Dirty Hands and Loyalty in Organisational Politics

Organisational politics can raise the problem of “dirty hands,” illustrated in this paper by an example drawn from a textbook on organisation theory. The initial question is whether the main character has different ethical and political obligations, but this leads on to the question to what extent w...

Full description

Saved in:  
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Business ethics quarterly
Main Author: Provis, Chris (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Journals Online & Print:
Drawer...
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Published: Cambridge Univ. Press 2005
In: Business ethics quarterly
Online Access: Volltext (JSTOR)
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Description
Summary:Organisational politics can raise the problem of “dirty hands,” illustrated in this paper by an example drawn from a textbook on organisation theory. The initial question is whether the main character has different ethical and political obligations, but this leads on to the question to what extent we can distinguish various different categories of obligation. The example may be of special interest because of the importance of close personal relationship in organisational politics, which brings the dirty hands problem together with the question to what extent friendships generate distinctive obligations. However, it is doubtful whether the allocation of obligations to different categories can be sustained in a useful way. It may be that we can put aside loyalty to an organisation, as a consideration which does not generate any distinctive obligation, but balancing other factors against one another may require the sort of judgment that has sometimes been called “political wisdom,” and sometimes “moral imagination.”
ISSN:2153-3326
Contains:Enthalten in: Business ethics quarterly
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.5840/beq200515215