A Critical Assessment of Libertarian Paternalism

This paper tries to assess to what extent libertarian paternalism lives up to its libertarian credentials, and whether this “softer” version of paternalism is more or less desirable than the traditional, more coercive (but also more transparent) form. Since much is made in the libertarian paternalistic programme of the ease of reversibility of “nudges,” it is argued that the distinction between effective and nominal ability to reverse a nudge is more important than its theoretical ease of reversibility—the more so, if anchoring, framing and status quo bias are as powerful as the libertarian paternalists maintain. If the libertarian paternalistic nudges are effective, but not always transparent, it is argued that this raises some questions (which do not seem to have been adequately addressed in the current literature) about the legitimacy of the interventions; about how the true preferences of the “consumer” can be guessed by the choice architect (and the role played by rationality in this process) and about the effective respect of her autonomy. Finally, this paper highlights some alternatives to “nudging” which place a greater emphasis on the full process of choice—rather than just on its outcomes—and can therefore better preserve true autonomy of choice.     

Beyond Paternalism: Cross-cultural Perspectives on the Functioning of a Mexican Production Plant

Expatriate managers of international businesses in emerging countries often struggle to mobilize their workforces. They sometimes perceive profound cultural differences as a barrier to the progress of their organizations. Some international businesses may adopt a paternalistic attitude toward their employees; but this questionable strategy brings mixed results. Are there ways out of paternalism for international businesses in emerging areas? This paper examines the diverging views held by foreign managers and local personnel of a foreign-owned production plant in Mexico, which managed to mobilize its workforce by building a strong sense of community, allowing a certain form of collective control to replace the paternalistic model, with its bonds of personal allegiance. Contrasting perspectives between Mexican and foreign employees show that intercultural misunderstandings, rather than the peculiarities of the local culture, are the greatest challenge to cooperation.     

On Nudging: A Review of Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health,Wealth and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein

This paper reviews the case for libertarian paternalism presented by Thaler and Sunstein in Nudge. Thaler and Sunstein argue that individuals’ preferences are often incoherent, making paternalism is unavoidable; however, paternalistic interventions should ‘nudge’ individuals without restricting their choices, and should nudge them towards what they would have chosen had they not been subject to specific limitations of rationality. I argue that the latter criterion provides inadequate guidance to nudgers. It is inescapably normative, and so allows nudgers’ conceptions of well‐being to override those of nudgees. Even if nudgees’ rationality were unbounded, their revealed preferences might still be incoherent.     

Against paternalism in Human Resource Management

The paper presents an evaluation of the paternalistic model of HRM. The analysis reveals that this conception of the employment relationship is deeply flawed and does not provide a morally acceptable approach towards responsible citizens in a democratic society. Moreover, where the employment relationship is based upon managerial hegemony and secrecy, the danger is that this can become institutionalized as a corporate morality that brings about the unintended consequences of moral indifference and unjust conduct towards employees and other stakeholders. The conclusion of this evaluation is that a wise management will try to open up its decision‐making processes and seek the participation of a wide range of stakeholders in the determination of the economic and social purpose of the company. There is another option: the employment relationship can be informed by a communitarian perspective, which aims to strike a balance between the economic interests of employers and employees, and the need for justice to foster mutual cooperation in the pursuit of a common purpose. This conception of the employment relationship will be outlined here as HRM in the 'community of purpose'.     

The Decomposition of the Corporate Body: What Kant Cannot Contribute to Business Ethics

Kant is gaining popularity in business ethics because the categorical imperative rules out actions such as deceptive advertising and exploitative working conditions, both of which treat people merely as means to an end. However, those who apply Kant in this way often hold businesses themselves morally accountable, and this conception of collective responsibility contradicts the kind of moral agency that underlies Kant’s ethics. A business has neither inclinations nor the capacity to reason, so it lacks the conditions necessary for constraint by the moral law. Instead, corporate policies ought to be understood as analogous to legal constraints. They may encourage or discourage certain actions, but they cannot determine a person’s maxim – which for Kant is the focus of moral judgment. Because there is no collective intention apart from any intentions of the individual agents who act as members of the corporation, an organization itself has no moral obligations. This poses a dilemma: either apply the categorical imperative to the actions of particular businesspeople and surrender the notion of collective responsibility, or apply a different moral theory to the actions of businesses themselves. Given the diffusion of responsibility in a bureaucracy, the explanatory usefulness of collective responsibility may force business ethicists to abandon Kant’s moral philosophy.     

Limited paternalism and the Pontius Pilate Plight

Ebejer and Morden (‘Paternalism in the Marketplace: Should a Salesman Be His Buyer's Keeper?”, Journal of Business Ethics 7, 1988) propose ‘limited paternalism’ as a sufficient regulative condition for a professional ethic of sales. Although the principle is immediately appealing, its application can lead to a counter-productive ethical quandary I call the Pontius Pilate Plight. This quandary is the assumption that ethical agents' hands are clean in certain situations even if they have done something they condemn as immoral. Since limited paternalism can give rise to this queer conclusion in the salesperson/buyer relationship, the principle is suspect. It may be a necessary condition for ethical sales, but is not sufficient. This discussion concludes by suggesting two additional criteria which, when complemented by the limited paternalism principle, are jointly sufficient.     

Untangling African indigenous management: Multiple influences on the success of SMEs in Kenya

This article examines the nature of indigenous management in relation to the success of SMEs in sub-Saharan Africa, taking Kenya and six SMEs under the management of Kenyan Africans, Kenyan Asians and Kenyan British as examples. It proposes that management systems, styles and practices, when appropriate to the local cultural contexts, will give rise to successful organizations. By formulating tentative hypotheses about this relation after reviewing the literature, the data from these case studies are interrogated first by using a ‘template’ derived from theories of management control to investigate the inter-continental cultural influences on local management, and then inductively to modify and develop the original hypotheses in view of possible intra-country influences. Paternalism, emerges as a common theme in the way cultural influences are combined, suggesting different types of paternalism for in-group and out-group organizational members. This is a possible success factor for local SMEs. Implications for future research in these areas and management practice are discussed.     

When Responsibility Can't Do It

Is being responsible good enough? Stone (1975) argued that we need corporate moral responsibility because neither law nor market is adequate to forestall harmful effects of business activities. However, it is not possible for businesses to become responsible for all forms of foreseeable, preventable harm that they produce. This is illustrated here by cases from insurance, television programming, automobiles and weapons production. Reflection on these examples leads to the formulation of a new conception of unintended harms as moral externalities of business activities. Although one might argue that these (negative) moral external effects are outweighed by the desirable end products of business activities, three reasons not to accept the results of such a “moral subtraction”(or double effect) argument are presented. Instead, the article concludes by offering four techniques for a qualitative, ethical analysis of produced artefacts and their consequences; intended not to displace but to supplement the study of moral responsibility in business.     

A Systematic Literature Review on Islamic Values Applied in Quality Management Context

The dominant framing of the political corporate social responsibility (CSR) discussion challenges the traditional economic conception of the firm and aims to produce a paradigm shift in CSR studies wherein the traditional, apolitical view of corporations’ roles in society is replaced by the political conception of CSR. In this paper, we show how the major framing of the political CSR discussion calls for a redirection to take international hard legal and moral regulations, as well as the need for the boundaries between business and politics into account.     

绩效压力对职场欺骗行为的影响机制研究

文章基于自我控制资源理论，以354名员工为样本，探讨了绩效压力是否会通过员工的自我损耗导致职场欺骗行为的产生，并关注了家长式领导和差错管理氛围的调节作用。结果表明：绩效压力对职场欺骗行为存在显著的正向影响；绩效压力通过诱发员工的自我损耗而使员工做出职场欺骗行为；仁慈领导具有正向的调节效应，德行领导和差错管理氛围具有负向的调节效应。研究结果有助于揭示职场欺骗行为产生的内在机制和边界条件，以及家长式领导和差错管理氛围可能存在的影响。     

Virtue and virtuousness in organizations: Guidelines for ascribing individual and organizational moral responsibility

This article advances research on moral responsibility in organizations by drawing on both philosophical virtue ethics grounded in the Aristotelian tradition and Positive Organizational Scholarship research concerned with virtuousness. The article discusses the very conditions that make possible the realization of virtues and virtuousness, respectively. These conditions ground notions of moral responsibility and the resulting praise or blame on organizational contexts. Thus, we analyze the way individuals and organizations may be ascribed interconnected degrees of retrospective moral responsibility and blame as depending on the interplay between the individual conditions leading to virtue and the organizational conditions leading to virtuousness. Based on this analysis, we develop a two-level account of moral responsibility in organizations that connects individual and organizational moral responsibility through the concepts of virtue and virtuousness. This is further operationalized into practical guidelines to ascribe degrees of individual and organizational blame, which can be used as a tool by managers, policymakers, or industry regulators.     

Individual, Collective and Social Responsibility of the Firm

The main concern of this paper is the moral responsibility of the firm, as well as of the individuals in a firm, to uphold environmental protection. Much of the business ethics literature defines corporate social responsibility in terms of stakeholder relationships, and the emphasis is frequently on collective as opposed to individual responsibility. This paper has three objectives. The first is to clarify the nature of moral responsibility, and the distinction between legal and moral responsibility. The second objective is to steer academicians and others towards a new vision of the firm. We argue that a firm is not just a singular legal entity but also a collectivity of morally responsible individuals who are liable for immoral acts of the firm. By expanding the boundary of responsibility of action from an intangible collectivity – the firm, to all the individuals within it, this vision moves beyond the typical emphasis on the firm as being the only moral agent responsible for corporate actions. The paper emphasizes not simply the responsibility of top echelon managers, but of every employee across ranks. The third goal of this paper is to examine the circumstances where application of moral responsibility becomes crucial, for instance, in the context of protection of the natural environment by a firm and its employees.     

家长式领导风格与高管团队行为整合的关系

家长式领导是一种具有较强的纪律性和权威性,并伴有慈父般的仁爱以及崇高的道德品行的领导方式,它包含权威、仁慈、德行三个维度,且各个维度对高层管理团队行为整合的效用有所不同.权威领导强调的是严厉的控制和教诲,仁慈领导强调的是对员工工作和生活需要的关注,德行领导强调的是领导者个人的品行和美德.首席执行官权威领导风格对企业高层管理团队行为整合具有显著的负向影响,仁慈领导风格和德行领导风格则具有显著的正向影响.     

Paternalism and the Pokies: Unjustified State Interference or Justifiable Intervention?

The Australian Productivity Commission and a Joint Select Committee on Gambling Reform have recommended implementation of a mandatory pre-commitment system for electronic gambling. Organizations associated with the gambling industry have protested that such interventions reduce individual rights, and will cause a reduction in revenue which will cost jobs and reduce gaming venue support for local communities. This article is not concerned with the design details or the evidence base of the proposed scheme, but rather with the fundamental criticism that a mandatory pre-commitment policy is an unacceptable interference with the liberty of the individual, and of organizations. It is argued that the concept of paternalism is a useful lens with which to study the interactions between business and society on this issue. It is contended that the benefits of a pre-commitment system to problem gamblers and society are socially and economically significant, and the cost to recreational gamblers, particularly the cost in terms of interference with the liberty of the individual, is minimal. Pre-commitment also requires gambling businesses to act in a more socially responsible manner. It is concluded that the proposed legislation constitutes a paternalistic intervention by government on the interaction between business and society, and that this is justified.     

Chinese employees’ leadership preferences and the relationship with power distance orientation and core self-evaluation

Informed by implicit leadership theories, this study investigates contemporary Chinese employees’ preferences for paternalistic leadership (including three components: moral leadership, benevolent leadership and authoritarian leadership) and transformational leadership. It further examines the relationship between power distance orientation, core self-evaluation (CSE) and leadership preferences. The study finds that contemporary Chinese employees most prefer moral leadership, but are also highly receptive to transformational leadership. They prefer authoritarian leadership least. Moreover, preferences for authoritarian leadership are predicated on followers’ power distance orientation. However, the opposite is true for moral leadership. CSE is positively related to followers’ preference for authoritarian leadership, benevolent leadership and transformational leadership, but not except for moral leadership. A positive interaction effect is found between power distance orientation and CSE with regard to authoritarian leadership preference. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.     

Reflections on Corporate Moral Responsibility and the Problem Solving Technique of Alexander the Great

The academic debate over the propriety of attributing moral responsibility to corporations is decades old and ongoing. The conventional approach to this debate is to identify the sufficient conditions for moral agency and then attempt to determine whether corporations possess them. This article recommends abandoning the conventional approach in favor of an examination of the practical consequences of corporate moral responsibility. The article’s thesis is that such an examination reveals that attributing moral responsibility to corporations is ethically acceptable only if it does not authorize the punishment of corporations as collective entities, and further, that this renders the debate over corporate moral responsibility virtually pointless.     

How Cognitive Neuroscience Informs a Subjectivist-Evolutionary Explanation of Business Ethics

Most theory in business ethics is still steeped in rationalist and moral-realist assumptions. However, some seminal neuroscientific studies point to the primacy of moral emotions and intuition in shaping moral judgment. In line with previous interpretations, I suggest that a dual-system explanation of emotional-intuitive automaticity (reflexion) and deliberative reasoning (reflection) is the most appropriate view. However, my interpretation of the evidence also contradicts Greene’s conclusion that nonconsequentialist decision making is primarily sentimentalist or affective at its core, while utilitarianism is largely rational-deliberative. Instead, I propose that current research on the human brain, in conjunction with converging experimental evidence, hints at moral subjectivism and its evolutionary basis as the most persuasive explanation of morality. These anti-realist conjectures have far-reaching implications for a wide range of topics in business ethics, as illustrated with the specific case of corporate social responsibility as a potentially tribal conception of the good.     

Unredistributable corporate moral responsibility

Certain cases of corporate action seem especially resistant to a shared moral evaluation. Conservatives may argue that if bad intentions cannot be demonstrated, corporations and their managers are not blame-worthy, while liberals may insist that the results of corporate actions were predictable and so somebody must be to blame. Against this background, the theory that sometimes a corporation's moral responsibility cannot be redistributed, even in principle, to the individuals involved, seems quite attractive.This doctrine of unredistributable corporate moral responsibility (UCMR) is, however, ultimately indefensible. I show this in several steps. After first locating UCMR in the context of the evolving debate about corporate moral agency, the paper reexamines cases cited in defense of UCMR and takes up the attempt to defend it by identifying corporate moral agency with corporate practices. A further section explores the claim that UCMR is a convention distinct from, yet compatible with, traditional natural notions of responsibility. The final section develops a notion of combined akratic agency to provide an alternate explanation, compatible with rejection of UCMR, of the phenomena which make the doctrine attractive. Jan Edward Garrett is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Western Kentucky University, with major interests in business ethics, the metaphysics of social organizations, and ancient philosophy. He has published on Aristotle's conception of techne (craft) in The Modern Schoolman (1987) and his article Persons, Kinds and Corporations: An Aristotelian View has appeared in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. He attended Peter French's NEH Summer Seminar on Corporate Responsibility in 1983.     

Responsibility, Taint, and Ethical Distance in Business Ethics

Much light can be shed on events which characterize or underlie scandals at firms such as Enron, Arthur Andersen, Worldcom, ImClone, and Tyco by appealing to the notion of ethical distance. Various inquiries have highlighted the difficulties in finding or identifying particular individuals to blame for particular events, and in the context of situations as complex as these it can sometimes be helpful to investigate the comparative ethical distance of various participants in these events. In this essay I offer a characterization of ethical distance in terms of moral responsibility, and in doing so I describe and illustrate the rough inverse correlation between moral distance and degrees of moral responsibility. I urge that the concept of ethical distance is capable of shedding light upon situations in which several people are involved in bringing about a state of affairs. I then argue that moral responsibility cannot do justice to all situations involving ethical distance. When the distance between a person and a state of affairs grows sufficiently large, a different type of treatment is called for, and I introduce the notion of moral taint to describe the moral status of agents in these situations.     

Corporate Moral Responsibility: What Can We Infer from Our Understanding of Organisations?

The question of corporate moral responsibility – whether corporate bodies can be held morally responsible for their actions – has been debated by a number of writers since the 1970s. This discussion is intended to add to that debate, and focuses for that purpose on our understanding of the organisation. Though the integrity of the organisation has been called into question by the postmodern view of organisations, that view does not necessarily rule out the attribution of corporate agency, any more than the postmodern view of the person rules out the attribution of individual agency. The postmodern view is opposed to a reifying, metaphysical view of corporate agency, but a semantic view of corporate agency would seem to sit more comfortably with it. A bigger problem for the idea of corporate moral responsibility arises from the fact that in Kantian terms organisations are not ends in themselves. In that sense they are not like persons, and this must limit their autonomy, and their responsibility. This aspect of organisations also limits their punishability. For these reasons corporate moral responsibility must be seen as more limited than the responsibility of persons.