The Ethical Dimension in American Management

Finkelstein Louis , Fortune, September 1958, p. 116 ff.

Davis Keith , California Management Review, Spring 1960, pp. 70–76.

Norris Louis W. , Harvard Business Review, September-October 1960, pp. 72–79.

Oliver Henry M. , Business Horizons, Spring 1958, pp. 33–43.

Mason Edward S. , Journal of Business, January 1958.

Childs Marquis Cater Douglass (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1954).

Hill Theodore (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1957).

Sutton Francis X. (New York; Schocken Books, 1956, paperback edition 1962).

See Gilman Glenn , Human Relations in the Industrial Southeast (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1956), especially chapter IX, for a discussion of the influence of regional mores and folkways on business decisions. See also Warner W. Lloyd Low J. O. , “The Factory in the Community” in Whyte W. F. , ed., Industry and Society (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1954) for an example of its operation in the Northeast.

See, for example, Warner W. Lloyd , The Corporation in the Emergent American Society (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1962), especially chapter 2.

See chapter III, “The Contending Forces,” in Childs Cater , op. cit.

See Myrdal Gunnar , Challenge to Affluence (New York: Random House, 1962), pp. 46–49. His data are from Poverty and Deprivation in the United States (Washington: Conference on Economic Progress, 1962). He makes the point, substantiating my own judgment, that the 40 per cent of our citizens who live below the level of deprivation play little or no part in establishing consensus in our society. Their voices, when they are heard at all, are the voices of protest and disillusionment.

But while we may tend to assume that social justice carries an economic price tag, Myrdal says (op. cit., pp. 64–65) “Never in the history of America has there been a greater and more complete identity between the ideals of social justice and the requirements of economic progress.” The italics are Myrdal's.

See chapter IV, “Modern Man and Modern Dogma,” in Childs Cater , op. cit.

See Miller Samuel H. , “The Tangle of Ethics,” Harvard Business Review, January-February 1960, pp. 59–62.

For example, the following comment on the philosophy of H. Richard Niebuhr, one of our great modern theologians, is found in Ramsey Paul , Nine Modern Moralists (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1962), p. 153. “Of all ethical notions none is more congenial to Niebuhr's main perspective on man and morals than the concept of ‘responsibility.’ In brief, to be ethically responsible means to be a responding being in relation to other beings.”

For good recent statements of the human relations approach, see McGregor Douglas , The Human Side of Enterprise (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1960), and Likert Rensis , New Patterns of Management (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1961). For its treatment with reservations, see Odiorne George S. , How Managers Make Things Happen (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1961). See also Gilman Glenn , “An Inquiry Into the Nature and Use of Authority,” Haire Mason , ed., Organization Theory in Industrial Practice (New York: Wiley and Sons, 1962).

The negative side of the argument is well presented by Donham Paul , “Is Management A Profession?” Harvard Business Review, September-October 1962, pp. 60–68.

For a discussion of the double role of the manager as professional and risk-taker, see Drucker Peter , “Big Business and the National Purpose,” Harvard Business Review, March-April 1962, pp. 52–59.

See Drucker Peter , The Practice of Management (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1954), pp. 37–38.

See Finn David , “Struggle for Ethics in Public Relations,” Harvard Business Review, January-February 1959, pp. 49–58.