Moral Decision-Making in Organizations

Abstract

Research on moral decision-making in organizations has expanded significantly over the past few decades. In this review, we build on prior comprehensive reviews on the topic to provide an updated view of the field, based on the latest findings. We first provide a brief historical overview of influential theories of moral decision-making and then describe the individual characteristics, interpersonal factors, and organizational factors that have been shown to influence people's morally relevant choices, as well as the cognitive, affective, and even physiological processes at play. We then provide a more critical view of the field and focus on what we do not know, suggesting several avenues for future research. Specifically, we call for more research that incorporates the temporal dynamics of moral decision-making in organizations and that better accounts for the nature of the real-world moral issues people face at work. We conclude with some practical implications.