Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society

Volume 22, 2011

Proceedings of the Twenty-Second Annual Meeting

Preferences Concerning Moral Development of Co-Workers

Because an organization member’s degree of cognitive moral development (CMD) can be expected to influence his or her decisions and behaviour, in this paper we investigate the idea that that employees might prefer to supervise, work with, or work under others of particular levels or stages of CMD. We surveyed undergraduate business students in order to identify typical CMD preferences for co-workers and test preliminary hypotheses concerning possible influences on those preferences. Majorities of subjects expressed preferences for conventional level work peers and subordinates but postconventional superiors, which could augur a lack of congruence between what subordinates typically desire of their superiors and how those superiors are likely to actually behave.