Philosophy of Management

Volume 5, Issue 3, 2005

Business, Legitimacy and Community

Do Managers Leave Ethics at Home? Influences on Ethical Decisions in Organisations and their Implications for Moral Autonomy

A previous paper in this Journal, ‘Must Managers Leave Ethics at Home? Economics and Moral Anomie in Organisational Decisions’ explored the scope for moral decision making in organisations and developed the concept of moral anomie, the absence of moral awareness and judgement in organisational decisions. We suggested that the industrial economy developed within a framework of neoclassical economics and scientific enquiry to the exclusion of ethics. This paper reports on a subsequent exploratory research project in three disparate Australian organisations. It sought to establish whether individuals acting in and for organisations find themselves able to exercise moral autonomy in making organisational decisions or are likely to make morally heteronomous or anomous decisions.