Business Ethics and Organisational Change
Abstract
The story of business ethics would seem to be a tale of horses, deckchairs, Molotovs and ostriches. There is little evidence that the growth in organisational codes of ethics (OCoE) in recent years has had much effect on organisational activity. Such was also the experience with the social responsibility debate of the 1970s – a debate which the current business ethics experience so closely parallels. The theme here is that business ethics and social responsibility have failed to “root” because (a) they have remained undefined and imprecise, and (b) organisations have neither the mechanisms for, nor the interest in, their adoption. As a result neither ethics nor responsibility has entered the “soul” of organisations. Commentators have misunderstood this and continue so to do because the bulk of debate in the business ethics arena adopts the individualist orientation that characterises much of the history of the philosophy of ethics.
Keywords
Citation
Gray, R.H. (1990), "Business Ethics and Organisational Change", Managerial Auditing Journal, Vol. 5 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/02686909010138944
Publisher
:MCB UP Ltd
Copyright © 1990, MCB UP Limited