Despite the importance of ethics in corporate crisis management, they have received limited attention in the academic literature. This article contributes to the evolving conversation on ethics in crisis management by elucidating the ethics of "justice" and "care" and distinguishing between them. Examples of the two approaches are offered through consideration of cases in corporate crisis management, including the alleged glass contamination case faced by Gerber Products Company, and, the shooting tragedy at San Ysidro faced by McDonald''s Corporation. It is (...) argued that both an ethic of justice and an ethic of care can be appropriate approaches in corporate crisis management. Areas for future research are discussed. (shrink)

Much light can be shed on events which characterize or underlie scandals at firms such as Enron, Arthur Andersen, Worldcom, ImClone, and Tyco by appealing to the notion of ethical distance. Various inquiries have highlighted the difficulties in finding or identifying particular individuals to blame for particular events, and in the context of situations as complex as these it can sometimes be helpful to investigate the comparative ethical distance of various participants in these events. In this essay I offer a (...) characterization of ethical distance in terms of moral responsibility, and in doing so I describe and illustrate the rough inverse correlation between moral distance and degrees of moral responsibility. I urge that the concept of ethical distance is capable of shedding light upon situations in which several people are involved in bringing about a state of affairs. I then argue that moral responsibility cannot do justice to all situations involving ethical distance. When the distance between a person and a state of affairs grows sufficiently large, a different type of treatment is called for, and I introduce the notion of moral taint to describe the moral status of agents in these situations. (shrink)

When corporations are accused of unethical behaviour by external actors, executives from those organizations are usually compelled to offer communicative responses to defend their corporate image. To demonstrate the effect that corporate executives'' communicative responses have on third parties'' perception of corporate image, we present the Corporate Communicative Response Model in this paper. Of the five potential communicative responses contained in this model (no response, denial, excuse, justification, and concession), results from our empirical test demonstrate that a concession is the (...) most effective and robust communicative option. (shrink)

The field of business ethics has shown little attention to the dynamics of memory in maintaining moral character. Yet memory is a complex process that involves the repression of some experiences in order to protect the moral integrity of the personality. Without the capacity to repress what one's moral conscience would not accept, the mind can be overtaken by neurotic ambivalence and moral confusion. In the context of business competition, where the pressures for potential gains and losses can be immense, (...) long repressed desires can receive renewed strength resulting in a weakening of moral constraint. In this essay, I use the psycho-analytic theory of repression to investigate the complex, psychological vicissitudes of human memory. The theory of repression is a particularly powerful tool to investigate the moral implications of memory because memories which are repressed - i.e., forbidden consciousness - are done so at the behest of the individual's moral ideals. Experiences that offend these ideals or threaten the integrity of the ego can be repressed. Repression, then, is an infallible index of moral judgement. I will apply the theory of repression to the characters in and story line of Arthur Miller's play "Death of a Salesman" to elucidate the relationship between memory and ethics in business. "Death of a Salesman" is well suited for this purpose because the memories of the main characters are central to the play and are inextricably linked to the moral challenge competition in business poses. (shrink)