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Executive courage is an important cultural variable that influences the survival of a business organization in an increasingly competitive global business environment. This study presents the results of an empirical cross‐cultural investigation of executive courage. Forty American and 29 Arab executives participated in the study. Nine hypotheses were tested. Results indicated that the two samples exhibited significant differences with regard to their perceptions of the dimensions of executive courage, the role of executive courage in today's business organization, the relative importance of personal growth and personal courage, and the interaction between executive courage and the organizational reward system. It is concluded that executive courage is a positive cross‐cultural force, deserving careful consideration by researchers and practitioners. It is also concluded that business organizations can best serve their need for survival by rewarding those who seek to do the right things, rather than those who do the expected things right.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of both supervisory abuse and moral efficacy in the weakening or strengthening of moral courage. The study also tests how the interaction between both could influence moral courage.

Cross-sectional data were collected from a sample of public hospital nurses in Egypt and structural equation modeling was used to analyse the data.

The study findings revealed that abusive supervision is negatively related to moral courage whereas moral efficacy is positively related to courage. Furthermore, moral efficacy moderates the abusive supervision-moral courage relationship in such a way that the negative association between abusive supervision and moral courage is reduced when moral efficacy is high.

Because of the cross-sectional design of the study, inferences regarding causality cannot be made. Furthermore, more research is needed to identify whether the results of this study apply in other contexts.

Organizations should identify abusive supervisors and offer them abuse-prevention training to circumvent their hostile behaviour. Organizations should also try to consider follower moral efficacy when matching supervisors with followers.

The study addresses calls for research on the personal factors that could mitigate the undesirable effects of abusive supervision.

One of the strongest and most important outcomes of trait social courage is employee voice, but researchers have only studied this relationship with unidimensional conceptualizations of voice. The purpose of this paper is to apply Van Dyne et al.’s (2003) three-dimensional conceptualization of voice, which also distinguishes three dimensions of silence, to provide a nuanced understanding of the relationship of social courage with voice and silence. The authors also test for the moderating effect of three contextual influences: top management attitudes toward voice and silence, supervisor attitudes toward voice and silence, as well as communication opportunities.

The authors conducted a four-timepoint survey with each measurement occasion separated by one week. A total of 134 participants completed all four timepoints.

The results support that social courage positively relates to prosocial voice and silence, whereas it negatively relates to defensive voice and silence as well as acquiescent voice and silence. In other words, social courage positively relates to beneficial voice and silence as well as negatively relates to detrimental voice and silence. The results also failed to support any moderating effects, suggesting that the relationships of social courage are very resilient to outside forces.

These findings both test prior results and discover new relationships of social courage, which can further stress the importance of courage. The authors also draw direct connections between the influence of social courage on the surrounding workplace environment – as well as the influences of the environment on social courage. While the current paper provides insights into social courage, it also directs future researchers toward new insights of their own.

Courage is an emergent research topic within organizations. While many authors have assumed that courage is important to work, the current paper is among the few to empirically support this notion.

This research attempts to shed some light on Palestinian executives and their organizational culture. Specifically, this research focuses on the dimensions of executive courage in the unique Palestinian culture. The impact of executive courage on Palestinian organizations is emphasized.

This research is survey‐based. The research instrument utilized in this study was also used in other cultural settings. Content analysis and factor analysis were used to analyze the data collected from a sample of 40 Palestinian executives.

The results underscore the significance of making tough decisions on behalf of the organization, as an important dimension of the multi‐dimensional executive courage construct. The results of this study clearly show the positive impact of executive courage on organizational culture of Palestinian organizations.

The findings of this research are relevant to Palestinian executives and those executives seeking to engage in joint‐ventures with them.

This research represents rare insight into the Palestinian organizational culture. In the process, the practices of the Palestinian executives with regard to executive courage and its impact on organizations are examined.

This paper aims to offer empirical evidence about the effect of the interaction between the audit committee and the internal audit function (IAF) on the moral courage of the chief audit executive (CAE).

A mixed approach was followed. In the first stage, questionnaires were sent to CAEs of 60 listed, financial and non-financial Tunisian companies. To enhance the depth of the analysis, in the second stage, semi-directed interviews with 22 CAEs from listed financial and non-financial Tunisian companies were performed.

This paper found that the existence of private access to the audit committee has a positive effect on the moral courage of the CAE. The number of meetings between the audit committee and the CAE, the examination of internal audit programmes and results together with the contribution of the audit committee to the appointment and dismissal of the CAE do not show a significant link with the moral courage of the CAE. It also found an insignificant relationship between the audit committee’s examination of interaction between management and the IAF and the moral courage of the CAE.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this paper fills one of the major research gaps in the auditing literature by demonstrating the critical role of audit committee–internal audit interaction in promoting the CAE’s moral courage to behave ethically.

Connected learning is a framework of learning principles that centers on fostering educational equity through leveraging social technologies and networking practices to connect students with opportunities, people and resources in communities within and beyond their classroom walls (Ito et al., 2013). The framework has been adopted and developed in K-12 education by teachers in professional development networks and introduced to some teacher education programs through these networks. Practitioners of connected learning frequently refer to the need for “courage” to develop and introduce connected learning-based practices in their classrooms. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

In this study, the authors investigate “courage” through a sociocultural lens in the case studies of six educators in a teacher education course on connected learning. The study examines the social contexts and activities that fostered acts of courage during their 14-week course.

The authors found that personal reflection on freedom and equity, two ethical concepts raised by the connected learning framework, seeded acts of courage. The acts of courage appeared as small acts that built upon themselves toward a larger goal that related to the participants’ ethical ideals. Three types of social activity contexts helped to nurture these acts: seeking models of possibility, mediated reinvention and “wobbling.”

This study helps to uncover some of the questions that connected learning scholars and practitioners have about why courage is so central, and how to cultivate courageous acts of pedagogical change.

The theoretical framework used in this study, courage from a sociocultural perspective, may serve to help scholars and teacher educators to shape their research and program designs.

This study offers insights into patterns of networked teacher-led educational change and the social contexts that support school-level impacts of out-of-school professional networking.

Using a sociocultural conception of courage to investigate connected learning in teacher education, this study demonstrates how equity and freedom, central values in the connected learning framework, serve as key concepts driving teachers’ risk-taking, innovation and change.

The purpose of this article is to propose an approach using mixed methods appropriate for studying polysemic concepts.

Anchored in cognitive approaches, the methods relied on a generally applicable conceptual framework, on cognitive mapping for an intellectualized conception, and on in‐depth interviews for an experiential conception on different participants’ judgments of managerial courage within the same context.

The mixed methods approach allowed the study first, to uncover two kinds of managerial courage. Second, while the intellectualized conceptions led to the enumeration of a greater number of positive consequences for third parties, the conceptions resulting from recollections of experiences focused more on the consequences for the protagonist. Third, the conceptual framework allowed the authors to distinguish between the results obtained from the two distinct data collection methods: the moral dimension, present in the more intellectualized cognitive maps, was largely absent from the consequences identified by participants in the conception of managerial courage resulting from experience.

This approach has provided two original methodological contributions. The first is the development of a widely applicable conceptual framework useful for studying polysemic concepts and for treating data generated by both approaches. The second is the distinction between conceptions of courage obtained from cognitive maps and those obtained through semi‐structured, in‐depth interviews, highlighting the complementarity of the chosen methods.

The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the implications of relational cultural theory (RCT) for mentoring individuals who have enacted moral courage.

Overviews of the construct of moral courage, the nature of work-related mentoring and RCT are provided. Subsequently, the relevance and implications of RCT for understanding moral courage-related suffering, and for supporting the growth, resilience and vitality of those who have enacted moral courage are discussed.

Within RCT, moral courage-related suffering is located in disconnection, invalidation and isolation for which sufferers also feel held at fault. Self-protective behaviors, including disavowal of self, can perpetuate this suffering.

Five insights from RCT for supporting the growth, resilience and vitality of individuals following acts of moral courage are elaborated, including affirming efforts to activate supportive relationships; demonstrating “radical respect”; facilitating voice; engaging through mutuality and fluid expertise; and, reframing resilience.

The dearth of attention to ways of supporting those who suffer following acts of moral courage reflects previously documented findings about the short-shrift given to issues of human health and sustainability in organizations and organizational research. Implications for policy, practice and education are described.

This paper extends the RCT perspective in mentoring, and addresses an important gap in the moral courage literature, namely, the identification of a theoretically grounded approach through which to support the growth, resilience and vitality of individuals who have enacted moral courage.

This paper aims to develop a methodology for teaching moral courage.

Conceptual generalization.

This study uses a five-step method for teaching moral courage, together with a seven-level sliding scale for developing attitudes related to moral courage.

This paper is an aspect of systemic education for pupils and students.

This study builds aspects of a methodology for education of active bystanders in moral conflict situations.

This study builds aspects of a systemic methodology for education of moral issues.

Beers viable model (Figure 1) has been used to visualize a model for teaching moral courage.