Behavioral Research, Business Ethics, and Social Justice

Abstract

The papers that appear in this issue of Social Justice Research were presented at a conference on Behavioral Research and Business Ethics that was held at Northwestern University in July and August, 1994. The conference was organized by the Center for the Study of Ethical Issues in Business of the Kellogg Graduate School of Management. The goal of the conference was to have distinguished behavioral scientists address issues within their domains of expertise that were relevant to problems in business ethics. Some of the nation's most distinguished philosophers, most of whom are specialists in business ethics, commented on the papers and addressed the relationship between descriptive and normative approaches to business ethics. There were too many papers given at the conference to be included in a single publication. As a result, the decision was made to select those papers that were maximally relevant to issues of social justice and to publish them here. The remainder of the papers wiU appear in a book tentatively entitled Behavioral Research and Business Ethics, to be published by the Russell Sage Foundation. The Russell Sage Foundation and the James S. Kemper Foundation were the major financial supporters of the conference. The papers that appear here are diverse in some ways but similar in others. Their specific content varies widely. Batson explores the nature of human motivation in organizations; Northcraft, Neale, Tenbrnnsel, and Thomas present a theory of the allocation of benefits versus burdens; Kirkman, Shapiro, Novelli, and Brett present data indicating that self-managed work teams have important concerns about the justice of their arrangemerits; and Lewicki and Stark investigate people's beliefs about the accept-