Organizational ethics of care for employees: Scale development and validation (2021)

Ethics of care is central to public relations, and particularly to its most strategic and involved stakeholders: employees. Yet, it remains unclear as to how care should be conceptually defined and empirically evaluated. To address such a practical need and research void, we aim to provide an original, valid, and reliable measure of organizational care of ethics for employees. Specifically, we will adopt a multi-phase, mixed-method design that consists of in-depth interviews, expert review, and surveys. The finalized measurement will be tested in both the routine work context and an organizational crisis situation to ensure its generalizability. Our project contributes to the mission of the Page Center on studying and advancing “ethics and responsibility in corporate communication” by making a convincing case for the potential of ethics of care as a theoretical and philosophically based construct with strong practical implications for public relations.