Measuring the moral entrepreneurial personality

The aim of this study was to describe the development of a moral entrepreneur scale. A 34 item Likert-type scale of the moral entrepreneur was constructed and shown to be free of socially desirable responses. Construct validity was evaluated by expert judges and, overall, was high. The other validity source was that groups of individuals known to be particularly high in the moral entrepreneurial personality scored higher on the moral-entrepreneur scale than did an unselected sample. The final source of validity on the moral-entrepreneur scale involved peer evaluations. Empirically, the moral-entrepreneur scale was shown to correlate positively with emotional intelligence and locus of control. The scale also correlated negatively with Machiavellianism. Factor analysis of responses for the three samples revealed a four- factor solution: creating awareness, resistance, anticipating, and mobilizing power.

Appreciation is due to anonymous reviewers.

Keywords: moral entrepreneur, scale, ethics, moral panic.

How can a society change its values? Changed experience, technological development and new information and circumstances in the world require new values. However, sometimes people continue to judge others by the same moral codes as previously, despite the fact that some of the values that made a contribution to human well-being in the past are no longer appropriate (Allott, 1991). Thus, finding the right values for changed conditions is a challenge for individuals. Posner (1999) regards those individuals who devote considerable time to causing people to change their values as moral entrepreneurs. They take advantage of the needs of the time to transform the public's attitudes toward specific issues, change legislation and attempt to "deviantize" others (Schur, 1971).

The studies on moral entrepreneurs can be divided into two categories - the scope of the problem and the scope of the moral entrepreneur's personality. The studies on the scope of the problem tend to concentrate on moral panic and related problems and pay much less attention to the scope of the personality of the moral entrepreneur. These studies examine the causes and effects of moral panic or related problems (e.g., Goode, 1993; Hall, Critcher, Jefforson, Clarke, & Roberts, 1978).

The studies on the scope of the moral entrepreneur's personality, on the other hand, have examined the influence of moral entrepreneurs' characters and their moral motivations together with the processes concerning judgment and behavior (e.g., Becker, 1963; Posner, 1999). The present study is based on the moral entrepreneur's personality. An attempt has been made in this study to define moral entrepreneur in terms of its component dimensions in order to construct adequate measures on the basis of the definition.

THE CRITERIA FOR A MORAL ENTREPRENEUR

Moral entrepreneurs are activists who attempt to persuade others to adhere to a particular value system. They are important individuals because of the extent to which they can, or do, anticipate potential moral threats to society, suggest clear and acceptable solutions for moral issues, create public awareness, mobilize power and because of the scope, type and quality of resistance they encounter (e.g., Becker, 1963; Ben-Yehuda, 1986; Teske, 1997).

Anticipating The process of anticipating moral threats is clearly critical to the success of moral entrepreneurs (Cohen, 1987). The determinants of the current moral issues in modern societies are only partly found in social and cultural backgrounds. Therefore, researchers suggest that these people use their cognitive image as a map of the future. The image of the future of a society includes what will happen, what might happen and what ought to happen. Moral entrepreneurs look for contradictory reasons and evidence in the light of new information to justify their beliefs (Goode & Ben-Yehuda, 1994). When moral entrepreneurs misinterpret moral issues or problems in a society or fail to anticipate what turns out to be important, they fail to create public awareness.

Creating Public Awareness To create awareness in people and to mobilize them requires effective communication. This needs to be tailored according to the knowledge and value system of others and using terms, stories and symbols that will be readily understood and accepted by them (Cohen, 1980). Furthermore, people cannot become responsible activists unless they know what the consequences of their acts will be. When the consequences of a moral problem fail to be anticipated by people, they tend to follow someone else who can explain and redirect their emotion (Bell, 1998). Moral entrepreneurs can understand the perspectives, emotions and values of others. This helps moral entrepreneurs to expand the conscious choices people have, so they can act more intelligently. On the other hand, moral entrepreneurs demonstrate high moral virtues such as justice, courage and honesty. They may break existing moral codes and cause a new form of rule to develop. Sometimes they may use their discretion to risk their lives to take action that results in even their death (Teske, 1997).