Skip to Main Content
HBS Home
  • About
  • Academic Programs
  • Alumni
  • Faculty & Research
  • Baker Library
  • Giving
  • Harvard Business Review
  • Initiatives
  • News
  • Recruit
  • Map / Directions
Faculty & Research
  • Faculty
  • Research
  • Featured Topics
  • Academic Units
  • …→
  • Harvard Business School→
  • Faculty & Research→
Publications
Publications
  • September–October 2022
  • Article
  • Organization Science

Seeking Purity, Avoiding Pollution: Strategies for Moral Career Building

By: Erin Reid and Lakshmi Ramarajan
  • Format:Print
  • | Pages:29
ShareBar

Abstract

This study builds theory on how people construct moral careers. Analyzing interviews with 102 journalists, we show how people build moral careers by seeking jobs that allow them to fulfill both the institution’s moral obligations and their own material aims. We theorize a process model that traces three common moral claiming strategies that people use over time: conventional, supplemental, and reoriented. Using these strategies, people accept or alter purity and pollution rules, identify appropriate jobs, and orient themselves to specific audiences for validation of their moral claims. People’s careers are punctuated by reckonings that cause them to reconsider how their strategies fulfill their moral and material aims. Experiences of gender and racial discrimination, access to alternate occupational identities, and timing of entry into the occupation also shape people’s movement between strategies. Over time, people combine these moral claiming strategies in different ways such that varying moral careers emerge within the same occupation. Overall, our study shows how people can build moral careers by actively revising purity and pollution rules while holding fast to institutional moral obligations. By theorizing careers as an ongoing series of moral claiming strategies, this research contributes novel ideas about how morals weave through and organize relationships between people, careers, and institutions.

Keywords

Personal Development and Career; Moral Sensibility

Citation

Reid, Erin, and Lakshmi Ramarajan. "Seeking Purity, Avoiding Pollution: Strategies for Moral Career Building." Organization Science 33, no. 5 (September–October 2022): 1909–1937.
  • Read Now

About The Author

Lakshmi Ramarajan

Organizational Behavior
→More Publications

More from the Authors

    • January 2023
    • Faculty Research

    Mellody Hobson at Ariel Investments

    By: Lakshmi Ramarajan and Francesca Gino
    • January 2023 (Revised March 2023)
    • Faculty Research

    Identity, Power, and Influence

    By: Lakshmi Ramarajan
    • January 2023
    • Faculty Research

    Nadine Vogel: Transforming the Marketplace, Workplace, and Workforce for People with Disabilities

    By: Lakshmi Ramarajan and Rachel Tropp
More from the Authors
  • Mellody Hobson at Ariel Investments By: Lakshmi Ramarajan and Francesca Gino
  • Identity, Power, and Influence By: Lakshmi Ramarajan
  • Nadine Vogel: Transforming the Marketplace, Workplace, and Workforce for People with Disabilities By: Lakshmi Ramarajan and Rachel Tropp
ǁ
Campus Map
Harvard Business School
Soldiers Field
Boston, MA 02163
→Map & Directions
→More Contact Information
  • Make a Gift
  • Site Map
  • Jobs
  • Harvard University
  • Trademarks
  • Policies
  • Accessibility
  • Digital Accessibility
Copyright © President & Fellows of Harvard College