Some centers of gravity are finally emerging in the field of business ethics after a decades-long search for action-guiding theories. Amongst the foremost of these are contractualism and virtue ethics. The former focuses on the morals of economic exchange, the latter on the moral qualities of...

The ethics of organizations has received much attention in recent years. This raises the question whether the ethics of organizations has also improved. In 1999, 2004 and 2008, a survey was conducted of 12,196 U.S. managers and employees. The results show that the ethical culture of...

To date, theory and research on corruption in organizations have primarily focused on its static antecedents. This paper focuses on the spread and growth of corruption in organizations. For this purpose three downward organizational spirals are formulated: the spiral of divergent norms, the...

Based on four interlocking empirical studies, this paper initially validates and refines the Corporate Ethical Virtues Model which formulates normative criteria for the ethical culture of organizations. The findings of an exploratory factor analysis provide support for the existence of eight...

Integrative Social Contracts Theory (ISCT) is arguably the most promising theory of business ethics to date, but is often criticized for its inability to produce substantive, action guiding norms. The gist of the problem is that the contractualist argument central to this theory may justify many...

Controls can have positive or increasingly negative effects on the behavior of employees. In this article we develop a theory to explain these effects. Central to this is the way employees interpret the management intentions in applying control measures. Since control measures reduce employee...

We develop a grounded neo-institutional theory explaining the occurrence of misconduct in professional service firms. The theory harbors two novel insights. First, parallel governance structures, which are presently the norm in many professional fields, aggravate rather than dampen misconduct....

De Open Onderneming: Een bedrijfsethisch vraagstukIn deze rede wordt de oproep vanuit de samenleving tot een grotere maatschappelijke openheid van bedrijven geplaatst in een bedrijfsethisch perspectief. Enerzijds zijn er bedrijfsethischeredenen voor openheid. Anderzijds zijn er ook morele...

In this paper, we examine the relationship between Christian religiosity, attitudes towards corporate social responsibility (CSR), and CSR behavior of executives. We distinguish four types of CSR attitudes and five types of CSR behavior. Based on empirical research conducted among 473 Dutch...

In the face of systemic challenges to corporate legitimacy, scholars and managers alike have been rethinking traditional answers to the question: What does it take to be a good company? We approach this question in two novel ways. We offer a normative answer, grounded in virtue ethics, by...