Arie Reshef
Sir Harry Solomon School of Management- Western Galilee College, Israel
Arie Reshef is a Senior lecturer at the Sir Harry Solomon School of Management Western Galilee College, and at the Business Administration Department , University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel. He is the editor of the "Study of The Organization and Human Resource Quarterly" published by the Center for the Study of Organizations and Human Resources Management. He teaches business ethics, psychology of moral behavior, organizational learning, human resources development and qualitative research methods. He has years of experience in the Israeli industry as vice president for organizational development and human resources development, and as human resources manager.
Moral issues do not appear in everyday life with a red flag flying over them. In most cases the moral issue requiring attention appears in a latent state within a broad and sometimes misleading context of social behaviors. The process of recognizing components requiring moral engagement is therefore critical to the decision making process which should also take moral considerations into account. Moral recognition is crucial for business managers. Bazerman and Chugh (2006) claim that since relevant data for our decision making is not presented to us on a silver platter, we often fail to identify the problem facing us:
"The information that life serves is not necessarily the information that one would order from menu, but like polite dinner guests and other victims of circumstance people generally seem to accept what is offered rather than banging their flatware and demanding carrots”( Bazerman & Chugh, 2006, p15).
Walker (2000) claims that in most situations wherein we are required to make moral decisions we are in a state of ambiguity, and that morality in everyday life is not a methodical process of gathering data vis-à-vis an objective world, and consequently making a decision on the correct way to act. According to Messick & Bazerman (1996), business leaders work in “a moral minefield” in which “at any moment, a seemingly innocuous decision can explode and harm not only the decision maker but also everyone in the neighborhood…” (p.9).
The present study examined the process of recognizing moral issues in business environment by business managers. 220 MBA students with 4 years of management experience or more ,were asked to report retrospectively by writing a description on the way they contended with moral issues in the workplace. The reports were analyzed by using content analysis methods. The analysis focused on describing the process of recognizing/failing to recognize moral issues.
The findings indicate that the organizational context in which the moral issue was presented and previous events experienced by the moral agent prior to his encounter with the reported moral issue were the main factors for recognizing /not recognizing moral issues. Content analysis revealed seven principal influencing factors recognizing (and failing to recognize) moral issues in complex business environment: 1.“Nature of the motivations for action”,2. “degree of moral openness”, 3.“nature of emotions”,4. “level of experience and knowledge”, 5.“nature of organizational culture”,6. “degree of stress on attention”, and 7. “content/subject of the moral issue”.
The moral issues reported by the participants were manifested in three principal spheres of activity: true reporting to stakeholders, managing human resources, and relations with stakeholders in the organization. The study shows that emotional factors influence both recognizing and failing to recognize the issues. Positive emotions function as moral markers, whereas negative emotions function as moral obstructions. An additional factor found to crucially influence recognizing and failing to recognize was the manager’s accumulated experience in contending with moral issues in the workplace
The findings of the study have theoretical importance for the research of the moral recognition process of business managers.
