Corporate Integrity: Rethinking Organizational Ethics and Leadership

Description

What do corporations look like when they have integrity, and how can we move more companies in that direction? Corporate Integrity offers a timely, comprehensive framework- and practical business lessons - bringing together questions of organizational design, communication practices, working relationships, and leadership styles to answer this question. Marvin T. Brown explores the five key challenges facing modern businesses as they try to respond ethically to cultural, interpersonal, organizational, civic and environmental challenges. He demonstrates that if corporations are to meet the needs of civil society, they must facilitate inclusive communication patterns based on mutual recognition and civic cooperation. Corporate Integrity is essential reading for professionals in organizational ethics, business leaders, and graduate students looking for practical and reflective insights into doing business with integrity and purpose.

Professor Marvin T. Brown is a Lecturer in the Philosophy Department at the University of San Francisco and at Saybrook Graduate School and has been working in the field of organizational ethics and communication for more than twenty years as an educator, writer, and consultant. He is the author of The Ethical Process: An Approach to Disagreement and Controversial Issues (2002) and Working Ethics: Strategies for Decision Making and Organizational Responsibility (1990).

'When Kofi Annan claims that 'we are not asking corporations to do something different from their normal business; we are asking them to do their normal business differently', very few really know what this means. Marvin Brown succeeds in showing us how... Instead of looking at business from a moral or top down perspective, he employs civic perspectives that allow different voices to be heard, various perspectives and views to be voiced, and multiple futures to be discussed. He advocates a relational approach where dialogue is the means, changing the pattern of communication part of the process and the ultimate goal is living in relationships of integrity. A timely contribution to our world today, where cynicism about business integrity is at an all time high.' Heidi von Weltzien Hoivik, President, European Business Ethics Network 'Not since Peter Drucker's Concept of the Corporation startled executives at the close of World War II has such a provocative and far-reaching view of the corporation and its moral responsibilities been proposed.' Richard O. Mason, Director, The Cary M. Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility and Carr P. Collins Distinguished Professor, Edwin L. Cox School of Business, Southern Methodist University 'I don't know any other book that places corporate integrity into the context of civil society so vigorously. To business people and employees, it persuasively shows what integrity means and entails for corporate leadership, policy and success. To consumers, investors, and business critics, it makes clear how companies can be respected as authentic corporate citizens. The book is a must for those who want to break through the current fashionable and superficial talks about ethical and unethical business behavior.' Georges Enderle, Arthur and Mary O'Neil Professor of International Business Ethics, Mendoza College of Business, University of Notre Dame, Indiana 'Marvin Brown has written a philosophically subtle yet eminently practical guide for thinking about corporate integrity. Corporate leaders as well as academic and students can learn from Brown's lucid and insightful book.' Professor Joe DesJardins, College of St Benedict, St Joseph University 'Marvin Brown has written an innovative and important book developing corporate integrity as a complex concept with a number of overlapping meanings. This systems approach to thinking about corporations and their roles in civil society is a unique contribution to the field of business ethics and will make a lasting contribution to this scholarship.' Patricia Werhane, Wicklander Chair of Business Ethics and Director of the Institute for Business and Professional Ethics, DePaul University 'Corporate Integrity is an insightful and timely exploration of the concept of integrity in business. Brown's analysis of corporations as human systems with a purpose explains the moral meltdowns in corporate America as systemic failures of relationships and communications, both inside and outside the organizations. This book offers a five-dimensional perspective from which corporations might protect or repair their 'integrity system' and thereby gain our trust. With the amended Federal Sentencing Guidelines now mandating the promotion of ethical corporate cultures - and making leaders responsible for this -Corporate Integrity has arrived not a nanosecond too soon.' W. Michael Hoffman, Executive Director, Center for Business Ethics, Bentley College '... a timely, thoughtful, lucid and engaging exploration of the role of the corporation and its moral and social responsibilities. ... a highly readable and thought-provoking book that should be as relevant to business leaders as to academics. Each chapter presents different models, examples and case studies, as well as extensive quotations from both classic philosophers and contemporary thought leaders. Brown also includes questions for reflection and dialogue, and an appendix of worksheets to facilitate the exploration of existing patterns of communication and the development of strategies to improve them.' W Michael Hoffman, Center for Business Ethics, Bentley College '... very insightful and explicative. The book of Brown broadens the perspective, is didactically well structured, and can count as one of the best introductions I have read so far on the concept of corporate integrity and responsibility. I hope this book will be an aid for thinking about and communicating the close relationship between civil society and corporations, and their responsibility towards one another.' Ethical Perspectives