Abstract

Apart from their responsibility to serve the goals of their organization, employees also have a personal and professional responsibility to work ethically. Ideally, these responsibilities of employee, professional and person coexist in harmony, but in practice they can also be at odds with one another.As members of a profession with a collective professional morality, professionals are expected to follow their own moral judgement about how to work. They have professional moral autonomy. This independent capacity to judge should be considered as their moral capital. If companies create free space for internal ethical debate and dialogue, this professional moral capital can improve the corporate moral climate and lead to business-ethical gains. In companies that create such space, the voice of potential whistle-blowers will be taken seriously, and the risk that problems of many hands occur might diminish. Business ethics should, thus, acknowledge the importance of the personal and professional moral responsibility of employees in business.