Abstract:Employee-employee conflicts are common occasions for managerial intervention. In judging such disputes, managers bring to encounters a frame that is not conducive to employee due process. Making managers aware of their legal responsibilities in resolving employee disputes is a poor substitute for managers’ understanding and implementation of their ethical due process obligations. Moreover, moral imagination is necessary in order to counter the effects of the managerial frame that employees are either not worthy of due process protections or that such protections (...) are not a priority. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to provide a historical overview of the ethical concept of organizational due process in relation to contemporary issues in the utilization of company grievance procedures in the rapidly growing nonunion arena. Another objective of this paper is to appraise the current practices that employers have evolved for resolving issues generated by grievances, particularly those of professional, white collar employees.

This paper argues that the concept of reliability provides a useful framework for analyzing defects in organizational design and for prescribing changes that will facilitate ethical decision making. Reliability becomes an ethical concern when the individual or organizational interest diverges from the collective interest. Redundancy and requisite variety provide two design tools which can enable organizations to act reliably in the collective interest. The paper then discusses potential disadvantages to the use of a reliability framework as well as possible problems (...) of implementation. It concludes by examining avenues for future research. (shrink)

Abstract:There can be ethical understanding of organizational policy issues and that is important. However, there can be policy understanding about what the organization should do without understanding of individual level responsibility. There can be cognitive understanding of both policy and individual level ethics responsibilities and that is important. However, there can be cognitive understanding without affective, emotive concern. Intellectual understanding without affective concern can lead to understanding without motivation. There can be cognitive understanding and affective concern and that is important, (...) but not enough. There can be cognitive understanding and affective concern without effective political method. An action-learning approach to organizational ethics can join cognitive understanding of policy and individual level issues with both affective concern and effective political method. Joining of cognitive understanding, affective concern, and effective political method can stimulate and enable ethical character. (shrink)