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51 St. Louis U. L.J. 941 (2006-2007)
Moral Intuitions and Organizational Culture

handle is hein.journals/stlulj51 and id is 974 raw text is: MORAL INTUITIONS AND ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE MILTON C. REGAN, JR.* INTRODUCTION Lawyers both shape and are shaped by the organizational environments in which they practice. They often play important roles in creating and operating ethics and legal compliance programs. Those programs in turm affect the milieu in which the lawyer must carry on her work. We can think of this milieu in a broad sense as an organization's culture. Many efforts to understand and respond to a succession of corporate scandals over the last few years have underscored the importance of organizational culture in shaping the behavior of individuals.' This focus reflects appreciation that even if an * Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center. My thanks to Carol Needham for inviting me to submit a paper based on my participation on the Association of American Law Schools panel in January 2007 that she organized. The panel served as the impetus for this article. I am grateful to Elizabeth Chambliss, Donald Langevoort, Susan Martyn, and John Mikhail for comments on an earlier draft. This article is dedicated to the memory of Father Robert F. Drinan, S.J., whose moral intuitions never failed him. 1. See, e.g., Lynne L. Dallas, A Preliminary Inquiry Into the Responsibility of Corporations and Their Officers and Directors for Corporate Climate: The Psychology of Enron 's Demise, 35 RUTGERS L.J. 1 (2003); Christine E. Early, Kate Odabashian & Michael Willenborg, Some Thoughts on the Audit Failure at Enron, the Demise of Andersen, and the Ethical Climate of Public Accounting Firms, 35 CONN. L. REV. 1013 (2003); Ronald R. Sims & Johannes Brinkman, Enron Ethics (Or: Culture Matters More than Codes), 45 J. BUS. ETHICS 243 (2003); William Arthur Wines & J. Brooke Hamilton III, Observations on the Need to Redesign Organizations and to Refocus Corporation Law to Promote Ethical Behavior and Discourage Illegal Conduct, 29 DEL. J. CORP. L. 43 (2003). A related concept is an organization's ethical infrastructure. See, e.g., Ann E. Tenbrunsel, Kristin Smith-Crowe & Elizabeth E. Umphress, Building Houses on Rocks: The Role of the Ethical Infrastructure in Organizations, 16 SOC. JUST. RES. 285, 286-87 (2003). For elaboration of this concept as applied to law firms, see Elizabeth Chambliss, The Nirvana Fallacy in Law Firm Regulation Debates, 33 FORDHAM URB. L.J. 119 (2005); Elizabeth Chambliss & David B. Wilkins, A New Framework for Law Firm Discipline, 16 GEO. J. LEGAL ErTHICS 335 (2003); Elizabeth Chambliss & David B. Wilkins, The Emerging Role of Ethics Advisors, General Counsel, and Other Compliance Specialists in Large Law Firms, 44 ARIZ. L. REV. 559 (2002); Elizabeth Chambliss & David B. Wilkins, Promoting Effective Ethical Infrastructure in Large Law Firms: A Call for Research and Reporting, 30 HOFSTRA L. REV. 691 941

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