This experimental study evaluated the influence of stated organizational concern for ethical conduct upon managerial behavior. Using an in-basket to house the manipulation, a sample of 113 MBA students with some managerial experience reacted to scenarios suggesting illegal conduct and others suggesting only unethical behavior. Stated organizational concern for ethical conduct was varied from none (control group) to several other situations which included a high treatment consisting of a Code of Ethics, an endorsement letter by the CEO and specific sanctions (...) for managerial misconduct. Only in the case of suggested illegal behavior tempered by high organizational concern were managers influenced by organizational policy to modify the morality of their actions. However, the responses to the illegal scenarios were significantly more ethical than the reactions given to the unethical (but not illegal) situations. The implications of these findings are then discussed. (shrink)

Impression management refers to behaviors used by individuals to control the impressions they make on audiences. This study demonstrated that business men and women were more likely to defend their questionable behavior by using excuses and justifications than to openly concede errors of judgment and behavior. Three hundred and sixty two participants received a scenario in which they had allegedly engaged in questionable behavior. The participants then wrote a position paper explaining their actions. Results indicated that people in business attempt (...) to avoid being associated with potentially negative interpretations of their behavior primarily through the use of justifications and excuses. In general, the types of responses were relatively consistent across work experience, educational and occupational levels. However, in some instances the specific explanations used depended on gender and age. (shrink)

Management and non-management employees of a northeastern bank read a description of a manager who engaged in a breach of confidentiality. Subjects were asked to evaluate the acceptability of 27 excuses. Results showed that subjects' ratings of acceptability were affected by their individual perception of the severity of the stimulus manager's breach of confidentiality. Subjects' rank did not affect acceptability of accounts.

The present paper describes a number of ethical quandaries facing the implementors of motivational interventions in organizational settings. A critical analysis of the traditional solutions to these issues within the organizational literature finds them lacking for want of considering unwitting cognitive biases and self presentational doublespeak, both of which may result in the rights of research participants being underprotected. The establishment of an Institutional Review process, loosely analogized from the biomedical and behavioral science research traditions, is suggested as a means (...) of protecting the rights of research participants as well as humanizing future motivational interventions. (shrink)

Two related studies focused on the effects that a questionable supervisory conduct has on the endorsement and vulnerability of the supervisor, as well as on judgments of supervisory morality. Male and female undergraduate and graduate business students were asked to read the account of a personnel manager who violates employee confidentiality concerning certain personality test results, but who has had a previous record of increasing or decreasing productivity. The studies revealed varying patterns of leadership endorsement, vulnerability, and judgments of morality (...) following this questionable or unethical conduct as a result of the personnel's manager's record and the subjects' sex. (shrink)

When managers use moral expressions in their communications, they do so for several, sometimes contradictory reasons. Based upon analyses of interviews with managers, this article examines seven distinctive uses of moral talk, sub-divided into three groupings: (1) managers use moral talk functionally to clarify issues, to propose and criticize moral justifications, and to cite relevant norms; (2) managers also use moral talk functionally to praise and to blame as well as to defend and criticize structures of authority; finally (3) managers (...) use moral talk dysfunctionally to rationalize morally ambiguous behavior and to express frustrations. The article concludes with several practical recommendations. (shrink)

In his classical paper C. Wright Mills suggests a novel view of the motives within the framework of sociology of knowledge. Contrasting an approach of sociology of knowledge to subjectivistic understanding of the motives as outer manifestation of the inner elements, Mills locates a particular types of action within typical frames of normative actions and socially situated clusters of motive. Motives is something that is imputed and avowed by actors, therefore it is necessary to consider, first, how different motives are (...) assigned by different actors to themselves and others in certain social and historical situations, and second, how different vocabularies of motive conflict with each other and replace each other over time. In this case motives are not a manifestations of some inner impulses but a justifications of the behavior. (shrink)