Abstract
The chapter presents the notion of organizational integrity as an expression of the ideal moral and political unity of a corporation. We begin with a discussion of the relation between individual and organizational integrity. After this the chapter elaborates the problems of building and maintaining integrity in corporations: the concept of organizational integrity. Moreover, we analyze the dimensions of integrity and values-driven management in relation to dilemmas of leadership. Finally the chapter deals with integrity and managerial judgment in order to provide the basis for dealing with organizational dilemmas in daily practice of leadership. Managerial judgment is based on a required capacity to understand the complex relation between personal and organizational integrity and include all relevant stakeholders in decision-making processes in a fair and just manner. Accordingly, corporate citizenship is an important outcome of integrity management.
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Notes
- 1.
Robert Audi and Patrick E. Murphy, “The Many Faces of Integrity,” Business Ethics Quarterly 16, 1 (2006): 3–21.
- 2.
Ibid. p. 6. Lynn Sharp Paine, Cases in Leadership, Ethics and Organizational Integrity. A Strategic Perspective (Chicago: Irwin, 1997), 335.
- 3.
Robert Audi and Patrick E. Murphy, “The Many Faces of Integrity,” Business Ethics Quarterly 16, 1 (2006): 6. Audi and Murphy discuss that integrity is defined rather differently in the literature on business ethics. There is a tension between definitions emphasizing honesty (for example John Della Costa in his book The Ethical Imperative) and other definitions that consider moral completeness as the central component. Virtue ethics definitions are also different. Some are very substantial taking loyalty, congeniality, cooperation and trustworthiness as components of integrity (p. 6) while other definitions are less substantial and consider integrity to an attitude of moral consistency and coherence with regard to one’s commitments to the good life. Audi and Murphy ask the delicate question whether there is a precise definition of integrity left. I would like to argue that integrity should be conceived as a moral and political virtue of doing what is ethically and morally right. When I define integrity as central to republican business ethics and therefore constitutive of corporate citizenship, I am more optimistic with regard to the possible applications of the concept that it is the case with the position of Audi and Murphy who after all seem to be very pessimistic concerning the possibilities of giving integrity a concrete significance. Audi and Murphy have not understood the importance of integrity in corporate citizenship. Therefore, I think the approach that is proposed by Lynn Sharp Paine is more useful for this purpose. Moreover, I use integrity as the concept indicating the commitment to business ethics of organizations in their concrete business activities.
- 4.
Lynn Sharp Paine, “Managing for Organizational Integrity,” Harvard Business Review 72, 2 (1994): 106–117.
- 5.
Robert Audi and Patrick E. Murphy, “The Many Faces of Integrity,” Business Ethics Quarterly 16, 1 (2006): 10.
- 6.
Stephen L. Carter, Integrity (New York: Basic Books, Harper Collins Publishers, 1996). This book can help to justify our argument that integrity is very important in a republican theory of business ethics and commitment of organizations to corporate citizenship. Carter discusses integrity as a pre-political virtue that is a virtue of good moral behavior as the foundation of citizenship with a wide range of applications in media ethics, politics, family life, e.g. marriage, sport etc. He considers integrity as a virtue and life stile applied to good people with honorable moral characters. This means that there also can be integrity in civil disobedience. This was shown by Martin Luther King who argued that civil disobedience and acceptance of punishment for civil disobedience was an adherence to the highest law, manifesting civil disobedience as a great act of morality and belief in justice.
- 7.
Material for this case is selected from James E. Post, Anne T. Lawrence and James Weber, Business and Society, Corporate Strategy, Public Policy, Ethics (New York: McGraw-Hill, Irwin, 2002). See also John R. Boatright, Ethics and the Conduct of Business (Prentice Hall: Pearson International Education, 2003), 441.
- 8.
James E. Post, Anne T. Lawrence and James Weber, Business and Society, Corporate Strategy, Public Policy, Ethics (New York: McGraw-Hill, Irwin, 2002), 595.
- 9.
Ibid. p. 598.
- 10.
Ibid. p. 600.
- 11.
Mark Moody Stuart, “The Values of Sustainable Business in the Next Century,” 12 July 1999. Mark Moody-Stuart, former Chairman and the Committee of Managing Directors (CDM) of the Royal Shell Group of Companies and Chairman of the “Shell” Transport and Trading Company, plc. at St. Paul’s Cathedral, London. See http://www.shell.com.
- 12.
Ibid.
- 13.
Mark S. Halfdon, Integrity. A Philosophical Inquiry (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1989).
- 14.
Ibid. p. 11.
- 15.
Jean-Paul Sartre, L’Etre et le Néant (Paris: Gallimard, 1943). Mark S. Halfdon, Integrity. A Philosophical Inquiry (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1989), 18. We can say that there is a close relation between integrity and authenticity in existentialist philosophy. In fact, there are many deep issues and also some paradoxes at stake in the concept of integrity from the point of view of existentialist philosophy. If integrity is related to sincerity we can ask the question how you can be sincere with integrity when the basic condition of existence is to be in bad faith that is according to Sartre “not to be the one that you are and to be the one that you are not” because existentialism is the philosophy of the human condition as negativity that is that human reality is to negate being in order to create meaning. From this existentialist point of view of negation and non-being, integrity would include a fundamental ability to have reflective self-awareness and existential wisdom of the individual. It would be sincerity in the existentialist sense where sincerity and authenticity are closely linked with integrity as the ability to be committed and engaged in life as a person with an authentic life project who is faithful to one’s personal ideals and concepts of a good life with commitment, engagement and sincerity. Accordingly, from the existentialist point of view, personal integrity is closely linked to personal identity where ontological commitment and understanding of existence in a deep personal sense including a reflexive understanding of cynicism, irony and sincerity is an important dimension of integrity.
- 16.
Mark S. Halfdon, Integrity. A Philosophical Inquiry (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1989), 136.
- 17.
Robert C. Solomon states this very clearly when he emphasizes that the virtues of the Nazi do not have anything to do with integrity. The concept of integrity is closely linked to morality and values. There can be no integrity without real moral values. Robert C. Solomon, A Better Way to Think About Business. How Personal Integrity Leads to Corporate Success (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 43. As defined as wholeness integrity should be defined as implying the wholeness of virtue, wholeness of the human person. Integrity is not selfishness because it is about the individual in relation to the larger picture and it integrates the individual in the sense of being an integral part of something larger than the person, that is for example community, corporation, society, humanity and cosmos (p. 38). In this sense integrity involves openness, flexibility, affection, cooperation and caring and it stands in sharp contrast to other figures of personal morality who are without integrity: the hypocrite, the opportunist and the chameleon (p. 41). In integrity one remains morally autonomous by being true to one-self and to community. With this approach Solomon emphasizes that the most important aspect of integrity may be the ability top follow basic virtues of honesty, fairness and trustworthiness as means between extremes (p. 69). Accordingly, for Solomon, we have to formulate a catalogue of good business virtues as expression of integrity. These virtues should not come from the top like the ten commandment of Moses, but they should rather be based on human deliberation, choices and decisions aiming at the good life (p. xvi).
- 18.
Bernard Williams, ed. “Ethical Consistency,” Problems of the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 166–186.
- 19.
Bernard Williams, in Utilitarianism: For and Against, eds. J.C. Smart and Bernard Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 98f. See also Bernard Williams, Utilitarianism and Moral Luck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
- 20.
Susan E. Babbitt, Artless Integrity, Moral Imagination, Agency, and Stories (New York and London: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers Inc., 2001).
- 21.
Mark S. Halfdon, Integrity. A Philosophical Inquiry (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1989), 37.
- 22.
Immanuel Kant, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (1785) (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1999). Immanuel Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (1784) (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1985). Immanuel Kant, Metaphysik der Sitten (1797) (Darmstadt: Werke, Band IV, 1983).
- 23.
Hayden Ramsey, Beyond Virtue. Integrity and Morality (New York: MacMillan Press, 1997).
- 24.
Ibid. p. 54.
- 25.
See Arthur Isak Appelbaum, Ethics for Adversaries. The Morality of Roles in Public and Professional Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999).
- 26.
Mark S. Halfdon, Integrity. A Philosophical Inquiry (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1989), 83.
- 27.
Ibid. p. 100.
- 28.
Jerry D. Goodstein, “Moral Compromise and Personal Integrity: Exploring the Ethical Issues of Deciding Together in Organizations,” Business Ethics Quarterly 10, 4 (2000): 805–819, 809.
- 29.
Ibid. p. 815.
- 30.
Milton Friedman, “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits.” New York Times Magazine 1970. Reprinted in Scott B. Rae and Kenman L. Wong, Beyond Integrity. A Judeo-Christian Approach to Business Ethics (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1996), 241–246.
- 31.
The Harvard Professor Michael Jensen has recently started to work on the concept of integrity as central to leadership (Harvard Business School Research Paper No 07-03 - see se website: ssrn.com/sol3/papers). In fact, Jensen does not seem to agree with the point of view that we cannot move from individual to organizational integrity since he says that he provides a model of integrity that provides powerful access to increased performance for “individuals groups, organizations and societies”. Jensen and his colleague Steve Zaffron argue that there is confusion between morality, ethics and legality in the concept of integrity and that they want to clarify this but they do not seem an opposition between the single objective view of the firm in relation to the idea of collective integrity of the firm. They define integrity as a state of “being whole, complete, unbroken, unimpaired, sound, perfect condition”. What is argued by these supporters of the financial view of the firm is that integrity is a necessary condition of workability in order to increase performance. So in this view integrity becomes an important element in increasing organizational performance and in contrast to the nominalist and individualist position proposed by Friedman. Accordingly, there does not have to be a contrast between the financial view of the firm and idea of going from individual to organizational integrity. However, the debate may be whether this financial view can be combined with an ethical view of organizational integrity.
- 32.
Michael Jensen, “Integrity: Where Leadership Begins. A New Model of Integrity,” Harvard Business School, NOM Research Paper, No. 07-03.
- 33.
See Ronald Dworkin, Law’s Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986).
- 34.
M.D.A. Freeman, ed. Lloyd’s Introduction to Jurisprudence, Seventh Edition (London: Sweet and Maxwell, A Thomson Company, 2001), 1401.
- 35.
Ronald Dworkin, Law’s Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986).
- 36.
Material for this case is inspired by Judith H. Rawnsley, Total Risk: Nick Leeson and the Fall of Barings Bank (Mass Market Paperback) (London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1996), Reprint edition. See also Nick Lesson, Rogue Trader: How I Brought Down Barings Bank and Shook the Financial World (London: Little Brown and Company, 1996). Analysis of the discursive elements in this case is based on Anders Bordum and Jacob Holm Hansen, Strategisk ledelseskommunikation. Erhvervslivets ledelse med visioner, missioner og værdier (København: Jurist og Økonomforbundets forlag, 2005).
- 37.
Lynn Sharp Paine, Cases in Leadership, Ethics and Organizational Integrity. A Strategic Perspective (Chicago: Irwin, 1997).
- 38.
Ibid. p. vii.
- 39.
Ibid. p. 98.
- 40.
Ibid. p. 2.
- 41.
Lynn Sharp Paine, Cases in Leadership, Ethics and Organizational Integrity. A Strategic Perspective (Chicago: Irwin, 1997), 3.
- 42.
Robert C. Solomon emphasizes that the idea of integrity implies a whole new way to think about business that seeks to overcome the dominant trivial metaphors of how we do business: “The question ‘who really benefits’ is a misunderstanding. To transcend the opposition of self-interest (profitability) and ethics is what the focus on the virtues is all about. Whether or not virtue is ‘its own reward’, the virtues on which one prides oneself in personal life are essentially the same as those essential to good business – honesty, dependability, courage, loyalty and, in short, integrity. To be virtuous, in other words, is to act in one’s own best interests” Robert C. Solomon, A Better Way to Think About Business. How Personal Integrity Leads to Corporate Success (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 34. In fact, an integrity strategy suggests to go beyond the many metaphors that Solomon thinks contribute to a “dehumanization of business” including “Making money, business is war, business is brutal violence, business is a battlefield, business is based on survival of the fittest, a corporation is an efficient money machine, business is a game of decisions, a corporation is a machine, business is characterised by competitive cowboy capitalism and finally the idea that the abstract greed as such is good”. I agree with Solomon that we need to go beyond such metaphors and that it is very important to acknowledge that integrity is closely linked to professionalism as the result of the virtue of integrity. We may say that the strategy for organizational integrity goes beyond the dehumanizing metaphors of business.
- 43.
Lynn Sharp Paine, Cases in Leadership, Ethics and Organizational Integrity. A Strategic Perspective (Chicago: Irwin, 1997), 3. We can as indication of the importance of integrity in business refer to the motto of Harvard Business school: “Make Business a Profession”.
- 44.
Joshua Joseph, “Integrating Ethics and Compliance Programs. Next Steps for Successful Implementation and Change,” ERC Fellows Program (Washington, DC: Ethics Resource Center, 2001).
- 45.
Muel Kapten and Johan Wempe, The Balanced Company. A Theory of Corporate Integrity (London: Oxford University Press, 2002), 152.
- 46.
See Immanuel Kant, ed., Metaphysik der Sitten (1797), (Metaphysics of Morals) Werke (Darmstadt: Band IV, 1983).
- 47.
Lynn Sharp Paine, Cases in Leadership, Ethics and Organizational Integrity. A Strategic Perspective (Chicago: Irwin, 1997).
- 48.
Chester Bernard, Functions of the Executive (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1938).
- 49.
Lynn Sharp Paine, “Managing for Organizational Integrity,” Harvard Business Review 72, 2 (1994): 106–117.
- 50.
Lynn Sharp Paine, Cases in Leadership, Ethics and Organizational Integrity. A Strategic Perspective (Chicago: Irwin, 1997), 94.
- 51.
Ibid. p. 96.
- 52.
Ibid. p. 96.
- 53.
Ibid. p. 98.
- 54.
Material for this case is among others selected from the KPMG Global Code of Conduct.
- 55.
KPMG Global Code of Conduct It is also inspired by McIntosh, Malcolm, Deborah Leipziger, Keith Jones, and Gill Coleman, Corporate Citizenship, Successful Strategies for Responsible Companies, Financial Times (London: Pitman Publishing, 1998), 244–245. See also Muel Kapten and Johan Wempe, The Balanced Company. A Theory of Corporate Integrity (London: Oxford University Press, 2002). In this book they develop the concept of integrity on the basis on analysis of this concept as presented by the KPMG, KPMG International. Audit, Tax, Advisory. KPMG International 2005.
- 56.
Ibid.
- 57.
Muel Kapten and Johan Wempe, The Balanced Company. A Theory of Corporate Integrity (London: Oxford University Press, 2002).
- 58.
Joe Badaracco, Jr. and Richard R. Ellsworth, Leadership and the Quest for Integrity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1989), 4.
- 59.
Ibid. p. 9.
- 60.
Ibid. p. 14.
- 61.
Ibid. p. 15.
- 62.
Ibid. p. 36.
- 63.
The metaphor of the fox and the ability to act behind the scenes are important aspects of political leadership in this sense. Contrary to a deliberative conception of political leadership this view considers management as a rather “Machiavellian exercise”. See for example the classic work of Anthony Jay, Management and Machiavelli (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall Press, 1996).
- 64.
Joe Badaracco, Jr. and Richard R. Ellsworth, Leadership and the Quest for Integrity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1989), 40.
- 65.
Ibid. p. 42.
- 66.
Ibid. p. 45.
- 67.
The concept of directive leadership may indeed be compared to the concept of “Charismatic Leadership” in Max Weber’s sociology of leadership. We can find many similarities between the two concepts.
- 68.
Joe Badaracco, Jr. and Richard R. Ellsworth, Leadership and the Quest for Integrity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1989), 65.
- 69.
Ibid. p. 66.
- 70.
Ibid. p. 71.
- 71.
Ibid. p. 73.
- 72.
Dawn-Marie Driscoll and W. Michael Hoffman, Ethics Matters. How to Implement Values-Driven Management (Waltham, MA: Center for Business Ethics, Bentley College, 2000).
- 73.
Joe Badaracco, Jr. and Richard R. Ellsworth, Leadership and the Quest for Integrity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1989), 74.
- 74.
Ibid. p. 74.
- 75.
Ibid. p. 90.
- 76.
See also another book by Joe Badaracco, Defining Moments. When Managers Must Choose Between Right and Right (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1997). This book includes an elaborate discussion of the Integrity conflicts in management.
- 77.
Joe Badaracco, Jr. and Richard R. Ellsworth, Leadership and the Quest for Integrity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1989), 7.
- 78.
Ibid. p. 8.
- 79.
Ibid. p. 102.
- 80.
Ibid. p. 119.
- 81.
Ibid. p. 129.
- 82.
Ibid. p. 140.
- 83.
Ibid. p. 153.
- 84.
Ibid. p. 168.
- 85.
Ibid. p. 183.
- 86.
See for example Marvin T. Brown, Rethinking Organizational Ethics and Leadership (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) that touches on many of the same themes that the we have presented in this analysis of strategies for leadership of organizational integrity.
- 87.
Stephen L. Carter, Integrity (New York: Basic Books, Harper Collins Publishers, 1996). See also the discussion of judgment in chapter 3.9.
- 88.
Lynn Sharp Paine, “Integrity.” In The Blackwell Encyclopedic Dictionary of Business Ethics, eds. R. Edward Freeman and Patricia H. Werhane (Blackwell Publishers, 1997).
- 89.
Lynn Sharp Paine, “Managing for Organizational Integrity,” in Harvard Business Review (Boston: Harvard, 1994), 72(2), 106–117.
- 90.
Ibid. I.3.
- 91.
Lynn Sharp Paine, Cases in Leadership, Ethics and Organizational Integrity. A Strategic Perspective (Chicago: Irwin, 1997), 229.
- 92.
Lynn Sharp Paine, “Moral Thinking in Management: An Essential Capability,” Business Ethics Quarterly 6, 4 (1996): 477.
- 93.
R.M. Hare, Moral Thinking: Its Levels, Method and Point (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).
- 94.
Lynn Sharp Paine, “Moral Thinking in Management: An Essential Capability,” Business Ethics Quarterly 6, 4 (1996): 489–490.
- 95.
Muel Kapten and Johan Wempe, The Balanced Company. A Theory of Corporate Integrity (London: Oxford University Press, 2002), 137. The authors propose a “corporate autonomy” mode to deal with the moral and political commitment of organizations with integrity.
- 96.
A critical reply may be that all this talk about ethics programs and ethics management seems rather overwhelming and takes away focus on daily business practice. I want to emphasize that although all the mentioned initiatives are very important it is of course the task of moral thinking to apply values and ethics structures correctly to the reality of particular organizations.
- 97.
Lynn Sharp Paine, “Law, Ethics and Managerial Judgment,” The Journal of Legal Studies Education 12, 2 (summer/fall 1994): 153–169.
- 98.
Lynn Sharp Paine, Cases in Leadership, Ethics and Organizational Integrity. A Strategic Perspective (Chicago: Irwin, 1997).
- 99.
Ibid. p. 101.
- 100.
Stephen L. Carter, Integrity (New York: Basic Books, Harper Collins Publishers, 1996). In this book there is a long discussion of media practice and integrity.
- 101.
Lynn Sharp Paine, Cases in Leadership, Ethics and Organizational Integrity. A Strategic Perspective (Chicago: Irwin, 1997), 226.
- 102.
Muel Kapten and Johan Wempe, The Balanced Company. A Theory of Corporate Integrity (London: Oxford University Press, 2002).
- 103.
Patrick E. Murphy, Eighty Exemplary Ethics Statements (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998), 15.
- 104.
Ibid. p. 23.
- 105.
Ibid. p. 25.
- 106.
Ibid. p. 57.
- 107.
Ibid. p. 63.
- 108.
Ibid. p. 73.
- 109.
Ibid. p. 75.
- 110.
Ibid. p. 106.
- 111.
Ibid. p. 144.
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Rendtorff, J.D. (2011). Corporate Citizenship as Organizational Integrity. In: Pies, I., Koslowski, P. (eds) Corporate Citizenship and New Governance. Studies in Economic Ethics and Philosophy, vol 40. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1661-2_5
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