In six experiments, we investigated the role of resource valence in intergenerational attitudes and allocations. We found that, compared to benefits, allocating burdens intergenerationally increased concern with one’s legacy, heightened ethical concerns, intensified moral emotions (e.g., guilt, shame), and led to feelings of greater responsibility for and affinity with future generations. We argue that, because of greater concern with legacies and the associated moral implications of one’s decisions, allocating burdens leads to greater intergenerational generosity as compared to benefits. Our data provide support for this effect across a range of contexts. Our results also indicate that the differential effect of benefits versus burdens in intergenerational contexts depends on the presence of two important structural characteristics that help enact concerns about legacies, including (1) future impact of decisions, and (2) a self-other tradeoff. Overall, our findings highlight how considering resource valence brings to the fore a number of key psychological characteristics of intergenerational decisions—especially as they relate to legacies and ethics.

Two studies tested the relationship between three facets of personality—conscientiousness, agreeableness, and openness to experience—as well as moral identity, on individuals’ ethical ideology. Study 1 showed that moral personality and the centrality of moral identity to the self were associated with a more principled (versus expedient) ethical ideology in a sample of female speech therapists. Study 2 replicated these findings in a sample of male and female college students, and showed that ideology mediated the relationship between personality, moral identity, and two organizationally relevant outcomes: organizational citizenship behavior and the propensity to morally disengage. Implications for business ethics are discussed.

Organizations adopt formal sanctioning systems to deter ethical violations, but the formal systems’ effectiveness may be undermined by informal sanctioning systems which promote violations. I conducted an ethnographic study of six trading crowds on two financial exchanges to understand how informal and formal sanctioning systems, which are grounded in different interpretations of equity, interact to affect trader deviance from rules established by the financial exchange (exchange deviance). To deter informal trader norms that conflict with exchange rules, the exchanges formally prohibit traders’ informal sanctions. The exchanges, however, underestimate traders’ informal sanctions related to ostracism and social rejection, which are not only difficult for the exchanges to detect, but also interpersonally hurtful and harmful to trader performance. Consequently, the traders’ informal social sanctions lead to secondary sanctions from trading firms. Ultimately, the informal sanctioning system evades the formal sanctioning system by exploiting what the exchanges deem to be minor rule violations.

U.S. Organizational Sentencing Guidelines provide firms with incentives to develop formal ethics programs to promote ethical organizational cultures and thereby decrease corporate offenses. Yet critics argue such programs are cosmetic. Here we studied bank employees before and after the introduction of formal ethics training—an important component of formal ethics programs—to examine the effects of training on ethical organizational culture. Two years after a single training session, we find sustained, positive effects on indicators of an ethical organizational culture (observed unethical behavior, intentions to behave ethically, perceptions of organizational efficacy in managing ethics, and the firm’s normative structure). While espoused organizational values also rose in importance post-training, the boost dissipated after the second year which suggests perceptions of values are not driving sustained behavioral improvements. This finding conflicts with past theory which asserts that enduring behavioral improvements arise from the inculcation of organizational values. Implications for future research are discussed.

Unfair offers in bargaining may have disruptive effects because they may reduce interpersonal trust. In such situations future trust may be strongly affected by social accounts (i.e., apologies vs. denials). In the current paper we investigate when people are most likely to demand social accounts for the unfair offer (Experiment 1), and when social accounts will have the highest impact (Experiment 2). We hypothesized that the need for and impact of social accounts will be highest when the intentions of the other party are uncertain. The results provided support for this reasoning.

In this article, we review and build on intergenerational and behavioral ethics research to consider how the motive to build a lasting legacy can impact ethical behavior in intergenerational decision making. We discuss how people can utilize their relationships to organizations to craft their legacies. Further, we elucidate how the legacy motive can enhance business ethics, incorporating theory and empirical findings from research on intergenerational decision making, generativity, and terror management theory to develop the legacy construct and to outline the psychological underpinnings of motivations to leave a positive legacy. We discuss the ways in which legacies can provide a link between life-meaning and pro-social motivation, and we consider the ways in which individuals’ social environments can moderate the intensity of the legacy motive and can impact legacy-building behavior by determining the types of legacies that are valued. Finally, we highlight the implications of these ideas for ethical behavior and sustainable decision making in business contexts.

Drawing upon the theoretical debate on the concept of common good involving, in particular, Sison and Fontrodona (2012), I aim to show how the common good principle can serve as the basis for a new diversity perspective. Each of the three dominant diversity approaches—equality, diversity management, and inclusion—runs the ethical risk of focusing on community or individual levels, or on particular disciplines—economic, social, or moral. This article demonstrates that the common good principle could mitigate the ethical risks inherent to each of these diversity approaches. There are three positive aspects to a comprehensive common good perspective: 1) it includes considering different community levels, which it connects by subsidiarity, 2) it embraces the moral, social, and economic fields, which it connects by teleological hierarchy, and 3) it avoids the risk of exclusion by generating a sense of solidarity.

Although it is unremarkable to hear a corporate culture described as ethical or unethical, it remains quite unclear what such a claim means or how it may be justified. I begin by addressing these two questions by offering an account of corporate culture as the intrinsic values that are shared by organisation members and that underpin organisational goals. I then employ this analysis to offer a new account of how moral responsibility is generated and distributed in business organisations. Since certain corporate values, or culture, will predictably promote wrongdoing by members, all those who participated in that culture will acquire a degree of moral responsibility for the wrongdoing that results. They are, we may say, complicit in the wrongdoing because they helped facilitate it. This is because, by sharing values in the way that creates corporate culture, organisation members give each other reasons for acting in line with those values.

The ethical sensemaking approach stands as an essential alternative to the dominant rational and objectivist paradigm of ethical decision-making in organizations. From this perspective, this research explores the intrapersonal interplay of emotions and reflexivity in ethical sensemaking. We analyzed thirty-seven semi-structured interviews conducted with executive coaches sharing a critical incident about an issue they framed as ethical. Our findings show that their ethical decisions unfolded over a three-phase emotional reflexive sensemaking process, where reflexivity allowed for the management of emotions in the form of emotional awareness, emotional unpacking, and emotional (dis)engagement. Therefore, we portray ethics as a fabric, produced through the knitting of emotions and reflexivity. And, while ethics certainly appear to be produced by the subject, we suggest a reciprocal relationship, whereby the very fabric of ethics contributes to the production of the ethical subject.

Anomie is a condition in which normative guidelines for governing conduct are absent. Using survey data from a sample of U.S. manufacturing firms, we explore the impact of internal (cultural) and external (environmental) determinants of organizational anomie. We suggest that four internal organizational factors can generate or suppress organizational anomie, including strategic aggressiveness, long-term orientation, competitor orientation, and strategic flexibility. Similarly, we argue that external contextual factors, including competitive intensity and technological turbulence, can influence organizational anomie. We extend anomie and ethics research by considering the impact of these firm cultural and environmental factors according to whether firms are publicly-traded or privately-held. Findings demonstrate that a number of firm cultural and environmental factors can generate or reduce anomie in firms. Moreover, strategic aggressiveness, long-term orientation, and strategic flexibility influence organizational anomie differently depending on whether the firm is publicly-traded or privately-held. Theoretical and practical implications of our findings are discussed.

Since seminal meta-analytical work in 2006 we have witnessed burgeoning research on ethical climates. This article offers a comprehensive review of literature examining the antecedents and outcomes of ethical climates over the last decade, as well as moderators of the relationship between ethical climates and other variables. Based on the review, an agenda for future research is also presented. In addition to highlighting the potential for incorporating alternative theoretical perspectives such as situational strength theory, trait-activation theory, social information processing theory, and institutional theory to better our understanding of ethical climates, this article highlights the need for future research to incorporate a dynamic perspective to study ethical climates, examine the curvilinear effects of ethical climates on work outcomes, extend the study of ethical climates to different levels of the organization, and examine the effects of culture on ethical climates.

This research examines how two dimensions of moral intensity involved in a corporation’s external crisis response—magnitude of effectiveness and interpersonal proximity—influence observer perceptions of and behavioral intentions toward the corporation. Across three studies, effectiveness decreased negative perceptions and increased pro-organizational intentions via ethical judgment of the response. Moreover, the two dimensions interacted such that a response high in proximity but low in effectiveness led to more negative perceptions and to less pro-organizational intentions. This interaction was particularly pronounced if the corporation portrayed itself as communal-oriented. The interaction was mediated by individuals’ ethical judgment, which was a function of the corporation’s perceived benevolent concern. We termed the interaction the Strategic Samaritan, for it was when the corporation tried to appear like a Good Samaritan, displaying proximity with victims but not accompanying it with effective help, that it was seen as acting with less benevolent concern.

Organization theory and business ethics are essentially the positive and normative sides of the very same coin, reflecting on how human cooperative activities are organized and how they ought to be organized respectively. It is therefore unfortunate that—due to the relatively impermeable manmade boundaries segregating the corresponding scholarly communities into separate schools and departments, professional associations, and scientific journals—the potential symbiosis between the two fields has not yet fully materialized. In this essay we make a modest attempt at establishing further connectivity by surveying the terrain covered by the two disciplines jointly, as if the boundaries between them did not matter. We commence by providing a concise overview of the organization theory discipline for interested non-specialists from the field of business ethics. Next, we proceed to point out four research themes commonly investigated by members of both communities, and also a variety of organization-theoretical perspectives on each. In the final part of this essay we explore what organization theory has to offer business ethics, and what the boundaries of that potential contribution are. We warn skeptical readers in advance that the spirit and tone of our essay is most definitely upbeat, as we are convinced that the potential for symbiosis between the two fields is vast and inspiring, even though it has only been unleashed partially and incidentally thus far.