Moral beacons: Understanding moral character and moral influence.

Objective: We introduce the concept of moral beacons-individuals who are higher in moral character than their peers and prominent within their social environment-and examine the degree to which moral beacons increase the moral awareness of their peers.

Background: Using data from cohorts of students in graduate business education across two universities, we applied theory and methods from organizational behavior, personality psychology, and social networks analysis to test two research questions about moral beacons.

Method: We used latent profile analysis of data from personality questionnaires and social network surveys completed by graduate business students at two universities (N = 502) to identify individuals classified as moral beacons.