Keywords
Spirituality, Greed, Ethics
Abstract
Abstract
Organizational malfeasance is oftentimes attributed to greed (Hansen & Movahedi, 2010). Such attributions appear appropriate given recent research demonstrating relationships between greed and shareholder return (Hayes et al., 2017). However, research exploring antecedents of greed is scant. We explored one such antecedent by examining the relationship between participants’ spirituality and a trait measure of greed. Results indicated that individuals’ spirituality explained unique variance in greed above that variance explained by sex (being a male) and college major (being a business major) - which have well-established relationships with unethical outcomes. This finding suggests that (a) spirituality was a precursor to dispositional greed, and (b) spirituality is important in scholarly attempts to explain organizational greed. Results further indicated that sex and spirituality interacted such that spiritual females reported significantly lower levels of greed than less spiritual females, while spirituality made no difference for males. The significance of these findings is discussed.
Recommended Citation
Walker, Alan G. and Mercer, Ian S.
(2022)
"The Relationship between Spirituality and Greed: Sex Matters,"
Journal of Religion and Business Ethics: Vol. 5, Article 1.
Available at:
https://via.library.depaul.edu/jrbe/vol5/iss1/1