Discussant Comment on “The Influence of Regulatory Approach on Tone at the top” by Bradley Lail, Jason MacGregor, Marty Stuebs, Timothy Thomasson

Journal of Business Ethics · 2015 · Volume 126 · Issue 1

DOI: 10.1007/s10551-013-2038-y

Abstract

In their paper, Lail et al. use the term “corporate tone” to refer to the organizational impact that results from executive tone at the top. This commentary will refer to this term as “organization ethical culture” to describe the intended consequence of setting an executive tone at the top.For any discussion about business and regulation, let us not forget there is a natural tension between government and business with respect to control. Power struggles between business and government have been documented as early as the eighteenth century with tension between the East India Company and the British Government (Moore2011).A financial impact event is defined as an event that results in additional legislative regulation.Development of behavioral modifications from legislative regulation, such as developing codes of conduct and ethics codes, are not included in Acts prior to 2002.At the time of writing this commentary, a web search resulted in more than 5.9 million references to tone at the top.

Keywords

Ethical Behavior, Ethical Leader, Audit Committee, Ethical Culture, Accounting Profession

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