| Managers do not have the luxury of having a chart with the correct answers to every situation they will face in the course of their careers. Occasionally, they will encounter situations where they will have to make decisions that may not be in alignment with their own values. The purpose of this study was to understand the factors that are part of the decision-making experiences of managers when faced with ethical dilemmas in their employing organizations. This qualitative study explored the subject area with middle managers in several organizations in the Mid-Atlantic area of the United States. A purposeful sample of ten individuals comprised the study sample.; Three semi-structured interviews were conducted with each participant. The interviews, each approximately 90 minutes in length, were spaced several days apart in order to give participants time to reflect on their interviews yet maintain the connection between interviews. The structure of the interviews was, first, to set the context, second to allow participants to describe their experiences, and third to have participants reflect on the meaning of their experiences.; The findings of this study indicate that major considerations are the organizational context (and the concomitant dynamic variables) and personal ethical belief systems. When the two clash, ethical dilemmas surface and managers must find ways to handle them. Participants used terms related to consequences or survival (personal or organizational), reputation, and responsibility when describing their reasoning process, but all participants relied upon their prior ethical socialization (including family and friends) to help them resolve their ethical dilemmas. This study marks a beginning point of qualitative research in the field of ethical decision-making in organizations. It begins to answer the "why" questions that cannot be answered through quantitative research. Further, a synthesized model of the factors that are part of managers' ethical decision-making process is presented. |
