Title
Ethical Business Cultures: A Literature Review and Implications for HRD
Department/School
Center for Ethical Business Cultures
Date of this version
7-2009
Document Type
Article
Keywords
ethical business culture; organizational culture; business ethics
Abstract
This literature review identifies characteristics of ethical business cultures, describes factors, considered to be important in developing such cultures, describes current practices of developing ethical culture programs, and discusses the role of HRD in developing ethical business cultures. We argue that ethical thinking and behavior can be learned and internalized as a result of work-based interpretive interactions, and this learning process constitutes an important part of organizational learning. Therefore, to help the organization develop an ethical culture, HRD needs to play a key role in several interrelated activities which include: culture change efforts, focused on the creation of conditions, conducive to ethical behaviors; creation of a dynamic program of ethical training for employees on all levels of the organization; and development of up-to-date codes of ethics.
Published in
Human Resource Development Review
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.