Nielsen, K. orcid.org/0000-0001-9685-9570, Agate, C., Yarker, J. et al. (1 more author) (2024) “It’s business”: a qualitative study of moral injury in business settings; experiences, outcomes and protecting and exacerbating factors. Journal of Business Ethics, 194 (2). pp. 233-249. ISSN 0167-4544
Abstract
Moral injury has primarily been studied from a clinical perspective to assess, diagnose and treat the outcomes of morally injurious experiences in healthcare and military settings. Little is known about the lived experiences of those who have had their moral values transgressed in business settings. Public scandals such as Enron suggest that moral injury may also occur in for-profit business settings. In this qualitative study, we examine the lived experiences of 16 employees in for-profit business organisations who identified as having suffered moral injury. Using semi-structured narrative interviews, our findings offer insights into the values that employees feel are transgressed and the pathways between morally injurious experiences and the long-term outcomes. Based on our findings, we propose a conceptual pathway to moral injury, which suggests that experiencing moral transgressions has a profound impact on employees as they feel a threat to their “good-me” identity, however, employees employ various coping strategies to minimise the impact during the event. Employees exited the organisation and often changed career paths to protect themselves from further injury and to make up for moral failure. This study advances our understanding of the experience of moral injury in business settings and the pathway explaining how and why people react differently to moral transgressions.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2024. Open Access: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Keywords: | moral injury; qualitative study; coping; for-profit business; identity |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Management School (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 16 Jan 2024 08:52 |
Last Modified: | 07 Oct 2024 08:33 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1007/s10551-024-05615-0 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:207358 |