In this reading, authors Reidenbach and Robin provide a model of corporate moral development. They provide examples of companies such as Johnson & Johnson that have taken an ethical leadership position, as well as those such as Film Recovery Systems that have been miserable failures.

Reidenbach and Robin’s notion of corporate moral development is based on the American psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg’s conception of individual moral development (see Unit A3). Kohlberg has described moral development as moving through three main levels. Each level is divided into two stages, so there are six stages in all. Some individuals progress through all the stages, while others get “stuck” at the lower stages.

Pre-conventional level (stages 1 and 2). At stage 1, the infant is initially motivated purely externally by fear of punishment, such as a spanking, and at stage 2 by a desire for rewards, such as a piece of candy.

Conventional level (stages 3 and 4). Stage 3 is the “good-boy/nice-girl morality,” in which children seek their parents’ or peers’ approval. After this, an individual may move to stage 4, the “law and order stage,” in which great value is placed on following social rules. At this stage people have started to move beyond merely an egoistic motivation to one in which there is real concern for meeting standards for non-selfish reasons. Kohlberg believed that most adults remain at this stage.

Post-conventional, autonomous, or principles level (stages 5 and 6). Here, one accepts moral rules not just because they are part of one’s society but because one knows that the rules are right. In stage 5, individuals see morality as a kind of contract between individuals that grounds individual rights, a position which is very close to Hobbes’s picture of morality (discussed in Unit A4). At stage 6, one fully internalizes moral rules because one accepts them as