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8 Calif. L. Rev. Online 1 (2017)

handle is hein.journals/callro8 and id is 1 raw text is: 











    California Law Review Online


 VOL. 8                                                       APRIL 2017
                    Copyright © 2017 by California Law Review, Inc.


  The Ethics of Intracorporate Behavioral

                                Ethics


                              Todd  Haugh*


                              INTRODUCTION
     Behavioral ethics, the study of how and  why  people make  ethical and
unethical decisions, has come into its own. Following a meteoric rise over the
last decade, the discipline has grown to occupy a distinct space within business
ethics. What sets it apart is a focus not on the normative question of how
individuals should act when facing ethical business quandaries-the province of
moral  philosophers and traditional business ethicists-but on the empirical
question of how individuals actually do act in moral contexts and why that is.
Researchers have found  that a host of situational and social factors influence
ethical decision-making; most of us are ethical, but only boundedly so. That
insight, and the follow-on practical implications for corporate compliance, offers
companies  new  and  more  effective approaches to lessen legal and ethical
breaches by their employees. Corporate leaders are beginning to see behavioral
ethics as the way to achieve more effective compliance at less cost.
     Amid  the promise of using behavioral ethics strategies to lessen corporate
wrongdoing,  however, lies a nagging unease. If ethical decision-making can be
influenced by  situational factors, then altering the conditions under which
individuals make those decisions can change their behavior. And because much


         DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.15779/Z38TD9N731
         Copyright © 2017 California Law Review, Inc. California Law Review, Inc. (CLR) is a
California nonprofit corporation. CLR and the authors are solely responsible for the content of their
publications.
      *  Assistant Professor of Business Law and Ethics, Indiana University, Kelley School of
Business; Jesse Fine Fellow, The Poynter Center for the Study of Ethics and American Institutions;
2011-12 Supreme Court Fellow, Supreme Court of the United States.


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