Ethics at work: understanding individual and social conditions for ethical behavior at work

The objective was to understand the individual and social conditions for ethical behavior at work. This led to a study of moral reasoning shown by subjects in others’ research. The general method was to analyze others’ interviews and narratives to examine the amount of moral reasoning when deciding dilemmas. This analysis resulted in the simple designation of 4 groups: ‘Criminals,’ ‘Rationalizers,’ ‘Agonizers,’ and ‘Altruists.’ It was observed that both ‘Altruists’ and ‘Criminals’ showed low-to-no moral reasoning; it seemed noteworthy that groups with opposite effects on society (beneficial, harmful) both used intuition and low moral reasoning. The conclusion consisted of simply raising questions; nothing was proven. The questions included whether less worry and disequilibrium were better for ethical decision making. Also discussed were “structured wholes” (consistent thinking across moral dilemmas) and whether work misconduct was caused by the system or human nature. There were no answers, but rather a discussion of these questions.