| Recent events such as insider trading activities on Wall Street, and the Bhopal and Challenger disasters, have spurred renewed interest in the moral aspects of organizations which is reflected in a diverse conceptual and empirical literature around organizational and managerial ethics. Studies have described corporate social responsibility and its economic implications, corporate codes of ethics, and managerial morality. With two exceptions, much of this latter work focuses on the values and moral reasoning of managers and does not explore morality as it is experienced by individuals in the organizational context. Additionally, a variety of conceptual models offer explanatory structures for understanding morality in organizations. Despite this rich literature, a connection between empirical descriptions of individuals' moral experience and models of organizational morality is lacking. This study was undertaken in order to develop a model of organizational morality grounded in the routine, everyday moral experience of managers.;The inductive nature of this study into the phenomenon of organizational morality required a research approach that allows systematic examination of the data without a priori conceptual frameworks. It also required an approach that results in generation of a model of the phenomenon under study. For these reasons, grounded theory method was selected. Following grounded theory strategies, semi-structured interviews were done with a selected sample of 19 managers and nurse managers in a variety of public and private organizational settings. These managers provided detailed descriptions of 32 situations posing ethical or moral difficulties for them.;Analysis of these descriptions revealed a process of organizational morality where moral reasoning and decision-making is inextricably linked to organizational problem-solving. Individuals, in responding to moral challenges, experience moral predicaments in which they know the correct moral action, but are uncertain how to proceed in the organizational setting. The moral and organizational dimensions are mixed. The individual acts as if facing a single problem, when there are two: the moral challenge and organizational problem which precipitated it. From this, comes a model of organizational morality as a situation-driven, two-dimensional phenomenon. |
