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Developmental constraints on ethical behavior in business

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Abstract

Ethical behavior — the conscious attempt to act in accordance with an individually-owned morality — is the product of an advanced stage of the maturing process. Three models of ethical growth derived from research in human development are applied to issues of business ethics.

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Claudia Harris is an Associate Professor of Management at the University of Scranton. She was formerly a financial analyst in the chemical industry.

William Brown is a Professor of English at the Philadelphia College of Textiles and Science.

The genesis of this paper was the authors' experience in using fiction to teach business management, and they have published papers on this topic in Organizational Behavior Teaching Review.

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Harris, C., Brown, W. Developmental constraints on ethical behavior in business. J Bus Ethics 9, 855–862 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00382909

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