IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/jbuset/v157y2019i4d10.1007_s10551-018-3955-6.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Ethics and Behavioural Theory: How Do Professionals Assess Their Mental Models?

Author

Listed:
  • Frank Jan Graaf

    (Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences
    University of Amsterdam Business School)

Abstract

The role and ethics of professionals in business and economics have been questioned, especially after the financial crisis of 2008. Some suggest a reorientation using concepts such as craftsmanship. In this article, I will explore professional practices within the context of behavioural theory and business ethics. I suggest that scholars of behavioural theory need a strategy to deal with normative questions to meet their ambition of practical relevance. Evidence-based management (EBMgt), a recent behavioural approach, may assist business ethics scholars in understanding how professionals infer ‘evidence’ to make decisions. For a professional, ethical issues are an integral part of decision-making at critical moments. As reflective practitioners, they develop insights related to ethical concerns when collecting and assessing evidence within decision-making processes.

Suggested Citation

  • Frank Jan Graaf, 2019. "Ethics and Behavioural Theory: How Do Professionals Assess Their Mental Models?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 157(4), pages 933-947, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:157:y:2019:i:4:d:10.1007_s10551-018-3955-6
    DOI: 10.1007/s10551-018-3955-6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-018-3955-6
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10551-018-3955-6?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jörgen Sandberg & Ashly H. Pinnington, 2009. "Professional Competence as Ways of Being: An Existential Ontological Perspective," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(7), pages 1138-1170, November.
    2. De Cremer, David & Mayer, David M. & Schminke, Marshall, 2010. "Guest Editors’ Introduction: On Understanding Ethical Behavior and Decision Making: A Behavioral Ethics Approach," Business Ethics Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(1), pages 1-6, January.
    3. Mollie Painter-Morland, 2006. "Redefining Accountability As Relational Responsiveness," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 66(1), pages 89-98, June.
    4. Lauren Purnell & R. Freeman, 2012. "Stakeholder Theory, Fact/Value Dichotomy, and the Normative Core: How Wall Street Stops the Ethics Conversation," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 109(1), pages 109-116, August.
    5. Giovanni Gavetti & Daniel Levinthal & William Ocasio, 2007. "Perspective---Neo-Carnegie: The Carnegie School’s Past, Present, and Reconstructing for the Future," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 18(3), pages 523-536, June.
    6. Johannes Brinkmann, 2009. "Putting Ethics on the Agenda for Real Estate Agents," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 88(1), pages 65-82, August.
    7. David McPherson, 2013. "Vocational Virtue Ethics: Prospects for a Virtue Ethic Approach to Business," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 116(2), pages 283-296, August.
    8. Kirsten Martin & Bidhan Parmar, 2012. "Assumptions in Decision Making Scholarship: Implications for Business Ethics Research," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 105(3), pages 289-306, February.
    9. Richard P. Nielsen, 2016. "Action Research As an Ethics Praxis Method," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 135(3), pages 419-428, May.
    10. Frances Bowen, 2007. "Corporate Social Strategy: Competing Views from Two Theories of the Firm," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 75(1), pages 97-113, September.
    11. Joan Fontrodona & Alejo Sison & Boudewijn Bruin, 2013. "Editorial Introduction: Putting Virtues Into Practice. A Challenge for Business and Organizations," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 113(4), pages 563-565, April.
    12. Herbert A. Simon, 1996. "The Sciences of the Artificial, 3rd Edition," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262691914, December.
    13. Patricia Werhane, 2008. "Mental Models, Moral Imagination and System Thinking in the Age of Globalization," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 78(3), pages 463-474, March.
    14. Koumakhov, Rouslan, 2009. "Conventions in Herbert Simon's theory of bounded rationality," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 293-306, June.
    15. Steven Taylor & Donna Ladkin & Matt Statler, 2015. "Caring Orientations: The Normative Foundations of the Craft of Management," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 128(3), pages 575-584, May.
    16. Rouslan Koumakhov, 2014. "Conventionalism, coordination, and mental models: from Poincaré to Simon," Journal of Economic Methodology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(3), pages 251-272, September.
    17. Eikeland, Olav, 2012. "Action Research – Applied Research, Intervention Research, Collaborative Research, Practitioner Research, or Praxis Research?," International Journal of Action Research, Rainer Hampp Verlag, vol. 8(1), pages 9-44.
    18. Kahneman, Daniel, 2002. "Maps of Bounded Rationality," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2002-4, Nobel Prize Committee.
    19. Michael D. Cohen, 2007. "Perspective--- Administrative Behavior : Laying the Foundations for Cyert and March," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 18(3), pages 503-506, June.
    20. Johannes Brinkmann & Ann-Mari Henriksen, 2008. "Vocational Ethics as a Subspecialty of Business Ethics – Structuring a Research and Teaching Field," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 81(3), pages 623-634, September.
    21. Giovanni Gavetti, 2012. "PERSPECTIVE—Toward a Behavioral Theory of Strategy," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 23(1), pages 267-285, February.
    22. R. Nielsen, 2010. "Practitioner-Based Theory Building in Organizational Ethics," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 93(3), pages 401-406, May.
    23. March, James G., 1987. "Ambiguity and accounting: The elusive link between information and decision making," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 12(2), pages 153-168, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Marli Gonan Božac & Katarina Kostelić & Morena Paulišić & Charles G. Smith, 2021. "Business Ethics Decision-Making: Examining Partial Reflective Awareness," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(5), pages 1-27, March.
    2. Tongyu Meng & Jamie Newth & Christine Woods, 2022. "Ethical Sensemaking in Impact Investing: Reasons and Motives in the Chinese Renewable Energy Sector," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 179(4), pages 1091-1117, September.
    3. Lu Yang & Yong-Zhan Zheng & Hsiao-Hsien Lin & I-Shen Chen & Kuan-Yu Chen & Qi-Yuan Li & I-En Tsai, 2023. "Under the Risk of COVID-19 Epidemic: A Study on the Influence of Life Attitudes, Leisure Sports Values, and Workplace Risk Perceptions on Urban Development and Public Well-Being," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(10), pages 1-22, May.
    4. Mohammad Hossein Rahmati & Ali Intezari & Bernard McKenna, 2022. "A Shi’a Islam Approach to Wisdom in Management: A Deep Understanding Opening to Dialogue and Dialectic," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 181(4), pages 891-911, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Johannes Brinkmann, 2019. "The Potential Use of Sociological Perspectives for Business Ethics Teaching," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 156(1), pages 273-287, April.
    2. K. Praveen Parboteeah & Matthias Weiss & Martin Hoegl, 2024. "Ethical Climates Across National Contexts: A Meta-Analytical Investigation," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 189(3), pages 573-590, January.
    3. Giacomoni Gilbert, 2024. "The Need for Products Interchangeability: An Unsolved Problem of Semantic Conflicts No Product Definition System Can Support Perfectly," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 15(2), pages 7672-7701, June.
    4. Linda Argote & Henrich R. Greve, 2007. "A Behavioral Theory of the Firm ---40 Years and Counting: Introduction and Impact," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 18(3), pages 337-349, June.
    5. Hiroko Nagano, 2020. "The impact of knowledge diversity: Integrating two economic perspectives through the dynamic capability approach," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 41(6), pages 1057-1070, September.
    6. Oliver Alexy, 2022. "How flat can it get? From better at flatter to the promise of the decentralized, boundaryless organization," Journal of Organization Design, Springer;Organizational Design Community, vol. 11(1), pages 31-36, March.
    7. Daniel A. Levinthal & Claus Rerup, 2021. "The Plural of Goal: Learning in a World of Ambiguity," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 32(3), pages 527-543, May.
    8. Scott C. Ganz, 2018. "Ignorant Decision Making and Educated Inertia: Some Political Pathologies of Organizational Learning," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 29(1), pages 39-57, February.
    9. Gilbert Giacomoni, 2022. "Towards a general framework for innovation shaped with AI to create and transform market offerings [Vers un cadre général d’innovation façonné par l’IA pour créer et transformer les offres du march," Post-Print hal-04083376, HAL.
    10. Rouslan Koumakhov & Adel Daoud, 2017. "Routine and reflexivity: Simonian cognitivism vs practice approach," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 26(4), pages 727-743.
    11. Paul De Grauwe, 2014. "Animal Spirits and Monetary Policy," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Exchange Rates and Global Financial Policies, chapter 18, pages 473-520, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    12. Tobias Knabke & Sebastian Olbrich, 2018. "Building novel capabilities to enable business intelligence agility: results from a quantitative study," Information Systems and e-Business Management, Springer, vol. 16(3), pages 493-546, August.
    13. Pascale Amans & Sylvie Rascol-Boutard, 2006. "Controlling Complex Organizations on the Basis of an Operational Performance Measure," Post-Print hal-01659071, HAL.
    14. Sunder Shyam, 2011. "Imagined Worlds of Accounting," Accounting, Economics, and Law: A Convivium, De Gruyter, vol. 1(1), pages 1-14, January.
    15. McCown, R. L., 2002. "Changing systems for supporting farmers' decisions: problems, paradigms, and prospects," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 74(1), pages 179-220, October.
    16. Basile, Luigi Jesus & Carbonara, Nunzia & Pellegrino, Roberta & Panniello, Umberto, 2023. "Business intelligence in the healthcare industry: The utilization of a data-driven approach to support clinical decision making," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    17. Jie, Yun, 2020. "Responding to requests for help: Effects of payoff schemes with small monetary units," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    18. Loris Gaio, 2005. "A diversity-based approach to requirements tracing in new product development," ROCK Working Papers 031, Department of Computer and Management Sciences, University of Trento, Italy, revised 13 Jun 2008.
    19. B. A. Huberman & N. S. Glance, "undated". "Diversity and Collective Action," Working Papers _001, Xerox Research Park.
    20. Lepori, Benedetto & Montauti, Martina, 2020. "Bringing the organization back in: Flexing structural responses to competing logics in budgeting," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:157:y:2019:i:4:d:10.1007_s10551-018-3955-6. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.