Patrick Maclagan,Management and Morality: A Developmental Perspective

Teaching Business Ethics -     

Whistle-Blowing and Morality

Whistle-blowing is generally considered from the viewpoint of professional morality. Morality rejects the idea of choice and the interests of the professional as immoral. Yet the dreadful retaliations against the messengers of the truth make it necessary for morality to leave a way out of whistle-blowing. This is why it forges rights (sometimes called duties) to trump the duty to the public prescribed by professional codes. This serves to hide the obvious fact that whether to blow the whistle is indeed a choice, not a matter of objective duty. One should also notice that if it fails to achieve anything then blowing the whistle was the wrong decision (or maybe the right decision that nobody would want to make). There is nevertheless a tendency to judge it based on the motivation of the whistle blower. In a way, whistle blowers should strive to act like saints. Yet, it is logically impossible to hold both whistle-blowing as mandatory and whistle-blowers as heroes or saints. Moreover, this tends to value the great deeds of a few over the lives of the many, which is incompatible with the basic assumptions of morality. But consistency is not a main feature of professional morality.     

Tractable Morality

This article discusses five propositions about managerial moral tractability -- that is, a morality that is amenable to the complexity of managers’ continual pressure to decide and act -- in their customer relations. The propositions come from the comparison of three case studies of different types of managers. To analyze the morality of managers, discursive practices of managers are studied. At the end of the article also some consideration is given to “information strategies” of managers, in relation to their tractable morality.Gjalt de Graaf received his Ph.D. at the Rotterdam School of Management of the Erasmus University Rotterdam. He worked for two years as an assistant professor ‘‘strategic management” at the Faculty of Economics and Business Studies of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Currently he works as a post-doc “Integrity of Governance” at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.     

After Durkheim: An Agenda for the Scoiology of Business Ethics

Over the last twenty years the organization of business activity appears to have shifted from an emphasis on bureaucratic organizations toward an emphasis on market structures. Economic self-interest has acquired a new social legitimacy, and the force of traditional moral authorities has waned. In these circumstances the work of Emile Durkheim on the problematics of business ethics and the impact of a culture of self-interest on the stability of society, work that has hitherto been neglected by the business ethics community, acquires a new relevance. In this paper we review Durkheim's problematization of business ethics, establish its relevance for the contemporary world, and use it to develop an empirical research agenda for the contemporary sociology of business ethics.     

Morality and marketing human organs

Recent break-throughs in surgery and the discovery of an effective immunosupressive drug called cyclosporin, have brought a Renaissance in organ transplants. These medical advances have also heightened concern over the already critical shortage of body organs. Several alternatives have been suggested which may help alleviate the organ shortage. One such alternative is to allow commerce in human organs. This article discusses the morality of commercialization of human organs within the framework of several ethical theories. Shaheen Borna is Associate Professor of Marketing at the Ball State University and has written several articles on advertising. Latest publication: The Informative and Persuasive Functions of Advertising: a Moral Appraisal — A Comment, Journal of Business Ethics 4 (1985), pp. 151–153.The first draft of this paper was presented to the faculty of Ball State University in the Bureau of Business Research Faculty Seminar Series. The author would like to thank all the faculty who provided insightful comments, particularly Dean Palomba, professors Williams and Hendrix. The author also would like to thank Mrs. Sandra Marsh for her invaluable editorial help.     

Three Realms of Corporate Responsibility: Distinguishing Legitmacy, Morality and Ethics

In the mid-1960s and 1970s the field of business ethics saw a basic shift in emphasis from personal responsibility to corporate responsibility. While the notion of corporate responsibility has come to be a dominant concept in the field of business ethics since that time, it is a contested concept that admits of a range of conceptions. A concern underlying this paper is that many of these conceptions are less adequate than they might be. This paper has two overlapping goals. First, it seeks to elaborate a more adequate conception of corporate responsibility by drawing upon critical theory to distinguish three different normative realms (viz., legitimacy, morality and ethics). Second, the paper attempts to indicate from a critical theory perspective the nature of corporate responsibilities in each of these realms. The paper begins with a short introduction to German critical theory and an explanation of the different normative realms. The following three sections elaborate in turn the responsibilities of corporations in each on the three normative realms. Finally, the conclusion attempts to indicate some of the advantages of a critical theory conception of corporate responsibility.     

Morality and Strategy in Stakeholder identification

Definitions of what it is to be a stakeholder are divided into "claimant" definitions requiring some sort of claim on the services of a business, "influencer" definitions requiring only a capacity to influence the workings of the business, and "combinatory" definitions allowing for either or both of these requirements. It is argued that for the purposes of business ethics, stakeholding has to be about improving the moral conduct of businesses by directing them at serving more than just the interests of owners. On that basis, influencer definitions are eliminated on the grounds that they only concern morally neutral strategic considerations and combinatory definitions on the grounds that the combining of ethical and strategic considerations they promise can be less confusingly achieved through an exclusively claimant definition. It is concluded that for the purposes of business ethics, stakeholders are claimants towards whom businesses owe perfect or imperfect moral duties beyond those generally owed to people at large.     

Morality and ethics in organizational administration

The article is a detailed case study of theft and fraud by an employee in an organization. The analysis suggests that in the process of dealing with the employee, the issue was notprimarily one of ethics, but of two moral principles in conflict, compassion and concern for a fellow human being and the morality governing responses to betrayal. The latter governed the results because that morality was congruent with the predominant ethics of the organization concerned with preserving the authority structure and integrity of the organization rather than the personal welfare of the individual in the organization. In sum, the paper argues that, based on this case, organizational behavior towards individual employees may be determined by individual morality that is reinforced by organizational ethical principles more concerned with the self interest of the organization than ethics per se.Howard Adelman, a Professor of Philosophy, directs the Centre for Refugee Studies at York University, recently recognized as a Centre of Excellence by the Canadian government. Adelman has authored three books, edited three others and published over 70 articles in other books and refereed journals. He has specialized in detailed case studies in such fields as psychiatry and law, the philosophy of higher education, philosophy of history and political philosophy.     

Fraud and the Politics of Morality

Most large frauds develop only gradually and incidentally. When things fall apart it is politic to call it anything but fraud. The author is a member of the Department of Sociology, University of Liverpool, POB 147, Liverpool L69 3BX.     

让“道德”“担责”更“透明”——中铝公司社会责任报告编制经验分享

中铝公司从2006年开始发布年度社会责任报告,至今已连续编制发布了7份,曾采用多种标准和指南为依据来编制社会责任报告。2010年,国际标准化组织在瑞士日内瓦发布了社会责任国际标准ISO26000,这使社会责任从概念的规范都上升到了一个更高的国际化和标准化层面。当年12月,中铝公司就开始研究ISO26000,并连续两年以此为指南编制社会责任报告编制。     

Morality and Rationality in Environmental Policy

The "Moralist" camp takes environmental morale to be essential in order to save nature. The "Rationalist" camp, mainly represented by economists, takes market-based instruments solely relying on extrinsic motivation to be both necessary and sufficient for a successful environmental policy. Recently, the moralists have learned to appreciate economists' incentive instruments, and rationalists have learned that environmental morale is required to find political support for the introduction of their preferred instruments.Intrinsic motivation in the form of environmental morale is moreover closely connected to the extrinsic motivation via crowding effects. Economic incentives – in particular tradeable emission rights and emission taxes – tend to undermine environmental morale while policy instruments tend to raise it.An environmental policy based on complementarity is able to exploit the advantages, and to weaken the disadvantages, of the policies proposed by the two camps. Market-based instruments should be accompanied by policies informing and inviting the consumers to engage. In addition, possibilities to participate in the decision-making about environmental policy should be offered (preferably via direct democracy), and the policy should be decided and undertaken at the lowest possible level, normally the local community level.     

浅谈过程管理、制度管理与人本管理

讨论了过程管理、制度管理与人本管理三种模式的管理理念、原则、方法、步骤,并简要讨论了各自的特点和适用条件,指出了人本管理是最终归宿。     

Normal Injustices and Morality in Complex Organizations

This paper applies theory and research examining errors in complex organizational systems to the problem of individual and collective morality in organizations. It is proposed that because of the nature of complex organizations, unjust outcomes can (and will) result from organizational actions even when all organization members have acted responsibly. The argument that complex organizations are therefore immoral is considered and rejected. Instead, the paper argues that morality in complex organizations begins with "heedful interrelating" among individual organization members. The paper concludes with a discussion of organizational processes and structures that promote heedful interrelating.     

The Morality of Risk Modeling

This article applies the concept of prudence to develop the characteristics of responsible risk-modeling practices in the insurance industry. A critical evaluation of the risk-modeling process suggests that ethical judgments are emergent rather than static, vague rather than clear, particular rather than universal, and still defensible according to the discipline’s established theory, which will support a range of judgments. Thus, positive moral guides for responsible behavior are of limited practical value. Instead, by being prudent, modelers can improve their ability to deal with the ethical and technical complexity of the risk-modeling process. While the application of prudence to resolve ethical challenges in risk modeling, an issue of practical importance to managers, is a first in the literature, the practice of applying an ethical lens to issues of pragmatic importance for managers is well established in Maak and Pless (J Bus Ethics 66:99–115, 2006a; Responsible leadership, 2006b) among others.     

The Morality of Good Business

We are taught, in business as in Christian life, that well doing will lead to well being, in the long run. (But how long is the long run?) Those in business have an important role to play in the moral and the political well-being of our society.     

Building a strong services brand: Lessons from Mayo Clinic

A strong services brand is built and sustained primarily by customers’ interactions with the provider. A services branding model depicts the dynamics of brand creation. From the interrelationships among the presented brand, external communications, and customers’ experiences emerge brand awareness, meaning, and, ultimately, equity. The Mayo Clinic case study illustrates the services branding model by showing how one organization has created, extended, and protected a powerful brand through an unwavering commitment to the well-being of its customers. Managers outside of healthcare can benefit from three branding lessons embedded in the Mayo Clinic story: (1) attend to organizational values; (2) play defense, not just offense; and (3) turn customers into marketers.     

Teamwork and Morality: Comparing Lean Production and Sociotechnology

In this article two important organizational concepts – lean production and sociotechnical systems design – are evaluated on their reflective capacity and their (moral) outcomes. At least in theory both concepts entail a promise of overcoming some of the irreflexive pitfalls of rational organization. As will be shown, both concepts do have shortcomings too. It is argued that the meaning and value of the concepts is related to the context in which the systems are implemented.     

大学的道德资本迷失与重拾

大学肩负着为中国特色社会主义建设培养合格人才的历史使命。随着经济社会的发展进步,大学道德资本的缺失与重拾显得尤为重要。高校应高度重视道德资本在功能认识、主体行为、形成机制、评价制度四个方面的缺失和影响,注重道德资本在理论体系、社会功能、形成机制和评价制度四个方面的构建,把立德树人做为教育的根本任务,整合道德资本资源,增加道德资本投入,实现思想道德素质和科学文化素质的全面提高,培养出更多德智体美全面发展的建设者和接班人。