BOMMER'S BEHAVIOURAL MODEL

Bommer's Behavioural Model

Bommer's Behavioural Model

Introduction

The purpose of this Code of Ethical Business Conduct is to ensure that all corporate business is conducted with the highest standards of integrity in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations. The company does business in many countries around the world and, as a good business citizen, we must observe the applicable laws of the countries in which the Company does business. Further, many United States laws are applicable to ACS' international locations and employees because our parent company is organized under U.S. laws. (Anderson, 1993, 106)

Bommer et al's Behavioural Model of Ethical and Unethical Decision Making

One of the critical outcomes of ethical decision making and conduct is a sense of trust among individuals, which is an important factor in organizational productivity and success. At the macro level of society, as well as in the international community, trust is important for not only growing economies, but for peace and stability in communities. Robert Putnam (2000) has developed these ideas through his extensive study of social capital, and Francis Fukuyama (1995) titled an entire book Trust, in which he examined trust in different cultures and economies. Fukuyama says, “… a nation's well-being, as well as its ability to compete, is conditioned by a single, pervasive cultural characteristic: the level of trust” (Fukuyama, 1995, p. 7). To the extent that trust results, at least in part from ethical decisions and ethical conduct, the importance of understanding ethical decision making is underscored.

More than ever, it seems, the success of organizations and the well-being of society are affected by the ethical choices by all in the organization. Simon (1948) argued that a science of administration is fundamentally about decision making. At least part of that science should involve ethical decision making. There has been a clear movement in the past decade to submit the study of administrative or organizational ethics to empirical study and testing. The results of such research have clear implications for how organizations are structured and managed. The implications may involve protective and reactive strategies to avoid unethical behavior, but also from a positive and proactive perspective, findings can provide managers with insights for engendering ethical decision making and action.

The purpose of this chapter is to present a general model of ethical decision making, including a summary of empirical research that relates to various relationships expressed in the model.

When a man sets out to solve a problem, he embarks on a course of mental activity more circuitous, more complex, more subtle, and perhaps more idiosyncratic than he perceives. ... Dodging in and out of the unconscious, moving back and forth from concrete to abstract, trying chance here and there, soaring, jumping, backtracking, crawling, sometimes freezing on point like a bird dog, he exploits mental processes that are only slowly yielding to observation and systematic description. (Braybrooke & Lindblom, 1970, p. 81).

A prefatory remark is pertinent at the outset of this discussion. Braybrooke and Lindbloom capture the messy and complex nature of decision ...