| MORAL CONSISTENCY OR MORAL BALANCE? A TEST USING ENTREPRENEURS’ DONATIONS FROM CHINESE PRIVATE FIRMS |
Received:September 15, 2017 Revised:September 15, 2017 |
Key Words: Donation; moral consistency; moral balance; social comparison; entrepreneur; status |
| Author Name | Affiliation | | GUANGXI ZHANG* | Zhejiang University of Technology |
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Abstract: |
| This study intends to resolve the debate between moral consistency and moral balance in the setting of entrepreneur donations. Given that both theories have received strong empirical evidence in separate literature, the key to understand the boundary conditions is to scrutinize their theoretical meanings and application domains. It is proposed in this paper that moral consistency corresponds with the absolute level of morality, while moral balance captures the relative level of morality centering on a baseline. Study 1 is an experiment using an online subject pool, finding that a high absolute donation leads to another high absolute donation in the next time point; in addition, an increase in donation is likely followed by a decrease in donation. Study 2 used archive data on charity lists ranking donations from Chinese entrepreneurs from private firms. It was found that the entrepreneurs who contributed high donations in year t were likely to provided high donations in year t+1, providing an evidence for moral consistency at absolute level. But an increase/decrease in donations compared with the last year was likely to induce a decrease/increase in donation in the next year, lending support to moral balance at relative level. Interestingly, moral balance was regulated by the social comparison information (i.e., status and status change) in charity lists. Implications for theories on moral balance, social comparison, and status are discussed. |
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