Business Ethics and Corporate Governance, Second Edition

CHARACTERISTICS OF AN ETHICAL ORGANIZATION

Mark Pastin²⁷ in his work, The Hard Problems of Management: Gaining the Ethical Edge provides the following characteristics of ethical organizations:

1. They are at ease interacting with diverse internal and external stakeholder groups. The ground rules of these firms make the good of these stakeholder groups part of the organization’s own good.
2. They are obsessed with fairness. Their ground rules emphasize that the other persons’ interests count as much as their own.
3. Responsibility is individual rather than collective, with individuals assuming personal responsibility for actions of the organization. These organizations’ ground rules mandate that individuals are responsible to themselves.
4. They see their ...