The Creation of the Workplace Social Courage Scale (WSCS): An Investigation of Internal Consistency, Psychometric Properties, Validity, and Utility

Purpose The current article reviews extant knowledge on courage and identifies a dimension of courage relevant to modern organizations, social courage, which is an (a) intentional, (b) deliberate, and (c) altruistic behavior that (d) may damage the actor’s esteem in the eyes of others. Through a multiple-study process, quantitative inferences are derived about social courage, and the Workplace Social Courage Scale (WSCS) is created. Design Four studies using seven samples analyze the WSCS’s psychometric properties, internal consistency, method effects, discriminant validity, convergent validity, concurrent validity, and utility. Many of these are investigated or replicated in largely working adult samples. Findings Each aspect of the WSCS approaches or meets specified guidelines. Also, social courage is significantly related to organizational citizenship behaviors, and the construct may relate to many other important workplace outcomes. Implications The current study is among the first to quantitatively demonstrate the existence of courage as a construct, and the discovered relationships are the first statistical inferences about social courage. Future research and practice can now apply the WSCS to better understand the impact of social courage within the workplace. Originality Despite many attempts, no author has created a satisfactory measure of courage, and the current article presents the first successful measure through focusing on a particular courage dimension—social courage. Future research should take interest in the created measure, the WSCS, as its application can derive future inferences about courage and social courage.