Social Responsibility and Ethics in Strategic Management Chapter 3 Learning Objectives

Reasons for Unethical Behavior

• Unaware that behavior is questionable
• Lack of standards of conduct
• Different cultural norms and values
• Behavior-based or relationship-based governance systems
• Different values between business people and stakeholders

Moral Relativism

• Moral relativism
• claims that morality is relative to some personal, social or cultural standard and that there is no method for deciding whether one decision is better than another

Moral Relativism

• Naïve relativism
• based on the belief that all moral decisions are deeply personal and that individuals have the right to run their own lives
• Role relativism
• based on the belief that social roles carry with them certain obligations to that role

Moral Relativism

• Social group relativism
• based on a belief that morality is simply a matter of following the norms of an individual’s peer group
• Cultural relativism
• based on the belief that morality is relative to a particular culture, society or community

Kohlberg’s Levels of Moral Development

• Preconventional level
• concern for one’s self
• Conventional level
• considerations for society’s laws and norms
• Principled level
• guided by an internal code of ethics

Encouraging Ethical Behavior

• Code of Ethics
• specifies how an organization expects its employees to behave while on the job

Encouraging Ethical Behavior

A code of ethics:

• clarifies company expectations of employee conduct in various situations
• makes clear that the company expects its people to recognize the ethical dimensions in decisions and action