The concept of moral identity has gained considerable theoretical and empirical traction since Augusto Blasi (1983) used the term in his Self Model of Moral Functioning over 20 years ago. Since then, a number of scholars (Aquino & Reed, 2002; Colby & Damon, 1992; Hoffman, 2000; Lapsley & Narvaez, 2004) have expanded on Blasi's ideas, and the collected papers in this volume testify to the variety and richness of these perspectives. In this chapter, we contribute to the ongoing conversation about the role of moral identity in guiding moral action by presenting a social-cognitive model that we apply to the domain of business. As researchers whose areas of study are organizational behavior and marketing, we are convinced that the concept of moral identity holds enormous promise for broadening our understanding of how moral constructs and concerns influence business activities, ranging from negotiations, leadership, and teamwork, to strategic decision making, advertising, and consumer behavior. Our aim is to take moral identity from its roots in developmental psychology and apply it to a new arena where moral decisions – questions about right and wrong – are unavoidable, and where people often have to make difficult tradeoffs among competing and equally compelling moral values.

The outline of our chapter is as follows. First, we briefly review the social-cognitive perspective on moral identity, highlighting a conception proposed by Aquino and Reed (2002) that defines moral identity in terms of its self-importance. Second, we present a model that situates moral identity within a network of other constructs that have been shown by prior theory and research to be related to moral behavior.