Shame

Shame is a social emotion in that it arises in a person when he or she recognizes that the act he or she has committed will be viewed negatively by other members of the social community.  Oftentimes, shame, or the avoidance of shame, is a powerful form of motivation for ethical behavior.

A person experiences shame when he or she has acted immorally or, more generally, has broken a societal norm or rule.  It may occur self-consciously, that is, in anticipation or expectation of how others will respond to one’s actions (“if they knew what I’d done, I would be disgraced”) or publicly, with corresponding humiliation and disrepute.

Of shame in business and financial contexts, Robert Solomon writes:

“shame plays an essential role in sanctioning corporate and commercial behavior.  Although the practices of free enterprise allow and even encourage a certain lack of rigidity concerning the mutual expectations and standards of behavior in business, there are, nevertheless, communally agreed-upon even if not always explicit rules of decent and honorable behavior.  Shame is an essentially social emotion.  In business, it forms the basis of ethical behavior insofar as it is vitally concerned with behavior within a community practice…a corporation without shame is very likely without ethics as well” (Robert Solomon, “Shame” in Blackwell Encyclopedic Dictionary of Business Ethics, p.580).