Managing Ethics in Business Organizations

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

The substantive content of the middle two sections of the book is interesting and worthwhile, although some of the research findings seem quite uncontroversial. For example, it seemed entirely predictable that whether the locus of responsibility for a corporate ethics program is assigned to the company lawyer as opposed to the human resources function would have serious impact on the approach and outcomes of an ethics program. The negative impact of corporate lawyers on the willingness of organizations even to permit the collection of ethicsrelated research data supports this judgment.

The authors have been very helpful in framing the alternatives in these kinds of programs. For example, the difference in practice and outcome between compliance-focused programs and those with a foundation based on shared ethical values is something for students, researchers, and practitioners to consider seriously. As my colleague Jack Duffy notes, it makes a huge difference in an organization whether you manage for compliance or whether you manage for commitment. This observation applies well beyond considerations of ethics; it applies to performance management, customer service, recruiting, innovation, etc.

There were a number of places in the book where I found myself taking contrary positions, debating the content with the authors. I count this as a good sign. For example, in one section of the text there is extensive discussion around previous work in the field of moral development, specifically the work of Kohlberg and Hare. While there has been much debate around Kohlberg's model of the pre-conventional, conventional, and post-conventional stages of development, the authors seem to agree with the notion that most people are at the conventional level. If this is the case, the subsequent research outcomes around employee perceptions and employee ethical behaviour are also unsurprising. Presumably there should be a relationship between the stage of moral development and the response of the employee to a particular ethics program approach.

There were a number of places in the book that made me sit up and take special note. One example was the report about the managers who claimed never to have seen the company's ethics policy document, when every one of them had signed a copy as part of their employment terms. I immediately began to wonder if I had signed a similar document upon arriving at this university. Another attention-getter was the report about accounting professionals and the analysis of the moral reasoning of accountants at senior levels of public accounting firms. There was also a brief mention of the question of the ethics of ethics behaviour research that I would have enjoyed seeing treated much more fully. Some of the innovative research tools such as the inbasket challenge with the imbedded ethical decision were also very interesting.

For those of us with general interest in ethical questions (as opposed to domain experts), whether in businesses, governments, academic communities, the content of this book is worthwhile once we get past the philosophy vocabulary and research orientation. Consider the range of topics discussed: empirical versus normative ethics research; compliance versus values programs; formal versus informal approaches; external pressures versus internal management decisions; integrated versus decoupled programs; culture and climate. This book has added substantially to my appreciation of these issues.