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ABSTRACT. This study examines two recent cases of ethical responses to crisis management; the 1995 fire at Malden Mills and Aaron Feuerstein's response, and a 1998 fire at Cole Hardwoods, followed by the response of CEO Milt Cole. The authors describe these crises, the responses of Feuerstein and Cole, their motivations and the impact on crisis stakeholders using the principles of virtue ethics and effective crisis management. What emerges is set of post-crisis virtues grounded in values of corporate social responsibility and entrepreneurial ethics. These include virtues of immediacy of response, supportiveness of victims, and rebuilding and renewal.
KEY WORDS: corporate social responsibility, crisis management, entrepreneurial ethics, organizational crisis, virtue ethics
Introduction
Organizational crises are "specific, unexpected and non-routine events or series of events that create high levels of uncertainty and threaten or are perceived to threaten an organizations' high priority goals" (Seeger, Sellnow and Ulmer, 1998, p. 233). These high impact events are occurring with increasing frequency and with increasingly broad affects. Much effort has been directed toward describing the sources of organizational crisis, stages of crisis development (Perrow, 1984; Fink 1986, Turner, 1976, Seeger and Bolz, 1996) and strategies for successful crisis management and recovery (Mitroff, 1988, Benoit, 1995). Relatively little attention, however, has been directed toward understanding the ethical imperatives organizations face during these events (Seeger, 1998). The dearth of attention exists despite the fact the organizational crisis almost always include critical ethical issues including questions about wrongdoing, intent, cause, blame, and responsibility, and often places organizational stakeholders in the role of victim. In many ways, crisis strips an organization's ethical framework to its most basic elements and makes these available for close public scrutiny.
One of the central features of crisis management is the visible and active role of the CEO (Hearit, 1995). The CEO is often designated as the crisis spokesperson bringing authority and credibility to a highly equivocal situation (Seeger, et al., 1998). The CEO may also establish the moral tone for the crisis response. He or she, for example, may accept responsibility where appropriate, seek to reduce and limit stakeholder victimage, take steps to provide appropriate compensation and provide assurances that similar events will not occur again. Perhaps a more common approach, however, involves diffusing responsibility, maintaining...