Abstract
Despite a growing body of research by management scholars to understand and explain failures in ethical decision making (EDM), misconduct prevails. Scholars have identified character, founded in virtue ethics, as an important perspective that can help to address the gap in organizational misconduct. While character has been offered as a valid perspective in EDM, current theorizing on how it applies to EDM has not been well developed. We thus integrate character, founded in virtue ethics, into Rest’s (1986) EDM model to reveal how shifting attention to the nature of the moral agent provides critical insights into decision making more broadly and EDM specifically. Virtue ethics provides a perspective on EDM that acknowledges and anticipates uncertainties, considers its contextual constraints, and contemplates the development of the moral agent. We thus answer the call by many scholars to integrate character in EDM in order to advance the understanding of the field and suggest propositions for how to move forward. We conclude with implications of a character-infused approach to EDM for future research.
Highlights
While there are many explanations for misconduct, including mainstream paradigms that assert the ethical shortcomings of context and/or bad people as underpinnings of misconduct (Kaptein, 2011; Kish-Gephart et al, 2010; Sims & Brinkmann, 2003; Treviño et al, 1998)., we suggest that when bad decisions have been made, where ordinary reasoning should have prevailed, poor individual judgment founded in character, is implicated
The virtue ethics perspective we describe can be extended to judgment and decision making (JDM); we focus on expanding the boundaries of traditional ethical decision making (EDM) approaches to account for more complex types of decision making for which the ethical dimensions are not necessarily salient at a point in time or by an individual
This paper takes a dive into exploring the contours of the decision-making landscape to show that character-infused EDM can counterweight the contextual undercurrent that challenges individual character, resulting in poor/unethical decisions
Summary
Ethical problems can be characterized by their situational complexity, unprecedented nature, and lack of one correct solution (Camillus, 2008; Heifetz, 1994), requiring deliberation and adjudication (Putnam & Conant, 1990), which are processes that greatly benefit from a virtue-based. The decisions and actions (or lack thereof) by an individual at a moment in time may not appear to have ethical consequences, but those consequences may come to light either through the collective action or inaction, or through time. The virtue ethics perspective we describe can be extended to JDM; we focus on expanding the boundaries of traditional EDM approaches to account for more complex types of decision making for which the ethical dimensions are not necessarily salient at a point in time or by an individual. This in turn will create a natural bridge to JDM. It is not our intention to unpack all of these connections, but rather use them as examples to illustrate our theorizing
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