Abstract
Objective: To explore the relationship between pharmacists' tenure in the community setting and their moral reasoning abilities. Design: Systematic random sample design. Setting: A large southeastern city in the United States. Participants:450 independent and chain community pharmacists identified from the state board of pharmacy list of licenced community pharmacists. Interventions: A mailed questionnaire that included a well-known moral reasoning instrument and collected demographic information. Main Outcome Measures: Moral Reasoning abilities and tenure of community pharmacists. Results: As a group, community pharmacists with greater years of tenure in community practice scored significantly lower on moral reasoning than those pharmacists with fewer years of tenure (p = 0.016). Conclusion: Four plausible explanations for the results are given including: a) a selection of lower ethical reasoners and/or an exodus of higher ethical reasoners from the community setting; b) a retrogression in the moral reasoning skills as community pharmacists obtain tenure in this setting; c) differences between the low and high moral reasoning groups may be due to a cohort effect; and d) the obtained practitioner sample may not have been representative of the population of community pharmacists.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Berger, B. A.: 1993, ‘Building an Effective Therapeutic Alliance: Competence, Trustworthiness, and Caring’, Am J of Hosp Pharm 50, 2399-2403.
Bern, D. J., A. Allen: 1974, ‘On Predicting Some of the People Some of the Time: The Search for Cross-Sectional Consistencies in Behavior’, Psych Rev 81, 506-520.
Chatman, J. A.: 1989, ‘Improving Interactional Organizational Research: A Model of Person-Organization Fit’, Acad of Manage Rev 14, 333-349.
Churchill, G. A.: 1987, Marketing Research: Methodological Foundations (Rinehart and Winston, Holt, New York NY).
Cohen, J.: 1977, Statistical Power Analysis for Behavioral Sciences (Academic Press, New York, NY).
Davis-Blake, A. and J. Pfeffer: 1989, ‘Just a Mirage: The Search for Dispositional Effects in Organizational Research’, Acad of Manage Rev 14, 385-400.
Gibbs, J.: 1977, ‘Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Judgment: A Constructive Critique’, Harv Ed Rev, 43-61.
Gilligan, C.: 1982, In a Different Voice (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA).
Goyder, J. and J. Leiper: 1985, ‘The Decline in Survey Response: A Social Values Interpretation’, Soc 2, 55-71.
Hegarty, W. H. and H. P. Sims: 1978, ‘Some Determinants of Unethical Decision Behavior: An Experiment’, J of Applied Psy 63, 451-457.
Hepler, C. D. and L. M. Strand: 1990, ‘Opportunities and Responsibilities in Pharmaceutical Care’, Am J of Hosp Pharm 47, 533-543.
Jackofsky, E. F. and J. W. Slocum: 1987, ‘A Longitudinal Study of Climates’, J of Org Behav 9, 319-334.
Jansen, E. and M. A. Von Glinow: 1985, ‘Ethical Ambivalence and Organizational Reward Systems’, Acad of Manage Rev 10(4), 814-822.
Kerr, S.: 1975, ‘On the Folly of Rewarding A While Hoping for B’, Acad of Manage J 18, 769-783.
Kohlberg, L.: 1969, ‘Stage and Sequence: The Cognitive-Developmental Approach to Socialization’, in D. A. Goslin (ed.), Handbook of Socialization Theory and Research (Rand McNally, Chicago).
Krichbaum, K., M. Rowan, L. Duckett et al.: 1994, ‘The Clinical Evaluation Tool: A Measure of the Quality of Clinical Performance of Baccalaureate Nursing Students’, J Nurs Educ 33, 395-404.
Kuhn, D.: 1980, ‘Short-Term Longitudinal Evidence for the Sequentiality of Kohlberg's Early Staes of Moral Judgment’, Develop Psych, 162-166.
Latif, D. A., B. A. Berger, S. G. Harris, K. N. Barker, B. G. Felkey and R. E. Pearson: 1998, ‘The Relationship between Community Pharmacists' Moral Reasoning and Components of Clinical Performance’, J of Soc and Adm Pharm 15(3), 210-224.
Lyons, N.: 1982, Conceptions of Self and Morality and Modes of Moral Choice: Identifying Justice and Care in Judgments of Actual Moral Dilemmas, Unpublis hed doctoral dissertation, Harvard University.
MacKeigan, L. D. and W. F. McGhan: 1988, ‘Person-Role Conflict in Pharmacists: Its Relationship to Job Scope, Need for Achievement, and Propensity to Leave an Organization’, J of Mark & Manage 2(4), 3-23.
Mischel, W.: 1969, Personality and Assessment (Wiley, New York, NY).
Mischel, W.: 1977, ‘The Interaction of the Person and the Situation’, in D. Magnusson and N. S. Endler (eds.), Personality at Crossroads: Current Issues in Interactional Psychology (Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ).
Piaget, J.: 1932, The Moral Judgment of the Child (Free Press, New York).
Ponemon, L. A.: 1990, ‘Ethical Judgments in Accounting: A Cognitive-Developmental Perspective’, Crit Perspect in Acc, 191-215.
Ponemon, L. A.: 1992, ‘Ethical Reasoning and Selection-Socialization in Accounting’, Acc Org and Soc 17, 239-258.
Rest, J. R. and D. Narvaez: 1994, Moral Development in the Professions: Psychology and Applied Ethics (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ).
Rest, J. R.: 1986, Moral Development: Advances in Research and Theory (Praeger, New York).
Rest, J. R.: 1994, ‘Background: Theory and Research’, in D. Narvaez and J. R. Rest (eds.), Moral Development in the Professions: Psychology and Applied Ethics (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ), pp. 1-26.
Rest, J. R.: 1990, Manual for the Defining Issues Test (University of Minnesota, Minneapolis).
Salant, P. and D. A. Dillman: 1994, How to Conduct your Own Survey (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Ft. Worth).
Schulz, R. M. and H. J. Baldwin: 1990, ‘Chain Pharmacist Turnover’, J Soc Adm Pharm 7, 26-33.
Sheehan, T. J., S. D. Husted, D. Candee et al.: 1980, ‘Moral Judgment as a Predictor of Clinical Performance’, Eval Health Prof 8, 379-400.
Thoma, S. J., J. R. Rest and M. L. Davison: 1991, ‘Describing and Testing a Moderator of Moral Judgment and Action Relationship’, J of Person and Soc Psy 61(4), 659-669.
Trevino, L. K.: 1986, ‘Ethical Decision Making in Organizations: A Person-Situation Interactionist Model’, Acad Manage Rev 11, 601-617.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Latif, D.A. The Relationship Between Pharmacists' Tenure in the Community Setting and Moral Reasoning. Journal of Business Ethics 31, 131–141 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010771103427
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010771103427