Individual Responsibility within Organizational Contexts

Abstract

Actions within organizational contexts should be understood differently as compared with actions performed outside of such contexts. This is the case due to the agentic shift, as discussed by social psychologist Stanley Milgram, and the role that systemic factors play in shaping the available alternatives from which individuals acting within institutions choose. The analysis stemming from Milgram's experiments suggests not simply that individuals temporarily abdicate their moral agency on occasion, but that there is an erosion of agency within organizations. The point about the erosion of agency is deepened in the discussion of a case study which illustrates the difficulty of identifying even the bare ''ownership'' of actions within organizations. While this is the case, explicating these reasons suggests that both individual actors and firms can bear ethical responsibility within organizational contexts. As part of the effort to present the whole picture, business ethics courses should introduce students to the relevant insights from social psychology and human factors research.

In Search of Individual Responsibility: The Dark Side of Organizations in the Light of Jansenist Ethics

“…While Jackall advances a world in which people are all too comfortable with a fleeting morality, constantly being renegotiated, Pascal points to the underlying reasons: people's penchant for earthly goods and the absolute reign of self-love. We should also note here that, in the literature about responsibility and its possibility in the corporate context, there is much to support Jackall's pessimistic argument (Bevan and Corvellec 2007;Card 2005;Loacker and Muhr 2009). In fact, an analysis of the literature of organizational power and its impact on the moral responsibility of individual managers seems to suggest that organizations can rob managers of their sense of responsibility (see Carr 1968).…”

“…And, in this evolutionary process, the role that moral luck can play (Velamuri and Dew 2009). The patrimonial bureaucracy described here rests on the principles of managers' behavior, these principles being linked to the demands of the situation rather than any undetectable, intangible ethical content (Card 2005;Norton 1992). This observation is what gives the book its ''disturbing '' nature (Van Maanen 1989, p.…”

“…The author lays the groundwork for an inquiry into the ethics of the manager in terms of respect for the rules of bureaucratic functioning. He wonders, somewhat skeptically, how the notion of personal responsibility-understood here as the general character of a person able, in good conscience, to answer for his own actions in the organizational context (Card 2005;De Leede et al 1999;Goodpaster 1983;Soares 2003;Takala and Pallab 2000;Thompson 1986)-can be preserved in such an environment.…”

Changes in Attitudes Towards Business Ethics Held by Former South African Business Management Students

“…However, this raises questions on how the most devastating financial crisis in recent history could have been caused by what was principally a failure of ethics (Yandle, 2010). Card (2005) has shown that individuals may sometimes abdicate their moral obligations when acting on behalf of an organisation and that there is a systematic erosion of agency over time where there tends to be less accountability for actions taken by the organisation. The author argues that an organisation, with its hierarchy and policies, may reduce an individual"s willingness to accept responsibility for his actions and the individual may therefore be able to act immorally while acting on behalf of the organisation.…”

Rethinking Responsible Agency in Corporations: Perspectives from Deleuze and Guattari

“…A study of the contaminating effects of corporate culture on individual moral agency involved scrutinizing the effects of power on individuals within corporations and the impact of bureaucracy on the individual's morality. As Card (2005) argues, one can even witness the abdication or erosion of individual moral responsibility within corporate contexts.…”