etica

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Social Justice Research, Vol. 16, No. 3, September 2003 ( C 2003)

Building Houses on Rocks: The Role of the Ethical
Infrastructure in Organizations
Ann E. Tenbrunsel,1,4 Kristin Smith-Crowe,2 and Elizabeth E. Umphress3

We present and discuss a theoretical modelof an organization’s ethical infrastructure, defined as the organizational elements that contribute to an organization’s
ethical effectiveness. We propose that the infrastructure is composed of both formal
and informal elements—including communication, surveillance, and sanctioning
systems—as well as organizational climates for ethics, respect, and justice. We
discuss the nature of therelationship between these elements and ethical behavior,
the relative strength of each of these elements, and their impact on each other.
Theoretical and practical implications of this model are presented.
KEY WORDS: ethics; communication; sanctioning; climate; justice; respect.

Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into
practice is like a wise man who built his house onthe rock. The rain came
down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against the house;
yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone
who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is
like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the
streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell
with agreat crash.
Matthew 7:24–27
(Holy Bible, 2001)
The business community has been deluged, not with rain per se, but with
reports of corporate wrongdoing. In a sample of 1500 employees in the United
1 Mendoza

College of Business, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana.
University, New Orleans, Louisiana.
3 Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas.
4 All correspondence should beaddressed to Ann E. Tenbrunsel, Mendoza College of Business,
University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556-0399.
2 Tulane

285
0885-7466/03/0900-0285/0

C

2003 Plenum Publishing Corporation

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States, 31%report that they have observed some type of wrongdoing in the last year
(Joseph, 2000). Recent examples of unethical activity within large corporations
such as Enron and Worldcom have plagued the news and the stock markets. Such
reports have damaged confidence in our businesses, shattered our faith in our
leaders, and undermined our belief in an ownership–based society.
If businesses are toregain the footage that they have lost, they must demonstrate that they are organizations that can be trusted to make ethical decisions. Part
of that demonstration will involve developing ethical structures that will communicate and reinforce the ethical principles to which organizational members will
be held. Most organizations have either established such structures or are in the
process ofdoing so. Companies are spending millions of dollars on ethics and compliance management with almost 100% of them addressing ethics-related issues
in formal documents and programs (Trevino, Weaver, Gibson, & Toffler, 1999).
Corporate codes of conduct, value-based mission statements, ethical ombudsmen,
and ethical training are just a few of the strategies undertaken by organizations in
response tothe increased pressure to become more ethical.
Unfortunately, the results of such efforts are decidedly mixed. Formal codes
of conduct, for example, have been argued by some to produce positive outcomes,
namely a reduction in unethical behavior (McCabe, Trevino, & Butterfield, 1996),
but by others to produce no discernible difference in behavior (Badaracco and
Webb, 1995). It has even been...