A theological context of work from the Catholic Social Encyclical Tradition

This article draws upon 100 years of writings which are referred to as the Catholic Social Tradition (CST). Using this tradition as a guide, the nature of work is explored along with the principles and virtues which vitalize the deepest dimension of work — how it affects the dignity of the human person. It develops five operational ethical principles which can be applied to questions of workplace ethics. Organizational policies and programs that seem consistent with CST are also discussed.Michael Naughton is Assistant Professor of Management and Theology at the University of St. Thomas (MN). Dr. Naughton's major research interest involves examining the influence and application of religious values on employees and the workplace environment.Gene R. Laczniak is Professor of Business in the Department of Marketing at Marquette University. His primary research interests focus on the social influence of business activities on society as well as marketing strategy.     

The Rehabilitation of Adam Smith for Catholic Social Teaching

Catholic Social Teaching (CST) takes a rather cautious view toward the value of the ideas of Adam Smith, due to his emphasis on negative political and economic liberty. Detractors of Smith within CST point to what they consider to be deficiencies within his works: an impoverished moral anthropology, a lack of concern for the common good, and markets untethered to human needs. Defenders of Smith within CST tend to emphasize the material benefits that derive from Smithian institutions, such as economic growth, improvements in standards of living, and the new opportunities that arise from cultures focused on innovation. This paper argues that Smith’s ideas have real value for CST. However, this value primarily lies in his moral psychology. While not denying the dangers of business activity for our moral lives, Smith also helps us to understand the possibility of the moral corruption of those who wield political power, thus providing an indirect defense of political and economic liberty that coheres with important Christian ethical notions found in CST. This is the case even though CST does not consistently recognize concerns surrounding the dangers of wielding political power—and thus Smith’s arguments offer real challenges to CST as well. This paper further suggests that these basic insights are relevant regardless of one’s favored institutional arrangements.     

Editorial: Special Issue on the Impact of Business Ethics on Public Life

Even though management scholars have offered several views on the process of corporate sustainability, these efforts have focused mainly on the technical aspects of sustainability while omitting the fundamental role played by individual moral competences. Therefore, previous work offers an incomplete and somewhat reductionist view of corporate sustainability. In this article, we develop a holistic framework of corporate sustainability in which both the moral and technical aspects of sustainability are considered. We do so by integrating the ethical, normative perspective of the Catholic social teaching (CST) with the competitive view of the natural resource-based view. This framework highlights the importance of CST principles and ideas in developing executive moral competences such as moral sensitivity and awareness, and moral cognition and motivation. Moral competences, in turn, influence the organizational selection of environmental strategies, giving leaders the intrinsic motivation to promote both a longer-term stance on corporate sustainability efforts and a relentless search for greener business models. Such strategies move the firm closer towards achieving environmental sustainability. Hence, by bridging the individual, normative-ethical with the organizational, implementational levels of corporate sustainability, our framework provides a more realistic, coherent, and complete perspective on the complex process of achieving corporate sustainability.     

Nurturing the Whole Person: The Ethics of Workplace Spirituality in a Society of Organizations

In a world which can be increasingly described as a “society of organizations,” it is incumbent upon organizational researchers to account for the role of organizations in determining the well-being of societies and the individuals that comprise them. Workplace spirituality is a young area of inquiry with potentially strong relevance to the well-being of individuals, organizations, and societies. Previous literature has not examined ethical dilemmas related to workplace spirituality that organizations might expect based upon the co-existence of multiple ethical work climates, nor has previous literature accounted for the relevance of the cosmopolitan (external, societal) source of moral reasoning in the ethical treatment of workplace spirituality. The purpose of this paper is to address these gaps by articulating two such ethical dilemmas related to workplace spirituality: the “quiet desperation” dilemma and the instrumentality dilemma. Moreover, I propose two theoretical contexts that foster “both-and” rather than “either-or” thinking, thereby mitigating (moderating) the relationships between climate combinations and conflictual aspects of the ethical dilemmas. For the “quiet desperation” dilemma, I propose a person–organization fit perspective to emphasize diversity of individual preferences instead of a managerially prescribed uniformity of spirituality. For the instrumentality dilemma, I propose a multiparadigm approach to workplace spirituality research to avoid the privileging of one research interest over another (e.g., instrumentality, individual fulfillment, societal good). I conclude with suggestions for future research.     

Moral Emotions and Ethics in Organisations: Introduction to the Special Issue

The aim of our special issue is to deepen our understanding of the role moral emotions play in organisations as part of a wider discourse on organisational ethics and morality. Unethical workplace behaviours can have far-reaching consequences—job losses, risks to life and health, psychological damage to individuals and groups, social injustice and exploitation and even environmental devastation. Consequently, determining how and why ethical transgressions occur with surprising regularity, despite the inhibiting influence of moral emotions, has considerable theoretical and practical significance to management scholars and managers alike. In this introduction, we present some of the core arguments in the field; notably, the effect of organisational life and bureaucracy on emotions, in general, and moral emotions, in particular; the moral standing of leaders, managers and followers; moral challenges raised by obedience and resistance to organisational power and ethical blindspots induced by what may appear as deeply moral emotions. These issues are explored by a collection of geographically diverse articles in various work contexts, which are thematically organised in terms of (i) moral emotions, ethical behaviour and social pressure, (ii) moral emotions and their consequences within/across levels of analysis, (iii) psychoanalytic perspectives on the management of moral emotions, (iv) virtue and moral emotions and (v) moral emotions and action tendencies. We end by suggesting certain avenues for future research in the hope that the endeavour initiated here will inspire improved practice at work.     

Corporate Social Responsibility Through a Feminist Lens: Domestic Violence and the Workplace in the 21st Century

Domestic violence is a serious issue, and the costs for business of failing to address the impacts of domestic violence in the workplace are high. New technologies and economic shifts towards services sector industries are fast dissolving the boundaries between the workplace and the home in many national labor markets. Moreover, companies are now expected to meet higher standards of behavior in fulfilling their responsibilities to employees and wider society. These developments present challenges for ethical reasoning about the limits of employer responsibility in relation to domestic violence. While a number of possible approaches have something to contribute, this paper argues that feminist theories provide the most useful framework for ethical reasoning about the issues domestic violence raises for business organizations. The practical value of such reasoning is then illustrated by applying the organizing framework developed by Yuan et al. (J Bus Ethics 101:75—92, 2011) to examine how recurring domestic violence-related initiatives can be integrated as routine practices in firm operations. The paper thus provides a structured qualitative study of theory and practice for dealing with the impacts of domestic violence in the workplace.     

Weight Discrimination in the American Workplace: Ethical Issues and Analysis

Research providing consistent evidence of pervasive discrimination against overweight job applicants and employees in the American workplace raises important questions for organizational stakeholders. To what extent is the disparate treatment of job applicants or employees based on their weight ethically justified? Are there aspects of weight discrimination that make it more acceptable than discrimination based on other characteristics, such as race or gender? What operational steps can employers take to address concerns regarding the ethical treatment of overweight individuals in the workplace? This article investigates these and related questions. Its purpose is to provide information and analysis that will assist organizations in formulating ethical responses to a widespread phenomenon: weight discrimination in the workplace. Although its focus is the American workplace, the proposed employer ethical obligations and the practical guidance that is provided are viewed as generalizing across countries and cultures.     

Developing Reflective Students: Evaluating the Benefits of Learning Logs within a business Ethics Programme

The paper presents a rationale for the inclusion of a learning log within a business ethics programme drawing on the results of a pilot with a group of undergraduate students. Learning logs were found to serve as a valuable means of helping students connect theory with familiar working practice and also enabled them to reflect on their own personal development and understanding of ethics over time. Comparison between the first and final log entries indicate that students were able to critically re-evaluate many of their initial assumptions about business ethics. While the first log entries were characterised by scepticism and relativist attitudes to business ethics, the final entry indicated that many students now rejected the notion that ethics are only relevant to private life. Moreover, there was evidence of increased understanding of the scope of ethical issues and the complexity of decision-making. Critical workplace incidents, reported in the third log entry, illustrated a wide range of ethical dilemmas facing young and inexperienced service workers. Integrating the use of such critical incidents, written from the perspective of a front-line worker, within a business ethics programme may also serve as a valuable counter-weight to the traditional emphasis on large corporate case studies which cast students in the role of a middle or senior manager.     

You May Not Reap What You Sow: How Employees’ Moral Awareness Minimizes Ethical Leadership’s Positive Impact on Workplace Deviance

Although a growing body of research has shown the positive impact of ethical leadership on workplace deviance, questions remain as to whether its benefits are consistent across all situations. In this investigation, we explore an important boundary condition of ethical leadership by exploring how employees’ moral awareness may lessen the need for ethical leadership. Drawing on substitutes for leadership theory, we suggest that when individuals already possess a heightened level of moral awareness, ethical leadership’s role in reducing deviant actions may be reduced. However, when individuals lack this strong moral disposition, ethical leadership may be instrumental in inspiring them to reduce their deviant actions. To enhance the external validity and generalizability of our findings, the current research used two large field samples of working professionals in both Turkey and the USA. Results suggest that ethical leadership’s positive influence on workplace deviance is dependent upon the individual’s moral awareness—helpful for those employees whose moral awareness is low, but not high. Thus, our investigation helps to build theory around the contingencies of ethical leadership and the specific audience for whom it may be more (or less) influential.     

The Third Eye: Exploring Guanxi and Relational Morality in the Workplace

We examine the use of Confucian relational morality as an alternative reference point to that of modernist morality in judging workplace ethical conduct. A semi-structured interview based study involving 46 ethnic Chinese managers and 30 non-Chinese expatriate managers in Singapore, provided evidence of the use of traditional guanxi-linked morality as a moral resource by some of the former group in judging workplace ethical dilemmas. While such morality played only a minor role in moral reasoning, and was largely overshadowed by modernist morality, the research nonetheless demonstrates that moral reasoning reflects wider cultural heritage, and is not merely a function of corporate culture and individual moral development.     

Sweated Labor as a Social Phenomenon Lessons from the 19th Century Sweatshop Discussion

The ongoing controversy about sweatshop labor has mainly focused on economic, on the one, and ethical aspects, on the other side. While proponents of sweatshop labor have argued that low wages would attract foreign investments, would create new workplace opportunities and thus improve economic welfare in less-developed countries, opponents of sweatshop labor argue that such treatment of laborers would violate their dignity, and they prompt western buyers to stop this kind of exploitation. However, the arguments in this debate are not new. As we will show, they can be traced back to the early “sweatshop” debate between social reformers and classical liberals in the 19th century. Interestingly, the 19th century debate identified sweatshop labor not as an industrial system but as a social phenomenon which becomes more likely when several social preconditions are fulfilled. It will be shown that the social preconditions identified in this debate determine working conditions till today and can be used to identify industries were sweatshop labor is more likely than in others—even in western countries.

     

A Study of Why Anomic Employees Harm Co-workers: Do Uncompassionate Feelings Matter?

Although anomic feelings have been found to lead employees to unethical performance, little is known about why this relationship is possible. The aim of this study is to test a compassion-based explanation of why anomic employees harm co-workers by displaying interpersonal deviance. The prediction is made that once sociological anomie (from the Greek, an-: absence, and -nomos: law) enters organizations in the form of employees’ private feelings of anomie—i.e., “anomia”—, this anomia will individually move staff to be uncompassionate in the workplace. Three uncompassionate feelings toward co-workers are then hypothesized to mediate the relationship between anomia and interpersonal deviance: (i) negative judgments about others, (ii) over-identification, and (iii) isolation. Data were collected from 280 employees at ten hotels in the Canary Islands (Spain). The results indicated that (a) anomia was significantly and positively linked to uncompassionate feelings and interpersonal deviance, (b) but only negative judgments about others mediated the anomia effects on interpersonal deviance. Findings suggest to managers that by spreading ethical standards that discourage negative judgments about others in the workplace, they can neutralize the mechanisms leading anomia to interpersonal deviance.     

The Moderated Influence of Ethical Leadership,Via Meaningful Work,on Followers’ Engagement,Organizational Identification,and Envy

This study examines a proposed model whereby ethical leadership positively influences the level of meaning followers experience in their work, which in turn positively impacts followers’ levels of work engagement and organizational identification, as well as reduces their levels of workplace envy. We further hypothesized that cognitive reappraisal strategies for emotional regulation would moderate the ethical leadership–meaningful work relationship. The model was tested in a stratified random field sample of 440 employees and their direct supervisors in the aviation industry in Turkey. Results based on data collected at two points in time showed that ethical leadership has a significant and positive direct effect on engagement and organizational identification, as well as indirect effects on those two outcomes through meaningfulness. Finally, results show that ethical leadership has a significant negative direct effect on workplace envy. Further, results showed that cognitive reappraisal emotion regulation strategy positively moderates, i.e., strengthens, the relationship between ethical leadership and meaningful work.     

Ethical perceptions of business students in a New Zealand university: do gender,age and work experience matter?

Ethical issues at the workplace have once again become topical and important due to considerable adverse publicity surrounding reports of unethical business practices by corporate managers. Accordingly, this paper re‐visits the question of whether gender, age and work experience do have an effect on ethical judgement, using 655 business students as respondents. This is necessary as business students are likely to become managers during their career and will face complex ethical concerns and dilemmas in their daily, routine affairs. The findings currently demonstrate that females are more ethically aware than their male counterparts – that is, there are differences between males and females regarding ethical judgement. There is also evidence to suggest that age is a factor that does impact on ethical judgement. However, we also found evidence to suggest that in some cases, the age factor does not necessarily have a significant impact on ethical awareness. The results further indicate that there is a difference in ethical judgement related to work experience. However, at the same time, in one question there is no evidence to suggest the claim that work experience does impact significantly on ethical judgement. Overall, it appears that ethical awareness does increase alongside work experience.     

Portraying ethical reasoning in Islamic banking: Addressing the role of work experience

This study aims to examine the ethical dimensions of Islamic bankers, with a reference to the factors influencing decision-making behavior related to ethical issues based on al-Ghazali's ethical philosophy. The findings reveal the manner in which Islamic banking practitioners brace themselves into situations that warrant the use of reason in making decisions related to ethical issues, where desires tend to dominate human choices. While the guidance of divine knowledge has been found to be ineffective in decision-making, the element of satanic force was found to significantly influence this process. The insignificant heterogeneous effect of work experience suggests that banking authorities should intensify the capacity building in the area of ethical teachings and the foundation of Islamic faith, regardless of the job tenure of employees. This study contributes to the growing literature on the ethical aspects in Islamic banking and organizational behavior by offering important implications for understanding and refining the ethical stance related to Islamic banking practices based on the Islamic perspective.     

Ethical decision‐making in Islamic financial institutions in light of Maqasid Al‐Sharia: A conceptual framework

This article develops a conceptual framework for ethical decision‐making in Islamic financial institution based on the Islamic methodological approaches on ethics. While making use of the similarities between the scientific method and the Islamic jurisprudence method, a framework is developed by means of argumentation and reasoning to integrate Sharia doctrines with the “plan, do, check and act” (PDCA) cycle as a managerial tool. Using Al‐Raysuni's analysis of Al‐Shatibi's work on maqasid al‐sharia, this article develops a framework to assess the ethical aspects of Islamic financial operations, which is then applied to hypothetical cases. This approach can help overcome the methodological deficiencies in measuring ethical performance in Islamic finance by focusing on the process of ethical decision‐making that leads to the outcomes of organizational behavior beyond legality of contracts. The framework outlines the conditions under which an activity that is considered legal and permissible contractually could lead to outcomes that can make it ethical or unethical.     

Workplace Spirituality as a Precursor to Relationship-Oriented Selling Characteristics

Very few studies have looked upon the construct of workplace spirituality in sales organization context. This paper integrates workplace spirituality with sales literature. The paper points out that self-interest transcendence is a common aspect in the workplace spirituality concept which emerged a decade ago and in most of the relationship-oriented selling characteristics—customer orientation, adaptability, service orientation, and ethical selling behavior. Based on the common aspect of self-interest transcendence, we propose that workplace spirituality could be a causal precursor to relationship-oriented selling characteristics. We present guidelines for future research, implications for practice and a few potential downsides of workplace spirituality in sales organization.     

Can Ethical Behaviour Really Exist in Business

Our soft survey reveals that the assumption underlying much of the business ethics literature -- that the conduct of business can and ought to support the social good -- is not accepted within the workplace. This paper considers an apparent dichotomy, with companies investing in ethical programs whose worth their employees and managers question. We examine the relationship between work, bureaucracy and "the market" and conclude that employees often question the existence of business ethics because there is no good and bad between which to choose. The choice is between success and failure. A common view of success and the "good life" is one determined by hard work in a well-organised company operating in a free market. Analysing the three aspects of this view (the free market, hard work, bureaucracy) we suggest these are mere fictions. A major problem we identify in business is that organisations are designed as profit making mechanisms and have no interest in the good of society. The challenge is to convince such organisations that a direct benefit accrues to them through their own ethical behaviour. In order to do this organisations must first be shown the importance of long termism. Executives, managers and other employees can be expected to attain high ethical standards only when they feel they are a integral part of an organisation and the organisation itself respects those standards. One of the keys to unravelling the undesirable situation of a perceived absence of ethics in business is in encouraging a greater identity community, company and workforce. We provide some examples of ways companies can meet the challenge of encouraging more ethical, long-sighted behaviour. In addition, we highlight ways in which the expectations of the organisations of the organisation can be communicated more strongly through corporate structures that foster ethical action that benefits the long term interests of the individual and the organisation. Overall implementing a successful ethical program is shown to parallel that of the implementation of a quality program.     

The organizational bases of ethical work climates in lodging operations as perceived by general managers

The focus of this research concentrated on ascertaining the presence of ethical climate types and the level of analysis from which ethical decisions were based as perceived by lodging managers. In agreement with Victor and Cullen (1987, 1988), ethical work climates are multidimensional and multi-determined. The results of this study indicated that: (a) benevolence is the predominate dimension of ethical climate present in the lodging organization as perceived by lodging managers, and (b) the local level of analysis (e.g. immediate workplace norms and values) is the predominate determinant of ethical decisions in the organization.The implication of this study is that the knowledge gained from understanding that ethical decision making in an organization is multidimensional and multi-determined will foster understanding of ethical decision formation in the organizational context.Randall S. Upchurch has a rich lodging industry background that encompasses 16 years of practical experience ranging from front office operations to hotel general management. He received his Ph.D. in May of 1993. He is the author of a text entitled Lodging Marketing. Sheila K. Ruhland is Assistant Professor of Marketing Education in the College of Education at the University of Missouri — Columbia. Her research interests are in area of workplace ethics, workforce issues, leadership development. She has conducted a seminar on Ethics and has published articles in the Marketing Educators' Journal, and Journal of Vocational Education Research.