Corporate Versus Individual Moral Responsibility

There is a clear tendency in contemporary political/legal thought to limit agency to individual agents, thereby denying the existence and relevance of collective moral agency in general, and corporate agency in particular. This tendency is ultimately rooted in two particular forms of individualism – methodological and fictive (abstract) – which have their source in the Enlightenment. Furthermore, the dominant notion of moral agency owes a lot to Kant whose moral/legal philosophy is grounded exclusively on abstract reason and personal autonomy, to the detriment of a due recognition of the socio-historical grounds of moral social conduct.I shall argue that an adequate theory of responsibility is needed, which does not only take into account individual responsibility, but also collective and corporate responsibility, capable of taking into consideration society and its problems. Furthermore, corporations are consciously and carefully structured organisations with different levels of management and have clearly defined aims and objectives, a central feature upon which I shall be focussing in this paper.     

Associations Between Organizational/Individual Factors and the Intentions of Employees

Abstract

This study of a university school foodservice operation examines whether a positive or negative association exists between the individual and organizational factors and the intentions to stay or leave the current job for foodservice employees or internal customers. The individual factors include job status, service length, age, education level, and job position. The organizational factors include several job characteristics, intrinsic motivation, formalization, participative decision-making and psychological stress. Job characteristics indicated a significant positive impact on university retention across the job characteristics of autonomy, feedback, dealing with others, and variety. The organizational factors of perceived formalization and participative decision-making also had a significant positive impact on university employee retention. The organizational factors of intrinsic motivation, task identity, and friendship opportunities did not have a statistically significant positive or negative impact on university employee retention yet had the directions of relationship that was expected. Finally, psychological stress had a negative impact on university employee retention. The article ends with suggestions for future research and limitations of the current study.     

Connected Moral Agency in Organizational Ethics

We review both the aspects of values-related research that complicate ideations of what we ought to do, as well as the psychological impediments to forming beliefs about the way things are. We find that more traditional moral theories are without solid empirical footing in the psychology of human values. Consequently, we revise the notion of values to align with their socially symbolic utility in self-affirmation and reformulate our understandings of moral agency to allow for the practicalities of context, circumstance, and connectedness. We close by discussing the research and practical implications for these revisions.     

Individual, Social and Organizational Sources of Sharing and Variation in the Ethical Reasoning of Managers

A growth in consumer and media ethical consciousness has resulted in the need for organizations to ensure that members understand, share and project an approved and unified set of ethics. Thus understanding which variables are related to sharing and variation of ethical reasoning and moral intent, and the relative strength of these variables is critical. While past research has examined individual (attitudes, values, etc.), social (peers, significant others, etc.) and organizational (codes of conduct, senior management, etc.) variables, it has focused on their influence on the individual – and not on their role in relation to patterns of group sharing and variation in an organization. Introduced as a new methodology to study ethics, microcultural analysis stipulates that to explain patterns of sharing and variation, one must understand how individual, social and organizational variables influence sharing and variation. Key hypotheses predict that managers who share in individual, social or organizational determinants will be more likely to share in ethical reasoning and moral intent. Qualitative and quantitative research supports the key hypotheses, finding social ties, personal moral intensity, Machiavellianism, locus of control and codes of ethics as significant determinants. Individuals who share in these determinants are more likely to share in ethical reasoning and moral intent. Additionally, regression analysis reveals social ties and personal moral intensity to be the strongest determinants. Based on these results, managerial recommendations focus on a holistic approach, manipulating these three determinants to cultivate a unified code of ethics within an organization.     

Ethics Programs, Perceived Corporate Social Responsibility and Job Satisfaction

Companies offer ethics codes and training to increase employees’ ethical conduct. These programs can also enhance individual work attitudes because ethical organizations are typically valued. Socially responsible companies are likely viewed as ethical organizations and should therefore prompt similar employee job responses. Using survey information collected from 313 business professionals, this exploratory study proposed that perceived corporate social responsibility would mediate the positive relationships between ethics codes/training and job satisfaction. Results indicated that corporate social responsibility fully or partially mediated the positive associations between four ethics program variables and individual job satisfaction, suggesting that companies might better manage employees’ ethical perceptions and work attitudes with multiple policies, an approach endorsed in the ethics literature. Sean Valentine (D.B.A., Louisiana Tech University) is an Associate Professor of Management in the college of Business at the University of Wyoming. His teaching and research interests include business ethics, organizational behavior, and human resource management. He has published in journals such as Behavioral Research in Accounting, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, and Journal of Business Ethics. Gary Fleischman (Ph.D., Texas Tech University) is an Associate Professor and is the McGee Hearne and Paiz Faculty Scholar in Accounting at the University of Wyoming. His teaching expertise is in accounting and entrepreneurship and his research interests are in business ethics and behavioral business research. He has published in journals such as Behavioral Research in Accounting, The International Journal of Accounting and Journal of Business Ethics.     

Individual and Organizational Antecedents of Misconduct in Organizations

A heterogeneous survey sample of for-profit, non-profit and government employees revealed that organizational factors but not personal characteristics were significant antecedents of misconduct and job satisfaction. Formal organizational compliance practices and ethical climate were independent predictors of misconduct, and compliance practices also moderated the relationship between ethical climate and misconduct, as well as between pressure to compromise ethical standards and misconduct. Misconduct was not predicted by level of moral reasoning, age, sex, ethnicity, job status, or size and type of organization. Demographic variables predicted job satisfaction and organizational variables added significant incremental variance. Results suggest the importance of promoting a moral organization through the words and actions of senior managers and supervisors, independent of formal mechanisms such as codes of conduct.

Beyond the Stalemate of Economics versus Ethics: Corporate Social Responsibility and the Discourse of the Organizational Self

The purpose of this paper is to advance research on CSR beyond the stalemate of economic versus ethical models by providing an alternative perspective integrating existing views and allowing for more shared dialog and research in the field. It is suggested that we move beyond making a normative case for ethical models and practices of CSR by moving beyond the question of how to manage organizational self-interest toward the question of how accurate current conceptions of the organizational self seem to be. Specifically, it is proposed that CSR is not a question of how self-interested the corporation should be, but how this self is defined. Economic and ethical models of CSR are not models of opposition but exist on a continuum between egoic and post-egoic, illusory and authentic conceptions of the organizational self. This means that moving from one to the other is not a question of adopting different paradigms but rather of moving from illusion and dysfunction to authenticity and functionality, from pathology to health.     

For or Against Corporate Identity? Personification and the Problem of Moral Agency

This article explores the concept of corporate identity from a moral perspective. In it we argue that the reification and personification involved in attributing an identity to an organization has moral repercussions. Through a discussion of ‘intentionality’ we suggest that it is philosophically problematic to treat an abstraction of the corporation as possessing identity or acting as a conscious moral agent. The article moves to consider practical and ethical issues in the areas of organizational commitment, of health and safety, and corporate social responsibility, and finds that the notion of identity can be abused, although it will no doubt continue to be used as it does have some practical utility. In conclusion, we argue that despite being meaningless from a philosophical stance, the concept of corporate identity need not be discarded, however, it is far from benign and intense moral scrutiny is necessary wherever it is applied. Ian Ashman PhD is a senior lecturer in the HRM division of the Lancashire business School, University of Central Lancashire. He has recently authored a number of papers on business ethics, leadership and research methods, all of which draw upon his interest in philosophies of existential phenomenology. He is an executive member of European Business Ethics Network U.K. Professor Diana Winstanley PhD, FCIPD was Director of Postgraduate Programmes at Kingston Business School, Kingston University. She wrote over 50 articles and five books, including her latest, ‚Personal Effectiveness: A Guide to Action’ (2005, CIPD) and Ethical Issues in Contemporary Human Resource Development (2000, Macmillan). She was a trained humanistic counsellor and an executive member of European Business Ethics Network U.K. Her research interests were in the areas of workplace learning, development, diversity and business ethics. Sadly, Diana Winstanley, died last summer.     

A Corporate Social Responsibility Audit within a Quality Management Framework

In this paper a corporate social responsibility audit is developed following the underlying methodology of the quality award/excellence models. Firstly the extent to which the quality awards already incorporate the development of social responsibility is examined by looking at the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and the European Quality Award. It will be shown that the quality awards do not yet include ethical aspects in relation to social responsibility. Both a clear definition of social responsibility and an improved audit instrument are required. A definition and an audit instrument are developed which stimulate movement in that direction and help organisations to reflect on their position in relation to social responsibility.     

企业社会责任风险管理研究

企业面临着越来越多来自利益相关的压力．分析了企业由于承担的社会责任不合理所导致的社会责任风险,介绍了企业进行社会责任风险管理的一般流程,希望通过本文引起对社会责任风险研究的重视。     

Virtuous Responses to Organizational Crisis: Aaron Feuerstein and Milt Colt

This study examines two recent cases of ethical responses to crisis management; the 1995 fire at Malden Mills and Aaron Feuerstein's response, and a 1998 fire at Cole Hardwoods, followed by the response of CEO Milt Cole. The authors describe these crises, the responses of Feuerstein and Cole, their motivations and the impact on crisis stakeholders using the principles of virtue ethics and effective crisis management. What emerges is set of post-crisis virtues grounded in values of corporate social responsibility and entrepreneurial ethics. These include virtues of immediacy of response, supportiveness of victims, and rebuilding and renewal.     

Moral Disengagement in Processes of Organizational Corruption

This paper explores Albert Bandura's concept of moral disengagement in the context of organizational corruption. First, the construct of moral disengagement is defined and elaborated. Moral disengagement is then hypothesized to play a role in the initiation of corruption by both easing and expediting individual unethical decision-making that advances organizational interests. It is hypothesized to be a factor in the facilitation of organizational corruption through dampening individuals’ awareness of the ethical content of the decisions they make. Finally, it is hypothesized to contribute to the perpetuation of corruption in organizations, because if individuals who have a greater propensity to morally disengage are more likely to make decisions that advance organizational interests regardless of the ethicality of those decisions, they may also be rewarded for those decisions in terms of organizational advancement. Together these studies form an argument that moral disengagement plays an important role in processes of organizational corruption.     

企业的社会责任

本文认为,企业的社会责任应从三个方面来认识。第一,企业最重要的社会责任是为社会提供优质的产品、优质的服务,出人才、出经验。如果企业能够给社会提供优质的产品,我们的产品就能走向全世界;能够提供优质的服务,我们就能吸引各国的客户到这里来;能够出人才,我们的企业管理人才就将通过自己的企业培养出来;能够出经验,我们这个经验就能够为其他企业所用。第二,企业必须重视经济增长的质量。在经济增长的同时,至少把自己的废水、废气、废渣处理了,减少企业所在地区的污染,改善环境。第三,企业要为社会的和谐作出贡献。不但要关心自己企业的职工,还要关心所在的社区。互助、互爱、互信,社会才能取得和谐。     

关于组织行为研究的五大前沿走势

从组织行为研究领域的前沿走势来看,后现代主义思潮在相当大的程度上具有标识性,这在各个相关学科中都有显著表现,如在组织行为基本原理方面,以演化(心理学)理论为新视角、新支点和新方法,对有关组织行为的基本特征及一般规律作出通论性归纳和解说;在组织经济行为方面,从传统"理性行为"的狭小视界中走出,直面现实人类行为,去解说组织中个体或群体的经济行为规律;在组织社会行为方面,在社会学关于"社会现象"的大背景下,将人的行为放置在特定的社会情境中去观察,以解析那些超越个体人格差异的群体心理现象及行为表现;在组织政治行为方面,研究特定社会政治环境中,一个组织为获取生存合法性和持续竞争优势,其成员究竟如何在内部通过权力斗争,以及在外部与其他组织间围绕控制权展开较量,从而实现组织场域利益最大化;在组织整合管理行为方面,以"战略性激励"为核心,密切关注现代组织学习型变革基本趋势。     

自由意志、行为选择与道德责任

在一个行为中,行为主体的意志自由、行为选择及道德责任存在着内关联性。通常来说,行为主体是否需要承担道德责任与其自身的行为选择有关,而行为选择中行为主体的意志是否自由又是其作出选择的前提和要件。所以自由意志既是行为选择的前提,又是行为主体为自身的选择承担道德责任的逻辑依据。     

浅析组织行为效率的影响因素

管理学所要解决的问题就是如何提高组织效率,完成组织目标,减少不必要的消耗。在现实工作中,很多工作的完成需要在组织中进行缜密分工和配合,在这一过程中,影响组织行为效率的因素包括人的因素、组织目标因素、良好的工作习惯、制度的因素、领导的因素五个方面。提高组织行为效率就是要追求每一个影响组织行为效率的因素发挥出最大的效能和作用。     

在华跨国企业社会责任变动趋势及影响因素研究

通过对在我国内地经营的大型跨国企业进行问卷调查,获取跨国企业在我国的社会责任数据,从而对在华大型跨国企业社会责任的变动趋势进行分析,结果显示跨国企业在我国的社会责任履行情况基本呈现出向好的趋势,但跨国企业的社会责任履行情况受经济波动和企业经营业绩的影响明显,而企业的规模、国别和行业因素均对跨国企业的不同维度的社会责任履行情况产生一定的影响。     

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.     

Religion and Attitudes to Corporate Social Responsibility in a Large Cross-Country Sample

This paper explores the relationship between religious denomination and individual attitudes to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) within the context of a large sample of over 17,000 individuals drawn from 20 countries. We address two general questions: do members of religious denominations have different attitudes concerning CSR than people of no denomination? And: do members of different religions have different attitudes to CSR that conform to general priors about the teachings of different religions? Our evidence suggests that, broadly, religious individuals do not prioritise the responsibilities of the firm differently, but do tend to hold broader conceptions of the social responsibilities of businesses than non-religious individuals. However, we show that this neither true for all religious groups, nor for all areas of CSR.