Organization Ethics
Richard P. Nielsen
Is the study of ethical issues in organizations. From a behavioral perspective, ethical issues in business, government, and non profit organizations are much more similar than they are different. Equally, the bureaucratic and organizational causes of unethical behavior in business, government, and non profit organizations are more similar than they are different. This is why organizational scholars study organizational ethics phenomena and not solely business ethics, government ethics, or non profit organization ethics issues.
For example, problems of fair treatment of employees, occupational health and safety, product/service safety, abuse of power, responsibility to external constituencies, pollution, bribery, privacy, conflict of interest, equal opportunity, preferential treatment, unjust discharge, etc., exist across business, government, and non profit organizations. Similarly, causes of unethical behavior such as greed for money and/or power, fear of upper level powerful managers, organizational requirements to obey orders, organizational isolation, routinized ‘‘in the box’’ job behavior, and thinking that does not include the ethical as part of ‘‘my job,’’ lack of organization civil liberties that might protect employees from retaliation for raising ethical issues, etc., exist in business, non profit, and government organizations.
Organization ethics may be following a developmental path similar to that of organization behavior. Organization behavior is taught in schools of management, business, public administration, education, engineering, nursing, public health, and medicine. This was not always the case. The behavioral sciences were introduced into business schools in the 1920s and it took almost 50 years for organization behavior to be taught in professional schools across eco nomic sectors. Organization ethics may be following a similar pattern. In the 1980s organization ethics was introduced into schools of management and business. Since then a few schools of government and public administration have begun to teach it, and it is spreading to other professional schools. The day may come when most ethics courses in management schools are called organization ethics instead of business ethics.
Bibliography
Ewing, D. W. (1977). Freedom Inside the Organization: Bringing Civil Liberties to the Workplace. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Hirschmann, A. O. (1970). Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Nielsen, R. P. (1993). Organizational ethics from a perspective of action (praxis). Business Ethics Quarterly, 3 (2), 131 51.
Nielsen, R. P. (1996). The Politics of Ethics: Methods for Acting, Learning, and Sometimes Fighting Others in Ad dressing Ethics Problems in Organizational Life. New York: Oxford University Press.