Innovative ethics officers as drivers of effective ethics programs: An empirical study in the Netherlands

IF 4.8 Q1 Economics, Econometrics and Finance

Business Ethics-A European Review Pub Date : 2020-08-01 DOI:10.1111/beer.12310

Sjoerd Hogenbirk, Desirée H. van Dun

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引用次数: 3

Abstract

Ethical misconduct and violations seriously harm individuals and organizations and lead to massive fines or the dismissal of employees and CEOs. Many firms have implemented ethics programs to prevent unethical behavior but these are often ineffective and take a traditional approach. Ethics officers are often responsible for running and developing ethics programs, in collaboration with other departments. They can therefore play a key role in improving ethics program effectiveness. We postulate that ethics officers need to adopt a more innovative approach in order to achieve ethical behavior amongst employees and managers, and that such an innovative approach requires certain personality traits. This study investigates how ethics officers’ personality traits and innovative work behaviors relate to the effectiveness of ethics programs and normative ethical behavior through an online questionnaire conducted among 110 ethics officers in large Dutch organizations. Structural equations modeling showed that innovative work behavior mediated the relationships between ethics officers’ openness to experience and ethics program effectiveness which, in turn, is related to more normative ethical behavior. Future research must examine the (partial) mediation effects, including other characteristics of ethics officers in relation to ethics program effectiveness and ethical behaviors at work, and replicate the study multi-nationally.

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创新伦理官员作为有效伦理计划的驱动因素:荷兰的实证研究

道德失当和违反行为严重损害了个人和组织，并导致巨额罚款或解雇员工和首席执行官。许多公司已经实施了道德计划，以防止不道德的行为，但这些往往是无效的，采取传统的方法。道德官员通常负责运行和发展道德项目，与其他部门合作。因此，他们可以在提高道德项目的有效性方面发挥关键作用。我们假设，道德官员需要采用更具创新性的方法，以实现员工和管理者之间的道德行为，而这种创新方法需要某些人格特质。本研究通过对110名荷兰大型组织的道德官员进行在线问卷调查，探讨道德官员的人格特质和创新工作行为与道德项目有效性和规范道德行为之间的关系。结构方程模型表明，创新工作行为在道德官员经验开放性与道德项目有效性之间起中介作用，而道德项目有效性又与更规范的道德行为相关。未来的研究必须检验(部分)中介效应，包括道德官员与道德项目有效性和工作中的道德行为相关的其他特征，并在多国复制研究。

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来源期刊

Business Ethics-A European Review Multiple-

CiteScore

5.90

自引率

0.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： -To offer rigorous and informed analysis of ethical issues and perspectives relevant to organizations and their relationships with society -To promote scholarly research and advance knowledge in relation to business ethics and corporate social responsibility and social entrepreneurship by providing cutting edge theoretical and empirical analysis of salient issues and developments -To be responsive to changing concerns and emerging issues in the business ethics and business and society sphere, and to seek to reflect these in the balance of contributions -To be the publication outlet of choice for all types of original research relating to business ethics and business-society relationships. Original articles are welcomed. Each issue will normally contain several major articles, and there will be an occasional FOCUS section which will contain articles on an issue of particular importance and topicality. Other regular features will include editorial interviews, book reviews, comments and responses to published articles, research notes and case studies. Business Ethics: A European Review is well established as an academic research journal which is at the same time readable, user-friendly and authoritative. It publishes both fully refereed scholarly papers and special contributions such as speeches and reviews. The range of contributions reflects the variety and scope of ethical issues faced by business and other organisations world-wide, and at the same time seeks to address the interests and concerns of the journals readership.