Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T13:02:09.551Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Moral Decision Making in Business: A Phase-Model

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Aviva Geva
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

The traditional model of ethical decision making in business suggests applying an initial set of principles to a concrete problem and if they conflict the decision maker may attempt to balance them intuitively. The centrality of the ethical conflict in the accepted notion of “ethical problem” has diverted the attention of moral decision modelers from other ethical problems that real-world managers must face—e.g., compliance problems, moral laxity, and systemic problems resulting from the structures and practices of the business organization. The present article proposes a new model for ethical decision making in business—the Phase-model—designed to meet the full spectrum of business-related ethical problems. Drawing on the dominant moral theories in business literature, the model offers additional strategies for tackling ethical issues beyond the traditional cognitive operations of deductive application of principles to specific cases and the balancing of ethical considerations. Its response to the problems of moral pluralism in the context of decision making lies in its structural features. The model distinguishes between three phases of the decision-making process, each having a different task and a different theoretical basis. After an introductory stage in which the ethical problem is defined, the first phase focuses on a principle-based evaluation of a course of action; the second phase provides a virtue-based perspective of the situation and strategies for handling unsettled conflicts and compliance problems; and the third phase adapts the decision to empirical accepted norms. An illustrative case demonstrates the applicability of the model to business real life.

Type
Articles
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 10 , Issue 4 , October 2000 , pp. 773 - 803
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aristotle, . 1985. Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Irwin, T.Indianopolis: Hackett.Google Scholar
Arrow, K. J. 1973. Social responsibility and economic efficiency. Public Policy 21: 303–317.Google Scholar
Baier, A. 1988. Theory and reflective practices. In Applied Ethics and Ethical Theory, ed. Rosenthal, D. M. and Shehadi, R, pp. 25–49. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.Google Scholar
Baier, A. C. 1992. Hume, David. In Encyclopedia of Ethics, Vol. 1, ed. Becker, L. C. and Becker, C. B., pp. 566–577. New York: Garland.Google Scholar
Barry, V. 1986. Moral Issues in Business. 3rd ed. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth.Google Scholar
Bayles, M. D. 1984. Moral theory and application. Social Theory and Practice 10: 97–120.Google Scholar
Beauchamp, T. L. and Bowie, N. E., eds. 1997. Ethical Theory and Business. 5th ed. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Becker, L. C. and Becker, C. B. 1992. Social contract. In Encyclopedia of Ethics, Vol. 2, ed. Becker, L. C. and Becker, C. B., pp. 1170–1177. New York: Garland.Google Scholar
Birmingham, R. L. 1969–1970. Contract, damage measures, and economic efficiency. Rutgers Law Review 24: 273–292.Google Scholar
Boatright, J. R. 1995. Aristotle meets Wall Street: The case for virtue ethics in business. Business Ethics Quarterly 5: 353–359.Google Scholar
Boatright, J. R. 1997. Ethics and the Conduct of Business. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Brady, F. N. and Dunn, C. P. 1995. Business meta-ethics: An analysis of two theories. Business Ethics Quarterly 5: 385–389.Google Scholar
Buchanan, A. 1996. Perfecting imperfect duties: Collective action to create moral obligations. Business Ethics Quarterly 6: 27–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buchholz, R. A. and Rosenthal, S. B. 1996. Toward a new understanding of moral pluralism. Business Ethics Quarterly 6: 263–275.Google Scholar
Burton, B. K. and Dunn, C. P. 1996, Feminist ethics as moral grounding for stakeholder theory. Business Ethics Quarterly 6: 133–147.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cassell, C; Johnson, P.; and Smith, K. 1997. Openning the blackbox: Corporate codes of ethics in their organizational context. Journal of Business Ethics 16: 1077–1093.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cavanagh, G. F; Moberg, D. J.; and Velasquez, M. 1981. The ethics of organizational politics. Academy of Management Review 6: 333–374.Google Scholar
Cavanagh, G. F; Moberg, D. J.; and Velasquez, M. 1995. Making business ethics practical. Business Ethics Quarterly 5: 399–418.Google Scholar
Center for Business Ethics. 1992. Instilling ethical values in large corporations. Journal of Business Ethics 11: 863–867.Google Scholar
Clarke, D. S. Jr 1985. Practical Inferences. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Coase, R. H. 1960. The problem of social cost. Journal of Law and Economics 3: 1–44.Google Scholar
Cody, W. G. M. and Lynn, R. R. 1992. Honest Government: An Ethics Guide for Public Service. Westport, Conn.: Praeger.Google Scholar
Cohen, M. R. 1933. The basis of contract. Harvard Law Review 46: 551–592.Google Scholar
Collier, J. 1998. Theorising the ethical organization. Business Ethics Quarterly 8: 621–654.Google Scholar
Collins, D. and O’Rourke, T. 1994. Ethical Dilemmas in Business. Cincinnati: Southwestern Publishing Co.Google Scholar
Cramton, P. C. and Dees, J. G. 1993. Promoting honesty in negotiation: An exercise in practical ethics. Business Ethics Quarterly 3: 359–394.Google Scholar
DeGeorge, R. T. 1995. Business Ethics. 4th ed. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
DesJardins, J. R. and McCall, J. J. 1996. Contemporary Issues in Business Ethics. 3rd ed. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Publishing Co.Google Scholar
Dobson, J. and White, J. 1995. Toward the feminine firm: An extension to Thomas White. Business Ethics Quarterly 5: 463–478.Google Scholar
Donaldson, T. and Dunfee, T. W. 1994. Toward a unified conception of business Ethics: Integrative Social Contracts Theory. Academy of Management Review 19: 252–284.Google Scholar
Donaldson, T. and Dunfee, T. W. 1995. Integrative social contracts theory: A communitarian conception of economic ethics. Economics and Philosophy 11: 85–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Donaldson, T. and Werhane, P. H. 1996. Ethical Issues in Business: A Philosophical Approach. 5th ed. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall Inc.Google Scholar
Etzioni, A. 1988. The Moral Dimension: Toward a New Economics. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Ferrell, O. C. and Fraedrich, J. 1994. Business Ethics: Ethical Decision Making and Cases. 2nd ed. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co.Google Scholar
Flores, F. and Solomon, R. C. 1998. Creating trust. Business Ethics Quarterly 8: 205–232.Google Scholar
Friedmann, D. 1980. Restitution of benefits obtained through the appropriation of property or the commission of a wrong. Columbia Law Review 80: 504–558.Google Scholar
Gatewood, R. D. and Carroll, A. B. 1991. Assessment of ethical performance of organization members: A conceptual framework. Academy of Management Review 16: 667–690.Google Scholar
Green, R. M. 1993. The Ethical Manager: A New Method for Business Ethics. New York: Macmillan College Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Held, V. 1992. Moral pluralism. In Encyclopedia of Ethics, ed. Becker, L. C. and Becker, C. B. Vol. 2, pp. 839–842. New York: Garland.Google Scholar
Hoffman, W. M. and Frederick, R. E. 1995. Business Ethics: Readings and Cases in Corporate Morality. 3rd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Horvath, C. M. 1995. Excellence v. effectiveness: Maclntyre’s critique of business. Business Ethics Quarterly 5: 499–532.Google Scholar
Hosmer, L. T 1987. The Ethics of Management. Homewood, III.: Irwin.Google Scholar
Hume, D. 1751/1974. An Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. Ed. Selby-Bigge, L. A. and Nidditch, P. H.Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Irwin, T. H. 1988. Aristotle’s First Principles. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Johnson, M. 1993. Moral Imagination. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Keeley, M. 1995. Continuing the social contract tradition. Business Ethics Quarterly 5: 241–256.Google Scholar
Koehn, D. 1995. A role for virtue ethics in the analysis of business practice. Business Ethics Quarterly 5: 533–539.Google Scholar
Koehn, D. 1998. Virtue ethics, the firm, and moral psychology. Business Ethics Quarterly 8: 497–513.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laufer, W. S. 1996. Corporate culpability and the limits of law. Business Ethics Quarterly 6: 311–324.Google Scholar
Laufer, W. S. and Robertson, D. C. 1997. Corporate ethics initiatives as social control. Journal of Business Ethics 16: 1029–1048.Google Scholar
Liedtka, J. M. 1996. Feminist morality and competitive reality: A role for an ethic of care? Business Ethics Quarterly 6: 179–200.Google Scholar
Maclntyre, A. 1984. After Virtue. 2nd ed. Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame University Press.Google Scholar
Maclntyre, A. 1992. Virtue ethics. In Encyclopedia of Ethics, ed. Becker, L. C. and Becker, C. B. Vol. 2, pp. 1276–1282. New York: Garland.Google Scholar
Maitland, I. 1985. The limits of business self-regulation. California Management Review 27: 132–147.Google Scholar
McCabe, D. L.; Trevino, L. K.; and Butterfield, K. D. 1996. The influence of collegiate and corporate codes of conduct on ethics-related behavior in the workplace. Business Ethics Quarterly 6: 461–476.Google Scholar
McClennen, E. F. 1999. Moral rules as public goods. Business Ethics Quarterly 9: 103–126.Google Scholar
Nash, L. L. 1990. Good Intentions Aside: A Manager’s Guide to Resolving Ethical Problems. Cambridge: Harvard Business School Press.Google Scholar
Newton, L. H. 1995. The many faces of the corporate core. In Business Ethics: Readings and Cases in Corporate Morality, ed. Hoffman, W. M. and Frederick, R. E.3rd ed., pp. 585–590. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Pastin, M. 1986. The Hard Problems of Management: Gaining the Ethics Edge. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.Google Scholar
Phillips, M. J. 1995. Corporate moral responsibility: When it might matter. Business Ethics Quarterly 5: 555–576.Google Scholar
Richardson, H. S. 1990. Specifying norms as a way to resolve concrete ethical problems. Philosophy and Public Affairs 19: 279–310.Google Scholar
Runge, C. F 1984. Institutions and the free rider: The assurance problem in collective action. Journal of Politics 46: 154–181.Google Scholar
Sandel, M. 1982. Liberalism and The Limits of Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sen, A. K. 1987. On Ethics and Economics. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Shaw, W. H. 1996. Business ethics today: A survey. Journal of Business Ethics 15: 489–500.Google Scholar
Sims, R. R. 1991. The institutionalization of organizational ethics. Journal of Business Ethics 10: 493–506.Google Scholar
Sinnott-Armstrong, W. 1988. Moral Dilemmas. New York: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Solomon, R. C. 1993. Ethics and Excellence: Cooperation and Integrity in Business. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Stevens, B. 1994. An analysis of corporate codes studies: “Where do we go from here?” Journal of Business Ethics 13: 63–69.Google Scholar
Tong, R. 1993. Feminine and Feminist Ethics. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Publishing.Google Scholar
Trevino, L. K. and Nelson, K. L. 1995. Managing Business Ethics: Straight Talk About How to Do It Right. New York: John Wiley and Sons.Google Scholar
Trevino, L. K. and Weaver, G. R. 1994. Business ETHICS/BUSINESS ethics: one field or two? Business Ethics Quarterly 4: 113–128.Google Scholar
Velasquez, M. G. 1992. Business Ethics: concepts and cases. 3rd ed. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Vidaver-Cohen, D. 1997. Moral imagination in organizational problem solving: An institutional perspective. Business Ethics Quarterly 7: 1–26.Google Scholar
Walton, D. N. 1990. Practical Reasoning: Goal-Driven, Knowledge-based, Action-Guiding Argumentation. Savage, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar