Organizational Moral Learning: What, If Anything, Do Corporations Learn from NGO Critique?

Abstract

conflict, crisis, Kohlberg, legitimacy, moral learning, organizational development, organizational learning,

An Integrated Model of Humanistic Management

“…Despite these encouraging findings, business case-driven thinking has been criticized by numerous researchers on moral grounds (Chandler, 2002;Sison, 2007;Spitzeck, 2009b;Spitzeck et al, 2009;Ulrich, 2008). They argue that the self-interested pursuit of profit is irreconcilable with truly responsible behaviour as it binds a responsible course of conduct to its profitability.…”

“…Nike and child labour (Zadek, 2004), Coca Cola and Greenpeace (Hartman and Stafford, 2006) and Citigroup and the Rainforest Action Network (Spitzeck, 2009b) to name just a few. All these cases share one central commonality: previously powerless stakeholders built the necessary conditions to harm the corporation economically.…”

“…As organizations are embedded into a wider social and environmental context they need to legitimize their conduct before a wide set of stakeholders (Donaldson and Preston, 1995;Evan and Freeman, 1988;Freeman, 1984;Granovetter, 1985;Spitzeck, 2009b;Ulrich, 2008). This legitimation requirement is philosophically based on Kant's criterion of publicity (Kant, 2003(Kant, [1795) and Habermas' discourse ethics (Habermas, 1984) and extends basically to any human being (Spitzeck et al, 2009).…”

“…In between the extremes are cases in which moral issues caused a legitimacy crisis and triggered organizational learning and change (Hartman and Stafford, 2006;Kädtler, 2001;Livesey, 2001;Spitzeck, 2009b;Zadek, 2004). Where this learning could not be left to the corporation, but needed to be enforced, it often fell in the domain of regulation to guarantee alterations of business conduct.…”

“…question of how business can be led to a more humanistic conduct (Melé, 2008(Melé, , 2009Spitzeck, 2009b). Researchers have adopted different premises in favour of this transition.…”