Profit-driven corporations can make management blind to ethics, study says

DATE: January 9, 2005

Corporations like Enron that overemphasize outcomes such as profits might make their leaders blind to ethics and limit their abilities to recognize ethical or moral issues when they surface, according to a University of Washington study.

Scott Reynolds, an assistant professor of business ethics in the UW Business School, examined why some managers recognize a situation as involving moral issues whiles others do not. His research demonstrates it is not always obvious when an issue has moral overtones – people can and do disagree about whether an issue involves ethics.