Ethical decision making: an examination of the impact of emotional intelligence and moral reasoning on school leaders

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This quantitative study examined the impact of emotional intelligence and moral reasoning on school leaders’ decision making. The Assessing Emotion Test (AES) measuring emotional intelligence, Defining Issues Test (DIT-2) measuring moral reasoning, the Adult Decision Making Competency (A-DMC) measuring decision making and a demographic questionnaire were administered to principals and assistant principals in nine school districts located in a small mid-Atlantic state in the United States. The measures were designed to test the relationship between emotional intelligence and decision making, as well as the relationship between moral reasoning and decision making. The study was anchored in the theoretical framework of authentic leadership, which suggests that one remains true to oneself by knowing who they are interpersonally, intrapersonally and developmentally. A correlation was conducted using SPSS to test the two independent variables, emotional intelligence and moral reasoning and the dependent variable decision making. The researcher sought to answer two research questions: 1) To what extent is there a relationship between emotional intelligence and ethical decision making? and 2) To what extent is there a relationship between moral reasoning and ethical decision making? The null hypotheses were accepted for each question. However, the relationship between moral reasoning and decision making was sufficiently strong to merit additional study. Moreover, the researcher noted that one variable from the demographics portion of the survey, age, was correlated with moral reasoning N2-score, which reports post-conventional thinking. However, a regression analysis showed that these relationships were not quite significant. While the correlation results were not at a level that yielded statistical significance, a duplication of the study accounting for a concerted effort to use additional portions of the Adult Decision Making Competency, might reach the threshold. The study also suggests that the impact of age on moral reasoning should be considered.

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