In the past few years we have witnessed the exposure of organisations that have exhibited unethical practices and individuals displaying far-reaching unethical behaviour that contributed to the recent economic meltdown. Seemingly paradigms that in the past served and governed organisational ethics have proven themselves inadequate for regulating organisational ethics. As a society witnessing these reprehensible actions we try to understand the logic of these actions and to find out whom we should blame. We also ask ourselves if there are no other approaches or perspectives that can change the contemporary logic governing organisations and ethics. Even new approaches presented seem to offer only a slightly remedying effect regarding the scandalous actions executed by organisational leader-founder(s) in the name of their organisations. Giacalone (2004:415) states that we are deluded as a society if we think that these scandalous actions will go away because organisations and organisational members are becoming more ethics friendly. This is because the root cause of these reprehensible actions has not been adequately dealt with in literature. Also, an alternative change agent that will provide a holistic framework for organisational ethics and will enhance intrinsic ethicality within organisations and individuals has not been sufficiently pursued within research. The purpose of this dissertation is to present organisational spirituality as an emerging construct and recognised phenomenon within organisational theory and ethics. More specifically the purpose of this study is to posit that (a) organisational spirituality is a better-suited construct and phenomenon to provide a holistic framework for governing organisational ethics and (b) applied organisational spirituality has the potential to enhance intrinsic ethicality in organisations and individuals. In order to present organisational spirituality as a transforming agent for organisational ethics, a literature review is conducted on organisational culture and organisational ethical constructs that have until recently been significant in serving and governing organisational ethics. Both organisational culture and organisational ethical constructs are problematised with regards to their relationship with unethical behaviours and organisational ethics. This is done in order to highlight the insufficiencies of current frameworks of organisational ethics and also to point out that organisational culture has proven itself to be inadequate in facilitating and maintaining good organisational ethics amongst individuals and organisations. The construct organisational spirituality is a holistic construct and phenomenon that is applicable to all organisational activities and aspects. Applied organisational spirituality accommodates the physical, emotional, rational and spiritual aspects of the individual. To improve the current organisational ethical situation facing organisations, organisational members, and the discipline of organisational ethics, conceptual ideas such as inner life, meaning at work, community, and higher order personal and organisational ethics that underlie the construct organisational spirituality are used to develop a conceptual framework that could significantly influence organisational ethics. The new framework is used to develop spiritual ethical values that can motivate intrinsic ethicality within the organisation and organisational individuals. The ramification of integrating organisational spirituality within organisational ethics is that through implementing conceptual ideas such as inner life, self-awareness, a sense of community, organisations and individuals have a sense of ethical transcendence that is motivated by awareness of self within a community of others. This dissertation also explores the construct spiritual leadership as a relevant leadership construct to facilitate and maintain organisational spirituality. The construct spiritual leadership embodies many value characteristics that are linked to effective leadership within the organisation. Since spiritual leader-founder(s) are also moral leaders spiritual leader-founder(s) play a significant role in promoting good organisational ethics through spiritual ethical values. Finally this thesis reviews case studies of organisations that have been successful through spiritual leadership. Case studies are reviewed to highlight and augment that organisational spirituality managed through spiritual leadership is a better-suited construct to accommodate the ‘whole’ person at work. Furthermore the case studies reviewed provide evidence that applied spirituality increases organisational and individual organisational potential such as organisational profitability, individual productivity, and that through self-awareness the organisation and individuals realise a higher order of organisational and personal ethics. / Dissertation (MTh)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Dogmatics and Christian Ethics / unrestricted

Ethical issues and problems in business are receiving increasing attention, both in terms of criticism of examples of "bad" behaviour of business actors and in terms of the development of ethical codes of conduct in certain companies, ethical visions for businesses etc. In general, ethical problems seem to be increasingly prevalent in business, but ethics tend to be disre­garded by traditional organisational and managerial theory. This calls for the development of an ethical perspective on business. This study adopts a stakeholder approach to the problem, meaning that the empirical focus lies on how business actors deal with the ethical issues that arise in their daily work in relation to various stakeholder groups. Two empirical studies have been conducted: one is a survey study of the attitudes of Swedish managing directors, and the other a case study of the ethical values and behaviour of two companies. These studies resulted in the formulation of concepts which reflect contextually interpreted moral views on the individual and organisational levels, respectively. On the individual level, a distinction was made between humanitarian morality, meaning that ethical problems in business are judged according to what is best for individuals, and organisational morality, where economic and practical concerns for the company are considered. On the organisational level, I found a principled, individually based morality where rule-following, voluntary agreements and personal moral norms were important, and an instrumental, collectively based morality, which meant that company goals dictated the way stakeholder relations and ethical dilemmas were taken care of. Overall, it was possible to make a distinction between two basic ethical criteria business actors use when judging ethical dilemmas: principles versus objectives. The results indicate that the use of principles and moral rules presuppose an intimate and personal handling of stakeholder relations. On the other hand, when business actors acquire a more professional way of managing their activi­ties, stakeholder relationships are handled in accordance with objectives and economic utility, these usually being the same as company goals. One of the major contributions of this thesis is the concept of the ethical contract, as a meta­phor for the relationship between a company and any one particular stakeholder with special focus on the informal and implicit aspects of the relationship. The contract is characterised by two opposing forces: the striving for self-interest, which underpins ethical problems, and the development of self-imposed duties, which are necessary if instrumentally based interaction is to be "good". The mutual development of such duties is stimulated by proximity and personal relations. / digitalisering@umu

The idea that ‘business ethics' picks out a distinct discipline within ethical theory is contentious; in particular, it is unclear why theoretical approaches to moral and political philosophy cannot satisfactorily address ethical concerns in the context of business activity, just as they can in the context of other human activities. In response, I argue that some features of the business environment require more focused analysis than currently available. This environment is characterised by the presence of large social groups – business organisations – that are not political in nature, but yet wield considerable power and are the vehicles for complex forms of collective action. The most pressing ethical concern raised by such collective action is collective moral responsibility. I develop an account of collective responsibility that is tailored to business organisations and that combines a number of strands of moral thought – a desert-based account of moral responsibility that is of a kind with that typically applied to individual humans; a pluralistic account of how collective responsibility is generated that is rooted in irreducible group-level properties; and a moderate approach to social ontology that sees nothing mysterious in ‘distinct' collective entities. From this starting point I develop two detailed models that illustrate how business organisations can constitute distinct collective entities that may be held morally responsible. The first shows how such organisations may satisfy the conditions required to hold moral agency, which is typically assumed to be a prerequisite for moral responsibility. The second breaks with this tradition and argues for the possibility of ‘non-agential' moral responsibility in cases where complex organisational structures mediate the actions of the moral agents that populate them. I conclude by showing how this distinct organisational-level responsibility, far from insulating organisation members from personal culpability, illustrates quite distinct standards against which such individuals may be judged.