Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers

by Robert Jackall

Overview

This updated edition of a classic study of ethics in business presents an eye-opening account of how corporate managers think the world works, and how big organizations shape moral consciousness. Robert Jackall takes the reader inside a topsy-turvy world where hard work does not necessarily lead to success, but sharp talk, self-promotion, powerful patrons, and sheer luck might. This edition includes a new foreword linking the themes of Moral Mazes to the financial tsunami that engulfed the world economy in 2008.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199729883
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	12/08/2009
Edition description:	Updated Edition
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	614,242
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Robert Jackall is Professor of Sociology and Chairman of the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at Williams College. He is the author of Workers in a Labyrinth: Jobs and Survival in a Bank Bureaucracy, and of many essays and reviews in publications such as Harvard Business Review, America, Commonweal, Science, and Contemporary Sociology. He also co-edited Worker Cooperatives in America with Henry M. Levin.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Business as a Social and Moral Terrain
1. Moral Probations, Old and New
2. The Social Structure of Managerial Work
3. The Main Chance
4. Looking Up and Looking Around
5. Drawing Lines
6. Dexterity with Symbols
7. The Magic Lantern
8. Invitations to Jeopardy
Author's Note
Afterword to the Twentieth Anniversary Edition
Notes
Suggestions for Further Reading

Editorial Reviews

"The real value of Moral Mazes is in its lucid, literate description of the world in which managers' live....Every business student and budding manager would be well advised to read this account....very interesting and important work, well worth the investment of time required to absorb and understand it."—Leonard J. Brooks, Journal of Business Ethics

"This book presents realistic accounts of corporate subculture and is an exemplary text for students."—Dr. Clifford Dorne, Texas A&M International

"Jackall has penetrated the recesses of the corporate world and returned with the finest account of the moral structure of that world that we are likely to get. This work is surely to become the definitive account of the labyrinth of ethics traversed by today's managerial elite."—Stanford M. Lyman, Florida Atlantic University

"A valuable addition to existing works because it discusses practical applications of solutions to ethical problems."—Library Journal

"Scandals over 'insider trading,' as practiced by Oliver North as well as by Ivan Boesky, have helped turn business ethics books into a booming business. Moral Mazes is the best of the recent releases."—Los Angeles Times

"Reformers who want to change the corporation, first must understand it. Robert Jackall's carefully researched analysis of the 'bureaucratic ethos' is one place to begin."—Ethikos

"A finely honed tour of an odyssey of moral transformation, in which the actors themselves remain largely unaware of the nature of their journey. It is a brilliant work."—Troy Duster, University of California, Berkeley

"Is managerial success in American corporate business mainly the result of hard work? Robert Jackall's book is indispensable reading for anyone seeking an answer to this question."—Hans Speier, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

"An interesting, unorthodox, and provocative book....Better than any other I have seen, [Jackall's] study reveals the normative reality of the manager's world."—Geoffrey C. Hazard, Jr., Yale Journal on Regulation

"A disturbing book....It evokes, cautions, and speaks of the secrets to be found in organizational worlds, and few readers will be unmoved by the author's careful, culturally informed critique of managerial practice....Jackall disturbs the calm and reassuring fronts displayed by corporate managers and their spokesmen in ways that instruct and challenge the reader."—John Van Maanen, Administrative Science Quarterly

From the Publisher