Recent research on the dynamics of moral behavior has documented two contrasting phenomena—moral consistency and moral balancing. Moral balancing refers to the phenomenon whereby behaving ethically or unethically decreases the likelihood of engaging in the same type of behavior again later. Moral consistency describes the opposite pattern—engaging in ethical or unethical behavior increases the likelihood of engaging in the same type of behavior later on. The three studies reported here supported the hypothesis that individuals’ ethical mind-set (i.e., outcome-based vs. rule-based) moderates the impact of an initial ethical or unethical act on the likelihood of behaving ethically on a subsequent occasion. More specifically, an outcome-based mind-set facilitated moral balancing, and a rule-based mind-set facilitated moral consistency.

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This paper proposes a framework to examine business ethical dilemmas and business attitudes towards such dilemmas. Business ethical dilemmas can be understood as reflecting a contradiction between a socially detrimental process and a self-interested profitable consequence. This representation allows us to distinguish two forms of behavior differing by whether priority is put on consequences or on processes. We argue that these forms imply very different business attitudes towards society: controversial or competitive for the former and aligned or cooperative for the latter. These attitudes are then analyzed at the discursive level in order to address the question of good faith in business argumentation, i.e. to which extent are these attitudes consistent with actual business behaviors. We argue that consequential attitudes mostly involve communication and lobbying actions aiming at eluding the dilemma. Therefore, the question of good faith for consequential attitudes lies in the consistency between beliefs and discourse. On the other hand, procedural attitudes acknowledge the dilemma and claim a change of the process of behavior. They thus raise the question of the consistency between discourses and actual behavior. We apply this processes / consequences framework to the case of the oil industry's climate change ethical dilemma which comes forth as a dilemma between 'emitting greenhouse gases' and 'making more profits'. And we examine the different attitudes of two oil corporations -BP Amoco and ExxonMobil -towards the dilemma.

Since ethical concerns are calling for more attention within OperationalResearch, we present three approaches to combine Operational Research models with ethics. Our intention is to clarify the trade-offs faced by the OR community, in particular the tension between the scientific legitimacy of OR models (ethics outside OR models) and the integration of ethics within models (ethics within OR models).Presenting and discussing an approach that combines OR models with the process of OR (ethics beyond OR models), we suggest rigorous ways to express the relation between ethics and OR models. As our work is exploratory, we are trying to avoid a dogmatic attitude and call for further research. We argue that there are interesting avenues for research at the theoretical, methodological and applied levels and that the OR community can contribute to an innovative, constructive and responsible social dialogue about its ethics.

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