Abstract

In recent years ethics has become of increasing interest to those who study organizations (e.g. Parker, 2003; Kornberger and Brown, 2007; Wray-Bliss, 2009; Helin and Sandstrom, 2010; Pullen and Rhodes, 2014). Both preceded and informed by a so-called ‘ethical turn’ in theory and philosophy more generally (Davis and Womack, 2001; Garber et al., 2000) ethical matters are no longer sequestered as the subject of the specialized discipline of business ethics, and more an issue for management and organization theory in general. This attention to ethics is perhaps a sign of the times; times of escalating corporate power (Barley, 2007) ushered in by the liberalization of global markets ruled by networks of giant corporations (Carroll, 2010) which have been freed from the old burdens of state regulation (Veldman, 2013). Indeed, when corporate power is ideologically justified and legally enabled, what might be beholden to keep it in check and hold it to account?