Prescribing Outside-Work Behavior: Moral Approaches, Principles, and Guidelines

Abstract

The more the distinction between professional and private life blurs, the more it becomes relevant whether employers may prescribe how employees should behave outside work. By analyzing different moral approaches found in the literature, this article introduces and develops the Integrity Approach to answer this question. Using this approach, an ethical principle for prescribing outside-work behavior is proposed: employees should behave outside work in such a way that they do not disrespect the integrity of their work. This principle is operationalized into twelve guidelines for employers prescribing outside-work behavior for their employees. This article opens up opportunities for follow-up research on the underexamined topic of outside-work behavior from an ethics perspective. Keywords Ethics. Outside-work behavior. Integrity theory. Code of conduct. Principles On October 2017, 50-year-old Juli Briskman, an employee of a US technology solutions and products firm, was on her daily cycling routine. As she was contemplating the bad state of her country and feeling frustrated about its president, Mr. Donald J. Trump himself passed her in his motorcade. She gave him her middle finger as a sign of protest. A photographer captured this moment and the picture immediately went viral. When her friends tagged her on the photo, she informed her employer about it and was promptly fired (Hauser 2017). From a business ethics perspective this is an interesting real-life case. Briskman did not do anything illegal and was not at work when she made the gesture. Why then did her company take disciplinary action against her for behavior that took place outside work? Outside work is outside of work's scope, isn't it? However Briskman's boss justified her dismissal by claiming that she had violated the company's code of conduct that states, "Covered Social Media Activity that contains discriminatory, obscene, malicious or threatening content [...] or similar inappropriate or unlawful conduct will not be tolerated" (Hauser 2017). Briskman was totally

Integrity Scandals of Politicians: A Political Integrity Index

“…The most common type of integrity scandals is misconduct in the private sphere, outside work (Kaptein, 2019). Thirty percent, or 106, of the scandals concern immoral behavior outside work, during private/personal time; for example, domestic violence, sexual intimidation, drunken driving, tax fraud, stealing from family or neighbors, intimidating tweets, stalking, and the like.…”

“You Are You, But You Are Also Your Profession”: Nebulous Boundaries of Personal Substance Use

“…It is clear that when professionals’ personal conduct outside work is viewed by their regulatory body to contravene an expectation of particular moral and ethical values, professionals may have their membership revoked and subsequently lose the opportunity to retain employment in that job. Organizations may also hold employees accountable to standards of conduct outside of work, espousing an belief that employees should behave outside work in such a way that upholds the integrity of the workplace ( Kaptein, 2019 ). Asymmetries between “professionals” and citizens extend beyond demarcations of formal knowledge and expertise ( Harrits, 2016 ) to expectations of differential conduct in self presentation in person and on social media, including attire, style of interactions with others, and expression of opinions ( Furnham et al, 2013 ; Packer et al., 2008 ; Weijs et al, 2017 ).…”