Business Ethics Round-Up on BNET and Beyond
Seems like this has been a veritable ethics week on BNET and on our sister pub, TechRepublic.
This morning our lady in London, Jessica Stillman, posted in BNET1 about a study recently published in Stanford's KnowledgeBase, which argues that people's ethics are highly influenced by their environment. Says Stanford accounting prof, Maureen McNichols: "It's easier than most people realize for ordinary, well-meaning people to get caught up in activities they should have known were wrong." Stanford professor of organizational behavior, Deborah Gruenfeld, concurs: "We underestimate the power of a situation to control people's actions. Most of us believe we're much more autonomous than we are."
So, business ethics: Nature or nurture?
Meanwhile, The Corner Office's Peter Galuszka wonders about Massey Energy's apparent about-face with regard to corporate social responsibility, or CSR. Massey, which Peter describes as "the nation's fourth largest coal producer that continually draws controversy for its big safety and environmental violations and questionable political campaign contributions in the Appalachian coalfields," has recently published its own CSR report detailing the company's efforts to better serve its community. Peter has his misgivings about the mountain-top removal coal giant's commitment but says that if Massey is "even doing a few things that the brochure claims, more power to them."
So, Massey: Genuine concern or just another case of "CSR-washing"?
Over at TechRepublic, Tech Sanity's Jason Hiner serves up a video "Five ethical dilemmas IT leaders must confront." The dilemmas include:
- Who should have access to data?
- Who's responsible for the accuracy of data?
- Who gets the blame when security is compromised?
- Does information's availability justify its use?
- Should employee know how much of their behavior is monitored?
So, technology: Does it make workplace ethics harder or is it just more of the same in a digital medium?