Prescribing Outside-Work Behavior: Moral Approaches, Principles, and Guidelines

Abstract

The more the distinction between professional and private life blurs, the more it becomes relevant whether employers may prescribe how employees should behave outside work. By analyzing different moral approaches found in the literature, this article introduces and develops the Integrity Approach to answer this question. Using this approach, an ethical principle for prescribing outside-work behavior is proposed: employees should behave outside work in such a way that they do not disrespect the integrity of their work. This principle is operationalized into twelve guidelines for employers prescribing outside-work behavior for their employees. This article opens up opportunities for follow-up research on the underexamined topic of outside-work behavior from an ethics perspective.