Exploring antecedents and consequences of managerial moral stress

• Date: 01 July 2020
• Author: Justin B. Ames,James Gaskin,Bradley D. Goronson
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/beer.12272
• Published date: 01 July 2020

Business Ethics: A Eur Rev. 2020;29:557–569. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/beer  

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  557© 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

1 | INTRODUCTION

Dealing with s tress has long be en considered “pa rt of the job” for

organisatio nal executives. Exe cutive pay packages of ten account for,

in part, the s tress of dealing with the wei ghty decisions senior man-

agement teams are t asked with maki ng. Industr y celebrates t hose

managers who me et the mental , emotional, an d physical deman ds

(Selye, 1956) of their work wit h fortitude and labels th ose who suc-

cumb to the ner vousness, tensi on, and stra in (Cooke & Rousseau ,

1984) as being simply not c ut out for the job. This caric ature imbues

individual coping capability as the determinant for successfully man-

aging stress in t he work-place. While executive capab ility may play

a role in conqueri ng the adverse effect s of stress, it would be hast y

to declare certain managers heroes without deeper consideration of

the nature of their foil…stress.

Recent research h as highlighted the distinc t forms of stress that

affect cer tain individ uals more than ot hers, and the refore, pose a

specific occu pational thre at (DeTienne, Agle, P hillips, & Inger son,

2012) that can impair physical health, psychological well-being, and

work perfor mance (Kahn & Byosiere, 1992; Sau ter & Murphy, 1995).

These studie s indicate that n ot all forms of stre ss have equal im-

pacts. Water s and Bird (1987) and Wyld and Jones (1997) prese nted

a unique form of st ress rooted in moral obligatio ns known as moral

stress (Reynol ds, Owens, & Rub enstein, 2012). Th e general stre ss

literature has typically subsumed moral stress as an indistinguish-

able aspect of s tress in general (Glasbe rg et al., 2006). However, the

bioethics fi eld has presented evidence t hat moral stress is a distin ct

form of stress pr evalent within t he nursing profe ssion and has rec-

ommended specific organisational interventions to support health-

care employee lo ngevity (Corl ey, Minick, Elswick , & Jacobs, 2005;

Received: 13 June 2 018 

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  Revised: 28 Januar y 2020 

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  Accepted: 31 Januar y 2020

DOI: 10 .1111/bee r.12272

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Exploring antecedents and consequences of managerial moral

stress

Justin B. Ames  | James Gaskin  | Bradley D. Goronson

Brigham Young University, Wheatley

Institutio n, Provo, UT, USA

Correspondence

Justin B. Am es, Brigham Young Unive rsity,

Wheatley Institution, 392 Hinckley Center,

Provo, UT 8460 2, USA.

Email: amestar11@gmail.com

Abstract

The legitimacy of mo ral stress as a dist inct form of genera l stress has long be en de-

bated in previous rese arch. Moreover, individual-leve l antecedents of mor al stress

are yet to be tested among e xecutives. This stu dy investigates role identity salien cy

(by calculating the tot al saliency of role s and competition b etween roles) as an in-

dividual-level anteced ent of managerial moral s tress and turnover i ntent as a con-

sequence of manageria l moral stress am ong high-level strategi c decision makers in

organisations. We also a nalyse the moderating effe ct of moral attentiveness in the se

relationships. Sur vey data were collec ted from 264 strat egic decision makers fro m

small to large U.S.-based or ganisations. Whi le controlling for overall s tress, result s

support a mode rated model, whe rein individuals exh ibiting a high level of mora l at-

tentiveness also demonstrated a significant positive relationship between work role

competition and mo ral stress and between managerial m oral stress and turnover in-

tent. Surprisingl y, total role salienc y demonstrated a significant neg ative relationship

with managerial mor al stress for the s ame individuals. O verall, the result s suggest

that managerial mor al stress may be a legitimate threat to execu tive retention, above

and beyond general s tress, for the indi viduals who are highl y attentive to the mor al

aspects of their environment.