Fluent Essays

Assignment: ·  Ethical Case Study.pdf  Ethical Case Study.pdf - Alternative Formats (453.36 KB) This Case Study is used to complete both your DQ 1 and Annotated Bibliography 1 Assignments. You will: · Review the Case Study above by clicking on the link above. · Find three PEER REVIEWED Articles on Ethical Dilemmas in the workplace, and create an Evaluative Annotated Bibliography for each of those three PEER REVIEWED articles. You will submit the assignment as Annotated Bibliography #1, in the Assignments and Directions folder of this Module. Do not use any articles I have provided nor any website articles as resources. Please review the directions for this assignment in the Assignments and Directions folder and/or in the Handouts folder found within each module. · Answer question #4 in the Case Study, as it serves as DQ 1. You will submit your answer in flipgrid, after completing the Annotated Bibliography 1 above.  Assignment and direction: 1. You will: · Review the Case Study linked above. Find 3 PEER REVIEWED articles on ethics in the workplace. Do not use articles found in websites. Use may use PGCCs Online library, or another of your choice. · Create Evaluative Annotated Bibliographies of the Articles using the template attached above, APA formatting for in text citations, and references and post it in this folder by clicking on the title Annotated Bibliography 1 above. APA_annotated_bibliography.pdf Ethical Case Study(1) (1).pdf Annotated Bibliography Rubric.doc APA_Annotated_Bibliography_Template.docx Running head: SHORTENED TITLE 1 SHORTENED TITLE 3 Full Title of Annotated Bibliography Student’s Name BMT 1500 Associate Professor A. Williams Date Full Title of Annotated Bibliography Field, J. (2003). Social capital. Retrieved from EBSCO eBook and Audiobook Collection database. In this section, you will be writing the annotation for the source you have cited above. An annotated bibliography can simply describe the source (summary annotation) or it can also include an evaluation (evaluative annotation). For summary annotations, briefly write about the source. Focus on describing your source, such as the author’s qualifications and why was the source created. Describe the main ideas, arguments, themes, theses, or methodology, and identify the intended audience of the cited source Explain the author’s expertise, point of view, and any bias he or she may have about the topic. Freeman, R.E. & Auster, E.R. (2011). Values, authenticity, and responsible leadership. Journal of Business Ethics, 98, 15-23. doi: 10.1007/s10551-011-1022-7 Evaluative annotations include both a short description and your evaluation of the cited source. In your evaluation, critically assess the selected source for accuracy, relevance, and quality. Compare to other sources on the same topic that you have also cited to show similarities and differences. Explain why each source is useful for your research topic and how it relates to your topic. Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the source. Identify the observations or conclusions of the author. Maak, T. (2007). Responsible leadership, stakeholder engagement, and the emergence of social capital. Journal of Business Ethics, 7, 329-343. doi: 10.1007/s10551-007-9510-5 This is an example of a summary annotation. This article focuses on the role of social capital in responsible leadership. It looks at both the social networks that a leader builds within an organization, and the links that a leader creates with external stakeholders. Maak’s main aim with this article seems to be to persuade people of the importance of continued research into the abilities that a leader requires and how they can be acquired. Maak, T. (2007). Responsible leadership, stakeholder engagement, and the emergence of social capital. Journal of Business Ethics, 7, 329-343. doi: 10.1007/s10551-007-9510-5 This is an example of an evaluative annotation. This article focuses on the role of social capital in responsible leadership. It looks at both the social networks that a leader builds within an organization, and the links that a leader creates with external stakeholders. Maak’s main aim with this article seems to be to persuade people of the importance of continued research into the abilities that a leader requires and how they can be acquired. The focus on the world of multinational business means that for readers outside this world many of the conclusions seem rather obvious (be part of the solution not part of the problem). In spite of this, the article provides useful background information on the topic of responsible leadership and definitions of social capital which are relevant to an analysis of a public servant. Case Study – Apple Suppliers & Labor Practices- Page 1 of 2 Apple Suppliers & Labor Practices With its highly coveted line of consumer electronics, Apple has a cult following among loyal consumers. During the 2014 holiday season, 74.5 million iPhones were sold. Demand like this meant that Apple was in line to make over $52 billion in profits in 2015, the largest annual profit ever generated from a company’s operations. Despite its consistent financial performance year over year, Apple’s robust profit margin hides a more complicated set of business ethics. Similar to many products sold in the U.S., Apple does not manufacture most its goods domestically. Most of the component sourcing and factory production is done overseas in conditions that critics have argued are dangerous to workers and harmful to the environment. For example, tin is a major component in Apple’s products and much of it is sourced in Indonesia. Although there are mines that source tin ethically, there are also many that do not. One study found workers—many of them children—working in unsafe conditions, digging tin out by hand in mines prone to landslides that could bury workers alive. About 70\% of the tin used in electronic devices such as smartphones and tablets comes from these more dangerous, small-scale mines. An investigation by the BBC revealed how perilous these working conditions can be. In interviews with miners, a 12-year- old working at the bottom of a 70-foot cliff of sand said: “I worry about landslides. The earth slipping from up there to the bottom. It could happen.” Apple defends its practices by saying it only has so much control over monitoring and regulating its component sources. The company justifies its sourcing practices by saying that it is a complex process, with tens of thousands of miners selling tin, many of them through middle-men. In a statement to the BBC, Apple said “the simplest course of action would be for Apple to unilaterally refuse any tin from Indonesian mines. That would be easy for us to do and would certainly shield us from criticism. But that would also be the lazy and cowardly path, since it would do nothing to improve the situation. We have chosen to stay engaged and attempt to drive changes on the ground.” In an effort for greater transparency, Apple has released annual reports detailing their work with suppliers and labor practices. While more recent investigations have shown some improvements to suppliers’ working conditions, Apple continues to face criticism as consumer demand for iPhones and other products continues to grow. Case Study – Apple Suppliers & Labor Practices- Page 2 of 2 Discussion Questions: 1. Do you think Apple should be responsible for ethical lapses made by individuals further down its supply chain? Why or why not? 2. Should Apple continue to work with the suppliers in an effort to change practices, or should they stop working with every supplier, even the conscientious ones, to make sure no “bad apples” are getting through? Explain your reasoning. 3. Do you think consumers should be expected to take into account the ethical track record of companies when making purchases? Why or why not? 4. Can you think of other products or brands that rely on ethically questionable business practices? Do you think consumers are turned off by their track record or are they largely indifferent to it? Explain. 5. Would knowing that a product was produced under ethically questionable conditions affect your decision to purchase it? Explain with examples. 6. If you were part of a third-party regulating body, how would you deal with ethically questionable business practices of multinational corporations like Apple? Would you feel obligated to do something, or do you think the solution rests with the companies themselves? Explain your reasoning. Resources: Apple ‘failing to protect Chinese factory workers’ http://www.bbc.com/news/business-30532463 How Apple could make a $53 billion profit this year http://money.cnn.com/2015/07/17/technology/apple-earnings-2015/ Global Apple iPhone sales from 3rd quarter 2007 to 2nd quarter 2016 (in million units) http://www.statista.com/statistics/263401/global-apple-iphone-sales-since-3rd-quarter-2007/ Despite successes, labor violations still haunt Apple http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/12/8024895/apple-slave-labor-working-conditions-2015 Reports – Supplier Responsibility – Apple https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/progress-report/ Author: Lucy Atkinson, Ph.D. Stan Richards School of Advertising & Public Relations Moody College of Communication The University of Texas at Austin http://www.bbc.com/news/business-30532463 http://money.cnn.com/2015/07/17/technology/apple-earnings-2015/ http://www.statista.com/statistics/263401/global-apple-iphone-sales-since-3rd-quarter-2007/ http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/12/8024895/apple-slave-labor-working-conditions-2015 https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/progress-report/ SALLY WHEELER ETHICS IN THE WORKPLACE ABSTRACT. The right to request flexible working has been introduced into the UK employment laws against a background of post-fordist work practices, which already allow for employer rather than employee flexibility. This paper posits the idea that for the individual employee to benefit from these new rights what is required is the situation of dialogues within the workplace that take place in an ethical frame that recognises the employee as an individual. KEY WORDS: corporate, dialogue, ethics, Levinas, work In April 2003 the Government introduced, by means of an addition to and an amendment of existing employment legislation, provisions for employee leave for domestic reasons. Taken with the conferral of enhanced rights around maternity and paternity leave these provi- sions are the bulwark of the Labour administration’s work-life bal- ance initiative. Specifically, any employee with child care responsibility, provided the child is under six years old or eighteen if disabled and subject to a qualifying period of employment, is entitled to apply to work flexibly.1 The words ‘to apply’ here are crucial as essentially an employee’s request is for a new contract which reflects a different work pattern. The employer is given a range of grounds on which the application may be declined. Additionally, there is a right for every employed individual to unpaid time off to deal with emer- gencies involving a list of statutorily defined dependants. 2 These rights are enacted as individual rights that each employee is to negotiate for with their employer’s representative. The purpose of this 1 Employment Rights Act 1996 s80F as inserted by the Employment Act 2002, s. 47. A more detailed legislative history can be found in L. Anderson, ‘Sound Bite Legislation: The Employment Act 2002 and New Flexible Working Rights for Parents’, Industrial Law Journal 32 (2003), 37. 2 Employment Rights Act 1996, s. 57A and s. 57B as inserted by the Employment Relations Act 1999, sch 4 (II) para 1. Law Critique (2007) 18: 1–28 � Springer 2006 DOI 10.1007/s10978-006-9008-9 paper is to examine the type of workplace dialogues that might take place in pursuit and consideration of these rights and how these dialogues might be situated within an ethical frame. This is the focus of section ‘Towards ethical dialogues’. In section ‘The structure of labour regulation’, I consider, as background, how these new rights fit within the structure of labour regulation in the UK. 3 In section ‘Changing demographics in the labour market’, I consider how the changing demographics of the labour market shape the identities of those individuals who are in employment. THE STRUCTURE OF LABOUR REGULATION The Rise of Individual Rights Developed economies offer a basket of legislatively grounded labour law rights. These create a baseline for employment conditions and can be termed ‘first generation’ rights. Obvious illustrations are the right to form Trade Unions and to bargain collectively. However, these rights vary greatly in quality across national borders, for example, some regulatory regimes draw no distinction in terms of rights held between full-time employees and part-time employees, others offer greatly reduced protection to part-time employees. In periods where state support of liberal capitalism has been in the ascendancy either from a genuine ideological standpoint or in re- sponse to a perceived need to provide a ‘low-cost, low regulation’ economy, organised labour has seen its position undercut either by direct state intervention or by the state absenting itself as a negoti- ating party. 4 These interventions have sought to roll back these rights or curtail their exercise. In the UK the period from 1979 onwards reflects exactly these two phenomena. This has frequently left the individual employee to negotiate rights at a contractual level or to petition against encroachment on rights at tribunal level. 5 As Hepple 3 Much more comprehensive pictures of labour law regulation are given by J. Conaghan, ‘Women, Work, and Family: A British Revolution?’ and H. Collins, ‘Is There a Third Way in Labour Law’, in J. Conaghan et al., eds, Labour Law in an Era of Globalization (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 53 and 449 respectively. 4 S. Lash and J. Urry, The End of Organised Capitalism (Cambridge: Polity, 1987), 280; and L. Dickens, ‘Individual Statutory Employment Rights since 1997: con- strained expansion’, Employee Relations 24 (2002), at 621, 624. 5 A. Pollert, ‘The Unorganised Worker: the Decline in Collectivism and New Hurdles to Individual Employment Rights’, Industrial Law Journal 34 (2005), 217. SALLY WHEELER2 and Morris6 point out in the years 1981–2001 the jurisdiction of Employment Tribunals to enforce individual rights has grown from 32 rights to 70 rights, while in the same period the percentage of the workforce covered by statutory collective procedures more than halved from 83\% to 35\%. 7 In the years between 1997–1998 and 2000–2001 the number of applications to Employment Tribunals rose by 60\%. 8 There is a sense in which, by seeking to ground in ethics the dia- logues that individual employees may have with the representatives of their employers, one is endorsing favourably the decline of collective bargaining structures and failing to recognise the power imbalances that inevitably characterise workplace exchanges. 9 An employment contract can never define the social relationships at play in the employment relationship. There are two responses to this. The first is to underscore the role of ethics. Collective bargaining structures cannot speak to the human interactions, which must underpin the bare contractual relationship; the care that is required of the em- ployee, the discretion that is retained by managers and the initiative that both need to display in their dealings with each other. 10 An ethically constructed dialogue has the potential to recognise this interaction and allow it to be used to recognise values such as social democracy and equality. Collective bargaining structures are more likely to reflect a negotiation of business case interests. 11 The second is to note that to cling to notions of multi-employer collective bargaining is to ignore the prevailing culture of current industrial relations, certainly throughout the constituent states of the EU, which is towards individual enterprise level settlement. 12 It is at 6 B. Hepple and G. Morris, ‘The Employment Act 2002 and the Crisis of Indi- vidual Employment Rights’, Industrial Law Journal 31 (2002), 245. 7 A not dissimilar pattern has emerged in the US, see K. Stone, ‘The Legacy of Industrial Pluralism: The Tension Between Individual Employment Rights and the New Deal Collective Bargaining System’, University of Chicago Law Review 59 (1992), 575. 8 Department of Trade and Industry, Routes to Resolution (London: HMSO, 2001). 9 J. Hyman and J. Summers, ‘Lacking Balance?’, Personnel Review 33 (2004), 422. 10 R. Hyman, ‘The Europeanization-or the Erosion-of Industrial Relations?’, Industrial Law Journal 32 (2001), 280. 11 L. Dickens, ‘Beyond the Business Case: a Three Pronged Approach to Equality Action’, Human Resource Management Journal 9 (1999), 9. 12 H. Katz, ‘The Decentralization of Collective Bargaining: A Literature Review and Comparative Analysis’, Industrial and Labor Relations Review 3 (1993), 47. ETHICS IN THE WORKPLACE 3 least arguable that the one of the consequences of market centred economic regimes has been to relegate notions of voluntary collective bargaining to the level of myth in any event. Second generation employment rights are those that cluster around ideas of flexible working; parental leave, recognition of particular caring responsi- bilities and the right of employees to achieve work/life balance. The negotiation of working practices around these rights would appear to fit more easily into enterprise level dialogues than traditional collec- tive bargaining structures. 13 As I explain in section ‘Changing demographics in the labour market’ below, the changing demo- graphics of the labour market mean that recognition of individual identity and individual need is required for second generation employment rights to be effective. This recognition is more likely to be realised through individual dialogues rather than the more tradi- tional approaches. 14 Collective bargaining structures were held dear by unions is an era where ‘the ‘‘normal’’ worker and hence the ‘‘normal’’ potential trade union member was a full-time employee whose employment status was not merely casual’. 15 Minorities, part- time workers, women and migrant workers were often left outside formal bargaining structures. This hierarchy of privilege was created by labour laws and endorsed by union approaches to bargaining.16 Dialogue has the potential to ease constraints and offer choices or assist in the making of choices. For employees it offers the mainte- nance of integrity, dignity and a flowering of creativity, for corpo- 13 M. Regini, ‘Human Resource Management and Industrial Relations in Euro- pean Countries’, in J Niland et al., eds, The Future of Industrial Relations in Europe (London: Sage, 1994). 14 A. Munro, ‘A Feminist Trade Union Agenda? The Continued Significance of Class, Gender and Race’, Gender Work and Organization 8 (2001), 454. 15 R. Hyman, ‘An Emerging Agenda for Trade Unions?’, in R Munck, ed. Labour and Globalisation (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2004), 19 at 20. There is extent to which representation for these sorts of workers is an emerging agenda for trade unions: see B. Abbott and E. Heery, ‘Representing the Insecure Workforce’, in E. Heery and J. Salmon, eds, The Insecure Workforce (London: Routledge, 2000), 155. 16 K. Stone, ‘The New Psychological Contract: Implications of the Changing Workplace for Labor and Employment Law’, UCLA Law Review 48 (2001), 521 at 573. SALLY WHEELER4 rations it offers, in economic terms, the best use of human capital and in political and social terms the opportunity to (re)create their legitimacy. 17 It is the possibilities for the creation of these shared spaces and the dialogues that might take place within them that I explore in section ‘Towards ethical dialogues’ of the paper. The Move from Union Representation to Consultation and Participation At one level the adoption into UK of works councils can be seen as a simple consequence of the Labour administration of 1997–2001 ending the UK’s opt out of aspects of the social policy agenda of the EU. However, on another level it illustrates, just as the rise of indi- vidual employment rights does, the desire of a neo-liberal state to reconfigure the balance of work place relations away from a partic- ular form of organised labour activity and into a dialogue agenda. The history of participation arrangements in the UK18 illustrates this observation. The UK did not look at an agenda wider than the equation between management accountability and the return of profit to shareholders until the Bullock Committee report 19 in 1977 and the subsequent White Paper. 20 The reality of post-Bullock developments was that ideas of employee participation in governance structures rather than in product quality and development initiatives were very limited. Under the Companies Act 1985 section 309 directors are required to take into account the interests of employees as part of the duty they owe to the company.21 There is no complimentary enforcement mechanism included for the benefit of employees. Under section 1 of the Employment Act 1982 corporations were required to 17 It is possible for those on both sides of the globalization debate to see that the present position of multinationals offers a unique opportunity for them to become public actors in the sense of exercising responsibility, see D. Rondinelli, ‘Transna- tional Corporations: International Citizens or New Sovereigns’, Business and Society Review 107 (2002), 391. 18 The whole area of employee participation is one which has been well traversed by industrial relations and labour law scholars. For a comprehensive review of the various different types of participation and a detailed bibliography see J. Hyman and B. Mason, Managing Employee Involvement and Participation (London: Sage, 1995). 19 Report of the Committee of Inquiry on Industrial Democracy (1977) Cmnd 6706. 20 Industrial Democracy 1978 Cmnd 7231. 21 A similar permissive rather mandatory approach to the consideration of interests wider than the traditional shareholder wealth stake in the company is employed in some US states. See E. Orts, ‘Beyond Shareholders: Interpreting Cor- porate Constituency Statutes’, George Washington Law Review 61 (1992), 26. ETHICS IN THE WORKPLACE 5 include in their Annual Report details of the steps they had taken to introduce and develop arrangements for ‘communication, consulta- tion, financial partnership and economic awareness’ amongst their employees. The same legislation restricted the legal basis of the ‘closed shop’ and also opened the way for Trade Unions rather than individual members to be exposed to civil liability for ‘illegitimate strikes’. A typical view of participation arrangements in the UK, prior to EU intervention, is that expressed by Ramsay 22 who sug- gested that management resorted to participation mechanisms as a way23 of buying off unrest within the corporate structure. This unrest, heralded by worker resistance and challenge, occurred on a cyclical basis within Taylorist-inspired management operations. Participation was not seen as part of a radical agenda forced into corporate structures by a ‘force from below’; nor was it delivered as a result of a macro-political agenda imbued with social and democratic concerns – quite the reverse in fact. It was viewed as a site of management capture. It is unlikely that moves to formulise a participation requirement would alter this perception. 24 A right of participation was introduced across the European Economic Area (EEA), or in some states consolidated and confirmed, in the form of the Works Council Directive.25 The directive provides for mandatory works councils on a supra-national level in all cor- porations that have a labour force of 1000 employees or more with the EEA, with 150 workers (minimum) in two separate states of the EEA. These works councils involve elected members of the workforce in a consultation forum with management. The forum is often held on an annual basis. Consultation is defined by the directive as ‘the exchange of views and establishment of dialogue between employees’ representatives and central management or any appropriate level of management’.26 The specified areas for ‘consultation’ are extremely wide; they range from business development through sales and investment to closures of undertakings. A similar directive minus the 22 H. Ramsay, ‘Cycles of Control: Worker Participation in Sociological and Historical Perspective’, Sociology 11 (1977), 481. 23 For this view see for example H. Braverman, Labour and Monopoly Capital (New York Monthly Review Press, 1974). 24 H. Taylor, ‘Insights into Participation from Critical Management and Labour Process Perspectives’, in B. Cooke and U. Kothari, eds, Participation: the New Tyranny (London: Zed, 2002), 122 at 136 25 Directive 94/45/EC of September 22nd 1994. 26 Article 2(f). SALLY WHEELER6 works council requirement to mirror this level of communication in smaller national level undertakings has recently been introduced. 27 Works councils have yet to become a major player in industrial relations but already it seems that they are being used to create competition between plants in different jurisdictions. 28 There is a marked reluctance on behalf of corporations embarking upon ‘greenfield site’ production to recognise unions 29 and the de-recog- nition of unions across existing workplaces has increased. 30 It seems that the works council form of participation is subject to capture within the parameters that Ramsay identified previously.31 One form of labour organisation has been used to de-stabilise another. 32 Ethical dialogues of the type that I model in section ‘Towards ethical dia- logues’ are unlikely to suffer the fate of capture for two reasons. First, the human resource management policies of large corporations are likely to be administered on a local level with local managers, the corporate structure at large being more interested in the attainment of production and cost targets rather that the minutiae of how these targets are achieved. 33 This is a point to which I return in the final section of this article. Second dialogues around the working patterns of individuals take place around very much more tightly defined terms of reference that involve a debate rather than the dispensing of general information. 27 Directive 2002/14/EC of the European Parliament and the Council of 11 March 2002 establishing a general framework for informing and consulting employees in the European Community. It is clear from Article 4 of the Directive (the so-called practical arrangements) that a structure akin to a Works Council maybe necessary if the undertaking has no other appropriate mechanisms in place to disseminate information. 28 K. Sisson and P. Marginson, The Impact of Economic and Monetary Union on Industrial Relations: A Sector and Company View (Luxembourg: Office of Official Publications of the European Community, 2000). 29 P. Blyton and P. Turnbull, The Dynamics of Employee Relations (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998, 2nd edn). 30 G. Gall and S. McKay, ‘Trade Union Derecognition in Britain, 1988–1994’, British Journal of Industrial Relations 32 (1994), 433. 31 J. Wills, ‘Being Told and Answering Back’, in J. Bryson et al., eds, Knowledge, Space, Economy (London: Routledge, 2000), 261. 32 For empirical information on this point see C. Lloyd, ‘What do Employee Councils do? The Impact of Non-union Forms of Representation on Trade Union Organisation’, Industrial Relations Journal 32 (2001), 313. 33 H. Arthurs, ‘Reinventing Labor Law for the Global Economy’, Berkeley Journal of Employment Labour Law 22 (2001), 271 at 284. ETHICS IN THE WORKPLACE 7 CHANGING DEMOGRAPHICS IN THE LABOUR MARKET The preceding 25 years have seen seismic changes in the personnel participating in the labour market. In the UK these changes can be demonstrated in stark terms by looking at just a few of the statistics available demographics of employment. In 1980 one in three jobs held by men was in manufacturing, in 2001 that figure has fallen to 1 in 5 jobs, in the same time frame the number of women in employ- ment has risen dramatically to almost equal the number of men. The ‘male breadwinner’ family now exists in misty-eyed memory only, 34 the most prevalent model for the family is that of ‘adult workers’ where both men and women are in the labour market. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the US reveals a similar pattern. By 2003, 61\% of families with children had both adults working. Returning to the UK, of the 12.7 million jobs held by women almost half are part-time. 35 There would appear to be three main inter- related drivers behind these changes and I examine each of them below. The new economic parameters of production dictate the type of employment that is available; this in turn I will argue, produces employees with particular needs. At the same time participation in the labour market has increasingly become the key with which to access welfare systems. Ulrich Beck’s observations36 on the effect of changes in employment structure on the life biographies of individ- uals are also pertinent. The term ‘life biography’ embraces the choices and constraints that individuals find present in their lives as they seek to balance less certain employment with family and other caring issues and general lifestyle concerns. 37 The linkage between life biography and employment structure is not a one-way street. An ever-expanding range of life choices, particularly for women, has 34 J. Lewis, ‘The Decline of the Male Breadwinner: Implications for Work and Care’, Social Politics 8 (2001), 152. 35 Figures taken from those made available by the UK Statistical Office, www.statisticaloffice.org. 36 U. Beck, The Brave New World of Work (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000). It is I think perfectly possible to draw this idea from Beck and take no further position on whether Beck offers an accurate reading or not of contemporary society at large. On this point see, for example, R. Dingwall, ‘‘‘Risk Society’’: The Cult of Theory and the Millennium’, Social Policy and Administration 33/4 (1999), 474. 37 ‘The proportion of life opportunities which are fundamentally closed to deci- sion-making is decreasing and the proportion of biography which is open and must be constructed biographically is increasing’, per U. Beck, Risk Society (London: Sage, 1992), 135. SALLY WHEELER8 reconfigured the role of employment in many employees’ lives. Work has become instrumental in many instances, important but essentially dull, a means to access other opportunities rather than an end in its own right. 38 Production and Market In both domestic and foreign employment markets women are now the recipients of low waged and often unregulated employment across the service sector and the light production sector such as the garment trade. Improved production technologies, the need for consumption opportunities to be available 24 hours a day and the time demands of a global economy renders much of this employment part-time. There has been a large increase in homeworking and in the casualisation of labour, often with women as the employees, to keep the costs of production low and productivity high. 39 OECD figures indicate that there has been a substantial rise in female employment between 1970 and 1990 across developed economies. For example, in the UK the percentage rose from 50.8 to 65.3 and in the US from 48.9 to 61.8. There is no evidence to suggest that these figures are in reverse. There are two seemingly opposing narratives that speak to the employment experience as distinct from identifying changing partic- ipants in the experience. The first is that the employment market is structured around flexibility, which is characterised by the effects I describe below. The second is that, notwithstanding features such as the growth of technology in the workplace, the employment market is one that is a model of stability. Permanent contracts were more prevalent in 2000 than they were in 1992. The number of employees on fixed term contracts dropped between 1992 and 2000. The resulting claim is that there is ‘a disturbingly wide gulf...between the over-familiar rhetoric and hyperbole we hear daily about our flexible and dynamic labour market and the realities of workplace life’. 40 38 Z. Bauman, Society Under Siege (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002) 148–149. See also R. Taylor, ‘Britain’s World of Work – Myths and Realities’ where this prop- osition is rationalised into an issue of declining ‘personal commitment to the work place’, ESRC Future of Work Programme Seminar Series www.leeds.ac.uk/esrcfu- tureofwork/downloads/fow_publication3.pdf at 11–12; and S. Cartwright and N. Holmes, ‘The Meaning of Work: The Challenge of Regaining Employee Engagement and Reducing Cynicism’, Human Resource Management Review 16 (2006), 199. 39 S. Bullock, Women and Work (London: Zed Books, 1994), and H Bradley, et al. Myths At Work (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 51f. 40 Taylor, supra, n. 38 at 7. ETHICS IN THE WORKPLACE 9 Despite appearances there is not an unbridgeable gap between these two accounts. There needs to be a recognition that any account of change risks the construction of an overly nostalgic picture of the past. 41 It is also the case that while some heavy industries offering a particular pattern of employment have declined and not been re- placed, others such as catering and technology support have assumed a much greater importance as employment providers. Some of these industries have always offered part-time work and anti-social hours. Changing consumption patterns exacerbate this. Taken together these factors would suggest that within the new economy flexibility is as much a ‘manufactured uncertainty’ as it is an actual reality. 42 The second generation employment rights discussed below may create an opportunity for employees to negotiate the role of work in their lives and for employers to enjoy the benefits of a workforce that is more in tune with its life patterns. 43 Part-time employment is often held on only short-term fixed contracts. Contract renewal depends more on market situations than performance as production follows the market. Those who work irregular and anti-social hours to meet the demands of the market require services to be available to them 24 hours a day – everything from food shopping to banking. Jobs are often no longer held for a period of years for all sorts of reasons and corporate employers are no longer viewed as providing lifetime job security. Beck describes this as the feminisation of work. Employ- ment in general is beginning to follow the pattern that it traditionally offered women: ‘[no] career but rather combinations of part-time work, casual contracts, unpaid work...’. 44 By way of example, in 1993 the last shipyard, the Swan Hunter yard, on Tyneside in the UK, once the region where one quarter of global shipping traffic was con- structed, closed, due at least in part to an inability to compete with yards in Sweden and Japan. A study of Swan Hunter’s former employees revealed that 43\% of those who subsequently found 41 A. Pollert, ‘The Orthodoxy of Flexibility’, in A. Pollert, ed., Farewell to Flex- ibility (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 4. 42 K. Doogan, ‘Insecurity and Long-term Employment’, Work Employment and Society 15 (2001), 419 at 422. 43 There is now a large literature that deals with the negative consequences of family/work conflict; poor physical health: adverse behavioural issues: job dissatis- faction and lower organizational commitment. For a comprehensive review see M. Marchese et al., ‘Work-family Conflict: A virtue ethic analysis’, Journal of Business Ethics 40 (2002), 145; and R. Rotondo, et al., ‘Coping with Multiple Dimensions of Work-Family Conflict’, Personnel Review 32 (2002), 275. 44 Beck, supra, n. 36, at 64. SALLY WHEELER10 employment were on temporary contracts and saw this as a situation that would continue. Skill and age were the keys to finding employ- ment. Only 28\% of unskilled manual workers found re-employment as opposed to 61\% of those who had been engaged in design work. 45 The effect of streamlined production technologies on participation in the labour force can be seen from examining figures on the length of the working week and the level of unemployment in developed economies. The working week, that is, what is considered to be full- time employment, has been in consistent decline since the 1970s and at the same time unemployment has risen, despite the absorption of large numbers of additional female workers into employment. Remuneration from so-called full-time work increasingly provides insufficient income for employees, resulting in the taking of a second job. 46 The so-called knowledge economy has not then created sig- nificant amounts of full-time employment. Full-time paid work has declined in availability and work is increasingly unavailable for the unskilled. 47 The replacement of fordist work practices with new work technologies has introduced manual workers to the idea of flexible working – possession, perhaps, of only a part-time job or two part- time jobs. 48 Much part-time employment seems to involve unpaid overtime and flexibility and cost savings for the employer only.49 Employers can manipulate the hours worked by part-time employees to keep them below the National Insurance contribution threshold. For the employee there are no similar cost savings or flexibility gains – for example, child care arrangements have to be made around part- time employment resulting in the employee having their life struc- 45 J. Tomaney, et al., ‘Plant Closure and the Local Economy. The Case of Swan Hunter on Tyneside’, Regional Studies 33 (1999), 401. 46 According to the National Study of Changing Workforce 1997 (familiesand- work.org) some 13\% of workers, 83\% of whom were still in full time employment took second jobs ‘to earn extra money’. The same survey also reported that while the length of the full-time working week had apparently decreased the actual working week among employees working 20 or more hours had … International Business & Economics Research Journal – Special Edition 2012 Volume 11, Number 13 © 2012 The Clute Institute http://www.cluteinstitute.com/ 1447 Promoting Ethics In The Workplace: Why Not Reflect General Organizational Justice? Pablo Ruiz-Palomino, University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain Ricardo Martínez-Cañas, University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain Raúl del Pozo-Rubio, University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain ABSTRACT Recent decades reveal increasing academic and practitioner interest in improving corporations’ social and ethical reputations. Efforts to promote ethics usually focus on the implementation of explicit, formal mechanisms, aimed at transmitting ethical and moral content and reflecting an interest in behavioural ethics. Although the efficacy of these mechanisms has been demonstrated, such efforts may fail if ethics does not exist in reality in the normal procedures and operations of the firm and in the treatment employees perceive from their employers. Organizational justice is an antecedent of ethical behaviour, though most research depicting this link has centred exclusively on assessing (un)ethical behaviours directed toward the organization. Other insights, however, might suggest a relationship between organizational justice perceptions and general ethical behaviour; therefore, this study conducts an empirical examination of survey data from 436 Spanish banking employees to discern their perceptions of organizational justice by top management and whether these perceptions are related to general ethical/unethical behaviours. Findings, finally, reveal that such perceptions have positive effects on workforce general ethics. That is, actions and efforts by top management that signal organizational justice can help promote ethics among a wider workforce. These findings have substantial practical implications, as well as insights for further research. Keywords: Organizational Justice; Ethical Behaviour; Top Management 1. INTRODUCTION he moral lapses and business scandals in recent decades (e.g., Enron, Arthur Andersen, Health South Corp., Countrywide) and the new issues that seem to arise daily (e.g., allegations of improper contractor payments that forced the resignation of Hewlett-Packard chief executive Mark Herd; Worthen & Lublin, 2010) make ethics an increasingly salient topic among both academics and practitioners. Academic studies offer substantial contributions to our understanding of the moral behaviour and decision making processes of people in organizational settings (Treviño, 1986; Hunt & Vitell, 1993; Jones, 1991). Yet the problem of immorality demands constant vigilance to keep it under control, and research still has room to propose solutions and options. For example, academics have suggested a link between behavioural ethics and justice/fairness perceptions in organizational settings. For decades, these issues were studied only separately, but recent contributions (e.g., Cropanzano & Stein, 2009) provide strong rationales for their close interconnection, which demands research that can embrace and address this link and thereby advance both organizational justice and behavioural ethics research. Several studies note positive associations between organizational justice variables (i.e., procedures) and behavioural ethics variables (i.e., deviant workplace behaviour) (Cohen-Charash & Spector, 2001). Yet previous research mostly focuses on a single type of unethical behaviour as a dependent variable, and most of that centres on unethical behaviour directed toward the organization (Treviño & Weaver, 2001; Rupp & Bell, 2010). The findings of these studies reflect traditional theoretical rationales (e.g., equity theory; Adams, 1965) that regard unethical responses against the organization (e.g., vandalism, theft) as efforts to balance out perceptions of unfairness that harm employees’ interests. Because fairness and justice underlie moral standards and principles (Rawls, 1971), the T International Business & Economics Research Journal – Special Edition 2012 Volume 11, Number 13 1448 http://www.cluteinstitute.com/ © 2012 The Clute Institute concept clearly can be applied to unethical behaviour directed to any other agent as well. Furthermore, despite the exclusion of organizational justice as an independent contextual variable in previous research (Treviño & Weaver, 2001), it should play exactly this role, considering its relation to contextual variables such as organizational policies, procedures, and decisions (distributive, procedural justice), as well as interactions with others (interactional justice). Finally, the top management of a firm should exert a strong influence on employees’ organizational fairness perceptions. Therefore, this study aims to analyse the impact of organizational justice on employees’ general ethical behaviours. Specifically, we examine the impact of general organizational fairness perceptions, caused by top management actions, on employees’ general ethical behaviour. We review prior literature to provide a basis for the rationales we use for our hypothesis. Next, we present our methodology and findings. Finally, we offer some conclusions, limitations, and implications for further research. 2. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND HYPOTHESIS According to Treviño and Weaver (2001), justice is a fundamental social expectation that motivates behaviour. When employees perceive fairness or unfairness, they experience certain positive or negative sentiments (e.g., anger, Pillutla & Murnighan, 1996; satisfaction, Greenberg, 1990; McCain, Tsai, & Bellino, 2010) that likely influence their consequent behavioural pattern. In line with equity theory (Adams, 1965), in organizational scenarios in which employees perceive general organizational injustice and unfairness, they tend to adjust their behaviour to redress the perceived injustice and also work to improve their welfare or status, usually at the organization’s expense (Treviño & Weaver, 2001). In contrast, when employees face fair treatment, such as when top management fairly allocates resources, employees likely aim to preserve the well-being of their organization (Zoghbi-Manrique de Lara, 2010) and subordinate their own interests to those of their organization (Lind & Tyler, 1988); their behaviours should also be ethical and in line with the company’s expectations (McCain et al., 2010). The prevalence of unethical behaviours directed against the company’s interests in recent decades (Greenberg, 2002) thus may be understood according to this “seeking balance” rationale, which is also consistent with the Van den Boss, Lind, and Wilde’s (1997) idea that a broad fairness heuristic guides people’s thinking about their relationship with their organizations, in terms of commitment and support dimensions (Treviño & Weaver, 2001). Although previous research mostly assesses unethical behaviours exclusively directed to the organization in contexts in which employees perceive organizational unfairness, there is strong evidence that people also value moral principles, such as justice, for their own sake (Cropanzano & Stein, 2009), not just in relation to the damage caused or benefits received. For example, Turillo, Folger, Lavelle, Umphress, and Gee (2002) suggest that self- interest is not the only, or even the prime, motivator for people to attend to fairness issues. Rather, employees may perceive that the virtue of fairness is its own reward (Turillo et al., 2002; Gillespie & Greenberg, 2005), in support of the idea that individuals present endogenous deontic emotions (Turillo et al., 2002). Moral values also appear beneficial for their own sake, as human ideals (González & Guillén, 2008), toward which people naturally strive (Kreeft, 1990). Because justice thus constitutes an important part of the larger domain of morality and virtuousness (Cropanzano, Byrne, Bobocel & Rupp, 2001; Folger, Cropanzano & Goldman, 2005), people who perceive justice in their organizational settings may feel more fairly treated and appreciated (Argandoña, 2011), which ultimately could motivate reciprocity in the form of fairness and other morally virtuous behaviours (Cameron, Bright, & Caza, 2004). Thus, general ethical behaviour, one which entails acts not exclusively directed toward the organization, could be enhanced in situations that encourage perceptions of organizational fairness. Prior business ethics studies (Zabid & Alsagoff, 1993) cite the important impact of top management for determining the level of ethics among employees, arguing that an ethics gap at top management levels prevents an ethical workforce from emerging (Gini, 1997). Fairness also is an issue that Treviño, Hartman, and Brown (2000) defend as crucial for ethics and for effective ethical leadership, which in line with previous research (Peterson, 2004) can enhance ethical behaviour in organizational settings. Accordingly, we assert that perceived general organizational justice, in reference to the perceived fairness exhibited by top management, has a positive impact: Hypothesis 1: General organizational justice, as manifested in top management fairness, relates positively to employees’ general ethical behaviour. International Business & Economics Research Journal – Special Edition 2012 Volume 11, Number 13 © 2012 The Clute Institute http://www.cluteinstitute.com/ 1449 3. METHODOLOGY Sample and Procedure The survey was distributed to 4,136 employees of large branches or offices of various Spanish banking companies. The questionnaires typically were distributed directly to employees, after gaining the consent of the branch manager; in some cases, they were mailed to employees, with the approval of a regional director. The 436 usable surveys finally received represented a response rate of 10.5\%, which is reasonable for organizational behaviour research, especially considering that the employees represented multiple business organizations (Valentine, Greller, & Richtermeyer, 2006). To minimise apprehension and social desirability bias, the cover letter to the questionnaire emphasised that there were no right or wrong answers. Wording in the questionnaire itself also guaranteed absolute anonymity and confidentiality to participants. To evaluate the possibility for nonresponse bias, the first and last quartiles of submissions were compared; late respondents should be more similar to nonrespondents than early ones (Armstrong & Overton, 1977). The chi- square and independent sample t-tests conducted did not reveal any significant differences in the study variables, so non response bias did not appear to be a concern for our study. Measures To measure general organizational justice, we used three items adapted from Treviño and Weaver’s (2001) scale, using a five-point response format (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree). Instead of organization though, we used top management as our main focus or responsible agent, which supported our research goal of determining the role of top management behaviour in influencing employees’ ethical/unethical behaviours. In general, the items address the extent to which employees perceive that they are treated fairly and respectfully, as well as how fairly top management acts with regard to employees’ interests (e.g., In general, top management treats its employees fairly). Guided by previous research on business ethics (Treviño & Weaver, 2001; Treviño, Butterfield & McCabe, 1998), we assessed perceived ethical behaviour by asking respondents about any unethical behaviours they had perceived by peers in the organizational setting. By asking about peers’ unethical conduct, we mitigate the potential for social desirability bias (Treviño & Weaver, 2001; Treviño et al., 1998). Three behavioral items were adapted from previous research (e.g. Izraeli, 1988; Treviño &Weaver, 2001; Peterson, 2004) which as in Peterson (2004) encompassed a variety of possible ethical failures with implications for the organization, co-workers and customers (e.g. misuse of company materials, claiming credit for someone else work, exaggerating benefits and advantages of corporate products and services). With a five-point response format (1 = never, 5 = very often), respondents indicated the level of frequency of such acts; the responses were reverse scored and averaged, so higher values represented more ethical behaviour perceived. Data Analysis We used SPSS (v.19.0) statistical software to generate descriptive statistics and other statistical analyses of the data. A correlation analysis and an independent two-sample t-test help test the hypothesis. As Table I reveals, the internal reliability of the measures was sufficient. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for the dependent variable was slightly lower than the minimum level of 0.7 recommended by Nunnally (1978) for basic research, but additional statistical analyses (i.e., a single factor for three items and acceptable item correlation with respect to the scale’s corrected total) revealed the appropriateness of the measure. In addition, levels higher than 0.60 can be considered acceptable, especially for exploratory scales (Hair, Black, Babin & Tatham, 2006). International Business & Economics Research Journal – Special Edition 2012 Volume 11, Number 13 1450 http://www.cluteinstitute.com/ © 2012 The Clute Institute Table I Means, deviations, and correlation matrix. (Cronbach’s alpha in bold. N = 434) Mean SD 1 2 1. Perceived ethical behaviour 3.55 .78 .61 2. General organizational justice 2.88 .89 .23** .86 Notes: The diagonal represents the Cronbachs alpha. Off-diagonal elements are the correlations between the variables. ** Significant at the .01 level (one-tailed) 4. RESULTS Hypothesis Testing We performed correlation analysis to test the strength and direction of the linear relationships among the target variables in this study: perceived ethical behaviour and general organizational justice. In Table I, we provide the results, which indicate some preliminary support for the hypothesis, in that the association between general organizational justice and perceived ethical behaviour (r = .23) is significant at p < .01, and in the predicted direction. Table II General organizational justice and perceived ethical behaviour (Independent two-sample t-test) High top management general justice (n = 234) Low top management general justice (n = 200) M SD M SD t-statistic p-value CI95 CI95 Perceived ethical behaviour 3.71 .73 3.35 .80 4.757 .00** .21–.50 ** Significant at the .01 level (one-tailed) To reinforce those results, we also conducted an independent two-sample t-test to determine if the means of two different populations (i.e., those who perceived high versus low general organizational justice) differ statistically in terms of perceived ethical behaviour. As the results in Table II reveal, and in line with our previous results, the test is significant at the .01 level, t (432) = 4.757. Thus, employees who perceive that top management’s general justice is high (M = 3.71, SD = .73, n = 234) on average represent a more ethical workforce than the group that perceives top management’s general justice as low (M = 3.35, SD = .80, n = 200). In addition, with 95\% confidence, we assert that there is always a mean difference between the two conditions related to the hypothesis, ranging between .21 and .50, which indicates significant differences (in the predicted direction) in the mean level of the perceived ethical behaviour measure, according to the extent to which top management shows general organizational justice in its daily behaviours. In summary, both the correlation analysis and the independent two-sample t-test offer support for our proposed hypothesis. Thus, general organizational justice, as perceived in the top management sphere, has an important, positive effect on workforce ethics. 5. DISCUSSION This investigation has aimed to analyse the role of general organizational justice perceptions, specifically those derived from reflections on the fairness of the treatment and conduct of top management, in determining the ethical behaviour of employees. Consistent with our hypothesis, we find that general organizational justice has a significant positive effect on employees’ ethical behaviours, spanning actions directed toward the organization, co - workers, and customers. Therefore, our findings extend prior research that positively link various measures of perceived organizational unfairness to the unethical conduct of employees that harms the organization (Greenberg, 1990; Treviño & Weaver, 2001; Cohen-Charash & Spector, 2001; Rupp & Bell, 2010), likely as a result of experiencing negative emotions (e.g., frustration, anger) in such an unfair organizational scenario (Skarlicki & Folger, 1997). International Business & Economics Research Journal – Special Edition 2012 Volume 11, Number 13 © 2012 The Clute Institute http://www.cluteinstitute.com/ 1451 Perhaps even more important, this investigation adds to previous research on organizational justice and behavioural ethics by finding a positive relationship between general organizational justice perceptions and an ethical behaviour measure that encompasses actions directed to the organization, co-workers, and customers. Although recent research suggests that organizational justice perceptions (procedural and distributive) positively affect employees’ ethical behaviour in their interactions with customers (McCain et al., 2010), our measure of ethical behaviour adds conduct directed specifically toward customers or co-workers. In addition to affecting ethical behaviours directed toward the organization, general organizational fairness perceptions can influence employees’ ethical behaviours in general. If they perceive that managers, i.e. top management, offers fair conduct and treatment, employees likely feel positive emotions and reciprocate by treating others in a fair and ethical manner (McCain et al., 2010). Efforts to build ethical leadership at the top levels thus are highly salient for management practitioners interested in promoting organizational ethics. Considering their high formal authority, top managers exert significant influence through their beliefs, features, decisions, and actions (Merton, 1957). Fairness and justice behavioural dimensions are expected in people who are perceived as effective ethical leaders (Treviño et al., 2000) and who have moral principles (Folger et al., 2005). Therefore top management cannot ignore this dimension in their daily working life if they hope to exert a positive impact on employees’ ethical behaviours. Several limitations in this study should be considered as well. In particular, this research took place in a single industry setting (banking) and a specific cultural context (Spain), so though the results likely hold in similar contexts, the external validity of our results may be somewhat limited. Furthermore, we measured ethical behaviour by asking respondents about their co-workers’ perceived unethical behaviours in organizational settings. This measure helps reduce social desirability bias (Treviño & Weaver, 2001; Treviño et al., 1998), but we might have missed out on more accurate information about the real impact that organizational fairness perceptions have on a respondent’s own ethical behaviour. Finally, our study is limited in that it focuses on just the direct relationship between organizational justice and behavioural ethics, without accounting for other potential intervening (mediating or interacting) variables within that relationship. We thus see many interesting directions for further research to provide insights into this organizational justice–behavioural ethics relationship. First, studies that pertain to other industries and cultural contexts should be conducted to determine the generalisability of our findings. Second, additional research might analyse the role of other variables in the relationship. As we noted, because feelings of inequity or equity tend to produce negative (e.g., frustration, anger; Coughlan & Connolly, 2001) or positive emotions and attitudes respectively (job satisfaction; Greenberg, 1990; McCain et al., 2010), general organizational fairness perceptions might influence employees’ (un)ethical conduct through the effect of such emotional and attitudinal variables. Researchers could seek to ascertain if these variables really play a mediating role or simply represent a final outcome of the relationship. Third, and finally, personal variables, such as cognitive moral development, could interact and help explain this relationship (Cropanzano & Stein, 2009), so further studies aimed at providing insights into the complex nature of this relationship might take into account the influence of personality traits. AUTHOR INFORMATION Pablo Ruiz-Palomino is an Associate Professor of Business Administration at UCLM, Spain. He received a Ph.D. in Business Administration; his current research interests focus on business ethics and social capital. E-mail: [email protected] (Corresponding author) Ricardo Martinez-Cañas is an Associate Professor of Business Administration at UCLM, Spain. He received a Ph.D. in Business Administration; his current research interests include business ethics, social capital, and strategy. E-mail: [email protected] Raul del Pozo-Rubio is an Assistant Professor of Business Administration at UCLM, Spain. He is also a doctoral candidate in Economics and Finance, and his current research interests are focused on long-term care costs and financing, as well as tourism and the environment. E-mail: [email protected] mailto:[email protected] mailto:[email protected] mailto:[email protected] International Business & Economics Research Journal – Special Edition 2012 Volume 11, Number 13 1452 http://www.cluteinstitute.com/ © 2012 The Clute Institute REFERENCES 1. Adams, J.S. (1965). Inequity in Social Exchange. In Berkowitz, L. (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology: Volume 2, New York: Academic Press. 2. Argandoña, A. (2011). Beyond Contracts: Love in Firms. Journal of Business Ethics, 99, 77-85. 3. Armstrong, J. S. & Overton, T.S. (1977). Estimating Non Response Bias in Mail Surveys. Journal of Marketing Research, 14, 396–403. 4. Cameron, K., Bright, D. & Caza, A. (2004). Exploring the relationships Between Organizational Virtuousness and Performance, American Behavioural Scientist 47 (6), 1-24. 5. Cohen-Charash, Y. & Spector, P.E. (2001). The Role of Justice in Organizations: A Meta-Analysis, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 86, 278-321. 6. Coughlan, R. & Connolly, T. (2001). Predicting Affective Response to Unexpected Outcomes. Organizational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes, 85, 211-225. 7. Cropanzano, R., Byrne, Z. S., Bobocel, D. R., & Rupp, D. E. (2001). Moral Virtues, Fairness Heuristics, Social Entities, and Other Denizens of Organizational Justice, Journal of Vocational Behavior, 58, 164- 209. 8. Cropanzano, R. & Stein, J.H. (2009). Organizational Justice and Behavioral Ethics: Promises and Prospects, Business Ethics Quarterly, 19, 193-233. 9. Folger, R., Cropanzano, R. & Goldman, B. (2005) What is the Relationship between Justice and Morality? In Greenberg J. & Colquitt J.A. (Eds.): Handbook of Organizational Justice, Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates 10. Gillespie, J.Z. & Greenberg, J. (2005). Are Goals of Organizational Justice Self-Interested?. In Greenberg J. & Colquitt J.A. (Eds.): Handbook of Organizational Justice, Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 11. Gini, A. (1997). Moral Leadership and Business Ethics. Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, 4, 64-81. 12. Gónzalez, T. F. & Guillén, M. (2008), Organizational Commitment: A Proposal for a Wider Ethical Conceptualization of Normative Commitment’, Journal of Business Ethics, 78, 401-414. 13. Greenberg, J. (1990). Organizational Justice; Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, Journal of Management, 16, 399-432. 14. Greenberg, J. (2002). Who stole the Money and When?: Individual and Situational Determinants of Employee Theft, Organizational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes, 89, 985-1003. 15. Hair, J.F. Jr., Black, W.C., Babin, B.J., Anderson, R.E., & Tatham, R.L. (2006). Multivariate Data Analysis. (6 th Ed.). New Jersey: Prentice Hall International. 16. Hunt, S.D. & Vitell, S. (1993). The General Theory of Marketing Ethics: A Retrospective and Revision. In Smith N.C. & John A. Q. (Eds.): Ethics in marketing. Homewood, IL: Irwin Inc. 17. Izraeli, D. (1988). Ethical Beliefs and Behaviour among Managers: A Cross-Cultural Perspective, Journal of Business Ethics, 7, 263-271. 18. Jones T.M. (1991). Ethical Decision Making by Individuals in Organizations: An Issue-Contingent Model. Academy of Management Review, 16, 366-395. 19. Kreeft, P. (1990). A Summa of the Summa. San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press. 20. Lind, E.A. and Tyler, T.R. (1988). The Social Psychology of Procedural Justice, New York: Plenum Press. 21. McCain, S-L Ch., Tsai, H. & Bellino, N. (2010). Organizational Justice, Employees’ Ethical Behavior, and Job Satisfaction in the Casino Industry, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 22, 992-1009. 22. Merton, R.K. (1957). The Role-Set. British Journal of Sociology, 8, 106-120. 23. Nunnally, J. (1978). Psychometric Theory, 2nd Edition, New York: McGraw-Hill. 24. Peterson, D.K. (2004). Perceived Leader Integrity and Ethical Intentions of Subordinates. The Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 25, 7-23. 25. Pillutla, M. & Murnighan, P. (1996). Unfairness, Anger and Spite: Emotional Rejections of Ultimatum Offers’, Organizational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes, 68, 208-224. 26. Rawls, J. (1971). A Theory of Justice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 27. Rupp, D.E. & Bell, C. (2010). Retribution, Moral Self Regulation and Self Interest in the Decision to Punish: A Moral Motives Extension of the Deontic Model of Justice, Business Ethics Quarterly, 20, 89- 106. International Business & Economics Research Journal – Special Edition 2012 Volume 11, Number 13 © 2012 The Clute Institute http://www.cluteinstitute.com/ 1453 28. Skarlicki, D.P. & Folger, R. (1997). Retaliation in the Workplace: The Roles of Distributive, Procedural, and Interactional Justice. Journal of Applied Psychology, 82, 434-443. 29. Treviño, L.K. (1986). Ethical Decision Making in Organizations: A Person-Situation Interactionist Model. Academy of Management Review, 11, 601-617. 30. Treviño, L.K, Butterfield, K.D. & McCabe, D.L (1998). The Ethical Context in Organizations: Influences on Employee Attitudes and Behaviour. Business Ethics Quarterly, 8, 447-476. 31. Treviño, L.K., Hartman, L. P. & Brown, M. (2000). Moral Person and Moral Manager: How Executives Develop a Reputation for Ethical Leadership. California Management Review, 42, 128-142. 32. Treviño, L. K. & Weaver, G. (2001). Organizational Justice and Ethics Program ‘Follow Through’: Influences on Employees Harmful and Helpful Behaviour, Business Ethics Quarterly 11(4), 651–671. 33. Turillo, C. J., Folger, R., Lavelle, J. J., Umphress, E. E., & Gee, J. O. (2002). Is Virtue its Own Reward? Self-Sacrificial Decisions for the Sake of Fairness. Organizational Behavior & Human Decision Processes, 89, 839-865. 34. Valentine, S., Greller, M.M. & Richtermeyer, S. (2006). Employee Job Response as a Function of Ethical Context and Perceived Organization Support. Journal of Business Research 59 (5), 582-588. 35. Van den Boss, K., Lind, E.A. & Wilde, H.A. (1997). The Psychology of Procedural and Distributive Justice Viewed from the Perspective of Fairness Heuristic Theory. In Cropanzano R. (Ed.), Justice in the workplace, Volume 2: From Theory to practice. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. 36. Worthen, B. & Lublin, J. S. (2010). Mark Hurd Neglected to Follow H-P code, The Wall Street Journal, August 9, pp. B1–B5. 37. Zabid, A.R.M. & Alsagoff, S.K. (1993). Perceived Ethical Values of Malaysian Managers. Journal of Business Ethics, 12, 331-337. 38. Zoghbi-Manrique de Lara, P. (2010). Do Unfair Procedures Predict Employees’ Ethical Behavior by Deactivating Formal Regulations?. Journal of Business Ethics, 94, 411-425. International Business … Vol.:(0123456789)1 3 Journal of Business Ethics (2020) 162:835–855 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-019-04364-9 O R I G I N A L PA P E R From Preaching to Behavioral Change: Fostering Ethics and Compliance Learning in the Workplace Christian Hauser1 Received: 4 April 2018 / Accepted: 13 November 2019 / Published online: 28 November 2019 © Springer Nature B.V. 2019 Abstract Despite the increasing inclusion of ethics and compliance issues in corporate training, the business world remains rife with breaches of responsible management conduct. This situation indicates a knowledge–practice gap among professionals, i.e., a discrepancy between their knowledge of responsible management principles and their behavior in day-to-day business life. With this in mind, this paper addresses the formative, developmental question of how companies’ ethics and compliance training programs should be organized in a manner that enhances their potential to be effective. Drawing on both the quali- tative analysis of existing ethics and compliance training and the conceptual literature on behavioral ethics, a framework is proposed that consecutively aligns various types of training into a comprehensive ethics and compliance training program. The strengths and limitations of the suggested framework are discussed. Keywords Business ethics · Responsible management learning · Ethics training · Employee training · Ethical employee behavior · Compliance JEL Classification A13 · D73 · K4 · L2 · M14 · M53 Introduction In recent years, an increasing number of companies have been training their executives and employees in the field of ethics and compliance (Weber and Wasieleski 2013; Weber 2015). In particular, companies that have previously experienced corrupt practices are recognizing the need to integrate responsible management principles into their cor- porate training activities (Hauser and Hogenacker 2014). The sentencing guidelines of the US Foreign Corrupt Prac- tices Act create a further incentive for companies to intro- duce ethics and compliance training; such programs can help mitigate fines or even result in deferred prosecution (Kaplan and Walker 2008; United States Sentencing Com- mission 2016). Moreover, the OECD Anti-Bribery Conven- tion procedure, according to which signatories perform peer review of countries’ anti-corruption performance, provides a governance structure to further promote the implementation of ethics and compliance training programs in companies domiciled in OECD countries (OECD 2010). Furthermore, multistakeholder initiatives such as the United Nations Global Compact encourage companies to implement such training programs (UN Global Compact 2009). The aim of these training programs is to enable practicing professionals to lead and act responsibly and to avoid getting involved in corrupt business practices (Gentile 2013; Nonet et al. 2016). Despite the increasing inclusion of ethics and compli- ance issues in corporate training, empirical research into the effectiveness of said training is still in its infancy and Christian Hauser is Professor of Business Economics and International Management at the University of Applied Sciences of the Grisons and Fellow at the Digital Society Initiative of the University of Zurich, Switzerland. He is a member of the topical platform Ethics of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences (SATW), member of the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) Working Group on Anti- Corruption and head of the first PRME Business Integrity Action Center in Europe. His research interests include international entrepreneurship, SME and private sector development, corporate responsibility and business integrity. * Christian Hauser [email protected] www.fhgr.ch/en_integrity 1 PRME Business Integrity Action Center, University of Applied Sciences of the Grisons, Comercialstrasse 22, 7000 Chur, Switzerland http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6349-1391 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s10551-019-04364-9&domain=pdf 836 C. Hauser 1 3 yields varying results (Maesschalck and de Schrijver 2016). Some empirical works, such as those by Delaney and Sockell (1992), West and Berman (2004), Valentine and Fleischman (2004), Verma et al. (2016), Remišová et al. (2018), and Hauser (2019a), conclude that ethics and compliance train- ing is positively linked to the respective intended outcome under scrutiny. Conversely, other studies, including those by Ritter (2006), Mayhew and Murphy (2009), van Montfort et al. (2013), Warren et al. (2014), and Jonson et al. (2016), find that their research does not conform to the aforemen- tioned correlation due to inconclusive findings. Furthermore, despite the increasing number of companies implementing ethics and compliance training, the corporate world continues to be rife with breaches of responsible man- agement conduct, ethical failures and scandals (Hauser and Kronthaler 2013; Schembera and Scherer 2017). This situa- tion indicates a knowledge–practice gap among profession- als, meaning that discrepancies might exist between profes- sionals’ knowledge of responsible management principles and their behavior in day-to-day business life (Hibbert and Cunliffe 2015; Nonet et al. 2016). In this context, the find- ings of behavioral ethics research suggest that incorporating the principles of responsible management into training does not automatically lead to behavioral change among practic- ing professionals because cognitive growth alone does not produce the ability and readiness to act responsibly at work (Fiol and Lyles 1985; Hibbert and Cunliffe 2015). Against this background, the aim of the present paper is to propose a multidimensional conceptual framework for how companies’ ethics and compliance training programs should be organ- ized in a manner that enhances their potential to effectively trigger behavior in accordance with the principles of respon- sible management. To this end, the developed framework integrates various training approaches and the different role profiles of instructors, arranging them in a consecutive order whereby the training progresses from more content-oriented and instructor-centered training methods to a practice-ori- ented and trainee-centered style, with each training stage building upon what executives and employees learned in an earlier stage. The outline of the present paper is as follows: following this introduction, the next section briefly summarizes the relevant literature on responsible management learning, eth- ics and compliance training, and behavioral ethics as well as pedagogical approaches and role profiles of instructors. The subsequent sections explain the methodology and present the results of the qualitative data analysis. Building on the extant literature and the qualitative findings, a multidimensional conceptual framework will be developed, indicating how various types of training and the roles of instructors should be integrated into a comprehensive ethics and compliance training program. Finally, the strengths and limitations of the proposed framework are discussed, and concluding remarks are made. Literature Review Responsible Management Learning Against the background of a series of prominent corporate scandals that have attracted attention in recent years, com- panies are increasingly acknowledging the importance of responsible business practices to increase their legitimacy and their subsequent chances of survival (Antonacopoulou and Sheaffer 2014; Wesselink et al. 2015). In contempo- rary research, this development has been accompanied by a growing debate about responsible management and its enactment in day-to-day business life (e.g., Abrams 1951; Hilliard 2013; Ennals 2014; Laasch and Conaway 2015; Nonet et al. 2016). Originating in the academic debate on the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME), responsible management education and learning are an expanding and evolving academic endeavor in the field of management studies. These efforts have a central focus on education and learning related to environ- mental sustainability, social responsibility, and ethics-and- compliance-related issues (Laasch and Moosmayer 2015). Responsible management education and learning take place either in an academic context or at work, respectively. In the case of education, students—as future professionals—learn about responsible management through both explicit univer- sity education and implicit ‘hidden’ curricula (Waples et al. 2009; Blasco 2012; Becker et al. 2013; Borges et al. 2017; Goodpaster et al. 2018; Hauser 2019b). In the case of learn- ing, both practicing executives and employees (Verkerk et al. 2001) learn about responsible management in the workplace. Here, learning can occur in formal spaces, such as explicit training programs, and also arises from more implicit social- ization processes (Antonacopoulou and Pesqueux 2010; Verma et al. 2016). To date, despite the increasing magnitude of studies on the topic of responsible management education in the aca- demic context, relatively little is known about on-the-job learning among practicing executives and employees (Benn et al. 2013). This lacuna is emphasized by the present lack of research on responsible management learning in the work- place. According to Laasch (2018), as of early 2017, 73 aca- demic articles had an explicit focus on responsible manage- ment education, and only one on responsible management learning. Against this background, the present paper aims to address the research gap regarding responsible management learning at work by focusing on explicit training programs implemented by companies, with a particular focus on one 837From Preaching to Behavioral Change: Fostering Ethics and Compliance Learning in the Workplace 1 3 of the three main areas of responsible management learning: ethics and compliance learning. Ethics and Compliance Learning in the Workplace Regular staff training is seen as an essential tool to deter illegal and unethical behavior in organizations (Hauser and Hogenacker 2014; Schembera and Scherer 2017; Hauser 2019a). Effective training should establish executive and employee knowledge and understanding regarding the eth- ics and compliance policies of the company and also raise awareness of the employer’s expectations of compliance with such policies, thus leading employees to behave in an appropriate manner. Hence, ethics and compliance train- ing should, in theory, help minimize the risk of companies becoming involved in undue business practices (Adam and Rachman-Moore 2004; Bryane 2005). Limitations of Current Ethics and Compliance Training Regarding the existing training programs of companies, Gentile (2013) identifies five major barriers to ethics and compliance learning in the workplace, including time, relevance, consistency, source, and impact. First, Gentile observes that a prime deterrent to successful implementa- tion of ethics and compliance training is time. The author notes that enterprises usually dedicate only very limited time to training their executives and employees in this field. At the same time, executives and employees often feel that the time spent on ethics and compliance training is wasted, as they seldom see any relevance of such training to their work- ing lives; in fact, they view it as merely a futile and hypo- critical exercise. This attitude is due to the often-observed lack of consistency between how employees are instructed to behave in training and the messages they receive in day- to-day business life. In training, executives and employees are taught that they should, under all circumstances, adhere to legal and ethical standards, yet in practice, they are often under pressure from the company to maximize short-term economic gains, which causes them to behave in a manner opposite to what was taught. Furthermore, the legitimacy of the source delivering the training is essential to its effective- ness. Regarding training suppliers, although external instruc- tors may have substantial knowledge of and experience with the topic, they frequently lack the credibility and authentic- ity required to be effective within the company. Conversely, internal instructors may have strong credibility within the company because they are familiar with its workings, yet, they may not be dedicated, or they might not be experienced facilitators of ethics and compliance conversations. Regard- less of their affiliation with the company, ethics and compli- ance instructors often have little regular contact with execu- tives and employees and thus lack an intimate understanding of the needs and pressures faced in day-to-day business life. For this reason, messages from superiors and peers, whether implicit or explicit, often trump those given by instructors. Finally, according to Gentile (2013), it is rather demanding to assess the outcomes of ethics and compliance training. Thus, instead of measuring the impact of the training on their executives and employees, companies normally quan- tify the inputs, such as the number of attendees, training hours or enjoyableness based on an end-of-training survey. Consequently, the impacts of ethics and compliance training often remain unclear. These identified limitations thus raise the question of how ethics and compliance learning should be refined (Scriven 1991; Patton 1996) to encourage prac- ticing professionals to acquire and develop awareness and usable knowledge on responsible business conduct as well as act accordingly when confronted with an ethical challenge. Insights from Behavioral Ethics Ethics and compliance training is a safe haven, but day-to- day work life is unlike training. For example, in working life, business professionals might be under extreme pres- sure to reach ambitious sales targets or meet tight deadlines (Rae and Subramaniam 2008; Albrecht et al. 2008). Thus, practicing managers need to learn and understand how illicit behavior can subtly take hold of them (Tenbrunsel and Messick 2004). Normally, professionals are not solicited directly to cheat or to bribe someone. Rather, a slow process corrupts individuals and organizations over time (Ashforth and Anand 2003). For instance, business professionals are sucked into corrupt practices because they get into situa- tions where they feel as though they need to continue along a previously adopted path (Beenen and Pinto 2009). Research into behavioral ethics has considerably advanced the understanding of decision-making in ethical dilemma situations (Prentice 2014). In this context, Rest’s (1986) four-component model is highly regarded among scholars and is thus frequently referred to in the literature (Craft 2013). This framework emphasizes that a four-step process determines whether a professional will act respon- sibly in a given ethical dilemma situation. The four com- ponents identified by the model are (1) being aware of the ethical issue, (2) making the ethical judgment, (3) develop- ing ethical intention, and (4) engaging in ethical behavior (Scholl et al. 2016). Rest (1986) states that ethical awareness is the initial stage in the ethical decision-making process. Only when a professional is able to recognize that a given situation involves an ethical dilemma can the issue be addressed, thus showing the fundamental importance of this stage. Once the ethical issue is detected, the professional needs to make judgments about the right course of action to take in the given situation. Thus, in the second stage, the professional 838 C. Hauser 1 3 needs to develop and analyze potential courses of action to be taken in order to address the ethical issue at hand and assess the potential consequences upon all parties involved. After concluding which course of action is most appropriate from an ethical point of view, the professional must develop the intention to follow through on his/her choice. This third stage might be particularly challenging because ethical values regularly conflict with other compelling (business) interests. In the fourth and final stage, the professional must execute the intended ethical action, meaning that he/she has to turn his/her good intentions into responsible behavior in day-to-day business life. Regarding the sequence of the stages involved in the pro- duction of (un)ethical behavior, Haidt (2001) emphasizes that ethical reasoning is a step that is commonly undertaken post hoc. In a workplace dilemma situation, professionals tend to act intuitively without considering the full implica- tions of their actions, only rationalizing their behavior after- wards. When confronted with ethical dilemma situations, many practicing professionals feel on an intuitive level that they do not have the option to act responsibly, particularly when business interests or personal welfare are at stake (Uhl-Bien and Carsten 2007). Thus, post hoc, they search for justifications for their illegal and/or unethical behavior (Haidt 2007). The findings of behavioral ethics research question the value of training approaches designed on the assumption that practicing managers will adopt responsible behavior once they have improved their awareness of ethical issues in busi- ness and acquired ethical knowledge (Haidt 2001). It is often taken for granted that professionals put their newfound cog- nitive knowledge into day-to-day business practice follow- ing the training. However, this is seldom the case (Prentice 2014). For instance, Pless et al. (2011) found that while the vast majority of participants in a given training increased their knowledge of and were able to reflect upon responsibil- ity issues, only a minority felt the need to act on that knowl- edge. Furthermore, Hibbert and Cunliffe (2015) highlight that the knowledge of principles alone is inadequate unless professionals understand their role in fostering responsible practice and their ability to act responsibly in legally and ethically challenging situations. Accordingly, behavioral ethics states that to realize greater influence in day-to-day business practice, ethics and compliance training must go beyond providing a somewhat superficial awareness of the principles of responsible man- agement. Rather, training needs to construct a sense of moral efficacy among practicing managers by providing them with options to act responsibly in ethical dilemma situations (Gentile 2012; May et al. 2014). Thus, behavioral ethics sug- gests that training must strengthen professionals’ ethics and compliance judgment and intentions on an intuitive level. If this is accomplished, a professional will be more likely to behave responsibly when he/she is confronted with an ethi- cal dilemma in day-to-day business life (Treviño et al. 2006). Pedagogical Approaches and Role Profiles of Instructors The acquisition of application-oriented knowledge, skills, and abilities is regarded as the main goal of formal company training programs (Arthur et al. 2003; Blume et al. 2010). Practicing professionals should be able to transfer the newly acquired knowledge and skills flexibly and purposefully to a variety of day-to-day working contexts and situations (Blume et al. 2010; Bell et al. 2017). To facilitate the devel- opment of this ability and competence among practicing pro- fessionals, various pedagogical approaches can be applied, including guided learning, action learning and experiential learning (Michel et al. 2009). Furthermore, instructors have been found to play a critical role in the success of training (Watts et al. 2017). Guided Learning Instructors play the key role in the guided learning approach, making all key decisions relevant to the delivery of the training. These decisions include defining the learning objectives and desired outcomes of the training, as well as defining the content, learning strategies, educational techniques and media used to achieve the learning objec- tives. This power allows instructors to largely control and monitor all work, interaction and communication processes within the training. Instructors define when and against which criteria to measure whether the participants have achieved the learning objectives. To this end, the instructors evaluate, give feedback, reward or require retraining until the participants meet the required standard. The transfer of knowledge in a guided learning context takes place primar- ily with the help of one-way methods of communication, such as lectures or direct instruction. Because these meth- ods do not involve major active contributions by the train- ing participants, the transmitted information is thus primar- ily internalized in the course of memorization. Hence, this approach is considered a passive form of learning (Wing- field and Black 2005; Michel et al. 2009). Although passive learning is widespread, many scholars argue that training needs to more actively involve participants in order to be effective (Raelin and Coghlan 2006). Action Learning The concept of action learning aims less at the mere transfer of knowledge but rather at enabling training participants to organize the learning process them- selves and to develop problem-oriented solutions (Sofo et al. 2010). For this reason, action learning-based training programs create space that puts participants in a position to act. Thus, action learning-oriented training programs are based on self-learning, self-organization and self-planning rather than on an experienced authoritative instructor who 839From Preaching to Behavioral Change: Fostering Ethics and Compliance Learning in the Workplace 1 3 prescribes all aspects of the training (Smith 1993; Barth et al. 2007). This scenario creates an open-process training within which the instructor has to react flexibly and cannot adhere to a rigid training lesson plan (Hackman and Wage- man 2005). The concept of competences plays a central role in action learning. The participants should acquire action- oriented competences consisting of a dynamic mixture of knowledge, understanding, skills and abilities (Delamare Le Deist and Winterton 2005). To acquire these competences, participants are encouraged to explore, discover, test, dis- cuss, plan, discard and rethink as much as possible by them- selves throughout the training (Sofo et al. 2010). The result of the training should consist of a concrete action-oriented outcome that has been created and presented during the training. Experiential Learning With the experiential learning approach, the instructor does not control the training and there are no predetermined learning objectives. The partici- pants instead learn from relevant experience gained from the training or the day-to-day working environment (Krics- falusy et al. 2018). In accordance with experiential learning theory (Kolb 1984), a number of factors influence learning, including the context, the motivation of the participant, the other peer participants, and the discoveries and experiences of day-to-day working life. Thus, learning can be seen as a byproduct of concrete practical activities. However, for experiential learning to be successful, it is important to understand that experimental exercises alone may not be enough to promote the desired learning. Rather, participants need sufficient time to critically (self-)reflect on their expe- riences (Wingfield and Black 2005). In this context, Kolb (1984) emphasizes that learning is a process and not an out- come. One of the instructor’s primary tasks is therefore to create the necessary time and space for critical (self-)reflec- tion on one’s own experiences and behavior (Rosenbloom and Alejandro Cortes 2008). Goal of the Paper Against the background of the extant literature, the aim of the present study is to contribute to the emerging debate on one of the main areas of responsible management learning: ethics and compliance learning in the workplace (Laasch 2018). For this purpose, a multidimensional conceptual framework is proposed for how companies’ ethics and com- pliance training programs should be organized in a manner that enhances their potential to effectively trigger behavior in accordance with the principles of responsible manage- ment. To this end, in the next step, a qualitative analysis of existing ethics and compliance training programs will be conducted. The first goal of the qualitative analysis is to identify the training objectives underlying ethics and compliance training and assign them to distinct training approaches related to the ethics and compliance decision- making process. The second research goal is to identify the educational techniques that companies use to train their executives and employees and to derive distinct role profiles of instructors who provide training in the field of ethics and compliance. Based on this analysis and upon the theoretical considerations of behavioral ethics research, a conceptual framework will be developed showing how different training approaches and roles of instructors can be integrated into a comprehensive ethics and compliance training program. The suggested consecutive alignment of various types of training tailored to the diverse needs of numerous trainee cohorts at different learning stages should help companies close the knowledge–practice gap observed in the literature. Methods Research Approach The present study focuses on the population of Swiss com- panies that periodically provide ethics and compliance train- ing to their executives and employees. As stated by Hauser and Hogenacker (2014), only 13\% of internationally active Swiss companies belong to this category. Predominantly, large enterprises, companies in the service sector, and com- panies that have been confronted with corrupt behavior have implemented ethics and compliance training programs. In contrast, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and companies belonging to the manufacturing sector tend to pursue such training efforts significantly less than their respective counterparts (Hauser and Hogenacker 2014). Due to the relatively small target group, and to obtain an in-depth and nuanced understanding of the objectives that companies seek to accomplish with their ethics and compliance training programs as well as the educational techniques they use to train their executives and employees in ethics and compli- ance issues, the present study adopted a qualitative approach. Furthermore, this approach was chosen because qualitative research methods are particularly suitable for generating the rich, detailed information necessary to develop conceptual frameworks and investigate sensitive issues (Glynn 2000; Kumar et al. 1993). Data Collection Drawing on the considerations of Yin (2009), the underlying research project involved the collection of four different and complementary types of information: interview, focus group, observation, and company document data. 840 C. Hauser 1 3 Interviews The sampling strategy for the interviews was based on the purposeful identification and selection of key informants with in-depth insights regarding the ethics and compli- ance training programs of their respective organizations or who are otherwise knowledgeable in the field (Kumar et  al. 1993; Glynn 2000; Gioia et  al. 2010). Interview- ees included in-house senior professionals responsible for conducting ethics and compliance training and practicing managers who participated in such training. Furthermore, interviewees included senior managers of external for- profit and nonprofit service providers offering ethics and compliance training, such as specialized law firms, consul- tancies, nongovernmental organizations, and universities. Consistent with established procedures, interview data were analyzed during the collection process (Glaser and Strauss 1967). Accordingly, additional interviewees were selected based on information identified as essential in previous interviews (Harrison and Corley 2011). This process resulted in an evolving sample until theoretical saturation was reached, meaning that no new aspects emerged from additional interviews (Gioia et  al. 2010; David-Barrett et al. 2017). It is worth noting that theoreti- cal saturation did not occur in all dimensions at the same time. For example, the dimension that was later termed “Raise ethics and compliance awareness and knowledge” reached saturation much earlier than the dimension that is now labeled “Provoke ethics and compliance behavior”. This is because almost all participants reported that an important aim of ethics and compliance training is to sen- sitize executives and employees to the topic. In contrast, significantly fewer participants explicitly mentioned that their training is intended to have a lasting effect on the behavior of their executives and employees. The same is true for the identified educational techniques, as …