How can codes of ethics acquire legitimacy—that is, how can they lay down obligations that will be seen by their subjects as morally binding? There are many answers to this question, reflecting the fact that moral agents have a host of different bases on which they may acknowledge code duties as ethically binding—or, alternatively, may reject those duties as morally irrelevant or actively corrupt. Drawing on a wide literature on legitimacy in other practical fields, this paper develops a multidimensional legitimacy (...) framework, describing ten distinct sources of legitimacy. It illustrates how these sources can be seized, not only by the code’s content, but by opportunities presented in the main stages of code development, adoption and implementation. In so doing, it aims to provide practical resources for code developers and ethics reformers in organizations and industries to avoid critical missteps, and to maximize the impact and efficacy of their work. (shrink)

Globally active companies are involved in the discursive construction of moral legitimacy. Establishing normative conformance is problematic given the plurality of norms and values worldwide, and is particularly difficult for companies operating in morally controversial industries. In this paper, we investigate how organizations publicly legitimize the trade of human tissue for private profit when this practice runs counter to deep-seated and widespread moral beliefs. To do so, we use inductive, qualitative methods to analyze the website discourse of three types of (...) organizations that trade in human tissue and are associated with different degrees of moral controversy with respect to tissue procurement and use. Our analysis reveals an object-oriented approach to moral legitimizing centered on the human tissue as a morally disputed good. We find that the website discourse translates human tissue into technology, constructs normative meaning around a dominant instrumental value associated with human-tissue-as-technology, and reproduces and stabilizes this meaning by six discursive mechanisms that amplify and anchor it. Moreover, the use of amplifying and anchoring discourse was greater in organizations associated with greater controversy. The results are consistent with an object-oriented sociality. (shrink)

Several researchers have identified codes of ethics as tools that stimulate positive ethical behavior by shaping the organisational decision-making process, but few have considered the information needed for code implementation. Beyond being a legal and moral responsibility, ethical behavior needs to become an organisational priority, which requires an alignment process that integrates employee behavior with the organisation’s ethical standards. This paper discusses processes for the responsible implementation of CoEs based on an extensive review of the literature. The internationally recognized European (...) Foundation for Quality Management Excellence Model is proposed as a suitable framework for assessing an organisation’s ethical performance, including CoE embeddedness. The findings presented herein have both practical and research implications. They will encourage construction practitioners to shift their attention from ethical policies to possible enablers of CoE implementation and serve as a foundation for further research on ethical performance evaluation using the EFQM model. This is the first paper to discuss the model’s use in the context of ethics in construction practice. (shrink)

Digital business has marked an era of transformation, but also an unprecedented growth of cyber threats. While digital explosion witnessed by the banking sector since the COVID-19 pandemic has been significant, the level and frequency of cybercrimes have gone up as well. Cybercrime officials attribute it to remote working—people using home computers or laptops with vulnerable online security than office systems; malicious actors relentlessly developing their tactics to find new ways to break into enterprise networks and grasping defence evasion; persons (...) unemployed during the pandemic getting into hacking; cloud and data corruption; digital fatigue causing negligence; etc. This study adopts a case-based approach to explore the importance of business ethics, information sharing and transparency to build an information-driven society by scouting the case of Punjab and Maharashtra Co-operative (PMC) Bank, India. PMC defaulted on payments to its depositors and was placed under Reserve Bank of India’s directions due to financial irregularities and a massive fraud perpetrated by bank officials by orchestrating the bank’s IT systems. The crisis worsened when panic-stricken investors advanced their narrative through fake news peddled via social media channels, resulting in alarm that caused deaths of numerous depositors. It exposed several loopholes in information management in India’s deposit insurance system and steered the policy makers to restructure the same, thus driving the country consistent with its emerging market peers. The study further identifies best practices for aligning employees towards ethical behaviour in a virtual workplace and the pedagogical approaches for information management in the new normal. (shrink)