Whenever we hear about ethical scandals, we tend to believe that unethical or illegal behavior in organizations is driven by character deficiencies of individual actors. Put differently, we simply assume that bad things are done by bad people (so-called bad apples). However, numerous corporate scandals, such as Enron, Ford, or Siemens, have demonstrated that even people with a high level of integrity can break the rules if they are put into a corrupt context. Good apples may become rotten in bad barrels. Regardless of their good intentions and strong values, individual actors might adapt to the unethical practices in their respective organizational context and, over time, lose the ability to see their wrongdoings. They become ethically blind. Such changes in people’s way of seeing the world and their value systems can occur in—and through—various organizational contexts in business, civil society, and public administration
Posted on: Mon, 15 Sep 2014 22:27:09 +0000
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