Understanding The Factors Underlying Ethical Organizations: Enabling Continuous Ethical Improvement

Abstract

Over the past decade, issues surrounding corporate ethics and the ethical decision making of individuals in business have been a major focus in the popular press, academic research and curriculum revision efforts in business schools. One of the quandaries faced throughout these efforts is how to enable an individual to make ethical decisions In this paper, a model is proposed that focuses on organizational culture as the means by which to provide an environment that fosters ethical decision making by the organizations members. A four-stage model for understanding the current ethical state of organizations is formulated. Subsequently, the focus shifts to the underlying factors and situations that may intentionally or unintentionally exist and that may cause an organization to progress to a higher stage or regress to a lower stage.