Motivating managers to develop their moral curiosity

2014 ◽  
Vol 33 (7) ◽  
pp. 709-722 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie E. Sekerka ◽  
Lindsey N. Godwin ◽  
Richard Charnigo
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Business Ethics ◽  
Field Study ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Ethical Dilemmas ◽  
Moral Decision ◽  
Moral Decision Making ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Organizational Settings ◽  
Safe Spaces

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to focus on an inward drive and commitment toward ethical discovery, which the authors refer to as the competency of moral curiosity. When directed toward moral decision making, the authors believe this ability can help managers effectively respond to their ethical challenges and contribute to an organizational environment that supports ethical performance. Design/methodology/approach – After presenting insights from the literature on curiosity and establishing its relevance, the authors describe a specific experiential learning tool designed to cultivate moral curiosity in organizational settings. The authors conduct a field study using this process to explore how moral curiosity can be strengthened through experiential practice. Findings – Results from the field study suggest that engagement in balanced experiential inquiry, a process that asks managers to reflect on their salient ethical dilemmas and then engage in both individual and collective meaning making, positively influenced participants’ curiosity toward moral decision making. Research limitations/implications – Limitations include challenges inherent to the field-study design, including lack of a control group and limited ability to predict long-term impacts of the intervention. Despite these concerns, the study has useful implications for managerial training and development. In particular, providing safe spaces where managers can discuss their ethical dilemmas is an important element of supporting their development into morally curious leaders who are interested in pursuing business ethics. Practical implications – Findings suggest that providing safe spaces where managers can discuss their ethical dilemmas is an important element of supporting their development into morally curious leaders who are interested in pursuing business ethics. Originality/value – The paper contributes to the research literature on ethics training and education for managers. The authors introduce the construct of moral curiosity as a competency that can be developed through experiential practice in organizational settings.

scholarly journals An Appraisal of Robert Brandom's Making it Explicit

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Scott Timcke
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Moral Decision ◽  
Moral Decision Making ◽  
Moral Thought ◽  
Robert Brandom ◽  
Magnum Opus

This paper attends to the moral thought of Robert Brandom as it appears in his 1994 magnum opus Making It Explicit. Insofar that it is necessarily to outline Brandom’s thought the presentation will refer to the conception of deontic commitments as providing a basis for inference and entitlements for the purposes of meaning making. Accepting these remarks as sound enough, the paper directs attention at the role of inference in moral-decision making. Finally, it offers an appraisal of Brandom’s moral thought system.

scholarly journals Applied Ethics and tertiary education in South Africa: Teaching Business Ethics at the University of South Africa

2013 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise Kretzschmar ◽  
Wessel Bentley
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Business Ethics ◽  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Tertiary Education ◽  
Applied Ethics ◽  
Moral Decision ◽  
Moral Decision Making ◽  
Moral Decisions ◽  
The University

This article explores how Applied Ethics, especially Business Ethics, is taught at the University of South Africa (Unisa). This discussion refers to the content of a particular Unisa module, Theoretical and Applied Ethics, which serves as an introduction to Bio-medical Ethics, Business Ethics and Environmental Ethics. The fundamentals of this course are: defining ethics; providing methods for moral decision-making; describing the role of ethics in a particular field and addressing common dilemmas in a specific context. The intention is to empower students to identify issues they are likely to face in the workplace, and to grow in confidence in their ability to make sound moral decisions when required to do so. The aim of this article is to contribute to the ongoing discussion between tertiary institutions about how the teaching of Business Ethics can be promoted, how moral decision-making in the workplace can be encouraged and what role theological ethics can play in this regard.

Moral decision making: searching for the highest expected moral value

2008 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Kenneth E. Aupperle
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Multiple Solutions ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Ethical Dilemmas ◽  
Moral Decision ◽  
Moral Decision Making ◽  
Moral Value ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Course Of Action ◽  
Moral Intent

This article offers a new way to conceptualize decision making in regard to ethical dilemmas and complex social issues. The framework provided here identifies steps essential to achieving the highest expected moral value. This process is complex but practical. The purpose is to help academics, students and practitioners in escaping from a simple black and white logic. The framework proposed here attempts to help analysts objectively assess the positives and the negatives associated with a given course of action in order to achieve the best possible outcome. All dilemmas have multiple solutions but too often we reach simple conclusions without addressing consequences. Clearly good moral intent can produce serious harm. Sometimes one may have to choose between the two; good moral intent versus good moral consequences

scholarly journals Ethical dilemmas in psychiatry: When teams disagree

2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 231-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Silva ◽  
Alex Till ◽  
Gwen Adshead
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Ethical Dilemmas ◽  
Ethical Reasoning ◽  
Moral Decision ◽  
Moral Decision Making ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Social Persuasion

SummaryMany ethical dilemmas in medicine are associated with highly unusual clinical situations and are an almost daily challenge for mental health teams. We describe the ethical issues that arose in relation to a significant difference of opinion between team members about using nasogastric clozapine in the treatment of a severely ill patient. We discuss how conflicting emotions and perspectives within teams acquire ethical significance and how negotiation and reflection are essential for good-quality ethical reasoning to take place.Learning Objectives• Understand the different effects and importance of reasoning and emotions in moral decision-making• Use a clinical scenario involving a difficult and controversial procedure to explore the impact of social persuasion in moral decision-making• Consider the effects of heuristics against rational thinking

Leadership, morality and ethics: Developing a practical model for moral decision-making

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfred W. Kaszniak ◽  
Cynda H. Rushton ◽  
Joan Halifax
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Applied Ethics ◽  
Moral Decision ◽  
Moral Decision Making ◽  
Contemplative Science ◽  
Practical Model

The present paper is the product of collaboration between a neuroscientist, an ethicist, and a contemplative exploring issues around leadership, morality, and ethics. It is an exploration on how people in roles of responsibility can better understand how to engage in discernment processes with more awareness and a deeper sense of responsibility for others and themselves. It draws upon recent research and scholarship in neuroscience, contemplative science, and applied ethics to develop a practical understanding of how moral decision-making works and is essential in this time when there can seem to be an increasing moral vacuum in leadership.

Framing Morality: How Antecedent-Focused Strategies Can Shape Moral Judgments

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Kappes ◽  
Jay Joseph Van Bavel
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Emotional Reactions ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Decision ◽  
Process Dissociation ◽  
Moral Decision Making ◽  
First Response ◽  
High Conflict

From moral philosophy to programming driverless cars, scholars have long been interested in how to shape moral decision-making. We examine how framing can impact moral judgments either by shaping which emotional reactions are evoked in a situation (antecedent-focused) or by changing how people respond to their emotional reactions (response-focused). In three experiments, we manipulated the framing of a moral decision-making task before participants judged a series of moral dilemmas. Participants encouraged to go “with their first” response beforehand favored emotion-driven judgments on high-conflict moral dilemmas. In contrast, participants who were instructed to give a “thoughtful” response beforehand or who did not receive instructions on how to approach the dilemmas favored reason-driven judgments. There was no difference in response-focused control during moral judgements. Process-dissociation confirmed that people instructed to go with their first response had stronger emotion-driven intuitions than other conditions. Our results suggest that task framing can alter moral intuitions.

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