ABSTRACT:We call for business ethics scholars to focus more attention on how individuals and organizations respond in the aftermath of unethical behavior. Insight into this issue is drawn from restorative justice, which moves beyond traditional approaches that emphasize retribution or rehabilitation to include restoring victims and other affected parties, reintegrating offenders, and facilitating moral repair in the workplace. We review relevant theoretical and empirical work in restorative justice and develop a conceptual model that highlights how this perspective can enhance theory (...) and empirical research in business ethics. We specifically identify topic areas that we believe have particular promise for business ethics scholars to pursue. We close our paper by discussing implications of the restorative justice approach for practicing managers. (shrink)

In this article we set the context for this special issue focusing on individual and organizational reintegration in the aftermath of transgressions that violate ethical and legal boundaries. Following a brief introduction to the topic we provide an overview of each of the four articles selected for this special issue. We then present a number of potentially fruitful empirical, theoretical, and normative directions management and ethics scholars might pursue in order to further advance this evolving literature.

Book reviewed in this article: Principles of Biomedical Ethics. By Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress.

This essay asks whether restorative justice practices in criminal legal systems are consistent with the aims of a liberal state.

A growing body of literature has examined managers’ use of restorative practices in the workplace. However, little is currently known about why managers use restorative practices as opposed to alternative responses. We employed a qualitative interview technique to develop an inductive model of managers’ restorative versus punitive response in the context of employee wrongdoing. The findings reveal a set of key motivating and moderating influences on the manager’s decision to respond to wrongdoing in a restorative versus punitive manner. The findings (...) also suggest that managers’ personal needs and perceived duties in the aftermath of employee wrongdoing are generally more consistent with restorative responses than punishment responses, which helps explain managers’ use of restorative workplace practices. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:In this article we set the context for this special issue focusing on individual and organizational reintegration in the aftermath of transgressions that violate ethical and legal boundaries. Following a brief introduction to the topic we provide an overview of each of the four articles selected for this special issue. We then present a number of potentially fruitful empirical, theoretical, and normative directions management and ethics scholars might pursue in order to further advance this evolving literature.