the relationship between consumer MI centrality and intention to purchase CRM sponsor brand.

Findings contribute to the literature on CRM, MI-based motivation of consumer behaviour and emotional brand attachment.

The literature on consumer morality and consumption is spread widely across many research streams and would benefit from grouping under selected themes so that scholars’ work can be guided by the compass of these themes. It is also important to add studies to each of these themes to serve as gateways that will guide new research. The aim of this special issue of the Journal of Consumer Marketing was to achieve precisely this purpose. The purpose of this paper is to open the gate to the exploration of the themes that today describe this landscape.

The paper assesses the contributions made in each of several domains to better understand, why and how moral consumption works, what its ingredients are and how it may grow in the future. There are at least four domains of morality and moral consumption studies as follows: the formation of the moral self and moral identity; moral identity and ethical consumption; moral reasoning (cognitive processes) and moral choice; and the moral self and marketing. Each of these domains of work provides insight into the moral consumption phenomenon.

The authors highlight the development of the moral self and underscore the significance of the relationship between identity development and the individual’s moral actions and by extension the significance of that relationship in moral consumption. Also, the paper adds to the current discussion on morality and ethical consumption by underscoring their interlinked nature and how that linkage can drive consumption behavior, highlight the cognitive processes involved in moral choices and how consumers reason to arrive at those choices. Finally, the authors provide examples of the workings of moral identity and reasoning in consumption contexts more directly.

Each of these morality and moral consumption domains of work provides unique insights into the moral consumption phenomenon; thus, it is important to disseminate the contributions made in each domain to better understand, why and how moral consumption works, what its ingredients are and how it may grow in the future. In this paper, the authors offer contemporary original samples of key contributions to each of these domains.

The purpose of this study is to examine the mediating role of moral identity on the relations between the independent variable of spirituality and the original consumer ethics scale (OCES) and attitudes towards doing good and recycling practices of the consumer.

To test the various hypotheses of the model, the methodology used is that of partial least squares (PLS) path-modelling, which is a variance-based structural equation modelling (SEM).

This research reveals a full mediation of the construct of moral identity in the relationship between spirituality and doing good/recycling practices, and the rejection of those who do not perform these practices that are responsible from the point of view of sustainability. In addition, the existence is shown of a partial mediation of the construct of moral identity in the relationship between spirituality and consumer ethics scale (CES).

It is demonstrated that the main effect on the attitude of consumers towards the consumption of products and services of companies whose behaviour is responsible towards sustainability is mainly motivated by having a high standard of ethical and moral values and such strong beliefs, such as those of honesty, kindness, generosity and compassion. The main implication of this investigation is that the authors’ results suggest that the identification of these types of consumers would constitute an effective marketing strategy and an important variable of segmentation.

This research is unique in two ways. First, this study proposes a model that provides a solution to the research problems caused by the incorporation of a fifth dimension into the OCES. Second, this paper is the first to investigate the role played by the moral identity as a mediator between the relationship of spirituality and attitudes towards unethical behaviour and doing good/recycling practices.

Religious institutions can affect organizational practices when employees bring their religious commitments and practices into the workplace. But those religious commitments function in the midst of other organizational factors that influence the working out of employees’ religious commitments. This process can generate varying outcomes in organizational contexts, ranging from a heightened effect of religious commitment on employee behavior to a negligible or nonexistent influence of religion on employee behavior. Relying on social identity theory and schematic social cognition as unifying frameworks for the study of religious behavior, we develop a theoretically informed approach to understanding how and why the religious beliefs, commitments and practices employees bring to work have varying behavioral impacts.

The logic of consequences and the logic of appropriateness have long been central to understanding behavior in organizations. However, scholarly work on the logic of appropriateness has consisted mostly of conceptual clarification and ex post explanation of observed behavior. In an effort to facilitate the study of the logic of appropriateness through experimental methods, this paper introduces an experimental paradigm that allows for the manipulation of decision logic as an independent variable. Using this paradigm, 710 participants played four iconic behavioral games in which profitability and ethics are both at play and, sometimes, at odds: Prisoners’ Dilemma, Dictator Game, Ultimatum Game, and Trust Game. The manipulation generated behavioral data, as well as qualitative data about participants’ considerations while deciding according to each logic. The behavioral data show that, compared to participants employing a logic of consequences, participants employing a logic of appropriateness rejected more unfair offers in an Ultimatum Game and were more generous when reciprocating trusting behavior in a Trust Game. In all other cases, behavior between the two logics was not significantly different. An analysis of the qualitative data suggests that a logic of consequences increased participants’ focus on monetary concerns, whereas a logic of appropriateness increased participants’ focus on moral concerns. Taken together, these data provide new insights into when, how, and why the two logics result in behavioral and cognitive differences. The authors conclude by considering directions for future research that they see as particularly amenable to study using the experimental manipulation presented here.

The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of ethical leadership on moral motivation of teachers in the schools of Pakistan.

Scenario-based experimental design was used to collect data (N = 174 teachers) from 25 schools in the city of Islamabad. Participants included 156 females and 18 males aged 23–37 years. Ethical leadership was measured at both construct and component levels (moral person and moral manager).

The results found that the moral person component of ethical leadership style heightens the moral identity (internalization)-based moral motivation, while the moral manager component and ethical leadership at construct level style increases moral identity (symbolization)-based moral motivation. Interestingly, in the absence of reward, only the moral person component of ethical leadership style maintained participants’ moral motivation.

The originality of this study lies in highlighting the divergence in ethical leadership style at component level that explains the differences in moral motivation of the teachers.