Ethical work climate 2.0: a normative reformulation of Victor and Cullen’s 1988 framework

Ethical work climate (EWC), introduced by Bart Victor and John Cullen, plays a central role in the business ethics literature due to its influence on employee’s ethical decision-making. Yet, the often-used framework is limited as a descriptive and prescriptive model because it lacks a normative focu...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Weber, James 1953- (Author) ; Opoku-Dakwa, Akwasi (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Springer Science + Business Media B. V 2022
In: Journal of business ethics
Year: 2022, Volume: 178, Issue: 3, Pages: 629-646
Further subjects:B Ethics theories
B Normative model
B Ethical principles
B Aufsatz in Zeitschrift
B Ethical work climate
B Levels of moral reasoning
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Summary:Ethical work climate (EWC), introduced by Bart Victor and John Cullen, plays a central role in the business ethics literature due to its influence on employee’s ethical decision-making. Yet, the often-used framework is limited as a descriptive and prescriptive model because it lacks a normative focus and does not allow for organizations guided by (arguably) universal ethical principles. We revisit Victor and Cullen’s original conceptualization of ethical climate and propose a reformulation of the ethical criteria to be conceptually consistent with Kohlberg’s theory of cognitive moral development and to accommodate principled climates. We also describe how the locus of analysis dimension can be simplified to allow for a more parsimonious and potentially more valid theory. In doing so, we eliminate redundancy noted in the original model and clarify normative preference among the ethical climate types. We discuss implications for research, teaching, and practice.
ISSN:1573-0697
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of business ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s10551-021-04778-4