Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T04:34:51.624Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Defining Accountability in A Network Society

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Mollie Painter-Morland
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

This paper challenges some of the basic epistemological assumptions that underpin our current conceptions of accountability. Recent legislative developments like Sarbanes-Oxley attempt to enhance accountability in the business environment through the employment of checks and balances and the threat of individual liability. This kind of legalistic strategy still seems to assume the existence of an individual agent who employs moral principles to come to decisions in a deliberate, impartial manner. This paper will emphasize that moral decision-making often does not take place in this manner, but is rather a tacit process of sensing what the appropriate behavior would be. Accountability, both with respect to individuals and organizations, is less a matter of “accounting for” a set of concrete assets, than a question of being accountable to a set of internal and external stakeholders, or in terms of the tacit sense of moral propriety that develops among business associates and colleagues over time.

Type
Special Section on Accountability
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , July 2007 , pp. 515 - 534
Copyright
Copyright © Business Ethics Quarterly 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bowie, N. E. 1999. Business ethics: A Kantian perspective. Maiden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.Google Scholar
Brewis, J. 1998. Who do you think you are? Feminism, work, ethics and Foucault. In Parker, M. (Ed.) Ethics and Organizations: 53–75. London: SAGE Publications.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cilliers, P. 1998. Complexity and postmodernism. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Collier, J., & Esteban, R. 1999. Governance in the participative organisation: Freedom, creativity and ethics. Journal of Business Ethics, 21: 173–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, T., & Porras, J. I. 2002. Built to last: Successful habits of visionary companies. New York: Harper Business.Google Scholar
Dreilinger, C., & Rice, D. 2001. Ethical decision-making in business. In Hoffman, W. M, Frederick, R. E., & Schwartz, M. S.Business ethics: Readings and cases in corporate morality: 95–99. Boston: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Foucault, M. 1972. The archeology of knowledge. New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Foucault, M. 1994. Foucault: Ethics, the essential works, vol. 1. London: The Penguin Press.Google Scholar
Frederick, W. C. 1995. Values, nature, and culture in the American corporation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freeman, R. E. 2001. Stakeholder theory of the modern corporation. In Hoffman, W. M, Frederick, R. E., & Schwartz, M. S.Business ethics: Readings and cases in corporate morality: 56–65. Boston: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Freeman, R. E., & Werhane, P. H. 1999. Business ethics: The state of the art. International Journal of Management Reviews, 1: 1–16.Google Scholar
Jones, C., Parker, M., & Ten Bos, R. 2005. For business ethics. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. 1999. Philosophy in the flesh. The embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
MacIntyre, A. 1981. After virtue. London: Duckworth.Google Scholar
MacIntyre, A. 1999. Social structures and their threats to moral agency, Philosophy today, 74: 311–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mills, A. E., Rorty, M. V. & Werhane, P. H. 2003. Complexity and the role of ethics in health care. Emergence. A Journal of Complexity Issues in Organization and Management, 5(3): 6–21.Google Scholar
Olivier, B. 2003. Discourse, agency and the question of evil. South African Journal of Philosophy, 22: 328–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Petersen, V. C. 1999a. Judging with our guts: The importance of an ineffable social grammar. Working paper 99–12. The Aarhus School of Business, Aarhus, Denmark.Google Scholar
Petersen, V. C. 1999b. Thinking with our hands: The importance of tacit, non-algorithmic knowledge. Working paper 99–10. The Aarhus Business School, Aarhus, Denmark.Google Scholar
Petersen, V. C. 2002. Beyond rules in business and society. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phillips, R. 2003. Stakeholder Legitimacy. Business Ethics Quarterly, 13: 25–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phillips, R., Freeman, R. E., & Wicks, A. C. 2003. What stakeholder theory is not. Business Ethics Quarterly, 13: 479–502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rorty, R. 1999. Philosophy and social hope. London: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Taylor, M. C. 2001. The moment of complexity: Emerging network culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, M. C. 2004. Confidence games: Money and markets in a world without redemption. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Werhane, P. H. 1999. Moral imagination and management decision-making. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar