Resolving to be More Moral

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by David Hagenbuch - professor of marketing at Messiah University -
​author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing -
author of Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick 

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With a new year come resolutions, often aimed at life-changing actions like exercising more and working less. Any effort to become the best version of ourselves is commendable, so why haven’t we heard this resolution? “In 2025, I want to be more ethical.”
 
As 2024 ended, it was interesting to read articles that curated top headlines from the prior twelve months, which reminded us of major life-altering and world-shaping events. Like other years, 2024 saw continued war and devastating natural disasters, and who can forget the contentious U.S. presidential election or the inspiring Paris Olympics?
 
Certain people commanded news coverage in good ways, while others did for the wrong reasons:

• P-Diddy was accused of sex trafficking that involved drug-fueled orgies. 
• Luigi Mangione has been charged with the murder of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO.
• Former U.S. congressman Matt Gaetz purportedly paid tens of thousands of dollars to women for sex and drugs, including to a minor. 
• Dominique Pelicot was sentenced in France to 20 years in prison for drugging and abusing his then wife while also inviting dozens of strangers to rape her.
• A fifteen-year-old girl in Madison Wisconsin reportedly killed a fellow student and a teacher.

 
Regrettably, poor moral choices weren’t restricted to individuals. Several large companies pooled employee maleficence, leading to these newsworthy corporate scandals:

• Mineral water producer Perrier utilized banned water purification processes.
• Commodity trader Trifugura engaged in data manipulation, inflated payments, and concealing overdue receivables – fraud that will account for approximately $1.1 billion in losses.
• The U.S. Justice Department found multinational software company SAP guilty of bribery in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), fining the company $220 million. 
• The U.S. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) fined the Netherlands affiliate of accounting giant KPMG $25 million for cheating on mandatory internal training exams. 

 
Of course, there were also millions of other unscrupulous acts that were too trivial to be newsworthy or that evaded public scrutiny for other reasons. However, in terms of morality, 2024 was not much different than 2023, and 2025, unfortunately, probably won’t see significant improvement.
 
So, given people’s proclivity to mess up and our perennial need for moral development, why don’t individuals make New Year’s resolutions to be more ethical?
 
Of the many plausible explanations, here are several that are most likely:

• People don’t see a need: If asked if they’re ethical, most people would probably respond that they are, which by and large is true. Although we all make mistakes, it’s likely a small percentage of people who commit unethical acts routinely.
• It’s a very broad pledge: Without a detailed action plan, it’s hard to even begin to approach such a far-reaching and expansive goal, i.e., “It’s a good objective, but how exactly do I accomplish it?”
• It’s difficult to measure: At year’s end, how does one know if they’ve been more ethical? The goal’s ambiguity and lack of clear benchmarks make it hard to easily see success. How exactly do you quantify and appraise ethical behavior?
• It’s daunting: Possible failure is likely why many potential resolutions never occur. No one likes to fall short of goals, particularly if they share them with other people.

 
That said, the most challenging goals are sometimes the most worthwhile ones, which is certainly the case for ethics. As rational, caring humans, we should want:

• To be the best version of ourselves, which connects closely to our moral choices
• To be true to our values and employ consistency across moral decisions
• To be good stewards of our actions, realizing their impact on others, including on our family, friends, the organizations we serve, as well as on our world.
• To avoid the major moral meltdowns described above that profoundly altered individuals lives and/or came at tremendous costs to organizations.

 
Fortunately, most people don’t face significant ethical choices each day. However, moral dilemmas are unpredictable: They’re like tornados that can arise with little warning and quickly become severe.

 
People who live in Tornado Alley understand the uncertainty and danger of the weather, so many there take necessary precautions and “have a safety plan in place.”
 
We each should follow that example and have a plan for moral decision-making, so when issues arise, we’re ready for them. Such a plan should involve specific actions like:

• Adopting a model for ethical decision-making, i.e., a set of moral standards that can be used for any ethical dilemma.
• Keeping ethics top-of-mind by reading thought-provoking opinion pieces and engaging with others who are interested in moral decision-making
• Enlisting others to act as sounding boards for our decisions and to help hold us accountable
• Making moral choices preemptively, or deciding before we actually need to decide.

 
These are several of the specific action steps I unpack in the final chapter of my new book (shameless plug), Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick.

  
Yes, we should resolve to make more moral choices, but do such resolutions really help? The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), which I used for my doctoral dissertation and hundreds of other researchers also have used successfully, suggests that they do.

According to the TPB, our intentions are the main determinant of our behavior. There are very few actions people take that they don’t first intend to take.
 
Have you made a New Year’s resolution? Any time of year is a good time to resolve to act ethically. Doing so brings many benefits, including more “Mindful Marketing.”

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Check out the book, Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick