This book expands the current discussion on ethics, addressing the gap between "headline" ethics cases, which are often extreme and taken from a business context, and the everyday ethical challenges that we all face in school, work, relationships, and communities. Case studies throughout demonstrate concepts and provide opportunities for readers to apply theory as they consider everyday issues such as the temptation to lie about an arrest on a job application, peer pressure to steal or drink, and the implications of "ratting out" a classmate who is cheating or a co-worker who is stealing. By including a broad array of ethical challenges, this book makes ethics more accessible to the reader. Drawing from several academic disciplines, including social psychology and organizational behavior, this book explores the personal and environmental factors that influence our ethical decision-making. The book is appropriate for ethics courses in an array of disciplines as well as anyone interested in ethical challenges.
Part I: Foundation for a Conversation on Ethics
1. Introduction
2. What are Ethics?
3. Why Do People Act Unethically?
Part II: Understanding Why and How We Do What We Do
4. Dispositional Factors Influencing Ethical Decisions
5. Psychological Processes and Mechanisms
6.Justifications that Allow Immoral Behavior
7. Situational Factors Influencing Ethical Decisions
Part III: Recalibrating Your Moral Compass
8. Expanding Your Lens
9. Changing Your Lens and Learning to Re-engage
Part IV: Applying What You’ve Learned
10. Guided Practice with Case Studies
Biography
Jean P. Kirnan has been Professor of Psychology at the College of New Jersey for over 30 years. Her teaching, consulting, and research focus on the application of psychological principles to workplace and community concerns.
"Jean Kirnan’s Everyday Ethics fills an important gap in both our thinking about ethics and our approach to teaching it. By focusing on the very real but all-too thorny problems posed by ‘everyday’ ethical dilemmas, she offers a comprehensive and compelling psychological and organizational analysis, as well as a creative and sensible guide to re-setting our moral compass." —Roderick M. Kramer, William R. Kimball Professor of Organizational Behavior, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, USA
"Everyday Ethics is a tremendous resource for anyone seeking to address the ethical challenges we all face at work on a daily basis. It is an engaging, inspiring, and immensely useful text with cases that truly bring the material to life." —Ryan Fehr, Associate Professor, Michael G. Foster School of Business, University of Washington, Seattle, USA
