Building on Werhane’s Foundation: Toward a Theory of the Morally Imaginative Organization

Abstract

Patricia Werhane’s landmark book Moral Imagination in Management Decision-making and subsequent related work are practically synonymous with business ethics scholarship on moral imagination. In this chapter, I present an overview of Werhane’s work on moral imagination, discuss its impacts in the business and business ethics literatures and beyond, and then offer a theoretical extension. Integrating Werhane’s scholarship that treats moral imagination as an organization-level concept with Nonaka’s (1991) theory of the knowledge-creating company, I present the concept of the morally imaginative organization. Recognizing that leaders of organizations in complex, dynamic environments will be unable to anticipate, identify, and/or respond to the many moral dilemmas that their organizations enact (or fail to enact), I present a normative model in which moral imagination involves all organizational actors and is embedded into the organization’s strategically important knowledge-creating processes. I call for further research at the intersection of business ethics and social science which honors Werhane’s legacy by exploring how organizations can become more morally imaginative.