The Responsibility to Lie and the Obligation to Report

This article is an examination of the moral complexity of the act of whistleblowing in the context of corporate corruption. Whistleblowing may be a morally admirable act underataken by morally ambiguous agents, but can only be fully understood in context. Using German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s essay “What Does It Mean to Tell the Truth?” This essay will examine how the kind of deception sometimes necessary in whistleblowing cases can be testimony to a larger and more profound truth.     

Color me moral: White and black product colors influence prosocial behaviors

There are “moral meanings” that people ascribe to objects in white and black colors. Namely, it seems that people have been conditioned to see objects in white color as potentially “morally good” and those in black color as potentially “bad.” In the current inquiry, we would therefore hypothesize that consumers see buying a product in white color as an act that is morally good and buying a product in black color as an act that is morally bad. If so, then, in accordance with the moral regulation theory, those who buy white‐colored products should feel licensed to behave less prosocially afterward, while those who buy black‐colored products should be more prosocial as they feel a need to compensate for their initial misconduct. We investigate such a hypothesis in six studies, examining prosociality after buying white‐ or black‐colored products. The results are consistent with our hypothesizing and highlight a moral credentials framework in particular in explaining why the effect occurs. Consequently, product colors do not only satisfy the diversity of consumer tastes but they also impact consumers’ prosocial behavior well‐beyond product choice and outside of retail domains.     

Civil disobedience and whistleblowing: A comparative appraisal of two forms of dissent

This paper compares and evaluates two forms of dissent: civil disobedience — protests by citizens against the laws or actions of their government; and whistleblowing — disclosure by employees of illegal, immoral or questionable practices by their employees. Each is identified, the conceptual issues are distinguished from strategic and normative ones and parallel moral questions posed. Should one first dissent within prescribed channels before going outside them? Should one act publicly or is withholding one's identity permissible or desirable? What is the basis and limits for one's loyalty to one's country or employer, and how can transgressing these limits be morally justified?     

Normative contexts and moral decision

This paper attempts to explain the significance of the ‘ideologies’ — or ‘middle-level’ normative discourse — described by Kenneth Goodpaster in his paper ‘Business Ethics, Ideology, and the Naturalistic Fallacy’. It is argued that the propositions constitutive of this discourse are not invokable moral principles (i.e. principles which generate solutions to actual moral problems). Rather, they are characterizations of the normative contexts in which moral decisions are made. As such, they place limits on the ways in which the abstract moral principles of traditional moral theory may be applied or interpreted in making real-life moral decisions.     

Dissolving the Moral Dilemma of Whistleblowing

The ethical debate on whistleblowing concerns centrally the conflict between the right to political free speech and the duty of loyalty to the organization where one works. This is the moral dilemma of whistleblowing. Political free speech is justified because it is a central part of liberal democracy, whereas loyalty can be motivated as a way of showing consideration for one’s associates. The political philosophy of John Rawls is applied to this dilemma, and it is shown that the requirement of loyalty, in the sense that is needed to create the moral dilemma of whistleblowing, is inconsistent with that theory. In this sense, there is no moral dilemma of whistleblowing. This position has been labelled extreme in that it says that whistleblowing is always morally permitted. In a discussion and rejection of Richard De George’s criteria on permissible whistleblowing, it is pointed out that the mere rejection of loyalty will not lead to an extreme position; harms can still be taken into account. Furthermore, it is argued that the best way is, in this as in most other political circumstances, to weigh harms is provided by the free speech argument from democracy. Lars Lindblom is a Ph D. student in philosophy at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden. He has worked as a business ethics consultant and has written on efficency, workplace inspections and business ethics.     

The moral responsibilities of stockholders

This paper attempts to address the question of the ethical obligations of stockholders. Having presumed a rather narrow conception of the nature of property, and citing the limitations on stockholders rights and/or power, some have suggested that stockholders have no significant moral responsibilities. Others say that stockholders have moral responsibilities which they derive from the fact that the shareholders of a corporation are the legal owners of it. This article first of all, contests the view that stockholders have no responsibilities regarding the moral or immoral activities of the corporation in which they invest. It will be maintained, however, that while stockholders have moral responsibilities to monitor corporate decisions and perhaps, to actively try to influence the corporation to act morally, such ethical obligations cannot be derived solely from the stockholders' legal ownership of the corporation. The true ground of the moral obligations of stockholders is a social/political one and one which embraces a broadened conception of the nature of property. Richard J. Klonoski is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Scranton. His most important publications are: Being and Time Said All at Once: An Analysis of Section 42, Tulane Studies in Philosophy: The Thought of Martin Heidegger 32; and Setting and Characterization in Plato's Euthyphro, Dialogos 19.     

Nobody is as Blind as Those Who Cannot Bear to See: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on the Management of Emotions and Moral Blindness

Although apparently irrational, people with seemingly high moral standards routinely make immoral decisions or engage in morally questionable behavior. It appears as if under certain circumstances, people become in some enigmatic way blind to the immoral aspects of what they are doing or consequences of their immoral actions. This article focuses and reports on a psychoanalytic inquiry into the role of emotions and the unconscious management of unwanted emotions in promoting moral blindness. Emotions are essential to the conscience, self-sanctioning, and advancement of moral behavior. Notwithstanding moral ideations, a sufficiently strong counterwill may create incongruence between moral intentions and actual desires or behavior. The unwelcome experience of acute moral emotions such as guilt and anxiety is likely to activate a range of psychological defense mechanisms and unconscious processes to manage these emotions. It is argued that the management of these emotions through undue avoidance, inappropriate regulation, or lack of regulation, can bypass self-sanctioning. As result, the condition of moral blindness can develop or be sustained. The psychoanalytic explanations offered contribute to the understanding as to how emotions in combination with the unconscious mind can cause moral blindness in any person, notwithstanding high moral standards and good intentions. Improved understanding of moral blindness represents an important scientific step in improved understanding of our moral and immoral selves, with all its complexities, conflicts, and contradictions.     

Effects of the Use of the Availability Heuristic on Ethical Decision-Making in Organizations

Recent corporate scandals across various industries have led to an increased focus on research in business ethics, particularly on understanding ethical decision-making. This increased interest is due largely to managers’ desire to reduce the incidence of unwanted behaviors in the workplace. This article examines one major moderator of the ethical decision-making process – moral intensity. In particular, we explore the potential influence of a particular cognitive heuristic – the availability heuristic – on perceptions of moral intensity. It is our contention that moral intensity is a perceptual construct, and that individuals’ use of the availability heuristic will influence perceptions of moral intensity which, in turn, will affect how moral issues are viewed and ultimately resolved. In this article, we present propositions concerning possible relationships between the availabilities of various phenomena and the components that moral intensity comprises, and report on two studies examining the effects of availabilities on two␣of these components: magnitude of consequences and social consensus. Our findings indicated that the availability of consequences associated with an act was positively related to perceptions of the magnitude of consequences of that act. We also found that the availability of others who believe that a particular act is morally acceptable is positively related to perceptions of social consensus that that act is morally acceptable. We posit that our results suggest the possibility that perceptions of moral intensity can be actively influenced to reduce unethical behavior in organizations.     

Should Corporations Have the Right to Vote? A Paradox in the Theory of Corporate Moral Agency

In his 2007 Ethics article, “Responsibility Incorporated,” Philip Pettit argued that corporations qualify as morally responsible agents because they possess autonomy, normative judgment, and the capacity for self-control. Although there is ongoing debate over whether corporations have these capacities, both proponents and opponents of corporate moral agency appear to agree that Pettit correctly identified the requirements for moral agency. In this article, I do not take issue with either the claim that autonomy, normative judgment, and self-control are the requirements for moral agency or the claim that corporations possess them. I claim that if both of these claims are correct, then corporate moral agency entails that, in a liberal democracy, corporations should have the right to vote. I show that under the conception of democracy supported by most liberal political theorists, all parties subject to the law are entitled to the right to vote, and all parties that possess autonomy, normative judgment, and self-control are subject to the law. Therefore, if the proponents of corporate moral agency are correct, then corporations satisfy the requirements for the right to vote. I then consider potential objections to this argument. I show that the strongest objection to the corporate right to vote is undermined by Pettit’s own argument for corporate autonomy. I then show that objections derived from other arguments for limiting the rights of corporations are equally unavailing. I conclude with some observations about the implications of my argument for the question of corporate speech rights.     

Whistleblowing in a changing legal climate: is it time to revisit our approach to trust and loyalty at the workplace?

This article suggests that the introduction of employment protection rights for whistleblowers has implications for the way in which trust and loyalty should be viewed at the workplace. In particular, it is argued that the very existence of legislative provisions in the United Kingdom reinforces the notion that whistleblowing should not be regarded as either deviant or disloyal behaviour. Thus, the internal reporting of concerns can be seen as an act of trust and loyalty in drawing the employer's attention to wrongdoing. Equally, external whistleblowing may result from a worker's belief that he or she also has a loyalty to the wider society. Given that the interests of employees do not necessarily coincide with those of their employer and that whistleblowers sometimes suffer reprisals, the author concludes that it is inappropriate to impose a contractual duty to report concerns. Instead, employers should endeavour to promote a culture of openness and create confidence in the mechanisms they provide for whistleblowing.     

Disaster selfies: How ethical reminders can mitigate morally questionable consumption practices

Joyful selfies taken at disaster sites create a controversial topic in terms of moral boundaries in digital life. While some consider it acceptable to take smiley selfies in a tragedy zone, others find this behaviour morally questionable. This article demonstrates empirically that excessive time spent on social media explains, at least partially, a greater tendency to like morally ambiguous content on social media. Specifically, this article shows that consumers tend to like more questionable content (such as smiley disaster selfies) on social media when they spend more time online. Further, this article shows that this effect is mediated by increased individualistic thinking. Responses to the survey experiment (N = 206) compared the tendency to like morally ambiguous content between groups of little, moderate and excessive use of social media, and tested for the mediating role of individualistic thinking on the relationship between time spent and liking behaviour. Second, the moderating role of an ethical reminder on time spent and the fact of liking morally ambiguous contents is demonstrated. In the presence of an ethical reminder, the effect of time spent on social media and liking morally ambiguous content becomes insignificant. This article contributes to theory on social media consumption by offering a novel underlying mechanism, such as increased individualistic thinking, as one variable that partly explains the liking for morally ambiguous content. This article also offers practical contributions for social media platforms and policy makers, showing that ethical reminders could be a possible and simple nudge to help consumers act more morally or become aware of morally questionable content.     

Defining a Post-Conventional Corporate Moral Responsibility

The stakeholder approach offers the opportunity to consider corporate responsibility in a wider sense than that afforded by the stockholder or shareholder approaches. Having said that, this article aims to show that this theory does not offer a normative corporate responsibility concept that can be our response to two basic questions. On the one hand, for what is the company morally responsible and, on the other hand, why is the corporation morally responsible in terms of conventional and post-conventional perspectives? The reason why the stakeholder approach does not offer such a definition, as we shall see, is because the normative stakeholder approaches tend to confuse the social validity with the moral validity or legitimacy. It leads us to a conventional definition of corporate moral responsibility (CMR) that is not relevant to the pluralistic and global framework of our societies and economies. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate this intuition.     

Whistleblowers in Organisations: Prophets at Work?

This article argues that the study of biblical prophets offers a profound contribution to understanding the experience, role and attributes of whistleblowers. Little is known in the literature about the moral triggers that lead individuals to blow the whistle in organisations or why whistleblowers may show persistence against the harshness experienced as a result of their actions. This article argues that our understanding of the whistleblower??s work is highly informed by appreciating how moral values and norms are exercised by prophets in seeking to become agents for change. This article identifies three core implications that have practical and theoretical relevance. The first concerns how the whistleblowing activity challenges the established order of an organisation as this is comprised of institutional structures, policies and procedures. Institutions display an unusual fragility against the seemingly powerless individual who helps reveal the wrongdoing. By disclosing ??hidden?? knowledge concerning illegitimate intentions and actions, the seemingly powerless individual creates tension that has implications for the stability and order of the organisation. The second implication concerns the degree of social concern and the individual??s interpretation of morality. Whistleblowers, like prophets, display concern for moral values that have implications for the welfare of others, and which they seek to promote through their whistleblowing act. The third implication concerns the importance of agency. By taking a moral stance, the whistleblower assumes an important agentic role facilitating change through his/her intervention. Although such change is sudden and unpredictable it brings about new conditions for the organisation and its members.     

Capitalism and rights: An essay toward fine tuning the moral foundations of the free society

The moral foundations of the free society are not epitomized by democratic decisions about costs and benefits, as Michael Novak recently argued in The American Vision: An Essay on the Future of Democratic Capitalism. Nor is equality of opportunity, insured through government measures that prohibit private discrimination, a component of the liberty that characterizes the free society, as Milton and Rose Friedman recently argued in their Free To Choose. Rather, it is the theory of rights — which is the theory of private property, broadly understood — that underpins and epitomizes the free society, justifying the capitalist economic order in the process. For that theory describes our basic moral and legal relationships, and shows as well that capitalism, unlike socialism, is a fundamentally moral system.Roger Pilon, Research Fellow, Institute for Humane Studies, 1177 University Drive, Menlo Park, CA 94025; currently: Special Assistant to the Director, U.S. Office of Personnel Management, Washington, D.C. 20415; A.B., Columbia University, 1971; M.A., Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1972, 1979.     

The politicisation of whistleblowers: a case study

The focus of this article is on the political nature of whistleblowing. It argues that reprisals by management, rather than silencing the whistleblower, result in the transformation and politicisation of the individual. The process that leads to the transformation of a loyal employee into a political activist is considered through analysing the experiences of a whistleblower in the sphere of financial regulation in South Africa. The article investigates the effect of retaliation by the employer on the employee-organisational relationship. It looks in particular at the nature of the power struggle between the whistleblower and management and suggests explanations why organisations tend to respond in such a harsh fashion to whistleblowing. It concludes that the act of whistleblowing not only displays an expressive dimension, but also a political instrumental dimension that is often neglected in literature on whistleblowing.     

Survey of Teaching,Training, and Research in the field of Economic and Business Ethics in Latin America

Theories of business ethics or corporate responsibility tend to focus on justifying obligations that go above and beyond what is required by law. This article examines the curious fact that most business ethics scholars use concepts, principles, and normative methods for identifying and justifying these beyond-compliance obligations that are very different from the ones that are used to set the levels of regulations themselves. Its modest proposal—a plea for a research agenda, really—is that we could reduce this normative asymmetry by borrowing from the normative framework of “regulation” to identify and justify an important range of beyond-compliance obligations. In short, we might think of “self-regulation” as a language and a normative framework with some distinct advantages over other frameworks like stakeholder theory, corporate social responsibility, corporate citizenship, and the like. These other frameworks have been under attack in the business ethics literature of late, primarily for their vagueness and their disappointing inability to distinguish clearly between genuine beyond-compliance moral obligations, on the one hand, and charitable acts that are laudable but not morally obligatory, on the other.     

Play fair! Innovating internal self-regulation in the market for profit

Regulation imposes compliance demands on business, but these controls by no means ensure that corporations will act ethically. Externally imposed controls by government or industry are prompts intended to move organizations to engage in a moral minimum. Such efforts are typically reactionary corrective measures, often crafted and applied after an ethical scandal occurs, and thereby offer limited effectiveness in providing systemic change. To provide insight on internally driven controls, this article examines how a newer form of monetized self-regulation, referred to as inverted moral markets, might be leveraged to motivate corporate ethical behavior. Inverted moral market (IMM) operations target firms suspected of unethical action, providing a type of market whistleblowing. Such activities are monetized through the sale of information to investors and by short selling. Rather than a desire to build moral strength, IMM firms are motivated by self-interest and profit. They can potentially ‘do good’ by imposing self-correction within the market, but without virtuous intent. We explore IMMs and the varied impacts their activities may have on the functioning of the overall market. We argue that a more balanced approach between internal and external regulation may enhance the environment for moral balance in a capitalist market system.     

In search of the moral manager

Because the business landscape is cluttered with amoral and immoral managers, moral managers are hard to find. What can be done to develop moral judgment in managers so that the good forces out the bad and the indifferent?     

Self-Efficacy as an Intrapersonal Predictor for Internal Whistleblowing: A US and Canada Examination

Examining intrapersonal factors theorized to influence ethics reporting decisions, the relation of self-efficacy as a predictor of propensity for internal whistleblowing is investigated within a US and Canadian multi-regional context. Over 900 professionals from a total of nine regions in Canada and the US participated. Self-efficacy was found to influence participant reported propensity for internal whistleblowing consistently in both the US and Canada. Seasoned participants with greater management and work experience demonstrated higher levels of self-efficacy while gender was also found to be influential to self-efficacy. These individual traits, although related to self-efficacy, did not directly relate to propensities for internal whistleblowing. The findings demonstrate that self-efficacy could represent an important individual trait for examining whistleblowing issues. Internal whistleblowing is becoming an important organizational consideration in many areas of North America, yet there is relatively little research on the topic. Organizations seeking effective internal reporting systems should consider the influence of self-efficacy along with its potential reporting influence. By empirically testing an under-examined component of theory related to internal whistleblowing, this effort contributes to management literature, extending the knowledge beyond a US context, and provides recommendation for managing individual bias with internal reporting systems. Brent R. MacNab is a faculty member in the discipline of International Business with the University of Sydney. Brent’s research interests focus on examination of cross-cultural and intra-cultural phenomena as related to management and human interaction issues like cultural intelligence, ethics management and workplace motivation. He has received two Fulbright Awards (Canada, 2002 and NAFTA focus 2003) for examination of his research in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. In addition to faculty duties Brent also acts as a consultant to organizations examining issues related to cultural training and ethics management. Reginald Worthley is a faculty member with the University of Hawai'i at Manoa where he teaches coursework in applied quantitative analysis. He specializes in survey research on various cross-cultural issues. Recent studies include a web survey quantifying motivational drivers in the Japanese workplace, a comparative longitudinal study of managerial values in six countries and a NAFTA study of cultural identity as related to defined areas of ethics management.