Muel Kaptein

• Doctor of Business Administration
• Professor at Rotterdam School of Management

Unethical behavior in the workplace is a widespread phenomenon. In this article a model for the ethical culture of organizations that consists of eight dimensions is employed to explain unethical behavior. The sample was composed of 341 triads consisting of a manager and two direct reports. The results show that six dimensions of ethical culture we...

Neutralizations are important explanations for the rise and persistence of deviant behavior. We can find many different and overlapping techniques of neutralizations in the literature, which may be a reason for inconsistent research findings on the use and influence of neutralization techniques. Therefore, by following both a deductive and an induc...

To be and to remain ethical requires struggle from organizations. Struggling is necessary due to the pressures and temptations management and employees encounter in and around organiza-tions. As the relvance of struggle for business ethics has not yet been analysed systematically in the scientific literature, this paper develops a theory of struggl...

While there are companies whose codes of ethics state that mere appearance of unethical behavior by employees is morally unacceptable, this so-called appearance standard has hardly received any attention in the business ethics literature. Using corporate integrity theory, this article explores the criteria that may explain how mere appearances of u...

Ethical leadership has become a popular subject of empirical research in recent years. Most studies follow Brown et al.'s (2005) definition of ethical leadership, which consists of two components: the moral person and the moral manager. In this paper, I argue for a third relevant component: i.e., the moral entrepreneur who creates a new ethical nor...

This study explores why nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) engage in unethical behavior because of, and not despite, their perceived moral integrity. Contrary to expectations, we show how a glorified perception of moral integrity within NGOs can create blind spots for unethical behavior, a phenomenon termed the NGO halo effect. The NGO halo consi...

Shareholder theory and stakeholder theory are often regarded as contrasting perspectives. Numerous studies have attempted to reconcile these perspectives by arguing and empirically demonstrating that serving stakeholders can be profitable for shareholders. However, the risk of this instrumental approach is that a company may not feel compelled to...

Shareholder theory and stakeholder theory are often regarded as contrasting perspectives. Numerous studies have attempted to reconcile these perspectives by arguing and empirically demonstrating that serving stakeholders can be profitable for shareholders. However, the risk of this instrumental approach is that a corporation may not feel compelled...

Business ethics concerns not only the ethical responsibilities of companies toward their stakeholders but also the ethical responsibilities of stakeholders toward the companies whose stakeholders they are. Stakeholder ethics addresses these ethical responsibilities precisely because they are stakeholders. Business ethics, therefore, requires stakeh...

Freedom of thought is an important right. However, does this mean that employees should be allowed to think anything? This article argues, through the concept of the moral duty of stakeholder love, that fantasies about one’s own unethical behavior at work can be morally undesirable. The article then develops a framework consisting of nine criteria...

Normative ethical decision-making models (NEDMs) are designed to enhance ethical decision-making. NEDMs are widely employed in business contexts. Unfortunately, there is no overview of NEDMs available in the scientific literature for use in business contexts. Additionally, there is no analytical framework that allows the classification and evaluati...

In both the literature and practice, it has been advocated that companies should have a profit cap. Utilizing corporate social contract theory, this article posits that under at least three conditions, companies do not have a general moral duty to cap their profits. These conditions entail that a company adheres to the contracting principles of its...

There are various examples of unethical behaviour in and by non-governmental organisations (NGOs), yet NGOs are perceived as morally good organisations. Drawing on social identity theory and cognitive dissonance theory we develop a conceptual framework to develop a new root cause for NGO unethical behaviour, namely that such behaviour can be explai...

Political integrity scandals in the Netherlands: The annual Integrity Index The integrity of politics and politicians plays a pivotal role in ensuring the quality of governance. Integrity is also an important value in societal discussions regarding that quality, as well as in research related to ‘good governance’. The public discourse concerning th...

Because business ethics focuses on the ethical responsibilities of companies to and for their stakeholders, the impression that companies have only duties and stakeholders have only rights can arise. To prevent stakeholders from becoming passive as a result, this article explores the ethical responsibilities of stakeholders to and for the companies...

In both the literature and practice, it has been advocated that companies should have a profit cap. Utilizing corporate social contract theory, this article posits that under at least three conditions, companies do not have a general moral duty to cap their profits. These conditions entail that a company adheres to the contracting principles of its...

Many organizations have adopted an organizational ethics program to prevent unethical behavior within the organization. Decoupling the adoption of ethics programs from their implementation has been identified in the literature as an explanation for the ineffectiveness of such programs. In addition to this so-called policy–practice decoupling, means...

This ground-breaking Research Handbook showcases the value, uniqueness, versatility, and holistic character of organisational integrity. Bringing together diverse perspectives from a wide range of expert contributors, it not only provides a comprehensive overview of the current state of the field, but also charts exciting new directions for future...

In this Introduction to the Research Handbook on Organisational Integrity I explain the value, uniqueness, versatility, and holistic character of organisational integrity. These four characteristics make organisational integrity a rich concept. I also explain how these four characteristics are the design qualities for the handbook. Bringing togethe...

Although scholarship discussing public relations professionals’ roles has been abundant, ethical dilemmas facing public relations professionals remain implicit in such roles. Specifically, a theoretically-derived typology explaining the origin of these dilemmas and categorizing them into distinct profiles has been lacking so far. We address this la...

With the occurrence of high-profile scandals in the nongovernmental organization (NGO) sector, scholars and practitioners alike have questioned why “good” organizations behave badly, yet little empirical research has explored this topic in depth. The present study examines the NGO halo effect, a conceptual framework that proposes three mechanisms t...

Many normative theories in business ethics determine the ethical responsibilities that companies have but not which ethical responsibilities companies do not have. This shortcoming creates the impression that corporate ethical responsibilities are unlimited, which in turn raises normative and practical problems. This article explores the limits of...

When should a company introduce a new ethical norm? This article uses the value‐belief‐norm theory to argue that the more an ethical issue threatens a company's ethical value and the more the company has an ethical responsibility to protect such value against such threat, then the more desirable it is for a company to establish ethical norms to pro...

This article takes a novel approach to explaining the causes of unethical behavior in organizations. Instead of explaining the unethical behavior of employees in terms of their bad organization, this article examines how a good organization can lead to employees’ unethical behavior. The main idea is that the more ethical an organization becomes, th...

The aim of this longitudinal study was to investigate the temporal dynamics of ethical organisational culture and how it associates with well-being at work when potential changes in ethical culture are measured over an extended period of 6 years. We used a person-centred study design, which allowed us to detect both typical and atypical patterns of...

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are perceived to be morally good, yet NGOs engage in multiple types of unethical behaviors. Research explains NGO’s unethical behavior despite their moral goodness. We conceptualize how NGO unethical behavior can be explained because of their moral goodness. We propose that the three characteristics inherent to...

This article uses a sample of 3,076 employees working in the USA to examine the relationship between the frequency of unethical behavior that employees observe in their organization and their intention to whistleblow. The results confirm the expected curvilinear relationship based on the Focus Theory of Normative Conduct. This relationship is a com...

Many organizations have adopted a corporate ethics program to prevent unethical behavior within the organization. Decoupling the adoption of corporate ethics programs from their implementation has been identified in the literature as an explanation for their ineffectiveness. Next to this so-called policy-practice decoupling, there may also be a mea...

When should a company introduce a new ethical norm? This article uses the Value-Belief-Norm theory to argue that the more an ethical issue threatens a company's ethical value and the more the company has an ethical responsibility to protect such value against such threat, then the more desirable it is for a company to establish ethical norms to pro...

Instead of explaining the unethical behavior of employees in terms of their bad organization (the so-called bad barrel theory), this article examines how a good organization can explain employees’ unethical behavior. The basic premise is that the more ethical an organization becomes, the higher, in some respects, is the likelihood of unethical beha...

This article advances research on moral responsibility in organizations by drawing on both philosophical virtue ethics grounded in the Aristotelian tradition and Positive Organizational Scholarship research concerned with virtuousness. The article discusses the very conditions that make possible the realization of virtues and virtuousness, respecti...

TThis article is about when a company should introduce a new ethical norm. By using the Value–Belief–Norm theory, I argue that the more an ethical issue threatens an ethical value and the more a company has an ethical responsibility to protect such value against such threat, then the more desirable it is for a company to establish ethical norms to...

p>This article is about when a company should introduce a new ethical norm. By using the Value–Belief–Norm theory, I argue that the more an ethical issue threatens an ethical value and the more a company has an ethical responsibility to protect such value against such threat, then the more desirable it is for a company to establish ethical norms to...

p>This article is about when a company should introduce a new ethical norm. By using the Value–Belief–Norm theory, I argue that the more an ethical issue threatens an ethical value and the more a company has an ethical responsibility to protect such value against such threat, then the more desirable it is for a company to establish ethical norms to...

Much has been written about the general moral duty to love one’s neighbors. In this article, I explore the specific application of this moral duty in the work setting. I argue from a secular perspective that individuals have the moral duty to love their stakeholders. Loving one’s stakeholders is an affective valuing of the stake-related values thes...

How often are politicians confronted with public allegations of integrity violations? Which types of violations, government levels, and parties do these scandals involve? The Political Integrity Index developed in The Netherlands offers information about the number and types of political integrity scandals in the country since 2013. This article pr...

Much has been written about the general moral duty to love one’s neigh-bors. In this article, I explore the specific application of this moral duty in the work setting. I argue from a secular perspective that individuals have the moral duty to love their stakeholders. Loving one’s stakeholders is an affective valuing of the stake-related values the...

The widespread use of business codes raises the questions of what we know about what codes are and what they do. This chapter presents an overview of what we currently know about the definitions, functions, and effectiveness of business codes. The chapter shows that business codes are an important method of self-regulation, that the many studies in...

ABSTRACT: Studies on the ethical culture of organizations have mainly focused on ethical culture at the organizational level. This study explores ethical culture at the team level because this can add a more detailed understanding of the ethics of an organization, which is necessary for more customized and effective management interventions. To fin...

Most of the norms developed for integrity programs are grounded in positivist arguments focused on effectiveness. The norms developed in this article are grounded in normative arguments that are directly deduced from the concept of integrity itself. The four norms are intentional wholeness; organizational wholeness; societal wholeness; and processu...

Moral entrepreneurship is a useful concept to describe not only the development of ethics of businesses and professions but also of people and organizations that become leaders because they create new ethical norms and are able to get followers for these norms. In this chapter I define the concept of moral entrepreneurship and describe its origins,...

In this chapter I present a definition of an ethics audit, its objects, its objectives, and an agenda for academic research.

This study aims to provide insight into the current incorporation of corporate culture in national corporate governance codes. We identify three levels of incorporation for each of the following three dimensions: layers of corporate culture (the “what”), the alignment of corporate culture in the organization (the “for whom”) and the board’s roles r...

Acknowledging that responsible management practice integrates sustainability, responsibility and ethics, this chapter focuses on the ethics component of the responsible management field, both in terms of what ethics is and how to manage it. The chapter connects the organizational and managerial levels of ethical issues by discussing the relationshi...

Compliance ist als Integritätsmanagement heute ein wesentlicher Aspekt erfolgreichen unternehmerischen Handelns. Unter den Bedingungen der digitalen Transformation, die neue Geschäftsmodelle ermöglicht, die Welt verbindet und vielseitige ungekannte Risiken birgt, ist ein robustes Compliance-Management gefragt, das sich nicht nur mit klassischer Kor...

In this chapter I define the concepts of ethical climate and ethical culture and give an overview of the current literature in this field.

In this chapter we introduce a management approach to ethics management. By managing ethics in a more pluralistic and dynamic way, ethics instruments will become more effective in fighting corruption. We make use of the Deming cycle to ground and structure our approach. We emphasize that ethics programs require a set of ethical components or instru...

This book contains a collection of 250 maxims about work. Each maxim comes with a brief explanation and a powerful picture. The maxims are sources of inspiration for reflection and application. The electronic version of the book can be downloaded here. The hardcopy version of the book is available in English and Dutch at Amazon Germany, UK, USA, Fr...

The book chapter explores business ethics insights of a virtue ethics orientation to add a normative component to empirical research on CSR concerned with intrinsic and extrinsic drivers for organizational social performance. It argues that we need to adopt a broader perspective concerning the intrinsic motivations of business organizations to purs...

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 eth...

The aim of the present longitudinal study was to quantitatively examine whether an ethical organizational culture predicts turnover among managers. To complement the quantitative results, a further important aim was to examine the self-reported reasons behind manager turnover, and the associations of ethical organizational culture with these reason...

Studies on the ethical culture of organizations have mainly focused on ethical culture at the organizational level. This study explores ethical culture at the team level because this can add a more detailed understanding of the ethics of an organization, which is necessary for more customized and effective management interventions. To find out whet...

An ethicism is a distinctive and fundamental view about ethics in the workplace. Ethicisms relate to the moral theories, doctrines, and ideologies that we follow. This new book is a catalogue of 150 ethicisms. I present a short definition and a typical risk of each ethicism. The risk is reflected in a cartoon because cartoons are a powerful tool fo...

This chapter "Corporations as moral entities" of the Encyclopedia of Business and Professional Ethics presents an overview of the literature about corporations as moral entities.

This chapter in the Encyclopedia of Business and Professional Ethics describes 13 different functions of Ethics Committees.

The more the distinction between professional and private life blurs, the more it becomes relevant whether companies may prescribe how employees should behave outside work. By analyzing different approaches found in the literature, this article introduces and develops an integrity approach to answer this question. Using this approach, we propose a...

So far, the field of business ethics lacks validated measures for assessing virtues at the organizational level. The aim of this study is to investigate the measurement invariance of a shortened Corporate Ethical Virtues scale. In this manner, we contribute to validating an instrument that is both psychometrically sound and efficient to use. We con...

Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean states that a virtue is the mean state between two vices: a deficient and an excessive one. The Corporate Ethical Virtues Model defines the mean and the corresponding deficient vice for each of its seven virtues. This paper defines for each of these CEV Model virtues the corresponding excessive vice and explores why...

To be and to remain ethical requires struggle from organizations. Struggling is necessary due to the pressures and temptations management and employees encounter in and around organizations. As the relevance of struggle for business ethics has not yet been analyzed systematically in the scientific literature, this paper develops a theory of struggl...

Reasonable arguments can be advanced to show that companies have an ethical responsibility towards animals. However, hardly any empirical research has been conducted to establish whether companies acknowledge these responsibilities and how they articulate them. This study shows that 47% of the 200 largest companies in the world make statements of e...

The first aim of this study was to identify long-term patterns of ethical organizational culture based on the perceptions of 368 Finnish managers over a period of two years. The second aim was to investigate whether there is a difference in the long-term occupational well-being (burnout and work engagement) of managers exhibiting different patterns...

Much research on integrity management centers on the internal activities and measures individual organizations can employ to foster integrity. Using institutional and cultural theory, this article, conversely, explores how organizations can cooperate with peer organizations to manage integrity. Based on empirical research, 23 different integrity pa...

With the growing concern of both corporations and their stakeholders towards social responsibility reporting, CSR standards and guidelines have become a common point of reference for practitioners, regulating bodies and scholars alike. However, research in the business ethics field seems to have given less attention to the way ethical concepts and...

Moral responsibility for outcomes in corporate settings can be ascribed either to the individual members, the corporation, or both. In the latter case, the relationship between individual and corporate responsibility can be approached as proportional, such that an increase in individual responsibility leads to a decrease in corporate responsibility...

Research by academics, professional organizations, and businesses on ethics in the workplace often relies on surveys that ask employees to report how frequently they have observed others engaging in unethical behavior. But what do these frequencies in observer-reports say about the frequencies of committed unethical behavior? This paper is the firs...

This report presents the results of a research into the content and implementation of the business codes of the 200 largest companies in the world.

Servants of the people, abbreviated to SPs, are all those who hold office in politics and government. The people grant them power under the condition that they serve with integrity. But how do they should that? This free e-book offers the necessary concepts, insights and guidelines. Each of the 95 chapters discusses one of the many facets of integr...

Up until now research in the field of integrity management has focused strongly on the internal organization. This article takes another perspective and explores how organizations cooperate in the area of integrity management. Four types of integrity partnerships emerge from this empirical study: the Workshop (focused on developing instruments), th...

Organizations are faced with the question, not only whether to adopt an ethics program, but also which components to adopt when. This study shows that unethical behavior occurs less frequently in organizations that have an ethics program than in organizations that do not have an ethics program. Nine components of ethics programs were identified and...

The increased attention to integrity in the public sector during past decades has been accompanied by growing interest in integrity as a field of research. As yet, analyses of integrity policy as a change process has not been part of the research agenda. Insight into the actors, factors, and circumstances that influence policy change could lead to...

Controls can have positive or increasingly negative effects on the behavior of employees. In this article we develop a theory to explain these effects. Central to this is the way employees interpret the management intentions in applying control measures. Since control measures reduce employee autonomy, there is a risk that employees either put too...

Research by academics, professional organizations, and businesses on ethics in the workplace often relies on surveys that ask employees to report how frequently they have observed others engaging in unethical behavior. But what do these frequencies in observer-reports say about the frequencies of committed unethical behavior? This paper is the firs...

Why do honest and decent employees sometimes overstep the mark? What makes managers with integrity go off the rails? What causes well-meaning organizations to deceive their clients, employees and shareholders? Social psychology offers surprising answers to these intriguing and timely questions. Drawing on scientific experiments and examples fro...

In this paper, we examine the relationship between Christian religiosity, attitudes towards corporate social responsibility (CSR), and CSR behavior of executives. We distinguish four types of CSR attitudes and five types of CSR behavior. Based on empirical research conducted among 473 Dutch executives, we find that CSR attitudes mediate the influen...

Integriteit is een zeer actueel thema binnen de publieke sector. Alleen al het aantal politici en bestuurders dat moet opstappen vanwege een gebrek aan integriteit is aanzienlijk. Dit boek is daarom geschreven voor degenen in de publieke sector die de eigen integriteit willen versterken en beschermen. Het boek geeft, aan de hand van vele praktijkvo...

Scientific research and legal provisions offer more guidance on what regulations and instruments government organizations should apply to manage their integrity than on how they should manage integrity, although the latter is at least as important as the former. Based on interviews with integrity officials at Dutch local government organizations, t...

This article examines how organizations can achieve proper employee behaviour with respect to the use of financial and material resources. We focus on the impact of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ controls. This study is based on a survey among 475 respondents in the Dutch defence organization showing that both hard- and soft-controls influence the perceived qua...

Business codes are an oft-cited management instrument. But how common are codes among multinationals? And what is their content? In an unprecedented study, the codes of the largest corporations in the world have been collected and thoroughly analyzed. This paper presents the results of that study. Of the 200 largest companies in the world, 52.5% ha...

Why do good people sometimes do bad things in their work? This important question for the management of the ethics and integrity of an organization is addressed in this book. Drawing on social-psychological experiments, a model of 7 cultural factors is presented.

Beheersingsmaatregelen kunnen naast een positief ook een toenemend negatief effect hebben op het gedrag van medewerkers. In dit artikel ontwikkelen wij een theorie om deze effecten te verklaren. Centraal hierbij is de wijze waarop medewerkers de bedoeling die de leiding heeft met beheersingsmaatregelen interpreteren. Omdat beheersingsmaatregelen de...

Putting measures in place to prevent wrongdoing in organizations is important, but detecting and correcting wrongdoing are also vital. Employees who detect wrongdoing should, therefore, be encouraged to respond in a manner that supports corrective action. This article examines the influence of the ethical culture of organizations on employee respon...

A business code of ethics is widely regarded as an important instrument to curb unethical behavior in the workplace. However, little is empirically known about the factors that determine the impact of a code on unethical behavior. Besides the existence of a code, this article studies five determining factors: the content of the code, the frequency...

Putting measures in place to prevent wrongdoing in organizations is important, but detecting and correcting wrongdoing is just as vital. Employees who observe wrongdoing should therefore be encouraged to respond in a manner that supports corrective action. This paper examines the influence of the ethical culture of organizations on employee respons...

The central idea of this chapter is to discuss how business schools can make a positive contribution to society. As described in this chapter, a central dilemma for business schools is how to achieve both rigor and relevance in research. The unique position of business schools seems to have generated extreme angst about this dilemma. We advocate in...

SAMENVATTING Vanwege de toenemende behoefte aan betrouwbare en relevante informatie over gedrag, verkent dit artikel het verstrekken van assurance hierover door accountants. Wij betogen dat de accountant op basis van een analyse van gedragingen, beoordeling van de oorzaken en werking van soft controls een mate van zekerheid over gedrag kan verschaf...

The ethics of organizations has received much attention in recent years. This raises the question of whether the ethics of organizations has also improved. In 1999, 2004, and 2008, a survey was conducted of 12,196 U.S. managers and employees. The results show that the ethical culture of organizations improved in the period between 1999 and 2004. Be...

The social and ecological challenges that governments face have raised their interest in socially responsible business conduct (SRBC). In this article we analyze the motives of executives to perform SRBC. We distinguish three types of motives: financial, ethical and altruistic motives. We test the hypotheses on a sample of 473 executives. The estim...