Ethical Decision Making: Where We’ve Been and Where We’re Going

Research on ethical decision making, or behavioral ethics, in organizations has developed from a small niche area to a burgeoning stand-alone field, one that has gained not only in number of articles written but in the legitimacy of the topic and the field. Our review motivated us to first try and summarize the field, not by comparing it to existing theoretical paradigms, but rather by observing what the data were telling us. We present our summary in the form of a model of ethical decision making and a typology that distinguishes intentionality of actions from ethicality of actions. After presenting this summary of the data, we critically review the research in this area, noting those areas which offer substantial insight and those that do not. In looking to the future and how the field can enhance the former and mitigate the latter, we identify several areas in which meaningful progress can be made, including defining what is “ethical,” revisiting unsubstantiated assumptions, focusing on the processes of ethical decision making, fixing methodological issues, and disentangling the outcomes of ethical decisions.