The Ethical Executive
Becoming Aware of the Root Causes of Unethical Behavior: 45 Psychological Traps that Every One of Us Falls Prey To
By: Robert Hoyk, Paul Hersey
Published: October 2008
Format: Hardcover, 152 pp
ISBN-10: 0804759650
ISBN-13: 9780804759656
Publisher: Stanford University Press
"The vast majority of people care about ethics, but are vulnerable to the traps described in this book. Good intentions are not enough to combat these forty-five traps", write ethics and leadership experts Robert Hoyk and Paul Hersey, in their practical and eye opening book The Ethical Executive: Becoming Aware of the Root Causes of Unethical Behavior: 45 Psychological Traps that Every One of Us Falls Prey To. The authors describe how ordinary people are capable of important errors in judgment that lead to serious breeches of ethical behavior.
Robert Hoyk (photo left) and Paul Hersey recognize that even people with a strong moral and ethical sense can fall victim to some very unethical activities in the course of doing their jobs. With the wrong situational dilemma placed before an ethical employee, there are very often powerful reasons for failing to do the right thing. The authors describe in detail how these ethical traps are created and how otherwise upright people can start down a very very wrong path. Unlike many books on business ethics, this fine book doesn't focus on ethical failure as being based on profit maximization, market pressure, or failure to comply with various laws and statutes. Instead, the authors believe the are the result of social and psychological influences.
Paul Hersey (photo left) and Robert Hoyk describe these forty-five ethical traps as falling into three major groups:
Primary Traps: The ethical failures are externally driven and involve the employee in taking action that would normally be outside of that person's ethical range. The employee often feels like there is little option but to follow the unethical path in these situations
Defensive Traps: These failures of ethics are usually attempts to reverse a previous ethical transgression. The action may have been the result of guilt or shame resulting from a personal issue or weakness.
Personality Traps: The ethical breeches result from deep seated personality issues that lead the employee to commit unethical actions. These ethical failures are all the result of internal issues.
For me, the power of the book is how Robert Hoyk and Paul Hersey take a practical approach to understanding the various causes of the forty-five ethical traps. The authors also provide experimental results to verify how and why each ethical problem takes place. The three major categories of ethical dilemmas, help the reader to identify the cause and course of each ethical issue, before it happens. Through the identification of the potential problem a company and its employees are able to avoid being ensnared by one or more of the ethical traps. The authors also point out the critical insight that executives who commit unethical actions are not evil people, but are average everyday people who succumbed to the temptation of the ethical traps.
I highly recommend the timeless and thought provoking book The Ethical Executive: Becoming Aware of the Root Causes of Unethical Behavior: 45 Psychological Traps that Every One of Us Falls Prey To by Robert Hoyk and Paul Hersey, to anyone seeking to understand why ethical failures occur, how to predict when and how they may arise, and how to prevent ethical dilemmas from happening in an organization. This understanding of the forces that create ethical issues will build mutual trust between employees and all of the stakeholders of the organization.
Read the essential book The Ethical Executive: Becoming Aware of the Root Causes of Unethical Behavior: 45 Psychological Traps that Every One of Us Falls Prey To by Robert Hoyk and Paul Hersey, and discover the underlying social and psychological reasons why executives fall into ethical traps. Armed with that knowledge, you can foresee dangerous ethical situations in advance, and prevent them ever taking place. This book will help your company build a solid ethical foundation.
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