Morality, Public and Private

Contemporary scholars such as Linda Treviño and Al Gini have studied the relationship between the private moral behavior of managers and their ability to satisfy their public moral responsibilities. On the one hand, it seems natural to hold that the moral standards used to [Page 1422]evaluate an individual's private behavior ought to be separated from the standards used to evaluate one's behavior in professional roles, representing organizations with public stakeholders. On the other hand, this tendency to separate private from public moral evaluations raises some problems associated with the ways in which private conduct can interfere with the satisfaction of public responsibilities.

There are two reasons that are cited to justify the separation of private moral standards from those that are public. First, it is sometimes ...