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Journal of Business Ethics

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01-12-2011

A Model for Ethical Decision Making in Business: Reasoning, Intuition, and Rational Moral Principles

Author: Jaana Woiceshyn

Published in: Journal of Business Ethics | Issue 3/2011

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Abstract

How do business leaders make ethical decisions? Given the significant and wide-spread impact of business people’s decisions on multiple constituents (e.g., customers, employees, shareholders, competitors, and suppliers), 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 (and three not-so-effective ones as contrast), I propose a model for ethical decision making in business in which reasoning (conscious processing) and intuition (subconscious processing) 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 (integration by essentials and spiraling), 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.

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This section closely follows the presentation of integration by essentials in Woiceshyn (2009).

This point is controversial as ethicists have not been able agree that there is a factual basis of moral principles. In contrast to most philosophers, there are some who start from the naturalistic premise that facts about human nature give rise to the need of ethics; that humans need to act according to the requirements of their nature in order to survive and flourish (Foot 2001; Gaut 1997; Hursthouse 1999). Continuing on that premise, others have argued that ethics is like any other science, and that facts can validate moral principles in the same way as they validate or invalidate any other kind of principles (Simpson 2009; Smith 2006).

This happens automatically once a principle has been identified.

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Title: A Model for Ethical Decision Making in Business: Reasoning, Intuition, and Rational Moral Principles
Author: Jaana Woiceshyn
Publication date: 01-12-2011
Publisher: Springer Netherlands
Published in: Journal of Business Ethics / Issue 3/2011
Print ISSN: 0167-4544
Electronic ISSN: 1573-0697
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-011-0910-1

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