Sanne Frandsen
Assistant head Organization, Department of Business Administration
Formal Ethics, Content Ethics and Relational Ethics : Three Approaches to Constructing Ethical Sales Cultures and Identities in Retail Banking
Author
Summary, in English
Following the global financial crisis, banks have become more regulated to advance ethical sales cultures throughout the sector. Based on case studies of three retail banks, we find that they construct the ‘appropriate advisor’ in different ways. Inspired by Bakhtin’s work on ethics, we propose a vocabulary of relational ethics centered on the ‘answerable self.’ We argue that this vocabulary is apt for studying and discussing how organizations advance ethical sales cultures in ways that instead of encouraging value congruence and alignment allow for ethical openness. In such cultures, employees—as moral agents—are morally questioning, critically self-reflexive, and answerable for their own actions toward others in their social relationships. Our paper makes three theoretical contributions, namely, problematizing the idea of cultural alignment and value congruence, demonstrating that identity regulation can both comprise and support the ‘answerable self,’ and advancing our understanding of the interdependence of ethical openness and ethical closure in fostering ethical sales cultures.
Department/s
- Department of Business Administration
- Organizational Studies
Publishing year
2024
Language
English
Pages
269-286
Publication/Series
Journal of Business Ethics
Volume
189
Issue
2
Document type
Journal article
Publisher
Springer
Topic
- Business Administration
Keywords
- Alignment
- Answerability
- Bakhtin
- Content ethic
- Ethical closure
- Ethical openness
- Ethical sales culture
- Formal ethic
- Identity
- Relational ethic
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 0167-4544