Most analyses of whistleblowing are concerned with the whistleblower as an actor or with the act of whistleblowing itself. However, as soon as the whistleblower enters the public arena, a social dynamic emerges of interdependent actors with different responsibilities and different interests.Such a dynamic demands a more comprehensive approach in which the motives of the different actors in the public debate are taken into account.This approach is developed here using an exemplary case of whistleblowing that took place in a Dutch (...) research institute.The intensive media attention damaged both the institute and the whistleblower.In retrospect this could have been avoided.In our analysis we give extra attention to the motives involved and to the inevitability of media logic.In order to avoid unnecessary damage we recommend guidelines to the three basic actors:the whistleblower, the organization and the media. (shrink)

The authors propose the integrity capacity construct with its four dimensions (process, judgment, development and system dimensions) as a framework for analyzing and resolving behavioral, moral and legal complexity in business ethics' issues at the individual and collective levels. They claim that moral progress in business comes about through the increase in stakeholders who regularly handle moral complexity by demonstrating process, judgment, developmental and system integrity capacity domestically and globally.

It is well established within the ethics and institutional theory literatures that institutions can have conflicting logics with ethical dimensions and that there are solutions to the conflicts. Within institutional, ethics, and change leadership theory, quantitative, mixture solutions such as distributive solutions have been frequently considered. The ethics, institutional, and change leadership theory literatures have recognized that there are qualitative transformational solutions that are different than quantitative mixture solutions. However and for the most part, with the notable exception of the (...) Thornton et al. :801–843, 2012) typology of solutions, the institutional, change leadership, and ethics literatures have not considered typologies of transformational solutions. And more specifically with respect to this article, the institutional, change leadership, and ethics literatures have not considered different types of transformational solutions to institutional logic conflicts with ethical dimensions. This article: develops a typology of transformational solutions; applies the typology with historical examples of conflicting institutional ethics logics within factory, cultural, and institutional social change leadership cases; and, considers practical and theoretical implications for institutional ethics change leadership for achieving and/or resisting different types of transformational solutions. (shrink)

Organizational ethics and institutional theories are extended by recovering Weberian and Pre-Weberian theorizing that emphasized the joining of ethics and institutional theories. Understanding how ethics and institutional systems influence each other can advance our understanding of the nature and causes of structural organizational ethics issues and help guide potential reforms. We consider the interplay of these elements during the recession of 2008–2009, highlighting how structural ethics problems may have to be addressed at the institutional levels and not solely the individual (...) or organizational levels. (shrink)

This commentary proceeds as follows. First, it is argued from both ethical and legal perspectives through an analysis of Court precedents that Etzioni’s has improperly developed a too narrow First Amendment interpretation and conclusion that Apple should comply with the FBI’s demand to provide the FBI with a key to open iPhones. That is, broad First Amendment considerations and not solely narrow First Amendment “compelled speech” or only Fourth Amendment privacy issues are offered and analyzed from both ethical and legal (...) perspectives. A key point here is that broad First Amendment considerations protect, with exceptions, political and ethical discretion space for “Press” organizations to exercise, or not, ethical responsibilities, including rights to publish or not publish information and opinions, rather than compliance with government orders to publish or not publish. Further, Court cases are discussed from both legal and ethical perspectives where the Courts have established that social media organizations such as Facebook and Twitter do and should have broad First Amendment protection of free expression and peaceful assembly as traditional media such as newspapers have. It is suggested that Apple can and should be considered a social media organization. In addition, special First Amendment protection and limitations concerning national security are analyzed. Second, it is suggested that Etzioni’s point that Apple protected its clients soley for “business profitability” reasons is also a too narrow interpretation since there are more complex, mixed, and combined ethical and political-economic reasons for protecting clients and First Amendment protections. Third, the philosopher Paul Ricoeur’s ethics process responsibility framework concerning relationships between ethics and law and the need for an ethics responsibility rather than a compliance approach, which is similar to Brandeis’ legal ethics approach, is compared with and offered as an alternative to Etzioni’s compliance based “Liberal communitarian” approach. It is suggested that the difference between the Rocoeur and Etzioni approaches is similar to the difference between compliance and ethics responsibility process programs in organizations. (shrink)

Crisis management can be simultaneously a content specific problem solving process and an opportunity for stimulating and enabling an organizations ethical tradition. Crisis can be an opportunity for ethical organizational development. Kierkegaardian upbuilding dialog method builds from within the internal ethical tradition of an organization to respond to crises while simultaneously adapting and protecting the organizations tradition. The crisis itself may not be a directly ethical crisis, but the method of responding to the crisis is built upon the ethical foundations (...) of an organizations tradition. A limitation of this method is that it may be less applicable to organizations with questionably ethical traditions. The concept of upbuilding dialog is derived from Kierkegaard, but here is applied to organizational crisis management. The method is illustrated and discussed in the context of a wrongful death crisis of the Dana- Farber Cancer Institute, a nonprofit organization, and an economic survival crisis at Ben and Jerrys, a business organization. (shrink)

Crisis management can be simultaneously a content specific problem solving process and an opportunity for stimulating and enabling an organization's ethical tradition. Crisis can be an opportunity for ethical organizational development. Kierkegaardian "upbuilding" dialog method builds from within the internal ethical tradition of an organization to respond to crises while simultaneously adapting and protecting the organization's tradition. The crisis itself may not be a directly ethical crisis, but the method of responding to the crisis is built upon the ethical foundations (...) of an organization's tradition. A limitation of this method is that it may be less applicable to organizations with questionably ethical traditions. The concept of "upbuilding" dialog is derived from Kierkegaard, but here is applied to organizational crisis management. The method is illustrated and discussed in the context of a wrongful death crisis of the Dana- Farber Cancer Institute, a non-profit organization, and an economic survival crisis at Ben and Jerry's, a business organization. (shrink)

Action research is combined research and practical action where the researcher joins with and acts with practitioners to help improve practice and theory building. Action research can be a form of Aristotelian critical, ethical praxis that developmentally changes the action researcher and the external world. Bernstein’s and Eikeland’s interpretations of Aristotelian ethics praxis are considered. The Argyris et al. “action-science” and the van de Ven “engaged scholarship” forms of action research with their differently nuanced interpretations of Aristotelian philosophy as foundations (...) for action research are considered and compared as examples of action research as an ethics praxis method with respect to a key similarity with respect to joining of critical ethics and actionable knowledge; another key similarity with respect to action research practice that can developmentally change the action researcher and the external world; and a key difference with respect to academic literature versus practitioner-based theory building is also considered. Examples in the cases of the political economist and action researcher, Hirschmann’s “Exit,Voice, Loyalty” approach and Greenleaf’s “Servant Leadership” approach to action research as forms of Aristotelian critical, ethical praxis are analyzed. (shrink)

This study investigates how collective corruption appears, using a computational method. Specifically, acknowledging that the characteristics of collective corruption process are analogous to percolation phenomena, we illuminate that collective corruption is formed by ongoing social interactions in an organizational boundary. By formulating a percolation-based system dynamics model, we consider the behavioral characteristics of collective corruption in terms of individuals’ corruption preferences governed by personal attributes on corruption. We also propose and examine scenarios regarding the formation of collective corruption.

We focus on moral climates through case studies of three state owned enterprises (SOEs) in a South China City. In Company A, a shipbuilding company, the general manager persuaded the supervisory bureau to allow him to replace the old top management team with managers chosen on merit, and who supported his desire for reforms. He exercised transformational leadership, established internal rule of law, cultivated a spirited moral climate, and achieved turnaround. At Company B, a financial services conglomerate, the general manager (...) exploited strong political connections, enfeebled the governance structures, and with two subsidiary barons proceeded to milk company resources. That, and a large contingent of sleeping incumbents (idle protégés), bred a moral climate overrun by corruption, dereliction of duty and hubris. Bankruptcy was not averted. Hotel X, a subsidiary of company B, was a partial machine bureaucracy; its moral climate characterised by punishment avoidance and lack of spirit. A headquarters power bloc and the sleeping incumbents whom they protected prevented a law abiding, equity sensitive general manager from improving performance, and he lost heart. From these cases, we build a model of the relationship between moral leadership, institutional superstructure, internal governance and control systems, enterprise moral atmosphere, and performance. (shrink)

The paper discusses the limitations of engineering ethics as implemented in practice, with a focus on the fact that engineering and other activities are carried out without any consideration of whether the activities are themselves ethical, and on the gap between legality and ethics. This leads to the following three central ideas of the paper. The first is the need for engineers to both be aware of and critique their own values and be able to widen their perspective to that (...) of the ‘other’, i.e., marginalised and minority groups and the environment. This understanding of the ‘other’ and values is also applied to the discussion of ethical issues relating to minority world (‘developed’) country engineers working in majority world (‘developing’) countries. The second central idea is the fact that structural and contextual factors in the form of barriers and enablers affect ethical values and practices. Individuals are not necessarily unethical in themselves, but the context and organisational ethos may present barriers to ethical behaviour and encourage the development of unethical values. These barriers and enablers are investigated through a pilot survey. The third central idea is the relationship between individual and collective responsibility and the need for support to enable engineers to think and behave ethically. (shrink)

Most analyses of whistleblowing are concerned with the whistleblower as an actor or with the act of whistleblowing itself. However, as soon as the whistleblower enters the public arena, a social dynamic emerges of interdependent actors with different responsibilities and different interests.Such a dynamic demands a more comprehensive approach in which the motives of the different actors in the public debate are taken into account.This approach is developed here using an exemplary case of whistleblowing that took place in a Dutch (...) research institute.The intensive media attention damaged both the institute and the whistleblower.In retrospect this could have been avoided.In our analysis we give extra attention to the motives involved and to the inevitability of media logic.In order to avoid unnecessary damage we recommend guidelines to the three basic actors:the whistleblower, the organization and the media. (shrink)

New forms of information technology, such as email, webpages and groupware, are being rapidly adopted. Intended to improve efficiency and effectiveness, these technologies also have the potential to radically alter the way people communicate in organizations. The effects can be positive or negative. This paper explores how technology can encourage or discourage moral dialogue -- communication that is open, honest, and respectful of participants. It develops a framework that integrates formal properties of ideal moral discourse, based on Habermas' theory of (...) communicative action, with properties of informal communication that help sustain good moral conversations. Ten criteria distilled from these works form the basis of a template that can be used for assessing the positive and negative impacts of emerging information technologies on moral dialogue. (shrink)

Professors are increasingly encouraged to adopt multiple role relationships with their students. Regardless of professor intent, these relationships carry risks. Left unexamined is whether student–faculty social multiple relationships impact student in-class behaviors. Provocatively, our exploratory study provides empirical support suggesting that when undergraduate students perceive that their professors engage in the multiple faculty–student relationships of friendships, drinking relationships, and sexual partnerships, students report they are more likely to engage in uncivil behaviors in the professor’s classroom. Accordingly, our study provides a (...) backdrop against which to think more substantively about the professorial role and the boundaries that accompany it. (shrink)

This study focused on the indirect influences of defective higher education, especially management education, on the corruption of Japanese business communities since 1997. Most arrested or penalized Japanese executives and bureaucrats since 1997 were the alumni of prestigious Japanese universities. Their levels of academic achievements are, consequently, conceived to be the highest of Japanese standards. They were, however, found guilty. Why did these highly intelligent Japanese adults make such fatal mistakes? In this article, the author argued that the event of (...) the continuous exposure of scandals and corruptions in Japan since 1997 was an unintended consequence of Japan's educational systems through Habermasian and Foucaultian positions. (shrink)

This paper applies Wempe’s (2005, Business Ethics Quarterly 15(1), 113–135) boundary conditions that define the external and internal logics for contractarian business ethics theory, as a system of argumentation for evaluating current or prospective institutional arrangements for arriving at the “good life,” based on the principles and practices of social justice. It does so by showing that a more dynamic, process-oriented, and pluralist ‘dialogic twist’ to Donaldson and Dunfee’s (2003, ‘Social Contracts: sic et non’, in P. Heugens, H. van Oosterhout (...) and J. Vromen (eds.), The Social Institutions of Capitalism: Evolution and Design of Social Contracts (Cheltenham, UK, Edward Elgar Publishing, Ltd.) pp. 109–126; 1999, Ties that Bind: A Social Contracts Approach to Business Ethics (Boston, MA, Harvard Business School Press); 1995, Economics and Philosophy 11(1), 85–112; 1994, Academy of Management Review 19(2), 252–284.) integrated social contracting theory (ISCT) of economic ethics will further develop this promising and influential approach to moral reasoning, ethical decision-making, and stakeholder governance. This evolutionary, interactive learning-based model of ethical norm generation via dialogic stakeholder engagement is particularly appropriate within economic communities that are experiencing value conflict and pressures for institutional change. (shrink)