David M. Wasieleski

Investigating Influences on Managers’ Moral Reasoning: The Impact of Context and Personal and Organizational Factors

Managers often face situations that challenge their ability to reason morally. Avariety of factors, including the issue itself and personal and organizational influences, may affect their responses. Using Kohlberg’s moral development theory and the Adapted Moral Judgment Interviewtechnique, we examine the influences of context, age, gender, type of work, and industry membership on 308 managers’ moral reasoning. No significant differences are found when considering age or gender. Differences are discovered when assessing the context of the dilemmas, managers’ type of work (managerial vs. technical), and industry membership (manufacturing vs. service). Implications from our findings are discussed.

An enquiry into the ethical efficacy of the use of radio frequency identification technology

This paper provides an in-depth analysis of the privacy rights dilemma surrounding radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. As one example of ubiquitous information system, RFID has multitudinous applications in various industries and businesses across society. The use of this technology will have to lead to a policy setting dilemma in that a balance between individuals’ privacy concerns and the benefits that they derive from it must be drawn. After describing the basic RFID technology some of its most prevalent uses, a definition of privacy is derived in the context of information systems. To illustrate current attempts at controlling the undesirable side effects of RFID, Lessig’s cyberspace framework is presented. It is found that each of Lessig’s components is inadequate at preventing individual privacy violations in RFID. The main focus within this framework is on the norms of society. The social norm mechanism that addresses privacy issues in cyberspace is the Fair Information Practices Principles (FIPP). After an analysis of these principles, it is posited that the FIPP only deal with procedural justice issues related to data collection and omit distributive and interactional justice reasoning related to the actual beneficial and detrimental outcomes to the individuals whose data is being obtained. Thus, RFID is presented in the context of the tension between the many benefits that are provided by the technology in social exchanges, and the risk it carries of the loss of privacy. The new, expanded framework recognizes both sides of the issue with the ultimate goal of providing a greater understanding of how privacy issues can be addressed with RFID technology.

Socially responsible modeling: a stakeholder approach to the implementation of ethical modeling in operations research

A common dilemma for modelers in operations research (OR) involves how to construct ethically sensitive models. Concern for ethical modeling has recently become more widespread in the OR literature. Arguably, however, this concern has not manifested into concrete frameworks for analyzing models. This paper presents an approach from the organizational ethics field for evaluating models. After first reviewing the state of ethics in OR—its relevance and current applications—a stakeholder framework for evaluating the social performance of the model is presented. Stakeholder theory is effective for assessing the impacts of models in use. The normative core underlying this theory addresses the ethical concerns in decision support systems and provides a prescriptive solution to ethical issues in modeling.

Aesthetic Rationality in Organizations: Toward Developing a Sensibility for Sustainibility

This article explains the coexistence and interaction of aesthetic experience and moral value systems of decision makers in organizations. For this purpose, we develop the concept of “aesthetic rationality,” which is described as a type of value-oriented rationality that serves to encourage sustainable behavior in organizations, and to complete the commonly held, “instrumentally rational” view of organizations. We show that organizations regularly exhibit not only an instrumental rationality but also an “aesthetic rationality,” which is manifested in their products and processes. We describe aesthetics, its underlying moral values, its evolutionary roots, and its links to virtue ethics as a basis for defining the concept of aesthetic rationality. We examine its links with human resources, organizational design, and other organizational elements. We examine these implications, identify how an aesthetic-driven ethic provides a potential for sustainable behavior in organizations, and suggest new directions for organizational research.

Book Review: William C. Frederick. 2006. Corporation, Be Good! The Story of Corporate Social Responsibility. Indianapolis, IN: Dog Ear Publishing. 334 pages,

At this critical juncture in the history of the corporation, a new book reflecting on the turbulent relationship of business with society over the past century has hit the shelves. The author William C. Frederick is one of the preeminent and most prolific scholars of the business-and-society field. Corporation, Be Good! The Story of Corporate Social Responsibility could not have come out at a better time. Business currently faces numerous new social and environmental challenges brought on by dynamic changes in the global economy. The social responsibility of business appears today to be highly salient to the public because of the recent outbreak of corporate scandals led by Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Adelphia, and Parmalat, among others. Frederick illustrates in this book that a corporate social responsibility (CSR) mindset was present for some six decades. With this reality in mind, he tells the reader that story—the more than halfcentury-long saga of CSR. It is not insignificant that the author of this book is William Frederick. He was one of the founders of the business-and-society field and a recipient of the Sumner Marcus Award in the Social Issues in Management Division at the Academy of Management. He has observed and interpreted the emergence and development of CSR throughout his academic career. There are few scholars who could adequately write a prospectus of the CSR concept framed as a retrospective evaluation of the past six decades. This book is an ensemble of classic pieces from Frederick’s career with fresh interpretations and new chapters interwoven to create a concise chronicle of CSR and business ethics from their grassroots to their modern image. Throughout the book, Frederick offers his vision for the future of CSR and an agenda for both academics and practitioners on the road ahead. Frederick is a master storyteller who takes readers on a journey from initial corporate outcries for increased attention to societal issues to the edge of the cliff where only open skies of opportunity are visible to potential forward-thinking ethicists. Inviting readers to sit back and take the quest with him, the author asks much from his fellow travelers. To know where corporate responsibility should go in the new millennium, it is important to know from where one has come. So although the book is a comprehensive Business & Society Volume 46 Number 4 December 2007 479-485

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The issue of consumer acceptance in the implementation of RFID and related ubiquitous technologies, driven primarily by privacy concerns, is a complex social problem involving consumers, companies, advocacy groups and government agencies – each of whom has different and often incompatible goals. This research decomposes the problem and explores it from the perspective of one of these stakeholders, that is, a company seeking to implement RFID in order to achieve specific business objectives. The authors establish a theoretical framework, based on social justice theory in business ethics that identifies the factors contributing to consumer and societal resistance to an RFID implementation. Within this framework, they outline the technical and managerial elements of an implementation plan, and relate those elements to the underlying components of social justice theory. The result is a strategy for technology managers that 1) considers the complex mix of consumer, societal and governmental concerns hindering adoption of the technologies, and 2) indicates areas of potential compromise.

Facilitating Consumer Acceptance of RFID and Related Ubiquitous Technologies

This chapter, grounded in empirical analysis, supports the position adopted by evolutionary psychologists that the human brain is hardwired to solve adaptive problems involving social exchange relationships. First, the evolutionary psychology hypothesis regarding social exchange is presented and explained in terms of its relevance to business. It is argued that the presence of cheater-detection/social-contract neural algorithms is ubiquitous among all members of a human population regardless of formal business training. In Study 1, I test the hypothesis on a sample of 300 business practitioners and students. Additionally, this study examines whether human brain circuits are structured to recognize agency-type arrangements in firms. In a second experiment, the effect of organizational work experience was tested to discover whether there exist moderating factors on the activation of cheater-detection circuits in a business context. It is posited that although corporate agents’ minds are biologically evolved to identify violators in social contract situations, the neural circuits responsible for detecting these breaches are influenced by organizational components including, organizational culture, that affect individuals’ perceptions of the terms of the exchange. Implications for business practitioners and researchers are offered.