Integration in Christian Ethical Decision-making

Abstract

Market complexity, ongoing change, and the effect of postmodern assump tions on capitalism leave organizational leaders to manage a degree of ambiguity historically unknown. In the midst of such ambiguity, leaders must respond to multiple constituents with competing demands (Fama, 1980), operating within structures that minimize the leaders' formal authority (e.g., Miles and Snow, 1986). The leaders' task, therefore, becomes the management of market and value ambiguity without formal influence, or at least with primarily informal influence (Kotter, 1985). It is in this ambiguous context that most organizational leaders are challenged with making and implementing ethical decisions (Donaldson, 2003). Overly simplistic assistance to leaders will not satisfy their complex needs. They require an integrated and appropriately sophisticated model for ethical decision-making. Christian leaders may require more, because they believe they are wrestling with truth in the midst of apparent chaos. Many promising advances are available to assist them, yet organizational efforts continue to strive for a more satisfactory integration. Given the overwhelming breadth and depth of ethical perspectives to date (Stackhouse, 1995), full and satisfactory integration is ultimately attainable only by God. However, we are called to the task of ongoing