Debra R. Comer and Gina Vega (eds.): Moral Courage in Organizations: Doing the Right Thing at Work: M.E. Sharp Publishing, Armonk, NY, 2011

Having read the late Rushworth Kidder’s (2005) book, Moral Courage: Taking Action When Your Values are Put to the Test, and having taught business ethics courses for several years, I undertook reviewing Comer and Vega’s edited ‘‘Moral Courage in Organizations: Doing the Right Thing at Work’’ wondering if it would provide any new insights into this complex construct. Indeed—for me—it does, and much more. Well suited as a supplemental text for semester-long courses in ethics, morality, principled leadership, and related courses, this well-edited and eclectic text is a worthwhile read. In addition to students benefiting from individual chapters as homework assignments for in-class dialogue and debate, I also easily can envision instructors and ethics workshop trainers applying selected sections as provocative in-session discussion material. With an easy-on-the-wallet price point for both e-text and paper versions, I plan to use it in my graduate and undergraduate business ethics courses. As with all edited books, the authors of the book’s fifteen chapters offer unique styles, approaches, contexts, anecdotes, and angles of expertise. From my perspective, nearly every chapter will serve to clarify and enrich readers’ understanding of this all-too-rare ‘‘moral courage’’ phenomenon. Moreover, I believe readers who process its messages deeply may even be emboldened to undertake courageous moral action when warranted. Indeed, one of the book’s strengths is the convincing case made that moral courage is a worthwhile and learnable skill—albeit, difficult to learn and act on. If moral courage is so valuable, why doesn’t it come naturally to us social beings? Part of the challenge, according to noted ethics scholar Moses Pava in the book’s Foreword, is that most of us are constrained by an instinctively selfish, me-first, you-second nature. Such a protect-self-first inclination makes it difficult to act on others’ behalf when there are potential costs to oneself for doing so—and, in moral situations, there are almost always costs. Workers typically can easily identify the potential costs to self about, for instance, questioning privacy breaches, confronting a harsh boss, speaking out about unsafe work practices, and commencing dialogue about perceived pay and promotion inequities. Yet, have we not learned the costs of not moving beyond selfish concerns? As even the most casual news reader knows, the failure of insiders to summon the courage to effectively confront massive ethical breaches at some of the largest global companies—for example, at Lehman Brothers, MF Global Holdings, and Olympus Corp.—has resulted in severely tarnished reputations, plummeting shareholder wealth, and job losses at all organizational levels. For many of us, organizational life has become much too individualistic, competitive, and—to paraphrase Thomas Hobbes (1651) in Leviathan— ‘‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.’’ Can such selfishness be sustainable? As a remedy and helpful springboard to the current book, Pava offers the ominously titled, ‘‘The Need to Overcome Self.’’ Pava’s musings offer a helpful precursor to much of what follows in this book— how we can overcome our instinctively self-protective selves to act in ways that will be evaluated later as sensitive, caring, fair, and right—even courageous. This fifteen-chapter book has five sections—beginning with three chapters that make clear ‘‘The Organizational Pressures That Make Moral Courage Necessary.’’ Al Gini starts off this section with several compelling assertions, R. W. Kolodinsky (&) Management Department, Gilliam Center for Ethical Business Leadership, College of Business, James Madison University, MSC 0206, Harrisonburg, VA 22807, USA e-mail: kolodirw@jmu.edu