Chapter 15: Embodied Ethics: A Mentoring and Modeling Approach to Ethics Training

Now more than ever, there is a pressing need for organizations to expand their ethics training repertoire. New scandals erupt on such a regular basis that one begins to wonder if big business can ever behave ethically. In this chapter, we explore how recent developments in cognitive science encourage us to rethink the methods used to promote ethical behavior in the workplace. We focus in particular on mentoring and modeling as modes that can better deal with the embodied dimension of ethics. The chapter echoes the insights offered over 30 years ago by Peter Drucker. In 1981, Drucker wrote a scathing critique of one of the biggest issues in management at the time: business ethics. “There are countless seminars on it, speeches, articles, conferences and books, not to mention the many earnest attempts to write ‘business ethics’ into the law” (Drucker, 1981, p. 18). Drucker’s greatest concern stemmed from the very concept of business ethics. Implicit in the wording was the assumption that ethics in the business context is fundamentally different from ethics in general. Drucker thought this approach was seriously misguided. It promoted casuistry, as captured in the famous 18th century pun: “An ambassador is an honest man, lying abroad for the good of his country” (Drucker, 1981, p. 26). In Drucker’s view, there is no business ethics, only ethics. He noted that authorities of moral philosophy in the Western tradition, from the Old Testament to Spinoza to Kant to Kierkegaard, have been unanimous on one point: “There is only one ethics, one set of rules of morality, one code, that of individual behavior in which the same rules apply to everyone alike” (p. 19). Just because one becomes CEO does not exempt a person from the rules of behavior that apply to other employees.