Moral Values in Small Organizations

This Element is an excerpt from Moral Intelligence: Enhancing Business Performance and Leadership Success (9780132349864) by Doug Lennick and Fred Kiel. Available in print and digital formats.

The unique challenges of morality in small business: building the small company that lives by the principles of integrity, responsibility, compassion, and forgiveness.

Although the core principles of morality are the same, the moral challenges that dominate an organization are often size-dependent. For one thing, the small company’s leader lives in a fishbowl--everyone can see everything they do. Moral competence is particularly crucial to the small company leader, because moral gaps cannot be hidden--and bad choices could spell the end of the business.