Managing Ethics in Business Organizations

Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences, Sep 2003 by Marche, Sunny

Managing Ethics in Business Organizations Linda Klebe Trevino and Gary Weaver. (2003). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press ISBN 0804743762 cloth

The opening decade of the 21st century has already produced its share of stars on the business walk of shame. Enron, Worldcom, Fannie Mae are the corporate names that spring immediately to mind, and there is a distressingly long list of executives within such organizations whose behaviour was certainly unethical and likely illegal. Therefore almost any book that addresses questions of improving the individual and collective ethical performance is welcome. The authors' general intent with this volume is to provide an integrated retrospective of their research program in this domain. The stated target audience is "scholars, practitioners, and students concerned with ethics in organizations."

The book is structured into four major sections comprising 12 chapters. Part One provides an analysis of the metatheoretical issues in the domain, particularly around the two major conceptual frameworks that inform the topic area: normative ethics and empirical ethics. Part Two focuses on the institutionalization of ethics primarily by way of control programs and/or values-oriented implementation. Part Three addresses the challenges of ethics programs, the application and limits of such programs, the role of climate and culture, and the connection between ethical behaviour and the sense of fairness in the organization. Part Four considers the research challenges looking to the future.

The book as a whole is founded on over a dozen previously published journal articles by the authors of the book. About half of the articles come from the Business Ethics Quarterly, and almost as many from the Academy of Management Journal or the Academy of Management Review. This is good news and bad news. On the positive side, we can be confident that the material has had effective peer review prior to this volume. On a negative note, the fact of previous publication undermines the overall value of the book somewhat since much of the material is already available to most readers, although perhaps not quite so conveniently.

In their research program the authors have made substantial investments of time, money, and effort in a number of research data collection projects, some large enough to form the foundation for more than one article. Since most of the chapters lean heavily on the previously published material, this produces some repetition of discussion from chapter to chapter in topic areas such as the research methodology and the descriptions of the data collection processes. It sometimes contributes to repetition in the section transitions and analysis as well, for example in areas discussing the limitations of the research. The seriousness of this criticism depends on how the purchaser intends to use the book. If she wants to use it primarily as a reference tool, to be dipped into as the situation requires, the repetition of these elements might actually be useful. If she plans to read it sequentially in its entirety (as I have done), the repetition will not be helpful.

In some respects, Part One-metatheoretical considerations-is the densest part of the material. If, like me, you come to this material with a very limited background in philosophy, you will need a dictionary. Just the vocabulary in this section can be intimidating, e.g., nomological, Kantianism, prolegomenon, exegetical, interparadigmatic incommensurability, ineliminably, epistemological, ontological, deontological, and my personally favourite phrase "generically neopositivist metascience". The density of the writing is also a function of the academically long sentence structures. The usual rule of thumb is that sentences longer than 25 words increase the cognitive demands on a reader. Sentences of twice that length are quite common. Needless to say the combination of the subject material, the vocabulary, and the writing style makes for a demanding reading experience.

The research credibility of the material presented seems to be quite appropriate, although I think it would be helpful had there been one piece of work in which the design was directed at disproving the hypotheses rather than supporting them. The apparent strength of the research design and execution is unsurprising given the peer review most of the material has survived. The statistical analyses and their detailed explication will be most appropriate for researchers who share this particular academic niche. My assessment is that such detail will be lost on students and practitioners, the other two target audiences. In some respects, it might be unnecessary for even academic audiences since the technical details of the statistics are always available in the original articles. Having said this, I should note that the organization of the book as a whole is good notwithstanding the fact that the material comes from a set of distinct and separate articles. The structure of the writing is also very smooth and effective on the face of it.