Raising ethics awareness in inclusive management training

Abstract

The notion of “ethics at work” invokes a representation of the social role incumbent on the company toward its stakeholders. A CSR and ethics policy invites a firm to critically reinvigorate its normative and procedural system, calling for an assessment of its regulatory and learning mechanisms as well as of its operational praxis. This policy aspires to an ethical and strategic alignment of the company. Empirically based, this article examines the representations and perceptions of ethics at work shared by a cohort of students in the Master’s program of a French business school. The “ethics at work” image is investigated as a fabric of representations, perceptions, influences, and empirical experiences surrounding the relationship between a company and its stakeholders. The collected data are drawn from 155 Ethics & CSR Discovery Reports produced by students during their internships. A manual analysis of content was conducted, followed by a confirmatory quantitative treatment using the lexicographical software programs ALCESTE and IRAMUTEQ. The results show that, although French legislation promotes human rights and environmental compliance, and despite the strengthening of societal conscience among leaders and managers, the implementation of corporate social responsibility continues to be insufficient. Certainly, best practices have been developed concerning environmental action, quality of life at work, work-life balance, and promotion of diversity and inclusion (sources of positive surprise). Nevertheless, shocking practices (negative surprise) were also identified. Our research discloses the gap between the organizational promises and effective programs on one hand, and the action plans and operational practices on the other. They also reveal the hysteresis of organizational behavior. The interpretative paradigm is based on a dual framework, centered on “ethics at work” and business ethics (Tsalikis & Fritzsche 1989; Kervern 1993; Victor & Cullen 1988; Birnik & Billsberry 2008; Chouaib & Zaddem 2012; Calabretta et al. 2011) and on a Levinassian interpretation (Levinas 1982; Bruna & Bazin 2017) of an ethics of otherness and organizational justice issues.