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“At last, a second edition of this seminal volume! This book articulates the ethics
and values that drew many of us into Industrial and Organizational Psychology in
the first place—our professional Tūrangawaewae, a ground on which to stand. We
need to stand that ground more than ever today, and this book articulates why. Its
vistas are prospective, and expansive: social and economic justice, socially responsive
and responsible research, workplace dignity, combating working poverty, societally
integrating refugees by respecting socio-economic, -political and -cultural justice,
spiritual values and religious faith; the over-arching UN Sustainable Development
Goals. From minimum to living wages, servants of power to empowerment, CSR
and Humanitarian work psychology, this is a book for the 21st century: for the
future of decent work in a sustainable society.”
—Stuart C. Carr, Ph.D., FRSNZ, End Poverty & Inequality
Cluster (EPIC), Massey University, New Zealand
“The second edition of Joel Lefkowitz’s wonderful book frames business practices
in a moral perspective—an important consideration for modern economies. It is
clearly written, expertly sourced, and responsibly frames business issues in terms
of the key issues from classic ethical theory.”
—Robert Hogan, Ph.D., President, Hogan Assessment
Systems, USA
ETHICS AND VALUES IN
INDUSTRIAL-ORGANIZATIONAL
PSYCHOLOGY
Ethics and Values in Industrial-Organizational Psychology was one of the first books
to integrate work from moral philosophy, moral psychology, I-O psychology, and
political and social economy, as well as business. It incorporates these perspectives
into a “framework for taking moral action” and presents a practical model for eth-
ical decision making. The second edition has added a chapter on Virtue Theory,
including its application in I-O, Organizational Behavior (OB) and business;
expands Moral Psychology to two chapters, with more attention to moral emo-
tions, effects of the “dark side” of personality, and the intuitionist model of moral
judgment; expands the sections on social and economic justice; and expands
the treatment of the Responsible Conduct of Research with a new chapter on
Research Integrity. Examples from I-O research and practice, as well as current
business events, are offered throughout. It is ideal for ethics and I-O courses at
the graduate level.
Manuel London
The Power of Feedback: Giving, Seeking, and Using Feedback
for Performance Improvement
Zinta S. Byrne
Understanding Employee Engagement:Theory, Research,
and Practice
Joel Lefkowitz
Ethics and Values in Industrial-Organizational Psychology,
Second Edition
Joel Lefkowitz
Second edition published 2017
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2017 Taylor & Francis
The right of Joel Lefkowitz to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
First edition published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. 2003
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lefkowitz, Joel, author.
Title: Ethics and values in industrial-organizational psychology / Joel
Lefkowitz.
Description: Second edition. | New York, NY : Routledge, 2017. | Series:
Series in applied psychology
Identifiers: LCCN 2016043161 | ISBN 9781138189928 (hardback : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9781138189935 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781315628721 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Psychology, Industrial. | Business ethics.
Classification: LCC HF5548.8 .L3644 2017 | DDC 174/.91587—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016043161
ISBN: 978-1-138-18992-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-18993-5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-62872-1 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
This book is dedicated to back-office clerks doing data entry
in the financial districts of New York;
goldminers in the dark and the wet and the heat
more than a mile beneath the Black Hills of South Dakota;
a police officer alone in his cruiser at 3:00 a.m.
after several days of street violence in Dayton, Ohio;
young women high school graduates
learning power sewing machine operation for piece rates
in Pennsylvania and New England;
partially literate washers and pressers in a steamy industrial
laundry in rural Louisiana;
aircraft parts production workers in Cleveland;
and many more. . . .
Because they graciously allowed themselves to be observed,
interviewed, surveyed, tested, evaluated or trained,
I came to appreciate what it is like to work in America.
List of Figures xi
List of Tables xii
List of Boxes xiii
Series Foreword xiv
Kevin R. Murphy and Jeanette N. Cleveland
1. Introduction 1
PART I
Moral Philosophy and Psychology 17
2. Meta-Ethics 19
PART II
Values183
PART III
The Responsible Conduct of Research 397
PART IV
Conclusion485
References517
Index591
FIGURES
The goal of the Applied Psychology Series is to create books that exemplify
the use of scientific research, theory and findings to help solve real problems in
organizations and society. Lefkowitz’s Ethics and Values in Industrial-Organizational
Psychology, Second Edition exemplifies this approach. This volume updates and sig-
nificantly expands his 2003 edition, preserving the strengths of this previous work
and incorporating a significant amount of new material.
This is a wide-ranging book that starts with a thoughtful discussion of the
meaning of ethical behavior and of philosophers’ long quest to understand the
meaning and the determinants of ethics. The first third of this book provides a
thorough discussion of the main currents of thought regarding ethics in the long
history of Western Civilization. As Lefkowitz surveys this broad landscape, he pays
careful attention to identifying concrete principles that can be applied to help
make ethical decisions in organizations; the second third of the book builds a
detailed and rigorous model for analyzing ethical choices in organizations. The
last third of this book applies the principles examined throughout to understand-
ing the ethical conduct of business, as well as the ethical conduct of research and
practice in applied psychology. In his last chapter, Lefkowitz offers a clear and
concrete set of steps for making ethically informed decisions.
This book draws from a broad and wide-ranging literature, and it presents an
extremely thoughtful synthesis of thought from a number of disciplines. Lefkowitz
makes a strong case for the need to take ethical reasoning seriously, and he shows
both the philosophical foundations and the practical implications of the systematic
study of ethical behavior in organizations. This is a work of exemplary scholarship
that should be on everyone’s bookshelf. We are thrilled to add Ethics and Values in
Industrial-Organizational Psychology, Second Edition to the Applied Psychology Series.
Kevin R. Murphy
Jeanette N. Cleveland
1
INTRODUCTION
A prolific academic author once told me that an effective book is generally based
on just one good idea—irrespective of how broad the topic or complex the mate-
rial. The overarching thesis of this book is that, contrary to an attitude too often
expressed or implied, professional ethics is not an unreasonable set of rules or
expectations designed by intrusive idealists to make our lives more difficult. For
example, in referring particularly to the domain having to do with the responsible
conduct of research (RCR), Macrina (2014) suggests that it is typically taught in
ways that communicate: “This is something we unfortunately must require you to
do, so let’s get it over with as quickly as we can, and then we can move on to the
important things” (p. xviii).
As psychologists we study human behavior. To do so, we depend on the good-
will and trust of the persons who cooperate with us voluntarily, sometimes reveal-
ing their private selves to us, enabling us to do our work and research. As industrial
and organizational (I-O) psychologists we further depend on the goodwill of
organizational decision makers who trust us when we say that we can improve the
effectiveness of their enterprises. As professionals, we cannot do that work very
well, at least not for very long, if we do not treat all of those persons ethically—
that is, honestly, fairly and with respect and dignity. It has been observed that
“The concept of human dignity is a central, if not the central, concept in legal
systems the world over” (Shultziner & Rabinovici, 2012, p. 105, emphasis in the
original). And in two recent surveys “Ethical, legal, & professional contexts” was
rated fourth-highest among 25 domains of competency by I-O graduate program
directors (Payne, Morgan, & Allen, 2015) and second-highest among 21 content
areas by practicing I-O psychologists (Steiner & Yancey, 2013). (One wonders,
however, whether inclusion of legal concerns as part of the domain may have
contributed to a positive rating bias.)
2 Introduction
But our motives ought not be solely instrumental. Indeed, as reviewed in chap-
ters 3 and 5, the hallmark of some moral theories is the rejection of such utilities
or “cost-benefit analyses” as a means of judging ethical behavior. As is charac-
teristic of all professionals we assume the responsibility of “the service ideal.” As
psychologists we carry with us a humanistic tradition that includes a concern for
promoting people’s welfare, some of which is formalized in our ethical codes.
Thus, ethical issues of fairness and justice and of duty and beneficence are central
to our core values as professional psychologists. Some of the more controversial
portions of this book, however, include the criticism that much of I-O psychol-
ogy has drifted rather far from those core values and has to a considerable degree
replaced them with a narrow version of business values that are not commensu-
rate with psychology’s humanistic heritage.
Portions of this book are concerned with matters that probably go beyond
what many of my colleagues view as the appropriate domain of professional ethics.
In my opinion—which is explained clearly in later chapters—we cannot avoid the
economic, sociopolitical and human developmental antecedents of individual and
organizational ethical behavior any more than we could hope to understand the
functioning of an organization as if it were a closed system, ignoring its cultural
history and the social, political and economic environments that influence and
set constraints on its internal policies and external actions (Katz & Kahn, 1978).
A similar conclusion seems justified with respect to the consequences of organi-
zational actions. For example, I-O psychology studies as legitimate and important
facets of employees’ job performance their organizational citizenship behaviors
(OCBs) because such prosocial behaviors contribute to organizational effectiveness,
even though they may not be part of the prescribed work role (Podsakoff, Whit-
ing, Podsakoff, & Blume, 2009). By extension, we cannot ethically ignore the moral
qualities and actions of the organizations to which we devote our efforts—in effect,
organizations’ citizenship behavior—with respect to the society that legitimizes and
supports them and in which they function. Just as we study employee perceptions
of organizational justice vis-a-vis an organization’s internal human resources activi-
ties (Gilliland, Steiner, & Skarlicki, 2001; Greenberg, 2009), we should also be con-
cerned with the social justice implications of the organization’s external actions,
which characterize the probity of its role in society. This perspective is in keeping
with that of other psychologists who have begun to express concern for the way in
which professionals carry out good work—“work that is both excellent in quality
and socially responsible” (Gardner, Csikszentmihalyi, & Damon, 2001).
Because it has always been my hope that this book would be used in the course
of I-O psychology students learning ethics, it should be noted that there has been
in recent years considerable turmoil about how ethics should be taught—in phi-
losophy departments and in professional and pre-professional programs. Hartner
(2015) contrasts the
He observes a movement in academe to largely replace the former with the lat-
ter, and argues against it. I think it is apparent from the content of this book that
I agree with him. Attempting to discuss realistic ethical problems detached from a
context of moral philosophy often devolves into an attempt to memorize lists of
disembodied “do’s and don’ts.”
Moreover, there’s another pertinent issue that seldom gets considered. Appro-
priate professional and ethical behavior is also taught implicitly by example,
role-modeling and other socialization processes on the part of graduate faculty,
internship supervisors and early mentors at work. Hafferty (1998), in writing
about curriculum reform in medicine, emphasized the importance of the informal
curriculum and the hidden curriculum, as distinct from a program’s formal curricu-
lum. The former is “an unscripted, predominantly ad hoc, and highly interper-
sonal form of teaching and learning that takes place among and between faculty
and students,” and the latter refers to “a set of influences that function at the level
of organizational structure and culture” (p. 404). Up until very recently these
two modes have served, I believe, largely to socialize beginning I-O psychology
students into I-O psychology’s predominant corporatist value system (Lefko
witz, 1990, 2003, 2008, 2013b, 2014a). But there are also newer, more human-
istic and prosocial perspectives emerging in the field to be acknowledged (cf.
Carr, MacLachlan & Furnham, 2012; McWha-Herman, Maynard, & Berry, 2016;
Olson-Buchanan, Bryan, & Thompson, 2013). In recognition of that flux one of
the objectives of this book is to encourage students to reflect on what they would
like their core professional identity to be, by which I mean one’s “beliefs, goals, and
meta-objectives concerning what it is you intend to accomplish in the organizations with
which you work and how you prefer to go about accomplishing them” (Lefkowitz, 2010a,
p. 294, emphasis in the original).
There seem to be essentially four kinds of publications concerned with eth-
ics. Each type is rather different from the others and makes a relatively unique
contribution, notwithstanding that there is some inevitable overlap among them.
The first category of publications consists of ethical codes that have been promul-
gated by governments, professional and trade associations, individual organizations
(including business corporations) and others. Such codes are offered as presum-
ably helpful and practical guides to ethical behavior, generally within particular
domains such as business management or the professions. However, a primary
limitation of ethical codes is that they are often written either in overly general
terms focusing on aspirational ideals or they are highly specific and idiosyncratic,
sometimes leading one to exclaim in frustration, “I can’t find my problem in the
code!” In the first instance one may be at a loss as to how to apply the broad
4 Introduction
ethical principles; if so, explanatory casebooks are helpful (e.g., Lowman, 2006;
Nagy, 2005). In the second instance the code may need further elaboration to
be useful, such as that provided by Canter, Bennett, Jones, and Nagy (1994) and
Nagy (2011) for the American Psychological Association’s (APA) code. Similar
to codes are legal and professional standards that set forth specific obligations of
professional practice or scientific research (e.g., American Educational Research
Association [AERA], APA, & National Council on Measurement in Educa-
tion [NCME], 2014; APA, 1987; Equal Employment Opportunity Commission,
Civil Service Commission, Department of Labor, & Department of Justice, 1978;
Office for Protection From Research Risks (now the Office for Human Research
Protections), National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human
Services [referred to hereafter as OPRR], 1991; and Society for Industrial and
Organizational Psychology [SIOP], 2003).
In contrast, the second category of publications consists of highly theoreti-
cal and philosophical treatises. Primary among these are original expositions by
moral philosophers, as well as reviews of moral theories by other philosophers—
sometimes in the form of critiques in which one theory “wins” and the others
“lose” because they are deemed logically less consistent and/or less comprehen-
sive. Chapters 2, 3, 4 and 5 of this book present a distillation of some moral
philosophies in which, although I have not shied away from offering criticisms,
no attempt is made to assess “winners” and “losers.” Rather, my intention is to
familiarize the reader with the varieties of ethical reasoning and to offer alter-
native conceptual approaches that may be useful in anticipating, evaluating and
resolving ethical dilemmas—even when you cannot find your problem described
in an ethics code. Different ethical problems, even within a single domain such as
business practices, may induce different types of ethical reasoning corresponding
to different moral theories (Fritzsche & Becker, 1984).
A third category of publications consists of illustrative casebooks that con-
tribute to our understanding by providing specific applications of ethical princi-
ples and guidelines that may otherwise be ambiguous or poorly comprehended.
But they tend to be limited by the same factors that limit the codes themselves,
and no one person or even small number of persons is likely to have direct
experience with enough real cases to represent anywhere near an entire code.
Good casebooks, therefore, almost always need to be collaborative enterprises—
perhaps developed by members of a professional ethics committee with consider-
able experience evaluating complaints.
The last major category of ethics publications consists of books that aim to
impact people’s lives and, by extension, society by showing how ethical considera-
tions are relevant to everyday affairs. These books deal with applied ethics, practi-
cal ethics or social criticism (from an ethical or moral perspective). Perhaps the
best known contemporary example of this genre is Singer’s (2011) wide-ranging
Practical Ethics, which tackles issues like euthanasia, animal killing, environmental
degradation, climate change, the distribution of wealth and much more, from a
Introduction 5
consistent theoretical position (that of consequentialism, see Chap. 4). Other exam-
ples are targeted for a specific audience, such as books on business ethics (e.g.,
Schminke, 2010).
With perhaps more than a little hubris, this book touches all four of those bases
and emphasizes primarily the ubiquitous, but often unacknowledged, role played
by personal and institutional values in shaping moral action. Although the book
develops a framework for ethical decision making, culminating in a model of ethi-
cal reasoning for taking moral action, I emphasize throughout the important role
played by the values that underlie our reasoning. That orientation is responsive to
the concerns expressed by Mitchell and Scott (1990):
The situation described by Mitchell and Scott is no less true regarding the
ethical education of I-O psychologists, and I hope that this book contributes to
fostering the sort of “moral discourse” they advocate. In particular, this book has
three meta-objectives. They are to enhance the reader’s ability to: (1) recognize
and understand the origins and nature of ethical problems and their contempo-
rary determinants; (2) appreciate the role of personal and societal values in shaping
ethical dilemmas and our reactions to them; and (3) improve the quality of those
reactions—i.e., make better moral choices.
An explosion of interest in ethics and morality appears to have taken place over
the past 25 years. It is erupting in many spheres of life. Social scientists (e.g., Etzi-
oni, 1996) and revered religious leaders (e.g., Dalai Lama, 1999, 2011) have felt
the need to offer prescriptions for improving the moral dimension of society; in
6 Introduction
the U.S. displays of public religiosity and calls for moral rectitude are at a level and
scale probably not seen since the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; psycholo-
gists have shown increased interest in morality as a unifying cognitive construct
(Brandt & Reyna, 2015); the number of books published on business ethics has
soared and professional journals, such as Ethics & Behavior, The Journal of Business
Ethics, Business Ethics Quarterly, The Journal of Religion and Business Ethics, Journal of
Business, Peace and Sustainable Development, Business and Society, et. al., have flour-
ished; the surefire indicator that a scholarly field has achieved a critical mass of
attention—an edited handbook—has existed for a while as well (Cooper, 2001);
consultants teaching business ethics or “values clarification” in corporations and
“character training” in the schools constitute a growth industry, and instructional
books holding out the promise of being able to raise moral children have become
best-sellers (Coles, 1997); within our profession the APA (1992) revised its ethical
code not so long ago yet has recently revised it again (APA, 2002) and amended
it still more recently (APA, 2010a, b), and in conjunction with the APA, SIOP
revised and expanded its casebook on ethics (Lowman, 2006); morality and char-
acter issues have become preeminent screening criteria for those who wish to
serve in public office1; and if further mundane demonstration were needed to
make the point, the Sunday magazine section of my hometown paper, The New
York Times, has been publishing an advice column titled “The Ethicist” for more
than ten years for those who find themselves ethically challenged.
Why all this attention? In part I believe it is because ethics is intimately
reflected in the essence of what it means to be a sentient person. Human beings
seem to have evolved several ways to answer the fundamental existential questions
of “Why?” and “What?” (As in “Why are we here?” or “What is the purpose or
meaning of life?”). They invoke five domains:
They all reflect basic human needs for achieving psychological fulfillment and a
sense of meaningfulness, subjective well-being and leading the good life through
our ways of being in the world. Psychologists, including some in I-O, have
shown increased interest in the notion of meaningfulness and in these outcomes
(Brethel-Hauritz & Marsh, 2014; Diener, Oishi, & Lucas, 2015; Dik, Byrne, &
Steger, 2013; Heintzelman & King, 2014; Kahneman, 2011; Linley & Leontiev,
2009; Lomas, 2015; McFarland, Brown, & Webb, 2013; Okulicz-Kozaryn &
Holmes, 2014; Van Vleet & Feeney, 2015; Wang & Hesketh, 2012). But the
Introduction 7
philosopher Simon Critchley (2015) cautioned, “The fact that we have been ask-
ing the same kinds of questions for millenniums is not an error: We are rightly
perplexed by our lives. The mistake is to believe that there is an answer to the
question of life’s meaning (para. 21).” On the other hand, psychologists have been
defining and studying people’s experience of meaning in life: empirical evidence
indicates that it is related to social relationships, religious faith, socioeconomic
status, positive affect and having a coherent understanding of the natural world
(King, Heintzelman, & Ward, 2016).
The fifth domain is rather distinct from the first four insofar as faith is the only
one that ostensibly entails a direct and explicit engagement with the existential
questions. What I mean by faith follows the notions of the comparative religion-
ist Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1963), who distinguished it from both religion and
belief. Although Smith did not define the term precisely, it is clear that faith is an
attribute of people—of personality—whereas religion refers to a social, cultural
and historical tradition, encompassing symbols, stories, theologies, ethical teach-
ings, architectural styles, and so on. Among those elements of any religion are its
beliefs, which represent ideas about its tradition. Faith, however, is the aspect of
human personality to which religion and its associated beliefs appeal for adher-
ents; but faith itself refers to a more fundamental and transcendent way of being in
the world. It accounts for the similarities in religious experience among believers
of many different religions.
The relevance of all this for our purposes is found in the writings of Fowler
(1981), who advanced a clearly psychological and humanistic conception of faith
as reflecting people’s attempt to shape and provide meaning to their lives, noting
that the process is informed by one’s values and reflected in the nature of one’s
relationships with others—which is, of course, what ethics is all about. In other
words, I think of faith secularly as a motive underlying such moral attributes as
trust and treating others with respect, dignity and compassion. It is compatible
with most notions of virtue (cf. Chap. 5). Those attributes seem to maintain their
salience in the American creed despite a recent decline in religiosity (Hout &
Fischer, 2002).
A particularly intriguing recent corroboration of the Smith/Fowler perspec-
tive is the growth in the number of students who are religiously nonobservant
and unaffiliated yet enrolled at divinity schools—referred to as nones (Freedman,
2015). Some of these young people are even atheist or agnostic, but they are very
much seeking a moral social justice perspective for their lives, thus exhibiting an
abundance of faith, as I use the term. Some observers have even commented on
the quasi-religious-like experiences that many enjoy in secular social environ-
ments such as their local CrossFit gym (Oppenheimer, 2015)!
From Smith (1963) and Fowler’s (1981) points of view religion is but one of
the possible manifestations of faith. As Singer (2011) pointed out, religion provides
a ready answer to the question of the meaning of life in general and, by exten-
sion, to the meaning of each believer’s life. Belief in a god as creator generally
8 Introduction
presupposes a divine purpose for that creation, so that meaningfulness for the
religious entails divining and fulfilling that purpose—achieving that goal. Secular
faith-based views sometimes can be rather metaphysical, such as that of Kohlberg
and Ryncarz (1990), psychologists for whom the answer to questions like “Why
be moral?” or “Why live?” is provided by “identify[ing] ourselves with the cosmic
or infinite perspective and valu[ing] life from its standpoint” (p. 192); that is, to
“sense the unity of the whole and ourselves as part of that unity” (p. 195).
Many folks look to one or more of the remaining four domains as sources for
answers, and, in refutation of Critchley (see previous quote), I would suggest that
the experience of fulfillment and meaning via these realms seems to be as much
or more a matter of process as goal attainment. In other words, it is in the acts of
attempting to attain understanding, experience loving and respectful relationships,
expressing ourselves, accomplishing meaningful tasks, and realizing worthwhile
objectives that we potentially answer existential questions like “Why?” A similar
conclusion is reached by the philosopher Richard Taylor (2012), albeit expressed
more lyrically:
You no sooner drew your first breath than you responded to the will that
was in you to live. You no more ask whether it will be worthwhile, or
whether anything of significance will come of it, than the worms and the
birds.The point of living is simply to be living, in the manner that it is your
nature to be living.You go through life building your castles, each of these
beginning to fade into time as the next is begun; yet it would be no salva-
tion to rest from all this. It would be a condemnation, and one that would
in no way be redeemed were you able to gaze upon the things you have
done, even if these were beautiful and absolutely permanent, as they never
are. What counts is that you should be able to begin a new task, a new castle, a new
bubble. It counts only because it is there to be done and you have the will
to do it.
(p. 982, emphasis added)
ourselves in this world in order to find fulfillment and meaning in it; to a con-
siderable degree, they all entail interpersonal, including intergroup, relations. For
most of us even the intellective aspects of our lives are not conducted entirely in
solitude. In fact, the relatively new multidisciplinary field of relationship science is
based on the premise that, “because interpersonal relationships are the foundation
and theme of human life, most human behavior takes place in the context of the
individual’s relations with others” (Reis, Collins, & Berscheid, 2000, p. 844). As
Emler and Hogan (1991) cogently expressed it, “there is very little of any con-
sequence, including mischief, that any individual can do entirely alone” (p. 81).
Therefore, ethics, the study of how one should properly live one’s life, especially
with respect to behavior toward others, is tied to the very essence of meaningful
existence.
But that still does not address why attention to ethics and morality has recently
increased. I do not know that anyone has provided a fully satisfactory nonmeta-
physical explanation for the current eruption, but there are a number of factors
that may have contributed:
1. The world has been astounded by biomedical advances such as mapping the
human genome; genetic engineering of food crops and livestock; the cloning
to date of at least 21 species of animals—albeit not yet including humans;
the creation of human embryos in order to extract undifferentiated stem
cells that can be “directed” into becoming a variety of specialized tissues; and
most recently an efficient method of “gene editing” (i.e., altering an organ-
ism’s heritable DNA); and plans to collect genetic data on 1 million Ameri-
cans while it remains unclear as to who will “own” that data (Davis, 2016).
It is not surprising that many have become more than a little frightened by
the ethical implications of those achievements (National Human Genome
Research Institute, 2015; Pollack, 2015; Wade, 2015b; Zimmer, 2015)—and
for some, it even recalls the horrific eugenics movement in the U.S. from the
1920s into the 1950s, in which tens of thousands of men and women under-
went forced sterilization because of their alleged inferiority (Cohen, 2016;
Leonard, 2016). A consortium of four international medical and scientific
academies has recently called for a moratorium on gene alteration because of
doubts about its moral and medical appropriateness (Wade, 2015b).
2. The globalization of American corporations has led to a growing awareness
of differences in what are considered ethically acceptable business practices
in other cultures and to the passage and amendment of the Foreign Corrupt
Practices Act (U.S. Congress, 1977/1998), as well as to a concern for the
extent to which U.S. corporations maintain working conditions and terms
of employment in developing-world production facilities that would not be
tolerated in the United States.Through mid-2015 there have been 136 FCPA
enforcement actions brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission
against American corporations (SEC, 2015).
10 Introduction
3. The proliferation of the Internet and people’s access to the World Wide Web
have led to concerns regarding privacy and confidentiality in business trans-
actions, as well as paradoxically to a growing sense of anonymity. Similarly, the
widespread use of “social media” has led to both gratifying, as well as hurtful
and abusive, social behavior toward peers.2
4. There had been a growing fearfulness associated with rising crime rates up
through the 1980s and early ’90s, especially with respect to apparently ran-
dom street crime; and more recently, a seemingly ceaseless incidence of highly
publicized murderous rampages—all of which is viewed by many Americans
as evidence of moral failing rather than emotional disturbance.
5. There has been an extraordinary increase in the power exercised by business
corporations over people’s lives—virtually tearing up the old implied social
contract—as well as the shift from a manufacturing to a service economy,
with the attendant job losses from the 1980s–2000s, loss of a sense of eco-
nomic security, and destruction of the sense of commitment and loyalty to
a long-term employer. These have in all likelihood been exacerbated by the
financial crisis of 2008 and subsequent worldwide recession.
6. There have been so many high-profile instances of unethical or corrupt
behavior on the part of corporate leaders that it has been characterized in
the press as a “scourge” (Zipkin, 2000). And it seems to have continued vir-
tually unabated in the decade-and-a-half since that discouraging comment
was made: unscrupulous mortgage lending practices and corruption in the
financial services sector in 2008 and beyond (Sorkin, 2015) in which, e.g.,
Goldman Sachs (and other banks) “falsely assur[ed] investors that securities
it sold were backed by sound mortgages, when it knew that they were full
of mortgages that were likely to fail” (Delery, 2016, p. B3); corporate per-
sonnel concealing ignition switch malfunctions responsible for at least 124
deaths in General Motors cars (Ivory, Protess, & Vlasic, 2015; Meier, 2016);
corporate sabotaging of emissions control computer software in Volkswagen
cars (Hakim, Kessler, & Ewing, 2015); intentionally selling salmonella-tainted
peanut butter, resulting in at least nine deaths and hundreds of cases of food
poisoning (Lewis, 2015); disregard of safety regulations at the Upper Big
Branch mine in West Virginia, resulting in an explosion killing 29 miners and
jail time for the company’s CEO (Blinder, 2015, 2016; Stolberg, 2015); and
on it goes. . . .
The behavioral scientist who is not well read in philosophy and ethics may be
surprised by the extent to which much of the content of ethical thought deals
with familiar psychological issues. Assumptions about human nature and motiva-
tion abound in ethical treatises, and the personal behavioral observations and
interpersonal experiences of the moral philosophers are frequently generalized by
them as characteristic of all humankind. In addition, the nature of the processes
by which intellectual progress is achieved in philosophy seems highly similar to
Introduction 11
the nature of psychology as it existed roughly 100 years ago. Psychology used to
focus on grand theories that attempted to explain the entire domain of human
behavior, each criticizing and supplanting one that preceded, as with the so-called
“schools of psychology”—structuralism, functionalism and behaviorism. Even
more so in moral philosophy, philosophical thought has taken the form of philo-
sophical argument—a dialectic in which theories are developed largely in response
to perceived weaknesses and criticisms of the one(s) before. However, the criteria
for acceptance have become very different in the two fields. In moral philosophy
it is a matter of which theory is more robust in withstanding the rational attacks
of its competitors—such as meeting the criticisms of logical inconsistency, lack of
inclusiveness and practical implausibility. In the social and behavioral sciences it is
a matter of which theory is more effective in generating testable hypotheses that
are confirmed by systematic observation—i.e., empirical evidence. As explored
further in chapters 6 and 7, psychology moves beyond simply considering the
logical sufficiency of moral theories by attending to the nonrational emotional,
cognitive and social antecedents of moral behavior, as well as to the issue of moral
development in childhood and its evolutionary underpinnings. But we should
recognize some overlap: even to philosophers the plausibility of an ethical theory
is a psychological criterion that is implicitly empirical (even if that sounds like an
oxymoron). That is, philosophers generally recognize that it makes little sense to
advocate a normative ethical model that is based on unrealistic assumptions and
expectations about human behavior.
Indeed, Steininger, Newell, and Garcia (1984) argued that the several differ-
ences that have frequently been advanced as distinguishing between ethics and
psychology fail to establish a clear demarcation. For example, one of the primary
distinctions has to do with the presumed differences between description and
explanation—which is what psychologists do—versus the ethical justification of
behavior. But on analysis the differentiation between the “causes” of behavior and
the “reasons” for engaging in it turns out to be not so clear-cut. For example, why
some accountants at Arthur Anderson shredded documents from Enron or why
some engineers at GM did not correct the faulty ignition switches would seem
to be entirely different questions from whether they should have done so. But
scientific explanations of behavior often involve the actor’s reasons or justifica-
tions; and moral justifications generally depend on assumptions about the causes
of behavior. “In the domain of human action, it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to
explain without assuming or implying values, and the ‘why?’ often refers to both”
(Steininger et al., 1984, p. 262).When people ask why those accountants shredded
the documents, they are probably seeking both the explanation and the justifi-
cation for the actions. “Both the psychologist who tries to explain behavior in
morally [i.e., values-] neutral terms and the ethicist who tries to justify judgments
about the moral rightness or wrongness of an action independent of any psycho-
logical considerations are denying the inevitable overlap of their two disciplines”
(p. 266). A related point is made by Alderfer (1998), who emphasized that scientific
12 Introduction
theory, data, methods and values all interact and that there is an “interdependence
between what is known scientifically and what is judged ethical at any point in
history” (p. 67).
The reader may find one of the moral theories discussed in chapters 2, 3, 4
and 5 more useful or otherwise more compatible than others, so that it might
be adopted as a consistent perspective within which to approach ethical delib-
erations. Alternatively, I have found different models with their associated ethical
principles to be more or less helpful and appropriate with respect to different
types of problems. This accords with the opinion of Bennis, Medin, and Bartels
(2010) who, in discussing moral decision making based on rules versus cost/
benefit analyses, assert that “different modes of decision making can be seen as
adaptations to particular environments” (p. 187). Either perspective necessitates
becoming familiar with the general issues and alternative approaches offered by
the various moral philosophies. In fact, I will note the opinions of several scholars
who advocate considering simultaneously all three major normative perspectives
presented in these pages (deontology, consequentialism and virtue ethics). Con-
sequently, my primary aim in this regard has been to produce a usable synthesis
that would be helpful in decision making, not just for the rare ethical crisis one
might face but for the “quiet, steady, day-to-day choices that add up to a career
characterized by integrity or moral malaise and/or conflict. It is for the quotid-
ian choices that moral guideposts are most needed and most wanting” (Lowman,
1991, p. 196). Aiding ethical decision making is just one of the main purposes
served by moral theory for professionals such as applied psychologists (Knapp,
1999). The other purposes are to help explain the fundamental moral underpin-
nings of society and its institutions, to identify and justify the general principles
on which our ethical standards and codes are based, to encourage moral behavior,
and to assist in the education and self-regulation of the profession by providing a
basis for compliance with those standards.
This book is premised on a number of personal beliefs and concerns about
ethics, the profession of psychology, I-O psychology in particular, the contem-
porary world of business and the sociopolitical nature of society. Many of them
become apparent in later chapters, but it is constructive and fair to the reader to
make some of them explicit at this point.
First off, concern about a high level of unethical behavior by I-O psycholo-
gists, or even a high incidence of ethical dilemmas in the field, was not among
the motives for writing (or revising) this book. In fact, when I was asked a few
years ago to prepare a talk admonishing I-O psychologists to improve their ethics,
I demurred because I felt it was unnecessary and instead focused on criticizing
the underlying values of the field (Lefkowitz, 2008). Although based on limited
data, self-reported ethical problems in I-O psychology have never seemed to be
a prevalent problem (Pope & Vetter, 1992) (although, as will be made clear in
later chapters, I believe that there are legitimate moral issues to be concerned
about relating to the profession’s value structure). In the domain of professional
Introduction 13