This articles serves as an introduction to a special issue of the Business Ethics Quarterly, dedicated to behavioral ethics in decision making. The authors present some initial information about the topic and provide a sneak peak of the articles presented in the issue, which sets the stage for what appears to be an interesting discussion on a different paradigm in the study of ethics in business.

De Cremer, Mayer, and Schminke (2010) mention recent scandals (e.g. Enron) to highlight the attention now payed to unethical behavior in business. Under popular theory, the actions are seen as merely the immoral behavior of a few "bad apples" within an organization that is otherwise primarily made up of good people. De Cremer, Mayer, and Schminke infer that this theory is too shortsighted and overly simplistic. They call on research that shows immoral decisions are often made by people who think of themselves as good people. Furthermore, these people show awareness of the expectations for good conduct. So why is it that immoral behavior persists?

De Cremer, Mayer, and Schminke postulate that behavioral ethics explains the cause. Rather than immoral behaviour being the result of bad apples, it is the result of a much more complex system of social and contextual interaction. In other words, the answer is not very simple and not isolated to one person acting on one decision. We must dig deeper. The series of articles in the issue provides theories related to this. The articles address the following concepts

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  • Moral awareness, or the identification of the actions that can negatively influence others, is an important concept to recognize.
  • Concern for one's legacy can influence a their moral behavior.
  • Moral personality and moral identity are concepts that affect persistent moral (or immoral) behavior.
  • The intention of the ethical decision maker can be shaped by factors like the type of interaction, the culture in which they were raised, and ethical infrastructure of an organization. 
  • During deception in bargaining, "proselfs" are more likely to engage in deception than "prosocials" when they are recipients of an allocation. Recipients are more likely to excuse deception when the allocator is lower in power. 
  • One's social category relative to other's influences their ethical decision making.
  • Two approaches can be studied for the response to an unethical event that has occured: (a) studying the extent to which self-interested versus other-regarding concerns play a role in the responses and (b) to examine how to deal with ethical failures after they have occured. 

In my interaction with leaders in ethics in sport, I have heard the same sentiment that De Cremer, Mayer, and Schminke relay--that is, most people do not think of themselves as immoral people. Yet, immoral behavior occurs often. Then, who are the people acting immorally. The answer, in many cases, is that the perpetrators of the immoral behavior are these same people that are apparently good people.  Taken even further, De Cremer, Mayer, and Schminke speculate that everyone will potentially act immorally given the right circumstances. 

Reacting based on the bad apples theory does society an injustice, because we quickly punish the people we identify as the perpetrators, and move on like we have solved the problem. What we have not dealt with are the primary issues, or the real causes of the immoral conduct. There are intrinsic factors in the management and culture of an organization that need to be addressed to ensure good moral conduct in an organization. Bad behavior will continue to persist with the current band-aid approach to resolving immoral conduct in business. Because of this, I believe more attention should be given to knowing more about behavioral theory in business.