Book Review: Corporate Wrongdoing and the Art of the Accusation

Robert R. Faulkner: Corporate Wrongdoing and the Art of the Accusation. New York: Anthem Press, 2011. 192 pp. £19.99 / $32.95, paper.

Read the review by Donald Palmer of UC Davis, published in Administrative Science Quarterly:

Inquiry in contemporary organizational theory into the causes of wrongdoing in and by organizations can be neatly packaged in a very small box. It exclusively focuses on the factors that can lead organizational participants and organizations to engage in wrongdoing, concentrating on factors related to rational choice, cultural prescriptions, and performance strain. Further, it analyzes a narrow range of types of wrongdoing: types that result in administrative sanctions, civil judgments, and criminal convictions. Organizational scholars for the most part completely ignore the labeling process by which organizational behaviors are designated wrongful and organizational actors are classified as wrongdoers. This labeling process is an important cause of wrongdoing. Simply put, there can be no wrongdoing unless someone or some organization draws a line separating right from wrong.

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Karl Weick on Organizational Wrongdoing

Donald Palmer: Normal Organizational Wrongdoing: A Critical Analysis of Theories of Misconduct in and by Organizations. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. 313 pp. $85.00, hardback.

Read the review by Karl E. Weick of the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, published in Administrative Science Quarterly:

Donald Palmer has developed a provocative argument about the inevitability of organizational wrongdoing. Here are two examples: ‘‘I came to the conclusion that even the most ethical, socially responsible, and law-abiding people are at significant risk of becoming entangled in wrongdoing when placed in an organizational context’’ (p. 23), and ‘‘The position of the line separating right from wrong is a political product, a reflection of the balance of power among competing interests rather than a representation of moral imperative. . . . [That line] is eminently disputable and perhaps inherently suspect’’ (p. 264). What we have here is a critical, inclusive, sociological analysis that takes the perspective of embedded wrongdoers.

The normalcy of wrongdoing makes more sense theoretically as we move away from the dominant organizational perspectives of rational choice theory and organizational culture, both of which treat wrongdoing as abnormal, and move toward an alternative perspective that gives more prominence to ethical decision theory, administrative systems, situational social influence, the power structure, accidental wrongdoing, and the social control of organizational wrongdoing.

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The Relation Between Morality and Organization: Where To Start?

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Editor’s note: We are pleased to welcome Masoud Shadnam of Rouen Business School in France, whose paper “Heterologous and Homologous Perspectives on the Relation Between Morality and Organization: Illustration of Implications for Studying the Rise of Private Military and Security Industry” is forthcoming in the Journal of Management Inquiry and now available in the journal’s OnlineFirst section.

Suppose you are an alien who has recently arrived on the Earth with a mission to explore the organizational life of human beings. Disguised in a human surrogate, you start interacting with people in organizations and getting to know the regularities of organizational life. Soon you realize that organizational order is coupled with another salient force that plays an important role in ordering human affairs in organizations, and that is moral order. You are not sure about the nature or origin of moral or organizational orders, but it seems evident to you that there is a relation between the two. Now you ask yourself: Are these orders distinct and independent from each other? Or they are somehow interdependent in their constitution?

This article shows that the alien’s query highlights two different theoretical perspectives that exist about the relation between morality and organization: “A heterologous perspective that views morality and organization as two fundamentally different and independent phenomena, and a homologous perspective that views them as two interdependent variations or aspects of a single phenomenon”. The article discusses the implications of taking each perspective for organizational studies of moral phenomena, and shows how the choice of theoretical perspective leads to starkly different conclusions about a single phenomenon. For the purpose of illustration, the author offers two different examinations of the recent rise of private military and security industry.

Read the paper, “Heterologous and Homologous Perspectives on the Relation Between Morality and Organization: Illustration of Implications for Studying the Rise of Private Military and Security Industry,” online in the Journal of Management Inquiry.

Masoud Shadnam is an assistant professor of management and strategy at Rouen Business School in France. He received his PhD in management and organization studies from Simon Fraser University. His research examines moral and cultural aspects of organizational settings from a descriptive perspective drawing primarily on insights from the disciplines of sociology and social philosophy. He is presently working on exploring the dynamics and politics of moral discourse in large organizations.

Organizational Decline and Turnaround: A Review and Agenda

Cheryl A. Trahms of Texas A&M University, Hermann Achidi Ndofor of Texas A&M University, and David G. Sirmon of the University of Washington–Seattle published “Organizational Decline and Turnaround: A Review and Agenda for Future Research” in the Journal of Management’s OnlineFirst section. The abstract:

In the 20 years since the last review on organizational decline and turnaround, the scope of turnaround research has expanded dramatically; however, research on this phenomenon remains empirically and theoretically fragmented. Recent research has incorporated managerial cognition, strategic leadership, and stakeholder management and has identified simultaneous and complex resource-based actions beyond the two-stage model developed in the last review by Pearce and Robbins two decades ago. Thus, herein we build from Pearce and Robbins’ review by cataloguing the past 20 years of empirical evidence related to turnaround, developing a descriptive model of organizational decline and turnaround, and concluding with a theory-based research agenda for organizational decline and turnaround. In doing so, this article summarizes what we know about organizational decline and turnaround, and proposes what we need to study, while providing a theoretical road map to guide this future research.

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Journal of Management January Issue Now Online

The Journal of Management’s January 2013 review issue is now online, and we invite you to enjoy free access to all articles through January 31st. The issue’s offerings include the following articles and much more:

Resource-Based and Institutional Perspectives on Export Channel Selection and Export Performance

Change Readiness: A Multilevel Review

The Delivery of Bad News in Organizations: A Framework for Analysis

Employee Justice Across Cultures: A Meta-Analytic Review

Click here for the complete Table of Contents.

When Good Deeds Go Bad At Work

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Doing good deeds above and beyond the call of duty in the workplace–also known as organizational citizenship behavior (OCB)–is supposed to be a positive thing. But according to findings published in Small Group Research, depending on what motivates the do-gooder, the outcome can be less than favorable:

Specifically, I have argued that some of the evident discrepancies in the literature on OCB outcomes may be explained by adding OCB motive into the equation. In particular, this article claims that the positive outcomes of OCB—increasing group performance and group cohesion—only occur when OCB is performed as a selfless act. With self-serving motives, OCB may even have detrimental effects, reducing group performance and group cohesion.

Click here to read the article, “Is a Good Deed Constructive Regardless of Intent? Organization Citizenship Behavior, Motive, and Group Outcomes,” published by Sara Banki of the University of Toronto in Small Group Research, and sign up for e-alerts to stay on top of the latest findings from the journal.

Coaching With Compassion

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The health of organizations depends upon the health and happiness of the human beings who run them. When it comes to coaching, compassion is key to creating well-being, both within the individual and at the organizational level. Richard E. Boyatzis, Melvin L. Smith, and ‘Alim J. Beveridge, all of Case Western Reserve University, published “Coaching With Compassion: Inspiring Health, Well-Being, and Development in Organizations” on November 1, 2012 in the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science. The authors write in the abstract:

Compassion involves noticing another’s need, empathizing, and acting to enhance their well-being. In response to another’s pain, the motivation is to increase hedonic well-being or the absence of pain. In response to another’s desire to grow, the motivation is to increase eudaimonic well-being or helping them develop. We argue that compassion includes both. Our expanded view suggests that coaching with compassion will lead to desired change, enhanced health, and well-being. We propose a model saying coaching with compassion invokes a psychophysiological state that enables a person to be open to new possibilities and learning. In contrast, coaching for compliance (i.e., toward how the coach or the organization believe the person should act) and deficiency-based coaching invoke the opposite state—resulting in a person being defensive, reducing cognitive functioning. We theorize how coaching with compassion can enhance adaptability of the organization through creating norms and relationships of caring and development.

Read the full article in the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, and click here to learn more about the journal. If you’re interested in receiving e-alerts about newly published research on group dynamics, organization development, and social change, then click here!

How To Act Like An OD Professional

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What can organizational development (OD) professionals learn  from theatre actors? In her article “Borrowing From Professional Theatre Training to Build Essential Skills in Organization Development Consultants,” published on November 1, 2012 in The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Leslie Stager Jacques of Massey University “explores the relationship between the interpersonal skills required by professional actors and those required by organization development (OD) practitioners”:

The objective is not to turn OD practitioners into actors but rather to indicate what might be a useful source of skill development for OD professionals. Although the end uses for the skill sets diverge, the skills themselves seem similar if not the same, especially the foundational skills of self-awareness, listening, and observing. Traditional methods of learning interpersonal skills may only address traditional OD problems that require diagnostic, positivistic control of behavior change. However, acting training such as improvisational techniques may develop more advanced skills such as reciprocity and collaborating, which are needed to practice dialogic forms of OD grounded in postmodern premises of shared meaning making, multiple realities, and collaborative solutions as proposed by Bushe and Marshak.

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Speak the Language of the Universe

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Even if you’re not mathematically inclined, it is difficult to not feel inspired by Galileo’s famous statement that “mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe”—and according to an article in Organizational Research Methods (ORM), this piece of wisdom is more relevant to your work as an organizational scholar than you might realize.

Jeffrey B. Vancouver and Justin M. Weinhardt, both of Ohio University, published “Modeling the Mind and the Milieu: Computational Modeling for Micro-Level Organizational Researchers” on July 9, 2012 in ORM. To see more OnlineFirst aticles, click here. The authors argue that computational models—which are “algorithmic descriptions of process details…typically operationalized as computer programs”—are an advantageous tool not taken seriously enough in organizational research:

Unfortunately, we argue that this relative absence of computational modeling has undermined the quality of theory in the organizational sciences. In particular, organizational scholars often develop verbal dynamic theories, but there is little discussion of how the dynamic relationships play out over time. Moreover, there is a growing body of research showing that even well-educated individuals are poor at understanding the effects of dynamic processes without external aids (e.g., Cronin, Gonzalez, & Sterman, 2009; Hintzman, 1990). In contrast, computational models force scholars to operationalize the underlying assumptions of their theories (Lewandowsky & Farrell, 2011). This can highlight unrecognized problems or advance understanding.

Read the complete article here. To learn more about Organizational Research Methods, please follow this link.

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Does Privacy Make Us Productive?

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Modern-day organizations increasingly are seeking to create an “open” work environment—one that makes workers more observable—theorizing that transparency boosts performance. But a new study in Administrative Science Quarterly (ASQ) finds this trend may be counterproductive.

Ethan S. Bernstein of Harvard University published “The Transparency Paradox: A Role for Privacy in Organizational Learning and Operational Control” on June 21, 2012 in ASQ.  Recognizing the prevalence of the trend in factories, the author provides field-based evidence that transparency is not “such a panacea” and makes a strong case for preserving worker privacy in the interest of productivity:

We typically assume that the more we can see, the more we can understand about an organization. This research suggests a counteracting force: the more that can be seen, the more individuals may respond strategically with hiding behavior and encryption to nullify the understanding of that which is seen.

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