This paper explores the subject of ethics expertise. We suggest that this is a topic which has been badly neglected despite ongoing discussions about subjects which presuppose a particular conception of expertise (e.g., codes of conduct, certification requirements). In addition, given significant challenges to any conception of ethical expertise, we try to determine whether it is possible to provide a meaningful and substantive account of it. The paper moves from more abstract discussion of the idea to grounding a particular model, providing substance to it, and discussing specific traits or qualities of ethics experts.

This paper addresses whether the adoption of Japanese financial practices by U.S. corporations can be used as a basis for encouraging U.S. managers to promote the interests of their (human) organizations over those of stockholders. An historical overview is provided of how the corporate organization in each country evolved and the corresponding development of managers’ responsibilities to the corporate organization versus shareholders. These concepts are then examined within the context of each country’s contemporary corporate financial structure and the corresponding financial responsibilities of managers to the corporate organization versus shareholders. A discussion is then provided of whether the values embodied in each system would affect the ability of the United States to encourage a more “corporate-oriented” ethic in its managers by adopting Japanese financial practices.

Investigations of large scale industrial accidents generally take one of two alternative approaches to identifying the cause or causes of those destructive events. The first is legal analysis, which focuses on the mechanical failure or human error that immediately preceded the accident. The second is socio-technical reasoning, which centers on the complexities of the interlocking technological and organizational systems that brought about the accident. Both are retrospective, and provide little insight into the means of avoiding industrial accidents in the future. This article looks at six levels of managerial responsibility within a firm, and suggests specific changes at all levels that should logically help in the prevention or mitigation of these high impact/low probability events. The most basic need, however, is for imagination, empathy, and courage at the most senior level of the firm.

Noncompete clauses (NCCs), or agreements by employees to not work for a competitor or start a competing business, have recently faced increased public scrutiny and criticism. This article provides a qualified defense of NCCs. I focus on the argument that NCCs should be banned because they unfairly restrict the options of employees. I argue that this argument fails because it neglects the economist Thomas Schelling’s insight that limiting exit options can be beneficial for a person. This employee-based defense of NCCs does not absolve all their uses, but it does give us a rough test for evaluating the permissibility of NCCs. With this test in hand, I turn to some of the more controversial uses of NCCs. For those who weigh heavily the interests of employees, the question is not whether NCCs, but when.

Corporate governance scholarship focuses on executive malfeasance, specifically its antecedents and consequences. Academic efforts primarily focus on prevention while practitioners are often left to hold firms and executives (including directors) accountable through a variety of sanctions. Even so, executive malfeasance still occurs even in the face of the vast resources used to monitor, control, and penalize firms and executives. In this paper, we posit equity markets do not adequately penalize firms for inaccurate earnings reports. Using a sample of 129 firms identified by the U.S. General Accounting Office for reporting fraudulent earnings in 10K filings, we found support for our assertion. Consequently, the one party who may benefit but escape accountability is firm shareholders. Moreover, we find little empirical evidence that the subset of firms sanctioned by the SEC is penalized more heavily than the full sample by markets at the time they report and correct their 10K filings. Our results raise serious questions whether such managerial opportunism can be eradicated given the apparent lack of consequences in equity markets for investors. We also question whether the SEC is able to discern between fraud and error in financial reporting and its implications.

The moral worth of attorneys has traditionally been judged in terms of compliance with legal codes of ethics. These codes, ostensibly designed to promote smooth and equitable functioning of an adversary system, are manifestations of a rule utilitarian moral system. This paper argues that ethical attorneys have a higher calling than rule compliance and that “moral commitment,” which combines commitment to “right” solutions and moral courage, is a superior yardstick for measuring their moral worth.

An analysis of the business ethics of the African-American church during and after Reconstruction reveals that it is a conflicted ethic, oscillating between two poles. The first is the sacralization of the business ethic of Booker T. Washington, in which self-help endeavors which valorize American capitalism but are preferentially oriented to the African-American community are advanced as the best and only options for economic uplift. The second is the “Blackwater” tradition, which rejects any racial discrimination and insists upon social justice. The inability of the Washingtonian business ethic to address the needs of the Black underclass are explored. A new business ethic is called for, which would be committed to meeting the basic needs of the most disadvantaged members of American society and those of the “international poor.”

Care has increasingly been promoted as an element of successful management practice. However, an ethic of care is a normative theory that was initially developed in reference to intimate relationships, and it is unclear if it is an appropriate normative standard in business. The purpose of this review is to bridge the social scientific study of care with philosophical understandings of care and to provide a theoretical justification for care as a managerial value. We review the three different forms of care advanced by the ethics literature: caring relations, organizational care, and care as a virtue. We compare these forms of care to the management litertature. In doing so, we integrate what has previously been a scattered, yet growing, body of research on care. Our review of the literature reveals that care has increasingly been studied in management in relation to an ethic of care. Yet, many of the properties of care have also played a role in other established research domains (e.g., leadership). We discuss and critique the management and ethics literatures on care, paying attention to areas of agreement or disagreeement between the two. We go on to provide a normative justification of care as a value in business. Finally, we close by suggesting directions for future research.

In this study, we theorize humanness in organizations as a property of practice. We apply practice theory to examine how humanness becomes enacted in a business organization as people prioritize organizational and individual ends in their work activities. Our empirical case study examines the everyday interactions of development team members in an R&D organization of a large Nordic cooperative. Challenging the dominant individualist and structuralist approaches in humanness and human dignity studies, we identify and locate four different aspects of humanness in organizational practices. As a result, we show how the emergence of humanness is an ongoing process that transpires through two mechanisms: site shifting and reconciliation; that is, people shift between different sites of the social, consisting of different sets of practices with underlying disparate assumptions of humanness, which requires reconciliation. These findings provide a basis for an alternative theorizing of humanness in organizations.

Moral repair is an important way for firms to heal moral relationships with stakeholders following a transgression. The concept is rooted in recognition theory, which is often used to develop normative perspectives and prescriptions, but the same theory has also propelled a view of moral repair as premised on negotiation between offender and victim(s), which involves the complex social construction of the transgression and the appropriate amends. The tension between normative principles and socioconstructivist implementation begs the question how offending firms should approach moral repair. Addressing this question, we develop a two-level conceptualization of moral repair, distinguishing between procedural and substantive levels of practice, which accommodate normativity and socioconstructivism, respectively. In so doing, we enrich the literature by 1) promoting conceptual clarity, 2) refining understanding of the moral repair process, and 3) suggesting the use of a unified, configurational approach to studying (nonlinear) relations between amends and moral outcomes.