TABLE 7.

7
HEATH’S SEVEN RATIONALIZATIONS OF UNETHICAL ACTIONS

• Denial of responsibility.
• Denial of injury.
• Denial of the victim.
• Condemnation of the condemners.
• Appeal to higher loyalties.
• Everyone else is doing it.
• Entitlement.
Source: “7 Neutralization/Rationalization Techniques”, a speech by Joseph Heath at the Centre for
Ethics at the University of Toronto, April 9, 2007, later published as “Business Ethics and Moral
Motivation: A Criminological Perspective,” Journal of Business Ethics, 83 (2008): 595-614.
FIGURE 7.2
DIAGNOSTIC TYPOLOGY OF ORGANIZATIONAL STAKEHOLDERS

STAKEHOLDER’S POTENTIAL FOR THREAT

High Low
STAKEHOLDER’S POTENTIAL

Type 4 Type 1
FOR COOPERATION

Mixed Blessing Supportive

High Strategy Strategy
Collaborate Involve

Type3 Type 2
Nonsupportive Marginal
Low
Strategy Strategy
Defend Monitor

SOURCE: G. Savage et al, “Strategies for assessing and managing organizational shareholders”, The Executive, Vol. 5, no. 2, May 1991, 65.
TABLE 7.6
Employee Rights Themes In North America

Privacy and dignity of person, personal information and property:

 Boundaries of personal rights, employers rights and right of the public
 Proper procedures: notification and consent
 Testing for substance abuse
 Harassment, sexual and otherwise
 Civil work environment
Fair treatment:
 Discrimination: age, race, sex, employment, pay
 Fair policies
 Is equal treatment fair?
Healthy and safe work environment
 Expectations: reasonability, right to know, stress, family life, productivity
 Quality-of-life concerns: smoking, health
 Family-friendly workplaces
Ability to exercise conscience
 Blind loyalty
 Whistle-blowing
Trust – the key to leadership, innovation, loyalty, and performance – depends on ethics
 Operations: downsizing, contingent workforce
FIGURE 7.3
THE FRAUD TRIANGLE

Motive

Rationalization Opportunity
Source: D.L. Crumbley et al, 2005, p. 3-131
FIGURE 7.4
MASLOW’S HIERARCHY OF NEEDS

Self-actualization,
Fulfillment Ego
Esteem,
Respect

Love, Affinity Social

Safety
Physical
Physiological
TABLE 7.8
HOW TO INCORPORATE ETHICS INTO CRISIS MANAGEMENT
Prevention and warning:
 Code of conduct: identify values, adopt, emphasize and make effective
 Identify potential ethics problems and warning indicators, and pre-plan responses, as part of an
ongoing enterprise risk management and contingency planning program
 Ethical “red flags” or warning indicators:
 Training to emphasize how to identify and what to do about them
 Check as part of an ongoing enterprise risk management system
 Encourage by publicizing good examples, and awarding paper medals
Analytical approach:
 Apply a stakeholder-analysis framework as discussed in Chapter 5:
 External ethics consultant
 Checklist or specific time to consider:
 ethics issues, alternatives & opportunities
Decision itself:
 Ethics/company’s values: integrate into the decision making:
 Consider how the crisis or its impact can be influenced ethically–timing, cost, mitigation?
 Specific consideration of how to improve the organization’s reputation drivers
including–trustworthiness, responsibility, reliability, and credibility
 Specific ethical communications objectives
 Assign ethics watch-dog responsibility
 Use a checklist or template with specific ethics objectives
 Apply moral imagination as discussed in Chapter 5
Communications on ethical intent to:
 Media, employees, customers, government, public & other stakeholders
FIGURE 7.5
PHASES OF A CRISIS

Cost Unanticipated Crisis

To Organization
Anticipated Crisis

Continuing
Reputational
Impact
Post-
Control Crisis
Begins State
Reached

Time
Controlled
Phases Pre-crisis Reputation
Uncontrolled Restoration