ics in business is closely related to the issue of social responsibility, which refers to ôthe doing of societal good unrelated or minimally related to the business in viewö (Camenish, 1991).
Business organizations often involve decision-making and implementation and often managers are faced with conflicting decisions, parties or priorities that require action. Empirical research on ethical beliefs in business organizations investigates the kinds of ethical problems that managers face in the course of their everyday work and begins with a well-known study of attitudes of Harvard Business Review readers towards business ethics conducted by Baumhart (1961). The author catalogued the salient ethical problems that business managers wanted to eliminate: gifts, gratuities, bribes, ôcall girlsö, price discrimination and unfair pricing, dishonest advertising, unfair competitive practices, cheating customers, unfair credit practices, overselling, price collusion by competitors, dishonesty in making or keeping a contract and unfairness to employees and prejudice in hiring. Brenner and Molander (1977) conducted a follow-up study and found the same set of undesirable practices. Today we need only to turn to our media or web page to problems in ethics in business, religion and government (Enron, Tyco, Texaco, DennyÆs Restaurants, and various televangelist ministers such as Jim Baker, Jimmy Swaggert and Creflo Dollar.).
Ethical Dimensions of Leadership
Ethical problems arise only when an individual interacts with other people (Bartels 1967). Ethical conflicts then occur when people perceive that their duties towards one group are inconsistent with their duties and responsibilities towards some other group, including oneself. Over the last decade, scholars have offered a number of models identifying the factors that influence ethical decision-making and organizational behavior (Hunt and Vitell, 1996; Ferrell and Gresha...