Seeing Through and Breaking Through: The Role of Perspective Taking in the Relationship Between Creativity and Moral Reasoning

Creativity and morality are key attributes that stakeholders demand of organizations. Accordingly, higher education institutions and professional training programs also seek to cultivate these attributes in future leaders. However, research has hitherto shown that, under certain conditions, creativi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of business ethics 2022-09, Vol.180 (1), p.57-69
Main Authors: Hui, Pamsy P., Chiu, Warren C. K., Pang, Elvy, Coombes, John, Tse, Doreen Y. P.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Attributes
Business and Management
Business Ethics
Cognition
Creativity
Curricula
Education
Ethics
Higher education
Management
Moral judgment
Morality
Original Paper
Perspective taking
Philosophy
Professional training
Quality of Life Research
Research design
Undergraduate students
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Summary:Creativity and morality are key attributes that stakeholders demand of organizations. Accordingly, higher education institutions and professional training programs also seek to cultivate these attributes in future leaders. However, research has hitherto shown that, under certain conditions, creativity may conflict with morality. This complicates the development of creative individuals who are also moral. We examined the complex relationship between creativity and moral reasoning with data collected from a group of undergraduate students. By considering the cognitive processes behind creativity and moral reasoning, we propose perspective taking as a moderating factor. Specifically, we found that while creative individuals might not necessarily adopt a lower level of moral reasoning, there was a more nuanced moderating relationship among creativity, perspective taking, and moral reasoning. That is, individuals who were weak in perspective taking tended to adopt a lower level of moral reasoning if they were also creative. Perspective taking was also directly and positively associated with moral reasoning. We explore the implications of our findings for future research and curriculum/program design.
ISSN:0167-4544
1573-0697
DOI:10.1007/s10551-021-04876-3