Organizations don't have a mind and can't have goals if we follow a microstructural approach that builds on methodological individualism. Yet, paradoxically, the existence of a normatively binding, shared organizational goal is typically a definitional criterion of what makes a group of individuals an organization. Building on the recent philosophy of social ontology, I answer this puzzle by demonstrating how agents within an organization believing in a shared goal make such a shared goal epistemologically independent, while ontologically emergent and dependent on individual beliefs. Through this collective belief, organizational goals become functionally real and normatively binding, and part of the most predictive theories to explain how individual agents behave in an organization. I also analyze how the deontic duties and rights of within-organizational roles aim to ensure that every member is either inspired, obliged, or channeled to engage in activities serving those goals, while also determining how much each member can influence the shared goals. This helps to bridge the micro-macro gap in organizational research by providing an account of the normative microfoundations for how individual agents come to adhere to organizational goals and together form a "group agent" capable of having goals and being morally responsible for them.
This paper explores the ontological relationship between descriptive and normative by drawing on the perspectives of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin Heidegger. Through Wittgenstein's concept of "grammar" and Heidegger's notion of das Man, we see that normativity shapes human perception and interpretation, making descriptive neutrality unattainable. Descriptions are always informed by norms and norms evolve by descriptions. This intertwined relationship has significant implications for business ethics, since ethical conflicts can now be reframed as lack of normative references. Ultimately, the paper proposes a perspective of moral perspectivism.
Organizational ethical culture, though widely studied, lacks conceptual clarity and precision with levels of analysis. To diagnose the specific conceptual and levels limitations, we assess the state of the science of ethical culture by analyzing 155 articles. Analysis revealed conceptual disorganization, confusion between the conceptual domain and nomological network, and imprecise treatment of levels of analysis. These limitations have resulted in downstream problems with building and testing theory; existing research is affected by unfalsifiable hypotheses, conceptual invalidity, contamination among measures, and incorrect levels-based inferences. To help overcome these limitations, we present a revised definition that integrates the dynamic model of organizational culture with the concept of ethical affordances. We present a multilevel model and describe potential interactions that determine how and under what conditions ethical culture manifests at relevant levels. We conclude with recommendations that will help future research move past these limitations.
According to the conventional wisdom among business ethicists, the "Business Judgment Rule" gives corporate leaders the discretion needed to abide by the firm's moral obligations. In the first part of the paper, I challenge this view: managers have compelling reasons to believe that the Business Judgment Rule (and corporate law more generally) allows corporate leaders to pursue ethically motivated decisions only when these decisions are expected to be profit-enhancing. This is problematic because it instrumentalizes ethics, pushes ethically motivated corporate leaders to dissemble, and corrupts the quality of our public discourse. In response, I propose that corporate law should incorporate ethics into the Business Judgment Rule, explicitly giving managers discretion to make ethically motivated decisions that are profit-sacrificing. After responding to concerns about implementing such a rule, I contend that such a rule would be an important step to put corporate ethics in its proper place.
"Moral distress" was introduced in nursing ethics to describe the experience of having the moral conviction about the right thing to do while having limited agency to enact it. It exists at the intersection of moral philosophy, moral psychology, and moral communities that influence our desires to act. Although moral distress has significantly impacted bioethics scholarship, it has had almost no presence in business ethics scholarship. We argue that moral distress is useful for understanding important problems of business ethics. We claim it may be missing from business ethics discourse not because it is not present but rather because it is ever-present, an existential condition brought on by the tension between profit maximization and other moral purposes. We consider how the moral communities of medicine and business can be morally supportive or distressing and set forth a taxonomy of moral conditions involving the relationship between knowledge, action, and desire.
Much philosophical literature on sweatshop ethics assumes that the individual branded marketers that sell consumer goods either employ sweatshop workers or can strongly influence the conditions under which those workers labor. This oversimplification misidentifies the rationale for and details of the responsibilities of big buyers for the labor standards in their supply chains. Throughout this article, we illustrate how philosophers' "vertical integration" and "control" assumptions distort our understanding of the internal dynamics within supply chains. Under the more realistic assumption that big buyers have "constrained influence" over labor conditions in their supply chains, we show that big buyers retain the responsibility to work toward social upgrading goals. However, fulfilling such a responsibility requires big buyers to collectively cede power to third parties in supply chains in formalized and accountable ways. Recent developments in transnational industrial agreements, such as the International Accord, are examples of this commitment.
How does a role—whether in business, law, government, or some other institution—change what is morally permissible or obligatory? Here I present three options and argue for the third. On the balancing model, a role simply gives its occupant additional normative reasons, to be weighed against all other normative reasons. On the shielding model, a role comes with its own moral code, blocking the force of all role-external reasons. On the filtering model, a role selectively filters its occupant’s reasons for action, creating obligations or permissions to act on a narrowed range of considerations. I argue that the filtering model offers a superior analysis of the ethics of roles, including the concepts of professional integrity and discretion. I focus on three difficult cases: a nuclear safety regulator, a criminal defense lawyer, and a corporate lobbyist. I conclude by discussing the implications of the filtering model for business ethics.
Research on the ethics of life and death in organizations has overlooked the growing role of social media in shaping the ethical implications of organizational regulations on death. More specifically, while recent research suggests that memes are increasingly used to influence the reputation and perception of organizational actions, research on their roles in legitimating the organization of death is scant. This paper analyzes Internet memes legitimizing police slaughter in Brazilian favelas. Three primary discourses were identified: denying life worthiness, establishing actors deserving death, and upholding the police organization as executioners of death. This paper contributes to research on the ethics of organizational death in three different ways in a context of political polarization and growing authoritarism. First, it discusses how social media creates a legitimate discourse that makes death visible and gloats over its victims. Second, this discourse is enabled by social media memes, which divert the ethical debate on life and death, replacing it with superficial and transient engagement. Third, we discuss how memes can reinforce the role of the state police enforcement apparatus as an expression of racialized inequalities.
We share the world we live and die in with others, in ways that are organized and disorganized. The authors of this special issue address life-and-death as a compound term, foregrounding the vital and deadly outcomes of (dis)organization and their (business) ethics implications as they play out in the context of growing inequalities and ongoing health, geopolitical, environmental, refugee crises and egregious war crimes. Organizations and organizing can shape such contexts by engaging in the ethics of care and politics of inclusivity, redefining "essential" or "front line" work, managing relationships between bodily health and work, or ethically relating to non-human forms of life. Considering the roles of organizations in terms of life-and-death can help scholars redefine organizations and/in/for/with the world by stressing the ethical dimensions of organizing for life which involves human and other-than-human relatedness and the obligation of care for all forms of life.
We take the opportunity in this editorial that marks the end of our tenure, to offer some reflections on our experiences. It is an occasion for looking back, for reflection on the scholarship and practice of business ethics, and for celebrating some of the outstanding work that is being done in and for the journal.
In this article, we consider how zones of slow death can emerge from epistemic marginalization-specifically, the kind that occurs when a social group lacks shared interpretive models due to processes of "social descent." Drawing on an ethnographic study of waste collectors who moved from skilled to low-skilled or unskilled labor, we explore how this epistemic marginalization is reinforced by the temporal framing of certain lives in the "past tense." In this way, epistemic marginalization and temporal disqualification are intertwined: denying a group's interpretive authority simultaneously enables the erasure of their claims to justice as outdated and obsolete.
In the business ethics and management literature, it is widely recognized that corporate sustainability is a complex concept that remains strongly contested. While some scholars highlight the current utility of the concept when used contextually, others claim that new conceptual foundations must be sought in order to improve the concept. In this article, I demonstrate that these contextualist and foundationalist strategies for conceptualizing corporate sustainability both must confront the ongoing, dynamic interplay between empirical and normative theorizing. Using the requirements of practical usefulness and theoretical robustness, I consequently argue that adopting the "pure" strategy of either contextualism or foundationalism is problematic. Instead, I defend the position of conceptual pluralism by claiming that it can partially reconcile contextualist and foundationalist commitments and thereby enable a flexible, multilevel corporate sustainability framework. I conclude by highlighting the key implications of this approach to concept formation for business ethics.
Contextual integrity has now become a (the?) dominant academic theory of privacy. It identifies privacy as both complex and social, two alluring attributes that other leading theories reject. Scholars who engage contextual integrity mostly do so only to convey their confidence in it as their working framework. Even passingly critical notes are rare. This article offers a legal realist critique: Were contextual integrity adopted as a legal standard, it would undermine the very values it was intended to protect, systematically favoring data-hungry corporations at the expense of an already shrinking zone of protected individual privacy. Contextual integrity is dangerous precisely because of the complexity and sociality that draw so many scholars to it. In an adversarial courtroom that pits corporate data interests against aggrieved individuals, these theoretical virtues favor the more sophisticated, well-funded, repeat player.
MacIntyrean business ethics research has focused on the concept of a practice, drawn primarily from After Virtue. MacIntyre later emphasized the need to adopt an account of human nature to provide a better grounding for his earlier social teleology. We consider three implications of incorporating the neo-Aristotelian and Thomistic account of human nature outlined in MacIntyre's later works for MacIntyrean business ethics research: First, this account enables the MacIntyrean perspective to better ground its focus on practices as a key moral requirement for the organization of work. Second, it provides a better basis for distinguishing productive practices in good order from other business activities lacking the characteristics of a practice. Third, a theory incorporating an account of human nature, particularly MacIntyre's notion of natural law, is better able to address broader questions in business ethics that are not directly concerned with the structure of work.
Despite substantial corporate investment in mentorship, learning, and talent development, access to these knowledge sharing practices may be unequal. This could be due to structural prejudices that determine who receives mentorship, whose learning is prioritised, and how knowledge is shared in organisations. Philosophical business ethics research has primarily focused on speaker-directed epistemic injustice, where employees' testimony is silenced or discredited. This article introduces hearer-directed epistemic injustice, a novel concept that highlights the wrong suffered by employees who are unjustly denied knowledge. Using Hidden Figures as a case, this article illustrates how testimonial oversimplification or omission can perpetuate structural inequalities in organisations. By extending Fricker's theory of epistemic injustice, I argue that "speakers"-mentors, managers, finance professionals, and leaders-should actively foster virtuous knowledge sharing practices. This research contributes to business ethics by providing a conceptual framework for identifying hearer-directed epistemic injustice in organisations and ways to mitigate prejudice in organisational epistemic practices.
