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Forms of ethical dilemmas in industrial-organizational psychology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2021

Joel Lefkowitz Open the ORCID record for Joel Lefkowitz [Opens in a new window]
Joel Lefkowitz*
Affiliation:
Professor Emeritus, Baruch College, and the Graduate Center, New York, USA
*
Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Professional ethics has not been a major focus in industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology—in comparison with our study of unethical behavior in organizations. Consequently, we know very little about ethical situations actually faced by I-O psychologists. This article presents and tests a structural perspective on understanding the nature of ethical dilemmas that can facilitate such study. A taxonomy of five paradigmatic forms of ethical dilemmas is defined and placed in a theoretical context. Narrative descriptions of 292 ethical situations were obtained from a sample of 228 professional members of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) in the United States and were used to empirically test the taxonomy. The narratives were content analyzed for form of dilemma, work domain of occurrence, relevance to human resource administration concerns, and favorability of the situation’s resolution. The work domains that were most problematic were academic research/publication activities, individual assessment/assessment centers, consulting issues regarding the client, and academic supervising/mentoring. There were no significant differences as a function of respondents’ sex, seniority, or professional membership status (member/fellow). This relatively “content free” structural aspect of ethical dilemmas enables comparisons across different domains (of professions, organizations, demographic groups, age cohorts, etc.) in which the overt idiosyncratic ethical problems experienced are not commensurable. Similarly, it can yield interpretable longitudinal comparisons despite changes in the manifestations of ethical problems encountered over time.

Keywords

professional ethicsethical dilemmasmisbehaviorethical taxonomystructure of ethical dilemmasparadigmatic forms of ethical dilemmascomparative ethics
Type
Focal Article
Information
Industrial and Organizational Psychology , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , September 2021 , pp. 297 - 319
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology

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Footnotes

The author is much indebted to Dick Jeannerett, Bill Macey, Mort McPhail, Rob Silzer, and Nancy Tippins for their contributions in vetting the survey questionnaire; to the 2009 members of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology Executive Board and Institutional Research Committee, as well as to Larry Nader and David Nershi for sponsoring and overseeing the administration of the survey; and to Questar for its implementation. Many thanks to Rob Silzer for his partnership in conducting the coding reliability analysis; to Setha Low, Rodney Lowman, and Charles Scherbaum for their helpful suggestions on an early manuscript; to Manuel Gonzalez for statistical data analyses, and Paige Alenick for a literature survey. Responsibility for the accuracy of all analyses is entirely mine.

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