The Servant of the People: On the power of integrity in politics and government

Servants of the people, abbreviated to SPs, are all those who hold office in politics and government. The people grant them power under the condition that they serve with integrity. But how do you do that? This book offers the necessary concepts, insights and guidelines. Each of the 95 chapters discusses one of the many facets of integrity, with plenty of positive and negative examples involving different kinds of SPs from different countries. The central message is that integrity has great power over SPs: it can make or break their careers. Muel Kaptein is a professor of ethics and integrity and a partner at KPMG

From Inaction to External Whistleblowing: The Influence of the Ethical Culture of Organizations on Employee Responses to Observed Wrongdoing

Putting measures in place to prevent wrongdoing in organizations is important, but detecting and correcting wrongdoing is just as vital. Employees who observe wrongdoing should therefore be encouraged to respond in a manner that supports corrective action. This paper examines the influence of the ethical culture of organizations on employee responses to observed wrongdoing. The findings show that, contrary to transparency and congruency of management, many other dimensions of ethical culture were negatively related to inaction and external whistleblowing and positively related to direct interven-tion, reporting to management and calling an ethics hotline. The model used for ethical culture explained 27.5% of intended responses by employees

The Battle for Business Ethics: A Struggle Theory

To be and to remain ethical requires struggle from organizations. Struggling is necessary due to the pressures and temptations management and employees encounter in and around organizations. As the relevance of struggle for business ethics has not yet been analyzed systematically in the scientific literature, this paper develops a theory of struggle that elaborates on the meaning and dimensions of struggle in organizations, why and when it is needed, and what its antecedents and consequences are. An important conclusion is that the greater the ethics gap and opposing forces, the greater the struggle required. Viewing business ethics as struggle has several implications for theory and practice

Why good people sometimes do bad things

Why do honest and decent employees sometimes overstep the mark? What makes managers with integrity go off the rails? What causes well-meaning organizations to deceive their clients, employees and shareholders? Social psychology offers surprising answers to these intriguing and timely questions. Drawing on scientific experiments and examples from business practice, Muel Kaptein discusses why good people sometimes do bad things and how they rise above this behavior. He explains why cheats wear sunglasses, why overstepping the mark could be a good thing, how a surplus of rules creates offenders and why we should be suspicious of colleagues who wash their hands after meetings

Maxims: A collection for work

MAXIMSA collection for work Maxims are very useful for ethics at work because they tell us briefly what ethics is and what we should do at work. This book presents a collection of 255 maxims about ethics at work. Each maxim comes with an explanation and a picture, thus increasing the maxim’s power.The maxims are sources of inspiration for reflection and application. The author, Muel Kaptein, conceived and examined these maxims during his career as a consultant, auditor and scientist since 1991. Muel is a professor in business ethics at the RSM Erasmus University and a partner at KPMG Integrity & Compliance. Muel is also the author of the following books: Ethics Management (1998), The Balanced Company (2002), The Six Principles for Managing with Integrity (2005), The Living Code (2008),Workplace Morality (2013), The Servant of the People (2014), and Ethicisms and their Risks (2018)