This review summarizes and critiques the empirical ethical decision-making literature from 1996–2003. One hundred and seventy-four articles were published in top business journals during this period. Tables are included that summarize the findings by dependent variable – awareness, judgment, intent, and behavior. We compare this review with past reviews in order to draw conclusions regarding trends in the ethical decision-making literature and to surface directions for future research.

Examines the theories of Socrates, Kant, Dewey, Piaget, and others to explore the implications of Socrates' question "what is a virtuous man, and what is a virtuous school and society which educates virtuous men.".

How do business leaders make ethical decisions? Given the significant and wide-spread impact of business people’s decisions on multiple constituents, how they make decisions matters. Unethical decisions harm the decision makers themselves as well as others, whereas ethical decisions have the opposite effect. Based on data from a study on strategic decision making by 16 effective chief executive officers, I propose a model for ethical decision making in business in which reasoning and intuition interact through forming, recalling, and applying moral (...) principles necessary for long-term success in business. Following the CEOs in the study, I employ a relatively new theory, rational egoism, as the substantive content of the model and argue it to be consistent with the requirements of long-term business success. Besides explaining the processes of forming and applying principles, I briefly describe rational egoism and illustrate the model with a contemporary moral dilemma of downsizing. I conclude with implications for further research and ethical decision making in business. (shrink)

Theories of ethical decision making assume it is a process that is special, or different in some regard, from typical individual decision making. Empirical results of the most widely known theories in the field of business ethics contain numerous inconsistencies and contradictions. In an attempt to assess why we continue to lack understanding of how individuals make ethical decisions at work, an inductive study of ethical decision making was conducted. The results of this preliminary study suggest that ethical decision making (...) might not be meaningfully “special” or different from other decision making processes. The implications of this research are potentially significant in that they challenge the fundamental assumption of existing ethical decision making research. This research could serve as an impetus for further examination of whether ethical decision making is meaningfully different from other decision making processes. Such studies could create new directions for the field of business ethics. (shrink)

To better illuminate aspects of stress that are relevant to the moral domain, we present a definition and theoretical model of “moral stress.” Our definition posits that moral stress is a psychological state born of an individual’s uncertainty about his or her ability to fulfill relevant moral obligations. This definition assumes a self-and-others relational basis for moral stress. Accordingly, our model draws from a theory of the self (identity theory) and a theory of others (stakeholder theory) to suggest that this (...) uncertainty arises as a manager faces competing claims for limited resources from multiple stakeholders and/or across multiple role identities. We further propose that the extent to which the manager is attentive to the moral aspects of the claims (i.e., moral attentiveness) moderates these effects. We identify several consequences of managerial moral stress and discuss theoretical, empirical, and practical implications of our approach. Most importantly, we argue that this work paves an important path for considering stress through the lens of morality. (shrink)

This paper explores possible connections between gender and the willingness to tolerate unethical academic behavior. Data from a sample of 285 accounting majors at four public institutions reveal that females are less tolerant than males when questioned about academic misconduct. Statistically significant differences were found for 17 of 23 questionable activities. Furthermore, females were found to be less cynical and less often involved in academic dishonesty. Overall, the results support the finding of Betz et al. (1989) that the gender socialization (...) approach dominates the structural approach. (shrink)

This research examines the relationships between education in business ethics, Reynolds’s (J Appl Psychol 93:1027–1041, 2008) “moral attentiveness” construct, or the extent to which individuals chronically perceive and reflect on morality and moral elements in their experiences, and Singhapakdi et al.’s (J Bus Ethics 15:1131–1140, 1996) measure of perceptions of the role of ethics and social responsibility (PRESOR). Education in business ethics was found to be positively associated with the two identified factors of moral attentiveness, “reflective” and “perceptual” moral attentiveness, (...) and with the PRESOR “stakeholder view” factor. Also, reflective moral attentiveness was found to act as a mediator in the relationship between education in business ethics and the PRESOR stakeholder view factor. Evidence of gender and social desirability bias effects was also found. The implications of these relationships and social cognitive theory for improved understanding of the mechanisms by which a variety of variables have their effects on PRESOR in business are discussed. (shrink)

As corporate scandals proliferate, organizational researchers and practitioners have made calls for research providing guidance for those wishing to influence positive moral decision-making and behavior in the workplace. This study incorporates social cognitive theory and a vignette-based cognitive measure for moral imagination to examine (a) moral attentiveness and employee creativity as important antecedents of moral imagination and (b) creativity as a moderator of the positive relationship between moral attentiveness and moral imagination. Based on the results from supervisor–subordinate dyadic data (N (...) = 162) obtained from employed students, hypotheses were largely supported as expected. Implications are discussed. (shrink)

Abstract:Previous research has identified multiple approaches to the design and implementation of corporate ethics programs (Paine, 1994; Weaver, Treviño, and Cochran, in press b; Treviño, Weaver, Gibson, and Toffler, in press). This field survey in a large financial services company investigated the relationships of the values and compliance orientations in an ethics program to a diverse set of outcomes. Employees’ perceptions that the company ethics program is oriented toward affirming ethical values were associated with seven outcomes. Perceptions of a compliance (...) orientation were associated with four of these outcomes. The interaction of values and compliance orientations was associated with employees’ willingness to report misconduct. In general, a values orientation makes a greater unique contribution to the measured outcomes when compared to a compliance orientation. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Neuroethics, the study of the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying ethical decision-making, is a growing field of study. In this review, we identify and discuss four themes emerging from neuroethics research. First, ethical decision-making appears to be distinct from other types of decision-making processes. Second, ethical decision-making entails more than just conscious reasoning. Third, emotion plays a critical role in ethical decision-making, at least under certain circumstances. Lastly, normative approaches to morality have distinct, underlying neural mechanisms. On the basis of (...) these themes, we draw implications for research in business ethics and the practice of ethics training. (shrink)

In Furnishing the Mind, Jesse Prinz attempts to swing the pendulum back toward empiricism.

This investigation applies a social cognition framework to examine moral awareness in business situations. Using a vignette-based instrument, the investigation compares the recall, recognition, and ascription of importance to moral-versus strategy-related issues in business managers (n = 86) and academic professors (n = 61). Results demonstrate that managers recall strategy-related issues more than moral-related issues and recognize and ascribe importance to moral-related issues less than academics. It also finds an inverse relationship between socialization in the business context and moral awareness. (...) Future directions for moral awareness research and the practical implications for these findings are discussed. (shrink)

Many views define the concept of automaticity in terms of a number of features, but they differ with regard to the features they put most emphasis on, as well as with regard to the coherence they assume among the features. One contemporary account is the gradual and decompositional view, which proposes to investigate each automaticity feature separately and determine the degree to which it is present. In this chapter, we engage in a detailed analysis of the most important features in (...) order to examine whether they can indeed be regarded as gradual, and whether they can be conceptually and logically separated. (shrink)