Ethical Scripts: How do middle managers integrate ethical considerations into decision making?

Importance and Key Contribution How do middle managers forge their ethical decisions when they are faced with non-routine decisions? This paper crafts the notion of ‘ethical script’ to explain the potential distance... [ view full abstract ]

Importance and Key Contribution
How do middle managers forge their ethical decisions when they are faced with non-routine decisions? This paper crafts the notion of ‘ethical script’ to explain the potential distance between the on-going decisions and the ones that the CEO/organisation prescribes. Middle managers are the individuals who are taking the day to day decisions, they are supposed to span the boundary between the top management team (Finkelstein & Hambrick 1990) who formulate strategy and the lower operational level of the firm. Within increasingly turbulent business landscapes, organisations middle managers are constantly confronted with non-routine events, which by their very nature cannot rely on established responses. Non-routine decisions taken by middle managers involve ethical concerns which are critical when middle managers cannot refer to routine answers.
Firstly the paper explains the codes and ethical frameworks before moving onto clarifying why the middle manager perspective is so important. The grey zone which emerges at the limits of organisational codes and infrastructure, yet doesn’t address how middle managers should respond to non-routine events is exposed before we turn to providing a basic discussion of how middle managers make their decisions and interpretations of organisational codes and routines in these situations. Finally we propose the notion of ‘ethical script’ as a way that middle managers navigate their way through non-routine events where the organisational routines and formal codes fail to provide direction (Weick & Sutcliffe 2006).
Theoretical Base
Resulting from a number of organisational scandals during the period 1974-1994 (Stevens 1994) organisations crafted codes of conduct that aligned with their core values, practices and objectives. A number of reviews on the success of ethical codes in organisations have been undertaken over the past four decades (White & Montgomery 1980), (Chatov 1980), (Cressey & Moore 1983), (Langlois & Schlegelmilch 1990), (Pitt & Groskaufmanis 1990), and (Kaptein & Schwartz 2008). However the unpredictable effectiveness of these ethical codes may be due to designers focusing too much on formal systems and activity within firm routines. This ignores the influence that informal activity and behaviour has on individuals in the workplace (Smith-Crowe et al. 2014), meaning when managers are faced with having to respond to non-routine events the organisational routines and formal codes are unable to provide solutions. Formal communications systems such as ethical codes of conduct (Weaver et al. 1999) which work alongside surveillance systems like performance appraisals and ethical ombudsmen are designed to ensure the behaviour and direction employees take when making decisions is aligned with organisational objectives (Tenbrunsel et al. 2003). For middle managers, events expose situations which in practice challenge interpretive frameworks, in particular non-routine events generally occur outside of the pre-existing rules, subsequently they challenge ethics (Deroy & Clegg 2011). However, non-routine events often expose issues which don’t align with organisational objectives, events such as these create uncertainty and can deform the structural regularities (Deroy & Clegg 2011).
Middle managers pivotal position in organisational hierarchy, this allows them to play a critical role in interpreting events, creating meaning, and directing the attention of the organisation (Dutton et al. 1997, Huy 2002, Sims 2003, Van Cauwenbergh and Cool 1982). They are tasked with helping to manage the emotions of others to better cope during radical change (Huy 2001), (Huy 2002), but how do they themselves cope during these unusual events, where do they go to for direction? A key element of the formal and informal codes is to assist managers to answer the question ‘what should I do?’ (Cullen et al. 1989) (Simha & Cullen 2012).
As Mouzelis (1989) states ‘actors do draw routinely on rules and resources in their daily conduct, but this orientation to rules and resources is neither exclusive or predominant’ (Mouzelis 1989). This is especially apparent when it appears that the rules and resources don’t provide solutions to issues. We propose the notion of an ‘ethical script’ as a way to theorise and describe the behaviours and response of middle managers during non-routine events. Barley (1989) argues that scripts offer actors interpretive schemes, resources and norms to create a way through the social world (Barley 1989). Scripts have been defined as a ‘schematic knowledge structure’ held in memory that specifies behaviours or event sequences that are appropriate for specific situations (Gioia & Poole 1984). The script is seen as a representation which compensates for the ambiguity of the real world and facilitates the move from meaning to action (Schank & Abelson 1977). This study forms the perspective that ethical script should be considered from the perspective of the individual’s beliefs and what they represent and justify to themselves in a certain context. Scripts allow individuals to answer the question ‘what are the possible responses for me in this context’.
Methods and Methodology
As middle managers and non-routine events are the units of analysis a qualitative approach which studies phenomena in the environments in which they naturally occur and uses social actors’ meanings to understand the phenomena is appropriate (Denzin & Lincoln 1994). The research engages a multiple case study approach, this affords the opportunity to create more robust theory, and enables broader exploration of the research question (Yin 1994), (Yin 2009). Multiple case studies allow for comparisons that clarify whether an emergent finding is unique to a single case or is replicable across a number of cases (Eisenhardt 1989). As managers make sense of their environment by interpreting events (Weick 1995) (Maitlis & Sonenshein 2010) close analysis of their responses during interviews provided the chance to develop understanding of how they responded to the same non-routine events.
The literature around business ethics as practice is still in its nascent stages of development (Clegg et al. 2007), to explore this further we should recognise the work of Tester and Bauman (2002) who seek to theorize ethics beyond rule based approaches, this suggests that ethics will be enacted in situations of ambiguity where dilemmas and problems will be dealt with without the comfort or certainty (Tester & Bauman 2002). Due to the exploratory nature of this research assuming a qualitative approach was appropriate as it potentially accommodates a larger range of possibilities to be examined when compared to quantitative analysis (Bryman 2008).
Initial contact was made with a number of organisations across Ireland, cold call emails and also utilisation of the networks of individuals involved in the project were engaged. Once initial organisational attention was secured further communications around confidentiality and data security with interested firms was had to build trust (King & Horrocks 2010), this resulted in four organisations from different industry sectors agreeing to participate in this exploratory study; this included two service providers, one product provider and one product and service provider. Eighteen participants, eleven female and seven male from the four organisations engaged in in-depth semi structured interviews, with each interview lasting between twenty five and fifty five minutes. Organisations were based either in the Republic of Ireland or both the Republic of Ireland and the UK. The interviews provided multiple cases of non-routine events or issues and focused around how managerial attention was obtained, the identification of non-routine events, (to date 37 have been identified) and managers responses to these events.


Initial Findings
It emerges that when events occur for which organisational routines or codes don’t provide immediate answers managers look to their morals or ethics for guidance. Some events are perceived by managers as having moral or ethical dimensions resulting in managers formulating responses which are structured and form what we label as ethical scripts. We theorise that the ethical script is a notion which is constructed by managers and exemplifies from the early data analysis in a number of different ethical script guises including:
Moral actor ethical script – one who takes a stand.
Avoider / non-engager ethical script – ignores their responsibility or commits limited effort to the non-routine event.
Conceder / complier ethical script – defers their own beliefs or perspectives to what they consider are the firms.
Exploiter / innovator ethical script – identifies possibilities in non-routine events.
Support seeker ethical script – Takes non action without guidance on how to proceed.
Having identified the initial proposed ethical script types we move now to explore data to recognise what the underlying mechanisms are and how this fills the knowledge gap between organisational routines, codes of conduct and middle manager responses to non-routine events.

Non-routine events, interpretation, uncertainty, judgement, ethical scripts, ethics, micro decision making, and middle managers. References Anon, 1997 BARLEY AND TOLBERT INST & STRUCTURATION LINKING ACTION AND... [ view full abstract ]

Non-routine events, interpretation, uncertainty, judgement, ethical scripts, ethics, micro decision making, and middle managers.

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