Justifications and procedures for implementing Institutional Review boards in business organizations

The present paper describes a number of ethical quandaries facing the implementors of motivational interventions in organizational settings. A critical analysis of the traditional solutions to these issues within the organizational literature finds them lacking for want of considering unwitting cognitive biases and self presentational doublespeak, both of which may result in the rights of research participants being underprotected. The establishment of an Institutional Review process, loosely analogized from the biomedical and behavioral science research traditions, is suggested as a means of protecting the rights of research participants as well as humanizing future motivational interventions.Robert A. Giacalone is Assistant Professor of Management at the University of Southwestern Louisiana. He has been given the Outstanding Young Men of America Award, 1985. One of his articles has been published in Group and Organization Studies (1985), another will be published in Basic and Applied Social Psychology.Paul Rosenfeld is a Personnel Research Psychologist at the Navy Personnel Research and Development Center in San Diego. The Outstanding Young Men of America Award has been given to him in 1986. He is the co-author of Introduction to Social Psychology (1985), St. Paul, MN: West.