Abstract

The corporate scandals of the twenty-first century have necessitated ethical behavior as a major component of the organizational process. These scandals occurred despite the ethical rules and laws in place, implying that rules and laws might not be effective in ensuring the ethical behavior of organizational participants at all times. Hence, a better approach to handling ethical decisions may be virtue ethics which demand the building of ethical character that intrinsically drives ethical behavior. Prudence was studied as a virtue which builds character and can moderate ethical behavior. The moderating role of prudence was studied in the context of organizational political behavior. Employee political behavior in organizations can have either positive or negative consequences; hence, it is in the realm of ethical decision-making. Since studies have not identified how individuals can self-regulate their desire for political behavior, the study proposed political prudence, a character-building virtue, as a self-regulating variable which can be used by individuals to avoid drifting to the dark side of political behavior. The study participants were drawn from three organizations in Lagos, Nigeria, and a cross-sectional research design was adopted for data collection. The results confirmed that political prudence moderated the effects of political will on political behavior such that individuals engaged in benevolent political will and avoided self-serving political will. The importance of the findings is that organizations have a means of steering participants away from the dark side to the bright side of political behavior which is useful for productivity.