Here-and-Now Ethics Talk in the Workplace

Individuals talk about ethics in the workplace, but that talk happens in highly constrained ways and at highly predictable times and places. However, much of the talk about ethics involves discussion of what I describe as "there-and-then" ethics talk and not "here-and now" ethics talk. The author attempts at studying organizational communication ethics patterns began in the fall of 2008. He wanted to study the typical communication patterns associated with discussing here-and-now ethics at work. The author had the sense that here-andnow ethics at work is rare, but he needed to figure out how he could observe. Creative and intelligent readers may be able to contrive scenarios in which a request to reimburse a personal lunch with friends is not unethical or at least "barely" unethical. In order to honor the mum effect theory that inspired our early thinking on the topic, we labeled that organizational communication pattern the workers' moral mum effect.