6 - Reconsidering ethics management

Summary

Throughout this book, questions have been raised about the way in which ethics programs are typically conceived of and implemented in organizations. It was argued that its main limitations center on the dissociation of ethics from business practice and the assumptions that underpin this dissociation. Chapter 1 drew on research that questions the effectiveness of ethics programs in terms of their motivation, formulation and integration. This analysis led to a critical re-evaluation of some of the basic assumptions that inform many ethics programs. It was suggested that if all the members of an organization are to participate meaningfully in its ethics programs, such initiatives would have to be reconceived in fundamentally different terms. This led, first of all, to a reconsideration of the nature of moral reasoning and moral agency.

Chapter 2 draws attention to the central role that deontological, utilitarian or rights-based theories continue to play in many business ethicists' understanding of ethical decision making and puts their limitations into perspective. It was argued that it is impossible to think of individuals as isolated, rational agents who are capable of objectively operationalizing these rational protocols whenever, and wherever, it is deemed necessary to arbitrate in matters of ethical significance.

In Chapter 3, an individual's sense of moral agency was described as something that is shaped and informed by tacit knowledge, an embodied sense of self, and the relationships in which he/she participates.