Moral intelligence : the construct and key correlates

D.Phil.The spate of large-scale financial misconduct across the globe, sparked interest, and concern regarding moral conduct in organisations. The impact of the immoral actions proved to be devastating for many companies, especially for the financial sector. These entities spend a lot of time and effort managing threats from external sources, such as clients and terrorist. Less focus is placed in reducing fraud from within. Conforming to the regulations however, increases strain on companies to comply with the guidelines. This compliance consumes a lot of an organisation’s resources such as time and money. Little focus, if any is placed on the psychological component of governance, namely, the moral intelligence of employees and on understanding the human contribution to corporate governance and immoral actions. Human Resource practitioners are not doing enough to understand this dynamic, specifically the role of moral intelligence, underlined by the moral decision-making process. From a theoretical point of view, the study was aimed at understanding the moral domain from a more integrated, broad-based approach, including the moral dynamic as a form of intelligence. From a practical point of view, the need for more reliable and scientific information on moral conduct served as driver for the study. This investigation included the examination of the construct moral intelligence as part of the multiple intelligence theory, understanding the moral decision-making process as part of moral intelligence, identifying an underlying set of universal moral principles as foundation for moral decision-making in business, and analyzing patterns of covariability between moral reasoning and moral competence as part of the decision-making process. The study was conducted in a large South African financial institution with a sample size of 466. The Moral Judgment Test was preferred as measure for moral reasoning and moral competence, while the EQ Map and Psychomatrix Spirituality Inventory (PSI) measured emotional and spiritual intelligence respectively. Results revealed support for Kohlberg’s stages of moral development. There was evidence that the use of post-conventional stages of moral reasoning increased moral competence, which is the consistency between reasoning and action. There was further statistical support for differences in moral reasoning and moral competence when compared with selected demographical variables. The various statistical operations provided information for the calculation of risk-ratios, aimed at identifying individuals prone to immoral action. This data is useful when selecting and promoting individuals in the bank. As a result of the qualitative information and quantitative data, an amalgamation of the various approaches produced an integrated model on moral intelligence. It is envisaged that this will contribute to understanding true moral intelligence as a broad approach. Various theoretical and practical conclusions are reached, and recommendations and limitations are discussed