ABSTRACT
Recent research rooted in a mix of anthropology, sociology, and evolutionary and social psychology has highlighted the fact that the social psychological study of ethics typically takes a relatively narrow view of the domain of morality (e.g., Haidt & Graham, 2007, 2009). Conventional scholarship conceptualizes morality in terms of matters of harm, welfare, fairness, or equality with respect to individuals-core ideals of various forms of the dominant Western tradition of ethical, political, and social thought. Conventional treatments of ethical behavior in organizations oŸen appear similarly focused. But this focus ignores the possibility that, anthropologically speaking, a preeminent concern for welfare and fairness is a minority position in the world and is not even the only moral outlook expressed in modern Western cultures. If so, organizational research not only needs to focus on matters of welfare and fairness, but also attend
to other categories of moral thought and behavior. In what follows, we summarize a recent alternative, empirically founded account of the scope of human moral intuitions-moral foundations theory-and develop its implications speci¡cally for behavior in organizations.
