What would corporations look like if they were to have integrity and how can we move them in that direction? In an effort to answer this question, Corporate Integrity takes a different path than most books that have distinguished themselves either in business ethics or corporate social responsibility. For one thing, this book overrides that distinction and provides a model of organizational ethics that is truly integrative. With a strong sense of integrity as wholeness, the book explores five dimensions of corporate life: the cultural, interpersonal, organizational, civic, and environmental. This exploration moves from an analysis of the integrity challenge on each of the five dimensions to a leadership strategy for meeting them.

The book is unusual in some other ways as well. It offers a particular perspective, a somewhat singular focus, and a special method. It explores the challenges of corporate integrity from a civic perspective. This perspective views corporations as members of civil society and corporate members as citizens. Instead of relying on the persuasiveness of the “business case,” which needs to show that doing well will result from doing good, the civic case relies on shared civic values of meeting human needs and respecting human rights. This allows an examination of how these values are realized not only in interpersonal relationships, but also in corporate relationships with other groups in civic society as they struggle to work together to design a sustainable world.

To bring these and other values into the analysis, the book focuses on relationships.