Abstract

The purpose of this workshop is to share our current work-in-progress and solicit feedback and ideas from our colleagues as we begin to design a research study based on a paper we presented at the 2005 Academy of Management conference, “The Ethical Implications of Power in Organizations.” Our paper examines the nexus of power and ethics in organizations, and how they are treated in the management, sociology, and psychology literature. Our discussion assumes a wide range of uses and abuses of power, including but not limited to sexual harassment, anti-labor practices, excessive executive compensation, manipulation of stock prices, discrimination, environmental degradation, etc. In addition we surface and discuss the assumptions, norms, paradoxes, and practices of power in organizations in relation to business ethics. We have clustered these into two levels: organizational and individual, while realizing the interaction effects.