NEW ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES Organizations

Today are developing structures designed to remove bureaucratic layers, push responsibility down, and empower individuals to make decisions at every organizational level. Take the example of office furniture manufacturer Herman Miller, Inc.  which is committed to the values of ‘‘open communication,’’ ‘‘the dignity of each individual,’’ and ‘‘quality relationships based on mutual trust and integrity.’’ Kevin Knowles, a crew leader for six years, said, ‘‘What always surprises me is that everyone in the company . . . is free to talk with anyone in management about whatever they’d like to talk about.’’ Managers at HMI cite workers’ ability to go over their managers’ heads as a major reason for the company’s success. ‘‘There’s no fear of retribution if you call someone three levels above.’’ HMI touts a process its chairman calls ‘‘roving leadership’’ that allows anyone to be a leader on a particular issue.

Here is an example of how roving leadership was tested successfully. An employee with AIDS decided that he should let others know about his illness. A coworker took the roving leader responsibility and informed the human resources manager. Quickly, the entire plant was informed, and a physician from headquarters flew in with a training videotape and a question-and-answer session. According to the roving leader, what’s important is that HMI’s value system ‘‘allows us to act on our instincts and know the company will support us. Because the value of each individual is important to us, we were able to stop the manufacture of furniture for one day to take care of Peter.’’ Such a culture likely contributes to the success of a company that was named in 2002 by Forbes magazine as among the 400 best-performing large American corporations. Business Ethics magazine also ranked HMI in the top 10 among the ‘‘100 Best Corporate Citizens.’’

These recent changes in organizational structure have powerful implications for taking responsibility and for ethical decision making, and they increase the importance of having a strongly aligned ethical culture. When individuals are independently making decisions, with less direct supervision, they need a strongly aligned ethical culture to guide them. An important part of this picture is a structure that supports taking individual responsibility for ethical action.

The organization’s formal decision-making processes are another important part of the ethical culture. In an aligned ethical culture, leaders make ethical concerns a formal part of all decision making. This emphasis on ethics in decision making can be reinforced by regularly addressing ethical concerns in meetings and by making them an expected part of managers’ reports regarding new products or new business ventures. For example, managers may be asked to consider potential harm to multiple stakeholders when proposing a new product or process. As one example, environmental impact is now an expected and routine part of corporate decision making in many firms. Some organizations are also creating special high-level ‘‘ethics’’ committees charged with reviewing major organizational level decisions from an ethical perspective. For example, one can imagine a responsible pharmaceutical company making such assessments about whether to launch a new drug that has serious side effects even after the FDA has approved it. Others have advocated the implementation of moral quality circles, groups set up to assess the morality of business decisions.