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Critical Literature Review

Compare and contrast these readings and produce a 1000 word critical reflection on the four articles about what ethical decision making is, and the factors that influence ethical decision making in organisations.

In this critical reflection you should provide a reasoned explanation for choosing the perspective(s) that you believe best explain ethical decision making in organisations.

Below is the structure of the essay

Short Introduction

Overview of articles (100~150 words)

Body (700~800 words)

Read all the articles and summarize them attempting to overview and capture their major arguments – what do these authors propose?
Make sure you conclude by answering the question – which of the articles you believe best explains the decision making process and tell the reader why.
Comparison and contrast about “what ethical decision making is, and the factors that influence ethical decision making in organisations”.
Responds originally, clearly and directly to the question with good evidence (high quality) of original insight.
Evidence/reference to academic journals/articles only.
Material deployed in a disciplined way and demonstrates a sophisticated comprehension of key issues of debate.
Critically review, analyse, synthesise and apply theoretical and technical body knowledge in a broad and creative way to a range of areas and diverse contexts.

Conclusion

Conclude by choosing the perspective (article) that best explains ethical decision making in organisations.

Referencing

Follow harvard referencing style – refer to document provided

Beyond ‘bad apples’ and ‘weak
leaders’
Toward a neo-institutional explanation
of organizational deviance

S U S A N N E C . M O N A H A N A N D B E T H A . Q U I N N

Montana State University, USA

Abstract

This article examines two starkly different cases—the abuse of
prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison and the falsification of
architectural internship reports—in developing a neo-institutional
analysis of deviance within organizations. We argue that the
organization’s role extends beyond a failure to act (e.g. monitor,
prevent, punish) to include implementing formal structures—
decoupling—that make individual deviance both predictable and a
predicate of organizational ‘success’. We identify environmental
conditions associated with decoupling, strategies to achieve it and
organizational responses of deflection. By linking macro-level rule
environments, organizational structure and participant behavior, we
offer a theoretical framework that elides the long-standing
definitional struggles in white-collar crime research through the
simultaneous consideration of the organization as environment and
the environment of the organization.

Key Words

decoupling • neo-institutionalism • normal deviance • occupational
deviance • organizational deviance • torture

Deviance within organizations is often framed as a product of individual
choices or behaviors, especially in mainstream discourse and in the popular
press. For example, in the case of the Abu Ghraib prison abuses, three

361

Theoretical Criminology
© 2006 SAGE Publications

London, Thousand Oaks
and New Delhi.

www.sagepublications.com
Vol. 10(3): 361–385; 1362–4806

DOI: 10.1177/1362480606065911

primary explanatory models have competed for ascendancy: (1) rogue
individuals from the US Military Police unit engaged in bad behavior (i.e.
the ‘bad apple’ explanation); (2) somewhere up the chain of command
individual officers gave orders that ultimately led to the abuse of Iraqi
prisoners (i.e. the ‘following orders’ explanation); or (3) abuses were the
product of failed leadership by specific persons who did not clearly
communicate norms or adequately monitor and supervise underlings (i.e.
the ‘failed leadership’ explanation).

The first explanation (‘bad apples’) is exemplified in the military’s court
martial proceedings for soldiers who directly interacted with Iraqi pris-
oners, as well as in the Bush Administration’s claim—from the moment the
allegations of abuse first came forward—that the abusive behavior was
atypical of the military and simply bad behavior on the part of a few out-
of-control soldiers (see Graham, 2004; Higham and Stevens, 2004; White
and Higham, 2004). The second explanation (‘following orders’) is exem-
plified by the defense in the court martial proceedings who have tried to
identify specific persons (e.g. Military Intelligence personnel, civilian con-
tractors, Pentagon officials) up the chain of command who ordered the
Military Police officers to use abusive techniques to ‘soften up’ Iraqi
prisoners in order to elicit information from them (see Cha and McCarthy,
2004; Cha and Merle, 2004; Higham et al., 2004; Vedantam, 2004; White
and Allen, 2004). The third explanation (‘failed leadership’) is exemplified
by accusations that mid- to high-ranking military officials (e.g. US Brig.
Gen. Janis Karpinski) failed to adequately train, monitor or supervise
troops on the ground, and failed to respond to early warning signs of
problems within the prison (see Graham and Ricks, 2004; Smith, 2004;
Taguba, 2004; White and Higham, 2004). Each of these explanations
focuses on the personal failures of individuals within the military (albeit at
ascending hierarchical levels) to act in legal, ethical or moral ways. Each of
these explanations also deflects attention from both the organizational
environment and the environment of the organization within which
abuses occurred.1

In contrast, criminological accounts of corporate and occupational devi-
ance have identified a variety of ways in which deviant behavior by
individuals is shaped by organizational context and processes. Some re-
searchers have focused on power relationships in organizations and how
those relationships can generate deviance (see Vandivier, 1972), others on
how cognitive processes that emerge in organizational settings may pro-
duce deviant behavior (see Kelman and Hamilton, 1989; Gioia, 1992), and
yet others have examined how socialization processes in organizations and
society can lead to the normalization of deviance (Skolnick and Fyfe, 1993;
Hochstetler and Copes, 2001; Crelinsten, 2003). In addition, Vaughan
(1982) has examined how the sheer structural complexity of organizations
may facilitate deviance in organizations, while Jackall (1988) and Pearce
(2001) focused on the relationship between formal control systems in
organizations and organizational deviance.

Theoretical Criminology 10(3)362

Although criminologists recognize the importance of formal organiza-
tions as structures and sites of action, historically based distinctions
between occupational deviance and corporate (or, more broadly, organiza-
tional) deviance continue to obscure the interconnections between these
phenomena. Studies of occupational crime consider the organization as a
context for deviant behavior to explain the decision making and actions of
those within organizations, frequently lower- and mid-level actors. In so
doing, however, they often fail to account for the embedded context of the
organization itself (or at least limit the factors considered, e.g. to economic
conditions) or the possibility that such ‘crime’ may directly or indirectly
enhance organizational effectiveness. Studies of corporate deviance, on the
other hand, begin with the legal fiction of the corporation as ‘individual’
and seek to explain the organization’s deviant actions. This line of work,
however, runs the risk of anthropomorphizing the organization, treating it
as if it had human motivations and capacity to act (Cressey, 1988).
Organizational structure is the product of decisions made by those with the
authority to establish such structure. When viewed in this way, the creation
of structure is as much the product of human agency as is the occupational
crime of lower-level participants. In addition, as Glasberg and Skidmore
have noted, studies of organizational deviance have tended to imply ‘a
focus on the internal structure of the organization itself as if the organiza-
tion exists independently of external forces that might create relations,
processes, and structures within organizations’ (1998: 426). Thus, calls for
definitional clarity in the study of white-collar crime (e.g. Braithwaite,
1985), though well placed, have produced a degree of fragmentation across
levels of analysis.

Rather than hold fast to the distinction between corporate and occupa-
tional crime, the present article considers simultaneously organizations and
the environments of organizations as contexts for human action. Specifi-
cally, we explore the relationship between (1) strategically designed and
implemented structures and (2) deviant and criminal acts perpetrated at
lower levels of the organization. Organizations are more than just in-
cidental or neutral locations where deviant behavior occurs. The role of
organizations, and their leaders and managers, often extends beyond a
failure to do certain things (e.g. monitor, prevent, punish, respond with
sufficient vehemence) to include implementing strategies for formal struc-
ture that facilitate deviance by participants and make such deviance
both predictable and a predicate of organizational ‘success’. Specifically, we
identify how organizations, through aspects of their formal structure
and strategies for eliding this formal structure, play a significant facili-
tating and causal role in the deviance that occurs within them. In this,
our approach parallels Vaughan’s (1982, 1997) multilevel analysis of
organizational deviance. We extend her analysis by offering a more general
theoretical framework that draws on neo-institutional organizational
theory (Meyer and Rowan, 1977; DiMaggio and Powell, 1983, 1991;
Scott, 2001).

Monahan & Quinn—Beyond ‘bad apples’ and ‘weak leaders’ 363

Neo-institutionalist theories conceive of formal organizations as deeply
permeated by broader cultural forces. As Scott argues: ‘Socially constructed
belief and rule systems exercise enormous control over organizations—both
how they are structured and how they carry out their work’ (2003: 120).
Neo-institutionalists thus challenge traditional ideas about the rationality
of organizational structure and call into question whether the primary
purpose of formal structure is to monitor, constrain and evaluate behavior
within organizations. Instead, the theory’s proponents argue that independ-
ent of its technical rationality, organizational structure is institutionalized,
that is, ‘taken for granted as legitimate, apart from evaluation of [its]
impact on work outcomes’ (Meyer and Rowan, 1977: 344). Institution-
alized structures enhance organizational stability by symbolizing, for ex-
ternal constituencies, the organization’s conformity with broader cultural
rules and expectations.

In this article, we examine what actually happens under the cover of
institutionalized structure by focusing on the empirical observation of de-
coupling. When operating in complex and competing institutional (or
‘rule’) environments, organizations are often formally organized so as to
shear structure (the blueprint for organizational action) from action (what
actually happens on the ground). That is, formal statements of how and
why things should be done are decoupled from how they are actually done.
In so doing, organizations satisfy environmental demands by demonstrat-
ing appropriate structure and policies while simultaneously freeing lower-
level employees to effectively and efficiently meet the organization’s
technical goals. Not surprisingly, in decoupled organizations, flexibility—
including the willingness to violate formal rules in the pursuit of organiza-
tional goals—is a highly valued quality among workers (Meyer and
Rowan, 1977). Although organizational sociologists have long known that
informal structure is pervasive in formal organizations (e.g. Selznick, 1948;
Dalton, 1959; Jackall, 1988; Van Maanen, 1991; Scott, 2003), neo-
institutional theory suggests organizational mechanisms by which informal
structure may be systematically linked to formal structure. That is, the
unofficial relationships and patterns of behavior that exist alongside formal
policies and structures may be more than accidental or incidental: they may
be the product of decoupling as a formal organizational strategy.

Previous research on deviance in for-profit organizations has identified
decoupling as a contributing factor, although researchers have not used the
term ‘decoupling’ nor do they connect their arguments to the work of neo-
institutional theorists of organizations. For example, in their independent
discussions of the effects of the ‘finance mode of control’ in organizations,
Jackall (1988) and Pearce (2001) argue that: (1) for-profit organizations
may manage conflicts between imperatives for profit and for adherence to
external regulations and norms by implementing a finance mode of control
where formal responsibility for how work is accomplished is pushed down
the hierarchy; (2) financial information alone is conveyed up the chain of

Theoretical Criminology 10(3)364

command; and (3) workers at the bottom of the hierarchy have flexibility
in how things get done. Pearce concludes that this control strategy:

Explains why so many safety, health and environmental violations are the
effects of the policies of higher management without this necessarily being
traceable to any specific decisions that they have made about product
quality, health and safety. It maximizes the likelihood of ‘willful blindness’
(Wilson, 1979) since it allows those at the top to be ignorant of the activities
of subordinates and to ignore the difficulties that subordinates face.

(Pearce, 2001: 44; see also Braithwaite, 1984; Pearce and Tombs, 1998)

Simply put, when organizational leaders set financial goals for subunits and
set their workers loose to pursue those goals, they encourage norm-
violating behavior while simultaneously buffering themselves from ac-
countability for the actions of lower-level participants. Both Jackall (1988)
and Pearce (2001), however, limit their analysis to the context of for-profit
organizations and to the goal of profit making.

The effects of conflicting norms on individual behavior have also been
extensively developed in the criminological literature. Specifically, strain
theory suggests that non-conformist behavior may result when the achieve-
ment of societal goals is blocked by overly restrictive institutionalized
means (Merton, 1938; Cloward, 1959; Dubin, 1959; Agnew, 1992).
Vaughan (1982, 1997) has argued for the application of strain/anomie
theory to organizational as well as individual behavior. In doing so, she
(1) applies the notion of opportunity structures to organizations; and (2)
advances a reconceptualization of Merton’s distinction between means and
goals—at least in the context of organizational deviance—as ‘scarce re-
sources for which both individuals and organizations compete’ (1997: 98).
In her analysis of the Challenger disaster, Vaughan attributes faulty deci-
sion making at NASA to the larger contradictory environment—what she
labels ‘a triumvirate of conflicting cultural imperatives’ (1997: 113)—in
which NASA operated. In this analysis, Vaughan connects the decision
making of individuals within NASA to the larger cultural environment of
the organization via organizational structures and practices. In an environ-
ment of scarce resources and competition (for contracts, in the case of
NASA contractors, or public funding, in the case of NASA), and conflicting
cultures, ‘organization structure facilitates misconduct as a solution to
blocked opportunities by creating structural secrecy . . . [and by] providing
difficult-to-monitor mechanisms for carrying out illegal acts that conceal
rather than reveal’ (1997: 100).

In this article, we argue that decoupling is a more general process that
plays out in a variety of organizational types (e.g. for-profit organizations,
but also state and professional organizations). In particular, the environ-
ments of organizations may be contradictory in ways that extend beyond
competition for profit or for scarce resources. Neo-institutional theory
offers a general framework in which we may consider organizations as
contexts and also the context of organizations, or what we term the

Monahan & Quinn—Beyond ‘bad apples’ and ‘weak leaders’ 365

embedded context of organizations. This approach provides a general
framework in which to simultaneously consider (1) the macro-level contra-
dictions faced by organizations; (2) how such conflicting norms shape
organizational structures (usually via the actions of upper-level organiza-
tional actors); and (3) how such structures influence individual behavior.

More specifically, we explore how organizational structure mediates
between the larger rule environment and organizational participants, and
how particular structural arrangements arrived at by the conscious choices
of managers, executives and leaders facilitate flexible, and sometimes
deviant, responses by organizational participants to conflicted institutional
environments. In such structures, rule-breaking behavior is to be expected.
By explicitly linking macro-level rule environments, organizational struc-
ture and participant behavior, we challenge explanations for deviance in
organizations that presume neutrality on the part of the organizational
structure and those who design and implement that structure.

In developing this general framework of organizational deviance we
draw on two disparate empirical cases: (1) the abuses by American military
personnel at the prison in Abu Ghraib; and (2) the falsification of intern-
ship records by architects-in-training. Using these cases—usefully aligned
on opposite ends of the spectrum of severity and notoriety—we illustrate
how deviance is produced by organizations when the organization de-
couples structure from action. In particular, we examine: (1) organizational
strategies that simultaneously elaborate and trivialize formal structure as a
social control mechanism; (2) behaviors on the part of individual partici-
pants (including formal rule violations) that occur in, and contribute to the
effectiveness of, organizations facing complex and competing institutional
environments; and (3) the complex environment in which organizations
exist that influences the extent to which structure is decoupled from action
in organizations.

The cases: Abu Ghraib prison and architectural
internship

Abu Ghraib

The Abu Ghraib prison abuses came to light in the spring of 2004 when
photographs, taken in the autumn of 2003, of Iraqi prisoners being abused
by American soldiers were nationally televised on 60 Minutes II. By that
time, numerous investigations of the prison abuses had been completed or
were underway, including investigations by the International Red Cross
and US Army General Antonio Taguba (ultimately released as the Taguba
Report). Congressional hearings followed during the summer of 2004.
Explanations for the deviant behavior varied from ‘bad apple’ prison
guards to prison guards claiming to be ‘following orders’ to ‘poor leader-
ship’ by superior military officers. The Abu Ghraib prison was but one of
numerous prisons set up in Iraq following the American occupation.2

Theoretical Criminology 10(3)366

Formally, the prisons were under the command of Brig. Gen. Janis
Karpinski who oversaw the Military Police Units that established and
maintained the prison system. The prisons, however, had dual functions:
they housed Iraqi prisoners who were under the control of US Military
Police and were the sites of prisoner interrogations on the part of
Military Intelligence and civilian contractors. And, crucial to our argument,
the chain of command of the latter did not coincide with that of the former
(Cha and McCarthy, 2004; Cha and Merle, 2004; Higham et al., 2004;
Smith and White, 2004). We will argue that this convoluted chain of
command—a product of organizational decoupling more than bad man-
agement or poor planning—along with other structural arrangements
provided a facilitating organizational context for the abuses at Abu Ghraib.
Data on the Abu Ghraib prison abuses were drawn from published
news accounts as well as publicly available reports of investigations into
the abuses.

Architecture’s Intern Development Program (IDP)

After graduation from architecture school, budding architects in the USA
are required to complete approximately 5600 hours of work experience in
16 different areas of architectural practice before they can take the
Architectural Registration Exam (ARE), the final step in the process of
becoming a registered architect. To qualify, work experience must be
acquired in an appropriate setting, typically in an architectural firm under
the supervision of a registered architect. IDP, a formal program run by the
National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB), tracks
the amount and types of work experience of these graduates and certifies to
state registration boards when an intern is qualified to take the ARE.
Interns document their work experience by submitting training records
(‘Training Unit Reports’), whose accuracy is verified by their architect-
supervisors, to NCARB’s national office.

A 1998 evaluation of the IDP, commissioned by NCARB and conducted
by the second author and an architecture school colleague, found that
falsification of ‘Training Unit Reports’ sent to NCARB was a widely known
and accepted practice, and that the profession of architecture was largely
indifferent to the practice (Quinn and Monahan, 2001; Monahan and
Quinn, 2002; Quinn, 2003). Our data on the falsification in the IDP
are drawn from data from this evaluation and our observations of
its aftermath.3

Analysis

At first glance, these cases seem incomparable in significance and context.
We would suggest, however, that our argument is strengthened by finding
similar structures and outcomes in seemingly incomparable settings.
Notably, even in their apparent differences, these two cases share im-

Monahan & Quinn—Beyond ‘bad apples’ and ‘weak leaders’ 367

portant structural features. Both are instances of deviance within highly
elaborated and formalized bureaucratic structures. In both cases, the
bureaucratic structures serve primarily symbolic functions rather than the
technical function of controlling participant behavior. Lastly, and im-
portantly, in both cases, organizational structure buffers lower-level partici-
pants and their activities from the pressures created by large, competing
social institutions and actors, thus creating the context for organizational
deviance.

Decoupled organizational structure

Decoupling is the organizational practice of disconnecting structure
from action (Meyer and Rowan, 1977; Scott, 2003). Classical theories of
bureaucracy presumed that organizational structure served as a form
of social control, creating organizational structures that control, co-
ordinate, monitor and evaluate individual workers in an ongoing way
(Taylor, 1911; Weber, 1947 [1924]). Empirical research since the late
1960s suggests, however, that these theories overstated the technical func-
tions of organizational structure, and reveals that organizational structure
is often ‘institutionalized’ (i.e. directly reflective of the institutional environ-
ment of the organization), primarily symbolic in its effects, and ‘decoupled’
from practice within the organization (for an early example, see Meyer
et al., 1981).

Deviance and strategies for decoupling

The strategy for decoupling—separating structure from action—adopted in
an organization is contingent upon the symbolic capital the organization
holds. Symbolic capital refers to claims made by the organization and their
social value; this is akin to what Sutherland (1949) referred to as ‘goodwill’
developed and nurtured by organizations. When strong claims are made
and trusted by the public, the organization accrues value from its symbolic
capital. The military’s symbolic capital rests on its claims to a clear chain of
command and formalized standard operating procedures; architecture’s
symbolic capital rests on its claims to professionalism. When decoupling
occurs—usually because of contradictions in the organization’s
environment—symbolic capital is emphasized in public claims and its
veracity generally goes unquestioned even if activity within the organiza-
tion deviates from the stated formal structure. We suggest that in these
situations, organizations, via their participants, are positioned to commit
organizational deviance (see also Biderman and Reiss, 1967).

Because their symbolic capital differs, different techniques are used in
Abu Ghraib prison and architecture’s IDP program to decouple organiza-
tional structure from activity. For the prison, flexibility at the ground level
was achieved via convoluted reporting lines (ironic in an organization that
publicly extols the virtues of a clear chain of command), vague and
conflicting statements of policies and procedures, and underground prac-

Theoretical Criminology 10(3)368

tices that existed alongside official practices. These activities took place
behind the symbolic curtain of clear chains of command and formalized
standard operating procedures. For architecture’s IDP, flexibility at the
ground level was effected through a combination of geographically dis-
persed training sites and a highly formalized and nationally centralized
reporting system. Falsification in architecture also takes place behind a
symbolic curtain, but in this case, the curtain consists of ‘guarantees’ by
supposedly trustworthy architectural professionals whose word is not
questioned, what Meyer and Rowan (1977) refer to as ‘the logic of
confidence and good faith’.

Deviance in the Abu Ghraib prison

In his 2004 report, General Antonio Taguba identified a range of inten-
tional abuses perpetrated by military police at Abu Ghraib:

. . . Punching, slapping, and kicking detainees; jumping on their naked feet

. . . Forcibly arranging detainees in various sexually explicit positions for
photographing . . . Forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping
them naked for several days at a time . . . Forcing naked male detainees to
wear women’s underwear . . . Forcing groups of male detainees to mas-
turbate themselves while being photographed and videotaped . . . Arranging
naked male detainees in a pile and then jumping on them . . . Positioning a
naked detainee on a MRE Box, with a sandbag on his head, and attaching
wires to his fingers, toes, and penis to simulate electric torture . . . Writing ‘I
am a Rapest’ (sic) on the leg of a detainee alleged to have forcibly raped a
15-year old fellow detainee, and then photographing him naked . . . Placing
a dog chain or strap around a naked detainee’s neck and having a female
soldier pose for a picture . . . A male MP guard having sex with a female
detainee . . . Using military working dogs (without muzzles) to intimidate
and frighten detainees, and in at least one case biting and severely injuring
a detainee.

Clearly, the activities at Abu Ghraib prison violated various formal norms,
both domestic and international, regarding the treatment of war prisoners.
Such diverse groups as the International Red Cross, Amnesty International,
Human Rights Watch, the FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Coali-
tion’s Provisional Authority and the State Department issued reports and
warnings about the divergence of prison practices from those allowed
by the Geneva Convention as well as standard military protocol
(Chandrasekaran and Wilson, 2004; Gellman and Smith, 2004; Higham
and Stevens, 2004; Slevin, 2004; Slevin and Wright, 2004; White, 2004;
Wright and Kessler, 2004).

Decoupling at Abu Ghraib prison

We suggest that these deviant practices were not simply the result of bad
apples or various forms of failed leadership—all individual-level

Monahan & Quinn—Beyond ‘bad apples’ and ‘weak leaders’ 369

explanations—but were empowered, so to speak, by structural arrange-
ments at the prison. A reading of official reports, the news coverage and
published statements from various military officials indicates a number of
ways in which the prison was structured so as to increase flexibility at
lower levels. First, a formal decision on 19 November 2003 by Lt. Gen.
Ricardo Sanchez altered the chain of command at the prison, shifting
authority over the prison guards from Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski (com-
mander of the 800th Military Police Brigade) to Col. Thomas Pappas
(commander of the 205th Military Intelligence Unit) (Graham and Ricks,
2004; Smith and White, 2004). The shift was particularly significant, given
the disparate missions of Military Intelligence and Military Police: Taguba
[in his 2004 report] said the move, ordered by Sanchez, ‘violated Army
doctrine by making military police subordinate to interrogators’ (Graham
and Ricks, 2004: A01), a move that was problematic ‘due to the different
missions and agenda assigned to each of these respective specialties’
(Taguba quoted in Smith and White, 2004: A01). An earlier inspection
report by Maj. Gen. Donald J. Ryder, dated 6 November 2003, concurred
with Taguba’s assessment, finding that allowing MPs to ‘actively set
favorable conditions for subsequent interviews runs counter to the smooth
operation of a detention facility’ (Higham et al., 2004). Taguba found that
as a result of this shift in command ‘coordination occurred at the lowest
possible levels with little oversight by commanders’ (Taguba quoted in
Smith and White, 2004: A01). Despite the change in command, Pentagon
officials (specifically, Undersecretary of Defense Stephen Cambone) ‘de-
fended the decision, saying it was intended to improve prison management
and did not mean military police operations came under the control of
military intelligence officers’ (Graham and Ricks, 2004: A01).

Other chain of command issues were raised by the presence and activity
of civilian contractors in the prison. In his report, Taguba recommended
reprimands for two civilian contractors involved in the Abu Ghraib prison
abuses, and raised questions about whether civilian contractors working
with military intelligence in the prison were issuing orders to military police
personnel (Cha and McCarthy, 2004). Through ‘outsourcing’ the military
has blurred the lines between military and civilian personnel, and injected
independent and largely unregulated individuals into the military setting:

Contractors typically have no formal authority to manage military person-
nel and many consider themselves partners or advisers. In practice, however,
soldiers say contractors may exert tremendous influence on the rank and file
because of their technical expertise and because they are often brought in to
work with high-level military officials. Their presence, some argue, has
complicated what used to be a clear chain of command.

(Cha and Merle, 2004: A01)

Behind the symbolic curtain of a clear chain of command, the organiza-
tional reality on the ground is opaque, and within the reality of a
convoluted and unclear chain of command, the prison abuses occurred.

Theoretical Criminology 10(3)370

The Abu Ghraib prison also operated under ambiguous and constantly
shifting policies and procedures regarding the treatment of prisoners. An
Army report released 25 August 2004 identified unclear policies as one
cause of the prison abuses:

Army Gen. Paul J. Kern—who oversaw the drafting of the report—said in
an interview . . . that Sanchez ‘wrote a policy which was not clear,’ and that
by doing so, he allowed junior officers to conclude mistakenly that they were
following an official policy as they stepped over a legal line.

(Smith, 2004: A01, emphasis added)

Other official documents contributed to the ambiguity, including a memo
signed by Donald Rumsfeld that ‘authorized harsh interrogation methods
for prisoners at Guantanamo’ and another memo, signed by US President
Bush, that ‘declared that fighters detained in Afghanistan were not entitled
as a matter of law to the protections afforded by the Geneva Conventions’
(Smith, 2004: A01). Kern’s report concluded that senior military officers
‘didn’t clarify for those young interrogators what their responsibilities
were’ (quoted in Smith 2004: A01, emphasis added). In the absence of clear
guidelines, numerous violations of both Army rules and Geneva Conven-
tions were perpetrated by low-level military personnel: ‘the use of dogs to
frighten detainees, the repeated stripping of detainees, and the use of
extended isolation and sensory deprivation’ (Smith, 2004: A01).

Of particular note are the informal channels by which policies approved
for use at Guantanamo Bay migrated to the prison system in Iraq. After a
visit to Iraq by Lt. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the commander at Guantanamo
Bay, ‘some of these [questionable] tactics—including the use of dogs—were
incorporated in a memo drafted by Sanchez’s legal office on Sept. 10
and sent to prison interrogators’ (Smith, 2004: A01). Rather than being
official and established, rules and regulations were in flux, unclear and
migratory.4

Taguba (2004) also identified another set of policies and procedures, the
designation and treatment of ghost detainees, as problematic:

The various detention facilities operated by the 800th MP Brigade have
routinely held persons brought to them by Other Government Agencies
(OGAs) without accounting for them, knowing their identities, or even the
reason for their detention. The Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center
(JIDC) at Abu Ghraib called these detainees ‘ghost detainees.’ On at least
one occasion, the 320th MP Battalion at Abu Ghraib held a handful of
‘ghost detainees’ (6–8) for OGAs that they moved around within the facility
to hide them from a visiting International Committee of the Red Cross
(ICRC) survey team. This maneuver was deceptive, contrary to Army
Doctrine, and in violation of international law.

The term ‘ghost detainees’ is evocative: the designation and treatment
of ‘ghost detainees’ are practices that occur locally within military units
while hiding behind the symbolic curtain of standard operating procedures
and policies.

Monahan & Quinn—Beyond ‘bad apples’ and ‘weak leaders’ 371

Through these strategies for decoupling, the military leveraged its
symbolic capital—clear chains of command, formalized standard operating
procedures—while simultaneously allowing for substantial flexibility and
innovation in day-to-day practice. The potential for flexibility, often framed
as cooperation or close relations between personnel from structurally
distinct units, was valued by high-ranking Pentagon and military of-
ficials including Stephen Cambone and Geoffrey Miller (Higham et al.,
2004). In practice, it sometimes took the form of abuse and torture of
Iraqi prisoners.

Deviance within the IDP program

The 1998 evaluation of IDP found that falsification of Training Unit
Reports was a widely known and accepted practice. We define falsification
as lying on official documents about experience, education or training. This
is a more limited understanding than Shapiro’s exposition of lying in the
context of white-collar crime—‘misrepresentations, deception, exaggera-
tion, omission, distortion, fabrication or falsification of information by
those in position of trust’ (1990: 351) in that we focus on such acts with
respect to official documents. None the less, the typology of falsification
that emerges from our data on architectural internships reflects all of the
forms of ‘lying’ that Shapiro identified.

Analysis of participant responses to open-ended survey questions un-
covered four types of falsification, all of which center on the Training Unit
Report form, the mechanism in IDP that links local architectural practices
to NCARB’s national-level certification process (Quinn and Hill, 2000;
Quinn, 2003). First, interns may circumvent the requirements for diverse
work experience by misrepresenting the content of their work through
‘creative categorization’. This occurs, for example, when interns report
time spent on easily obtained construction drawings as experience in an
area where it is more difficult to gain experience, such as design work.
Second, interns may circumvent duration and training setting requirements
by filing Training Unit Reports for experience gained during a period of
employment too short to meet the duration requirement or for an employer
who does not meet the training setting requirement. Third, interns may
‘pad’ their Training Units by reporting more units than actually worked in
an area where it is difficult to gain experience. Ten units become fifteen,
thirty-two are rounded off to forty. Similarly, interns may ‘pre-report’ by
claiming credit for experience not yet gained but expected in the future, or
completely fabricate significant portions of experience. The fourth form of
falsification—the forgery of a supervisor’s signature—is ancillary to the
other forms. Interns forge signatures out of administrative expediency or,
more seriously, to hide other forms of falsification.

The surveys revealed that practicing architects and others in the pro-
fession, such as board administrators, know that falsification occurs. This
was particularly evident in practitioner concerns about the absence of

Theoretical Criminology 10(3)372

external verification of intern-submitted forms. None the less, few practi-
tioners were themselves willing to police the process, and in some cases,
practitioners admitted that they too participated in falsification by signing
forms they knew to be exaggerated or otherwise inaccurate. In all, it
appears that interns, firms and the profession circumvent, re-create,
justify and ‘massage’ messy and complex day-to-day work experience
into a formalized system of reporting that bears questionable resemblance
to reality.

But why? Unlike the canonical profession of medicine, architecture is
marked by low profit margins, fluctuating demand for services and no
centralized institutions to serve as training sites (diverse and geographically
dispersed firms versus medicine’s teaching hospitals). These environmental
conditions make it difficult for the profession to provide a consistent and
coherent internship program, especially when interns are most effectively
used on high volume, repetitive tasks such as construction drawings. The
symbolic imperatives inherent in being a profession, however, demand it
(Boyer and Mitgang, 1996; Quinn, 2003).

Decoupling in architecture’s IDP

Falsification in the IDP is facilitated by architecture’s mechanism for
reporting and certifying training units, the Training Unit Report that is
completed by architectural interns, signed by registered architects and
accepted as documentation of completed work by NCARB. This report
bridges the geographic distance between local architectural firms and
NCARB; the integrity of the report, suspect given the lack of monitoring of
local activity by a nationally-based organization, is assured by the certify-
ing local professional architect.

Although the reporting mechanism links the local to the national via a
report of work experience, only the report is actually observed by NCARB.
The work itself is ‘performed beyond the purview of managers’ (Meyer and
Rowan, 1977: 357), and is vouched for by local professionals who are
trusted to act in the best interests of the profession and society. When
recorded in documents at the national level, the work experience becomes
‘real’, whether or not it really was performed. Falsification exists at the
nexus of the local and the national, when the local communicates with
the national and establishes an official record that becomes the reality
of the profession. Falsification works in decoupled systems because it is
performed by those—in architecture’s case, architects and budding
architects—who are trusted to act honorably even in the absence of
regulation or monitoring. This is a classic example of ‘the logic of good
faith and confidence’ (Meyer and Rowan, 1977: 357).

Thus, in IDP, structure (the recording of training units) is decoupled from
action on the ground (the acquisition of actual work experience) via a

Monahan & Quinn—Beyond ‘bad apples’ and ‘weak leaders’ 373

system of tracking internship hours and experience that relies upon opti-
mistic, perhaps even naı̈ve, assumptions about the good behavior of interns
and architect-supervisors. As one 25-year-old architectural intern put it:

[H]ow hard is it to get your employer to sign off on something that you
haven’t done? That’s one question this questionnaire failed to ask. It’s
anonymous so why not ask some tough questions, i.e. how often have you
lied or cheated on filling out the time sheet?

Commonalities

Despite these disparate strategies for decoupling, Abu Ghraib prison and
architecture’s IDP share three common qualities. First, in both cases, the
organization faces sharply conflicting environmental pressures that are
resolved via decoupling. Second, the military hierarchy and architecture’s
professional organizations do little to monitor or audit the activities of
lower-level participants. Third, in both cases, high-ranking officials in the
organization respond to accusations of participant deviance with indif-
ference about the systemic forces that might facilitate or generate deviant
behavior. That is, they resist looking to the organization itself for an
explanation of deviance.

Conflicting environmental norms

Decoupling occurs most commonly in organizations that face complex and
conflicted institutional environments (Meyer and Rowan, 1977), and it
allows the organization and its leaders to manage conflicting expectations
by signaling its adherence to societal norms while simultaneously retaining
the ability to effectively accomplish work (Meyer and Rowan, 1977; Scott,
2003). In decoupled organizations, ‘institutionalized’ organizational struc-
tures are adopted, where bureaucracy is deeply permeated by cognitive,
normative and legal expectations from the environment. Highly institution-
alized structures may, however, interfere with the organization’s on-the-
ground effectiveness. Under those conditions, Meyer and Rowan (1977)
argue, the organization and its leaders face a dilemma: adhere to environ-
mental expectations at the expense of performance or reject the en-
vironmental demands at the expense of legitimacy. The strategy of
decoupling allows organizations to have it both ways: the institutionalized
structure is a symbolic display, while action within the organization
proceeds largely independently from the structure. That independent
action—the ‘domains of discretion, flexibility and individual initiative’
(Scott, 2003: 284)—is one locus of deviance that occurs within organiza-
tions. Although not all ‘discretionary’ activity is necessarily deviance,
deviance is a predictable and even productive response to such institution-
alized structures. Consequently, the dismay of organizational executives
and managers, when they profess surprise at such deviance, should be read
with caution and perhaps cynicism. Meyer and Rowan put it clearly:

Theoretical Criminology 10(3)374

[In institutionalized organizations] human relations are made very im-
portant. The organization cannot formally coordinate activities because its
formal rules, if applied, would generate inconsistencies. Therefore indi-
viduals are left to work out technical interdependencies informally. The
ability to coordinate things in violation of the rules—that is, to get along
with other people—is highly valued.

(1977: 357)

In the case of the Abu Ghraib prison, the conflicting norms coming from
military intelligence, on the one hand, and human rights groups and
treaties, on the other, were resolved via ritualization of organizational
structure and the implementation of an explicit organizational strategy of
increasing the flexibility of and cooperation among workers on the ground.
Structurally, control of the prison guards was removed from Brig. Gen.
Janis Karpinski and shifted over to military intelligence personnel (Taguba,
2004); operationally, the goal was to increase cooperative activity at lower
levels (i.e. between prison guards and interrogators):

Karpinski recalled that [Col.] Miller told her he wanted to ‘Gitmo-ize’ the
prison . . . the concept has been misunderstood, and [according to Under-
secretary of Defense Stephen Cambone] all the Pentagon had in mind was ‘a
cooperative attitude, team-building, call it what you will, between’ in-
telligence interrogators and military police to produce more and better
information.

(Smith and White, 2004: A01)

General Taguba’s report concluded that, at Abu Ghraib, ‘coordination
occurred at the lowest possible levels with little oversight by commanders’
(quoted in Smith and White, 2004: A01), a situation that is typical of
decoupled organizations. Accommodation to the conflicting environmental
pressures thus occurs at two levels: (1) at the lowest levels of the military,
where military police ‘cooperate’ with military intelligence on the ground,
but also (2) at higher levels of the military, through its establishment of
structural arrangements that facilitate such cooperation on the ground.
Most of the attention, however, is focused on low-level actors who engaged
in disturbing and reprehensible behavior at the expense of an analysis of
the decisions about structure that facilitated the deviance.

In the case of architecture’s IDP, pressures toward professionalization
conflict with market pressures toward efficiency: that is, architects seek to
legitimize themselves as autonomous and self-regulating professionals (and
having a formal internship is a symbol of this) while simultaneously
pursuing profit in a competitive market of architects and others (e.g.
structural engineers) with a claim to design buildings (Guttman, 1988;
Cuff, 1992; Boyer and Mitgang, 1996). This conflict forces architectural
interns to get ‘double-duty’ from their work in that they have to simultane-
ously satisfy NCARB’s requirements for quantity and distribution of work
experience and still produce profit for the firms that employ them. De-
coupling occurs as a result of this conflict. The reporting mechanism for

Monahan & Quinn—Beyond ‘bad apples’ and ‘weak leaders’ 375

IDP is ritualized—a highly formalized and complex system that tracks and
ultimately reifies data of questionable quality. This allows architectural
firms to use interns in the most economically profitable way, a response to
market pressures, while simultaneously allowing interns to accumulate
evidence of sufficient training units to sit for the Architectural Registration
Exam, a response to pressures toward professionalization. As one intern
astutely noted, ‘IDP record keeping is wonderful if one can feel comfortable
looking at it flexibly.’ Both interns and architects understand the flaws of
the system, but also its advantages. Accommodation to the conflicting
environmental pressures is again made at two levels: (1) at the lowest levels
of the profession, by interns and their architect-supervisors, through their
falsification of records in order to simultaneously satisfy the market and
the profession, and (2) at the highest levels of the profession, through the
structural features of the IDP program that itself facilitates falsification.

Absence of effective monitoring of activities

Organizational leaders can maintain the façade that formal structure
accurately reflects action only if they do not examine too closely what
actually happens on the ground. Too much internal attention to in-
stitutionalized requirements can, after all, lead to gross inefficiencies; that is
the problem solved by decoupling. Thus, minimal or ceremonial inspection
and evaluation is a hallmark of decoupled organizations (Meyer and
Rowan, 1977). The first line of attack is minimal evaluation or evaluation
that is suspect because it is conducted by internal actors in the tradition of
professional (be it architecture or military) self-regulation. IDP could be
monitored via NCARB audits of Training Unit Reports; this does not,
however, happen. There is no mechanism for auditing the accuracy of
Training Unit Records; once certified by local architects, veracity of reports
is assumed. In the case of Abu Ghraib prison, the evaluation that took
place was internal and remained secret for quite a while. Thus, an internal
report by General Ryder (whose findings were partially disputed by the
later Taguba, 2004, report) and a series of reports from the International
Red Cross (Slevin and Wright, 2004) were not made public until after the
scandal broke in the mainstream press. That said, Taguba’s report was
publicly released upon its completion, breaking with the military’s string of
secretive, internal, ceremonialized monitoring.

In addition to minimal and internal evaluation, there was also little
accountability for problematic behavior when it was identified. This
speaks to the organizational leaders’ strategies for responding, or not, to
being ‘outed’ for deviant behavior in the ranks. In the months leading up to
the Abu Ghraib prison abuse, Taguba found that, ‘After escapes, follow-up
and accountability were lacking. Investigations into escapes were “rubber-
stamped” and approved by Karpinski, but there was no evidence that any
of the general’s orders for changes were followed’ (Higham et al.,
2004: A01).

Theoretical Criminology 10(3)376

Similarly, in architecture’s IDP, NCARB did not establish any official
penalties for falsification. Findings from the initial surveys and a small
follow-up survey that queried directly about falsification show that it was
widely known that IDP ‘has no teeth’ (in the words of a current intern) and
most interns know there are few consequences for falsifying records. As
one intern noted, ‘there are no checks, no penalties, no way to get caught’.
When asked in the follow-up survey what NCARB might do if it caught
someone falsifying records, 31 percent thought the individual would simply
be asked to re-submit an accurate form. Less than 10 percent of interns
surveyed thought a serious penalty would be assessed, such as having hours
denied, being suspended or being kicked out of the program. In both cases,
the relatively empty regulatory environment increases the likelihood of
deviance, especially in the context of conditions of strain and cultural
definitions in favor of deviance.

Minimal or ceremonial monitoring is particularly easy to implement
when work is done outside the presence of managers. Although Brig. Gen.
Janis Karpinski commanded Abu Ghraib prison until 19 November 2003,
Taguba’s 2004 report found that she rarely visited the prison, especially
after the insurgency exploded. Instead, she supervised the prison from the
Baghdad Airport (Higham et al., 2004). Similarly, NCARB’s IDP tracks
intern hours in various tasks at a great geographic distance, keeping
records in Washington DC for work accomplished in local architecture
firms around the country. Although geographic distance need not produce
weak monitoring, it certainly facilitates it.

Confronted with deviance: the response

Deviance is the dirty secret of decoupled organizations. That is, to effec-
tively function in an environment with conflicting norms, workers engage
in innovation, cooperation or flexible behavior, each of which can fairly
easily cross the line into deviance. Given this, it is not surprising that
leaders of decoupled organizations resist self-inspection and, more sig-
nificantly, change in organizational structures or procedures. Their resist-
ance draws from two domains: (1) the sheer efficiency of deviant behavior
impels the organization to ignore or trivialize it, and (2) the obvious
availability of a deviant actor on whom to pin blame allows the organiza-
tion to deflect criticism. We see both in the IDP and Abu Ghraib cases.

Overall, there is significant evidence that warning signs of trouble in Abu
Ghraib were systematically ignored or glossed over by the military. The In-
ternational Red Cross, other human rights organizations, the FBI, the
Defense Intelligence Agency, the Coalition’s Provisional Authority and even
the State Department sent out early warnings of potential problems in the
prison (see Chandrasekaran and Wilson, 2004; Gellman and Smith, 2004;
Higham and Stevens, 2004; Slevin, 2004; Slevin and Wright, 2004; White,
2004; Wright and Kessler, 2004). By all accounts, nothing changed and no
one was punished as a result of these reports, another hallmark of

Monahan & Quinn—Beyond ‘bad apples’ and ‘weak leaders’ 377

decoupled organizations. Once the allegations of abuse became public,
individuals—Military Police, commanders—were blamed for their indivi-
dual deviant behavior, thus deflecting attention from the wider systemic
issues that shaped the deviant behavior. Individual ‘bad apples’ and ‘poor
leadership’ became convenient scapegoats for deeply entrenched organiza-
tional strategies and processes.

Similarly, despite a thorough dissemination of the research findings with
respect to falsification among architectural interns (e.g. Hill and Quinn,
1998; Mitgang, 1999; Quinn, 2003) and seemingly genuine concern of
leaders in the profession, these findings have had little impact on the
structure and administration of IDP. NCARB has instituted some internal
monitoring of the Training Unit Report forms, but it is unclear how a
process conducted within the confines of NCARB’s Washington office will
be able to detect falsification originating in geographically dispersed
architectural firms. No processes of independent verification (e.g. auditing
firm records) have been implemented. The NCARB board did pass a
resolution attaching some penalties to confirmed acts of falsification, but
little effort has been made to make them known to interns and their
employers. For example, sanctions for falsification of IDP forms are not
directly mentioned in the official IDP Handbook. Tellingly, the recom-
mendations of the Collateral Internship Task Force—an ad hoc committee
charged with addressing the problems of internship and who had access to
the findings of the evaluation—make no mention of the problem of
falsification (Czarnecki, 2001).

Conclusion

There is no doubt that torturing prisoners of war and lying on documenta-
tion about professional training are bad acts. These bad acts are, however,
the product of strain produced by a conflicted institutional environment
and the interrelationship of organizational and individual responses to that
strain. Popular explanations for deviance in organizations focus on in-
dividuals (e.g. the bad apples, the failed leaders) and their malfeasant or
negligent behavior. As previous sociological research has found, however,
individuals who engage in deviant behavior are often influenced by power
relationships, cognitive processes or socialization processes within the
organization (see Vandivier, 1972; Kelman and Hamilton, 1989; Gioia,
1992; Skolnick and Fyfe, 1993; Crelinsten, 2003). We add to the discussion
about deviance and organizational context by proposing a general theoreti-
cal frame for examining how formal organizational structure—specifically,
decoupling—facilitates and obscures participant deviance, and how formal
structures are influenced by a complexity of external environmental factors
(beyond simply economics and state policy making). That is, our analysis
of the cases of Abu Ghraib prison and architecture’s IDP program allows us
to identify a variety of specific structural practices—opaque and convoluted

Theoretical Criminology 10(3)378

reporting mechanisms, work done outside the view of management, the
logic of confidence and good faith, ambiguous and constantly shifting
policies and procedures, avoidance of inspection and evaluation—by which
ignorance at the top of an organization is created and maintained while
discretion, flexibility and innovation at lower levels is facilitated. Although
our analysis describes the occupational deviance of lower-level workers, the
lens of neo-institutional theory clarifies how these seemingly informal
practices are connected to and indeed the product of formal structure and
practice, including decoupling.

As Merton (1938) first noted, there are a variety of responses to
mismatched cultural goals and institutionalized means. Innovation as a
form of deviance gets the most attention, but there are other deviant
responses including retreatism and ritualism. Interestingly, when applied to
organizationally bounded behavior, a kind of ‘functional specialization’
may emerge between the organization and its participants, where structure
is ritualized and so facilitates innovative individual responses. The response
to conflicting environmental norms is a complex interplay between the
organization and its actors, neither independent of the other and neither
alone a sufficient explanation for organizational deviance.

These disparate cases illustrate that decoupling is not specific to for-profit
organizations, but may be a more general organizational innovation in
situations of environmental contradiction. Decoupling is a strategy for
balancing the demands for organizational effectiveness with the organiza-
tion’s need for external legitimacy. Effectiveness, however, means different
things in different contexts (e.g. profit in market-driven contexts, quantity
of interrogations or control of prisoners in military contexts). Across such
contexts, however, decoupling is a commonly used strategy to negotiate
environmental contradictions. Thus, decoupling takes different forms in
different types of organizations (e.g. state organizations, professional
organizations), but its effects are the same: decoupling facilitates deviance.
Given the mundaneness of decoupling in organizations, deviance in organ-
izations is strikingly normal and predictable. This is powerfully illustrated
through our comparison of the serious and highly publicized abuses of
Abu Ghraib to the more mundane and obscure acts of architectural interns.
This suggests that what happened in the former might be a result of more
than the operation of torture regimes (Crelinsten, 2003). In a contemporary
twist on Hannah Arendt’s (1963) notion of ‘the banality of evil’, these
horrendous acts of torture may find their roots in a mundane structural
problem faced by many organizations in complex and contradictory
environments.

Neo-institutional theory also helps account for organizational reactions
and inaction when deviance is uncovered. As Pearce (2001) noted, decoup-
ling creates plausible deniability for organizational leaders. That is, organi-
zational decision makers can deflect attention from structure, practices and
even policies by focusing on the lower-level participants who personally
engage in deviant behavior. The scapegoats are clearly identified in the

Monahan & Quinn—Beyond ‘bad apples’ and ‘weak leaders’ 379

cases we explored: Military Police officers who engage in prisoner abuse,
military leaders who fail to adequately train or supervise personnel,
architectural interns who lie on Training Unit Reports and architects who
certify documents they know have been falsified. The formal structures that
facilitate deviance, however, remain intact and largely unquestioned.5

Focusing on the organizational structures within which deviance occurs
leads to a set of questions that move beyond ‘who is to blame?’ When the
broader environment consists of competing or conflicting norms, organiza-
tional leaders and managers respond with structural arrangements that
simultaneously absorb those conflicts and become the context for deviance.
The organization effects a sort of buffering of lower-level workers from the
environment by offering sufficient flexibility—in the absence of serious
monitoring—to accomplish work. When deviance is detected, however, this
buffering (i.e., the distancing) may be employed against these lower-level
actors as it is now the organization and its leaders who are protected from
blame by the process of decoupling and the scapegoating that ensues. In
this is embedded the central dynamic of organizational decoupling: that
deviance is normalized as long as it is invisible, and disavowed when it
comes to light.

These findings have profound implications for policies aimed at correct-
ing and preventing these forms of deviance in organizations. To begin to
address these conundrums, we must move beyond demonstrating how
white-collar crime differs from other forms of crime (Schlegel and
Weisburn, 1993). Indeed, it may be more productive to dispense with the
term white-collar crime altogether and turn instead to the study of organi-
zationally bounded deviance. Such an approach elides some of the persist-
ent problems in white-collar crime research (see Braithwaite, 1985) by
moving beyond considerations of the occupational role of individuals or a
fictitious agency of organizations. Neo-institutional theory provides the
conceptual tools to effect an integrated, cross-level analysis of the em-
bedded context of organizations and the organizational embeddedness of
‘deviant’ individuals.

Notes

An earlier version of this article was presented in April 2005 at the Pacific
Sociological Association’s Annual Meeting in Portland, OR. The authors
acknowledge the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards
(NCARB) for its support of the Intern Development Program (IDP) study, the
late Pamela Hill who served as Co-PI for the IDP study, Montana State
University for its support of Professor Quinn’s sabbatical leave, the Institute of
Legal Studies at the University of Wisconsin Law School which hosted Pro-
fessor Quinn during the writing of this article, and Susan Will, David Boyns,
Leslie Crismond and three anonymous reviewers for very helpful comments on
this article.

Theoretical Criminology 10(3)380

1. Note, however, that an early International Red Cross analysis did identify
‘system’ problems (Slevin, 2004).

2. In an unfortunate historic parallel, the Abu Ghraib prison was on the site of
a notoriously brutal prison under the regime of Saddam Hussein.

3. For a description of the research methodology, see Quinn (2003).
4. There is an uncomfortable issue lurking in the background—beyond the

scope of the present article—and that is the question of the particular form
these tactics took. Historian Alfred McCoy (e.g. 2005) argues that the
pictures from Abu Ghraib could serve as illustrations for a CIA inter-
rogation manual that has been in circulation since the Cold War. While he
offers no structural explanation for why the abuses occurred, he argues that
their cultural form was influenced by these age-old and—interestingly,
largely ineffective—interrogation tactics.

5. Interestingly, the believability of these scapegoating accounts may be
strengthened by the broader ethos of individualism and anti-structuralism
that pervades American culture.

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SUSANNE MONAHAN and BETH QUINN are Associate Professors of
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Monahan & Quinn—Beyond ‘bad apples’ and ‘weak leaders’ 385

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The Effect of Organizational Forces on Individual Morality: Judgment, Moral Approbation,
and Behavior
Author(s): Thomas M. Jones and Lori Verstegen Ryan
Source: Business Ethics Quarterly, Vol. 8, No. 3, Psychological and Pedagogical Issues in
Business Ethics (Jul., 1998), pp. 431-445
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3857430
Accessed: 30-01-2020 08:50 UTC

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THE EFFECT OF ORGANIZATIONAL FORCES
ON INDIVIDUAL MORALITY:

JUDGMENT, MORAL APPROBATION, AND BEHAVIOR

Thomas M. Jones and Lon Verstegen Ryan

Abstract: To date, our understanding of ethical decision making and
behavior in organizations has been concentrated in the area of moral
judgment, largely because of the hundreds of studies done involv-
ing cognitive moral development. This paper addresses the problem
of our relative lack of understanding in other areas of human moral-
ity by applying a recently developed construct moral appro-
bation-to illuminate the link between moral judgment and moral
action. This recent work is extended here by exploring the effect that
organizations have on ethical behavior in terms of the moral appro-
bation construct.

nur understanding of ethical decision making and behavior in organizations

tJhas been informed by two largely separate streams of research. Formal
decision making models (e.g., Ferrell and Gresham, 1985; Hunt and Vitell, 1986;
Trevino, 1986; Jones, 1991) have dealt with the micro organizational aspects

of such decision making and have relied heavily on social psychology, particu-
larly social cognition, for their theoretical foundations. The other strain of
research on ethics in organizations deals with macro organizational issues-

e.g., organizational cultures, leadership, and institutional features such as

codes of ethics and has employed organization theory, in various forms, in the
analysis (Victor and Cullen, 1988; Cohen, 1995). What has been lacking thus

far is theory that specifically relates macro level phenomena to micro level be-
havior. Put differently, we need theory that explains, in detail, how an organi-

zation’s moral signals are perceived and processed by organization members,
along with how likely those signals are to affect members’ behavior. This paper

attempts to provide such theory, by way of application of existing theory and
new theory development.

As Jones (1991) pointed out, most formal models of ethical decision making
in organizations can be expressed in terms of some variant of Rest’s (1986)

sequential four component model. By way of review, Rest’s description of the
four steps is as follows:

(D1998. Business Ethics Quarterly, Volume 8, Issue 3. ISSN 1052-1SOX. pp. 43 1-445

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432 BUSINESS ETHICS QUARTERLY

1 ) Recognition-The moral agent must first recognize the moral issue. An

agent who does not recognize the moral aspects of an issue will certainly

rely on “non-moral” criteria in making a decision.

2) Judgment-The agent must then engage in some form of moral reason-

ing to arrive at a moral judgment. Moral reasoning has been described by

Kohlberg ( 1976), whose moral development hierarchy has been widely used

in both theoretical and empirical work.

3) Intent The moral agent then must establish moral intent. In so doings

he/she places moral concerns ahead of other concerns and decides to take

moral action.

4) Behavior-At this stage, the agent actually translates intent into moral

behavior. Helshe overcomes all impediments internal and external, and

carries out his/her intended moral action.

In this paper, we assume that organizational forces have an impact on each of

the four steps. After referencing some very recent research that has been done

on Step 1 of this sequence, we argue that organizational factors profoundly af-

fect the link between moral judgment (Step 2) and moral behavior (Step 4) by

describing the postulated psychological mechanisms.

Considering that Rest’s model has been in existence for 12 years, remark-

ably little research has been done on components other than moral judgment

(Step 2). Part of this concentration can be explained by the fact that Kohlberg

developed an instrument for measuring cognitive moral development (CMD)

thus saving scholars (himself, in particular) the burden of developing a new

instrument for each study. Rest ( 1979) accelerated the use of CMD as a variable

in empirical studies of ethical behavior by developing the Defining Issues Test

(DIT), a forced-choice psychometric instrument that replicates Kohlberg’s time

consuming instrument with reasonable accuracy, but is simple and quick to ad-

minister. As a result, hundreds of studies have been undertaken using cognitive

moral development as a variable.

Some of this research has attempted to link CMD to actual moral behavior

(Blasi, 1980; Thoma and Rest, 1986; Waterman, 1988). The theory (either ex-

plicit or implicit) behind this research stream is that people who have greater

cognitive skills in the moral realm will have stronger, more intrinsic spurs to

moral action. Since their reasoning is more autonomous, their behavior ought to

be more autonomous as well, leading them to carry out their moral judgments

with greater frequency than their less sophisticated counterparts (with lower

CMD scores). The somewhat surprising and disheartening conclusion that can

be drawn from this research is that the link beeween these two variables is not

particularly strong; cognitive moral development explains relatively little of the

variance in moral behavior. We are left with a relatively modest level of under-

standing of moral behavior.

Perhaps in response to this gap in understanding, some recent work has fo-

cused on the first element in Rest’s model: recognition of the moral issue. Studies

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THE EFFECT OF ORGANIZATIONAL FORCES 433

by Trevino and Weaver (1996), Butterfield, Trevino, and Weaver (1996), and

Gautschi and Jones (1998) have examined various aspects of moral awareness,

based on the sensible proposition that recognition of the moral aspects of a de-

cision must occur before moral reasoning of any kind can take place. Furthermore,

since the more advanced stages of Kohlberg’s moral development hierarchy

(Stages 3 through 6) are likely to lead to judgments that are other than self-

interested, we might expect that recognition of moral issues and the subsequent

engagement of moral decision making processesf as opposed to non-moral pro-

cesses, will result in better behavior.

Moral Approbation

In a very recent paper, Jones and Ryan (1997) argue that a construct called

moral approbation, the desire of moral agents to be seen as moral by them-

selves or others, plays a critical role in moral decision making and behavior.

The substantially condensed version of this argument that is presented below

sets the stage for our explanation of how organizational factors affect the moral-

ity of individual organization members.

The moral approbation construct has two facets a desired level of moral

approbation and an anticipated level of moral approbation. The desired level of

moral approbation is derived from Jones and Ryan’s (1997) contention that hu-

man beings have a motive to be moral. This motive to be moral can come from

many sources, including philosophy (Aristotle,1934;Adam Smith,1759tl982),

religion (Frankena, 1968), biology (Hoffman, 1976; Kagan, 1984), socializa-

tion (Epstein, 1973) including impression management (Schlenker, 1980; Reis,

1981; Tetlock, 1985), and cognitive development (Epstein, 1973; Blasi, 1984).

This motive to be moral will vary, perhaps substantially, among human beings,

but will be present to some degree in virtually all people. According to the theory,

one manifestation of this motive to be moral is desired moral approbation, a

desire for moral approval from the agent’s referent group (Hyman, 1942/1980;

Williams,1970). The identity of the referent group will also vary from person to

person but will consist of those people to whom helshe looks for moral example

or feedback. The referent group could be as narrowly deElned as the person him/

herself or as broadly as an entire society, depending on the agent’s psychology.

Anticipated moral approbation is highly contextual and depends on the level

of moral responsibility that the agent anticipates will be attributed to him/her by

hislher referent group based on hislher planned behavior. Because the moral

approbation construct is best illustrated in complex moral decision making situ-

ations, Jones and Ryan (1997) use the example of an individual in an organization

contemplating his/her response to potential wrongdoing on the part of the orga-

nization to outline this part of their argument. In such situations, moral

responsibility is based on four characteristics of the decision making context:

1 ) severity of consequences (more severe consequences confer greater moral

responsibility on the agent);

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BUSINESS ETHICS QUARTERLY 434

2) moral certainty (situations involving unambiguously wrong behavior con-
fer greater moral responsibility on the agent);

3) degree of complicity (greater involvement in the wrongdoing confers
greater moral responsibility on the agent); and

4) extent of pressure to behave unethically (greater organizational pressure to
go along with the wrongdoing reduces the moral responsibility on the agent).

The moral responsibility of an agent would then be a positive function of sever-
ity of consequences, moral certainty, and degree of complicity, mitigated by
pressure to behave unethically.

Having made a moral judgment (Step 2 of Rest’s model), the agent contem-
plates a course of action: moral intent (Step 3). At the same time he/she estimates
the level of moral responsibility likely to be attributed to him/her based on the
four factors described above. The agent then compares the level of moral appro-
bation that he/she anticipates from his/her referent group based on his/her planned
behavior and compares it to the level he/she requires (desired moral approba-
tion). If the behavior meets the agent’s threshold of desired moral approbation,
he/she follows through with the planned behavior. If not, he/she modifies his/
her planned behavior until it meets the threshold. This process is graphically
depicted in Figure 1 (Source: Jones & Ryan, 1997).

Figure 1

The Moral Approbatlon Model

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THE EFFECT OF ORGANIZATIONAL FORCES 435

Jones and Ryan’s (1997) indirect argument for the moral approbation construct
consists of a demonstration that human beings make attributions of responsibility as
the model predicts, followed by a detailed case that actual behavior varies along the
same lines. The former set of arguments explains why the behavior documented in
the latter set of arguments occurs. In summary, the moral approbation model repre-
sents an attempt to explain why the link between moral judgment and moral behavior
is weaker than we might expect and one mechanism by which organizational fac-
tors may play a signiElcant role in actual moral action.

Moral Approbation and Organizational Influences
on Moral Behavior

The moral approbation construct will be applied here in an effort to explain
the impact of organizational factors on the moral decision making and behav-
ior of individual members. From this perspective, the organization affects
individuals in two distinct ways. First, the organization itself may affect the
choice and composition of the referent group for many members of the organi-
zation. Second, the organization may affect the level of responsibility that the
individual attributes to him/herself through its effect on the four elements of
moral responsibility.

Organizations and Referent Groups

As the above-summarized theory suggests, human beings seek approval from
their referent groups. Individuals who are highly autonomous in moral matters
(analogous to Stages 5 and 6 of Kohlberg’s moral development hierarchy) will
regard self approval as the ultimate standard for moral action. Many individu-
als, however, will require the approval of a broader group, including, for example,
family members, close friends, church leaders, and teachers. Because organiza-
tions play a major role in the lives of many people, acting not only as their
principal source of income but also as a place where much of their time is spent
and many of their friendships are formed, it is highly probable that organiza-
tions will also be crucial determinants of at least part of their members’ referent
groups. Some individuals in organizations may have a few organization mem-
bers among their referent groups, while others may adopt the organization
itself its values and its culture-as a referent group. While this assertion re-
garding the link between referent group formation and organizations may seem
intuitively obvious, a detailed, theory-based argument will aid our understand-
ing of this phenomenon.

Theoretical support for organizational influences on referent group choice can
be derived from Bandura’s classic works on social learning (1977; 1986). Bandura
(1977) argues that social learning takes place through two primary mechanisms-
response consequences and modeling. Learning by response consequences is what
might be called learning by direct experience. Individuals respond to situational

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436 BUSINESS ETHICS QUARTERLY

stimuli in various ways as they conduct their lives and receive differential feed-

back- some positive, some negative to their responses. They learn to behave so

as to avoid the negative consequences and promote the positive consequences. In

organizations, individuals tend to engage in behaviors that prompt organizational

rewards and eschew those that result in punishment.

This form of direct learning serves an informative function, a motivational func-

tion, and a reinforcing function (Bandura, 1977). As information, response

consequences cause the individual to create hypotheses about which responses are

well suited to which situations. Bandura is clear in his rejection of the view that

this process in merely mechanistic; cognition plays a role in the interpretation not

only of the nature of the consequences but also of the relationship between the

response and the consequences. Response consequences also serve a motiva-

tional function. Because human beings ean anticipate events in their lives, the

expected consequences of certain responses can motivate them to behave in cer-

tain ways. A reinforcing function is also claimed for response consequences.

Reinforcement makes the message as to the propriety of certain behaviors clearer

and stronger. Organizations with consistent rewardlpunishment frameworks will

reinforce certain behaviors through this mechanism.

As Bandura (1977) points out, learning would be both slow and risky if indi-

viduals learned only by direct experience; their own experiences would not be

extensive enough to allow learning at a significant pace and their mistakes could

result in hazardous situations. Much social learning, therefore, takes place

through modeling. Here the individual learns by observing the behavior of oth-

ers and noting the consequences that ensue. The process is largely informative

(as above), taking place through symbolic representations of the observed be-

havior which inform the choice of responses thought to be appropriate.

Modeling has four component processes-attentional, retention, motor re-

production, and motivational. Attentional processes are selective in nature, which

refers to the fact that people tend to model their behavior on that which a) they

observe most frequently and b) seems to be most effectiveB Not surprisinglys

many human beings model their behavior on that which is most often exhibited

in the organizations where they work, and they are more likely to model the

behavior that is rewarded by the organization.

Observation alone often is not enough to assure that individuals will remem-

ber modeled behavior. Repeated exposure to behavior often results in

representational systems image-based or verbal-that produce retrievable

“memory codes” that guide behavior, thus serving as retention systems for the

learned responses (Bandura, 1977: 26). Organizations are often the source of

not only repeated exposure to certain types of behavior but also the images and

verbal representations that simplify the development of such memory codes.

Through motor reproduction processes, individuals “learn by doing.” They

develop and refine their responses along the lines of the modeled behavior. Fi-

nally, observational learning also serves a motivational function. Individuals

learn by observing behavior in others and favoring that which has functional

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THE EFFECT OF ORGANIZATIONAL FORCES 437

value i.e., that which has been rewarded. They are motivated to model their

behavior on this favored behavior because they hope to secure similar rewards.

In short, organizations may be an important factor in an individual member’s

choice of referent group. Some individuals, of course, will be self-referent on

moral matters, depending on only their own moral standards for moral approba-

tion. For many people, however, the referent group will include family members,

close friends, church leaders, and/or teachers and some are likely to include

other organization members, groups within the organization, or, in the extreme

case, the organization itself as part of their source of moral approbation.

The conclusion that organizations influence the choice of referent group for

individual members should not be surprising. Many human beings spend a great

deal of time in organizational settings and depend on organizations for their

livelihood. Thus, through reward and punishment systems, authority structures,

formal and informal rules, and organizational cultures, organizations create the

environments though which individuals “enact” much of their lives. Social

learning is the process through which the dimensions of that enactment are

created. Thus do organizations enter the referent groups of at least some of

their members.

Organizational Influences on Attributions of Moral Responsibility

Organizational forces are also likely to influence attributions of moral responsi-

bility, an important determinant of moral approbation. The moral agent makes such

attributions based on the four factors included in the model: severity of consequences,

moral certainty, degree of complicity, and extent of pressure to behave unethically

(as represented in our example). This subsection describes the effect of organ-

izational forces on these four components of moral responsibility.

Severity of Consequences. At first glance, severity of consequences would
seem to be set by the circumstances that define the immediate situation and

hence immutable by organizational forces. Jones (1991) has described magni-

tude of consequences, a related concept, as an element in the determination of

issue contingency. However, the critical determinant in the moral approbation

model is the moral agent’s perception of severity of consequences, a perception

that the organization may influence through such mechanisms as schemata

and euphemism.

Gioia (1992) discusses the importance of schemata cognitive frameworks

for making sense out of complex phenomena-on ethical decision making in

organizations. By influencing an individual’s choice of a schema, the organiza-

tion can influence the range of choices the individual feels that he/she has.

Viewing an issue with a moral component (such as the potential recall of Ford

Pintos because they tended to burst into flame in certain types of rear end colli-

sions-Gioia’s situation) as an economic (cost-benefit) problem, a legal problem,

or a customer complaint problem will dictate different solution sets than will

viewing the same circumstances as threats to the lives and health of dozens of

human beings. Thus does schema formation affect moral decision making. More

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438 BUSINESS ETHICS QUARTERLY

specifically, such schema use could affect an individual’s attributions regarding

severity of consequences. An economic problem involving cost and benefits to

the company (e.g., costs of litigation, harm to reputation for safety, costs of

fixing the automobile itself to reduce the risk) will often be couched solely in

terms of a common metric money which substantially attenuates the perceived

severity of consequences of the situation. Moral responsibility and thus the

agent’s attributed level of moral approbation will be reduced accordingly, per-

mitting him/her to act less aggressively to address the anticipated wrongdoing,

in essence reducing the probability of moral action.

Organizations also frequently use euphemisms to mask or attenuate the se-

verity of certain actions. The quintessential offender in terms of euphemisms is

probably the military. Reporting battlefield deaths in terms of “body counts,”

for example, as the Army did during the Viet Nam War, tends to trivialize the

fact that for each number in a body count, another human being lost his (or, less

likely, her) life. The severity of consequences component of attributions of re-

sponsibility would be lessened by the use of such euphemisms.

Through these techniques and others, then, the organization can, intention-

ally or not, shape individual members’ perceptions of the severity of consequences

associated with organizational actions. As the severity of consequences is per-

ceived to increase, attributions of responsibility also rise, along with the actor’s

behavioral response.

Moral Certainty. Organizations can also serve to reduce or enhance the level

of moral certainty attached to a moral issue. Because organizational decision

making is highly complex (Stephens and Lewin, 1992) and organizations are

often hierarchical, individuals at lower levels often do not have all the facts that

are deemed necessary to fully understand a situation demanding action. When

moral issues are at stake organizational wrongdoing, for example lower level

individuals may reason (perhaps correctly) that, although the problem seems

evident enough from their perspective, if they had the vantage point of a higher

level person, with the attendant information, they would see that only a minor

problem (or no problem) existed. This phenomenon of isolation from “the big

picture” is exacerbated by the tendency of some organizations to structure work

relationships so that group members have little contact with members of other

work groups. Any attempt to verify information or “compare notes” on moral

problems is impeded by this type of structure. The perspective on moral situa-

tions in organizations described above reduces the amount of moral certainty

that an individual member factors into his/her assessment of moral responsibil-

ity. The behavioral response necessary to achieve his/her desired level of moral

approbation declines accordingly.

Moral certainty can also be affected by the culture of the organization. In some

corporations, for example, the company “ethic” is that the firm’s stockholders

are the only appropriate beneficiaries of the fruits of their investments. Other

“stakeholders” are of concern only for instrumental reasons; their claims have

no intrinsic worth. This is a normative position, of course, and is not necessarily

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THE EFFECT OF ORGANIZATIONAL FORCES 439

“true” on its face; normative arguments that stakeholders have legitimate intrin-

sic claims on the firm have also been advanced. Nonetheless, firms that adopt

this stockholder hegemony posture create a normative standard that may

compete with “common morality” in the minds of some individuals in the com-

pany. At some point, these individuals may perceive moral ambiguity where

before they saw moral certainty. Reduced attributions of moral responsi-

bility follow.

Organizationally adopted euphemisms also play a role in increasing moral

ambiguity. Morally neutral terms like “administrative gratuities” have been

applied to corporate bribes, presumably to reduce the likelihood that they will

be recognized as being morally improper and cause moral qualms on the part of

company employees.

Another feature of corporate life that perpetuates moral ambiguity is the ten-

dency of individuals and groups within the firm to avoid moral dialogue (Bird

and Waters, 1989). Meeting topics in corporations tend to be couched in busi-

ness terms-meeting goals, controlling costs, dividing up sales territories, setting

quotas, etc.- rather than focusing on ethical questions. Moral issues are osten-

sibly thought of as peripheral to the main topic and “a waste of time” by many

meeting attendees. This lack of “moral talk” greatly impedes the chance that

anything approaching a judgment-affirming consensus will be reached. The iso-

lation of individuals in organizations with respect to moral matters will tend to

perpetuate, if not promote, moral ambiguity.

The recent tendency of some organizations to create cross-functional work

teams with access to information from multiple sources makes it clear that orga-

nizations’ effect on moral certainty can also be positive. Such teams can reduce

the isolation felt by organization members in traditional hierarchies and pro-

mote cross functional dialogue, reducing the probability that an individual agent

will feel that he/she lacks enough information to make a moral judgment with a

high degree of certainty. Research by Asch (1951; 1955; 1956) supports our

case that reinforcement from others strengthens an individual’s resolve to act in

accordance with internally derived judgments. Milgram’s (1974) obedience to

authority experiments also support this conclusion. Under experimental condi-

tions in which the subjects were given support for their reluctance to administer

higher shock levels, they tended to substantially reduce the maximum shock

level administered. In addition, far fewer subjects administered the full regimen

of shocks under this condition.

Codes of ethics are another means that organizations use to increase moral

certainty. Where moral ambiguity might otherwise exist, a clear statement of

policy in a code of conduct can reduce it considerably. Many corporations have

recently hired ombudspersons to handle, among other matters, ethical ques-

tions from employees. Discussions with these ombudspersons may serve to re-

duce moral ambiguity for organization members. The ethics training offered

to employees of some firms could serve the same purpose. Further, although

some organizational cultures may increase moral ambiguity, as discussed above,

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440 BUSINESS ETHICS QUARTERLY

others may decrease it. If an organizational culture includes such (implicit) poli-

cies as “always make sure the customer is satisfied,” many moral ambiguities-

how to treat an out-of-warranty product failure, for example will be reduced

or eliminated.

In sum, organizations have the ability to both reduce and enhance moral cer-

tainty and hence affect attributions of responsibility by individual agents. The

probability of moral behavior is thereby reduced or increased as well.

Degree of Complicity. Perhaps the greatest impact that organizations have

on attributions of moral responsibility involves the degree of complicity that

individual agents feel with respect to an ethical act. The very nature of organi-

zations tends to diffuse responsibility. Stone (1975) documents the difficulty

that legal mechanisms have in dealing with wrongdoing in corporations. Corpo-

rate decisions are often made using a variety of inputs from various units of the

firm. In few instances is any single individual or even single unit fully respon-

sible for a corporate decision. In many cases, responsibility is highly diffuse.

Organizations that are highly bureaucratized exacerbate this problem; individual

employees and work units are both specialized and compartmentalized in terms

of decision making responsibility. The existence of such specialization can lead

individuals to use it as an excuse to attempt to limit their responsibility as well.

In the classic historical account of ethical wrongdoing entitled “The Aircraft

Brake Scandal,” a character named Gretzinger says:

After all, we’re just drawing some curves, and what happens to them after they

leave here well, we’re not responsible for that. (Vandivier, 1972: 49)

He makes this comment despite his knowledge that the data on which the curves

are based had been falsified. Diffusion of responsibility of this magnitude would

mean that no individual would bear responsibility for any corporate decision.

Feelings of powerlessness with respect to high level decisions are made worse

by limitations on information flows. Restricted information flows are epitomized

by the military’s historical “need to know” criterion for exchanging information

on the job: if a co-worker doesn’t need to know a certain fact or have certain

data to do his/her job, he or she should not have access to it.

Smith and Carroll (1984) point out that diffusion of responsibility can be

quite deliberate. One common rationale for avoiding responsibility for moral

decisions is that individuals at low levels of the organization don’t have the

positional authority to act on the moral aspects of corporate decisions and, be-

cause of their low status and commensurate (relatively) low pay, have no desire

to do so anyway. “Let the people making the high salaries tackle the difficult

ethical questions” seems to be a widely held view among occupants of lower

echelon corporate positions, according to Smith and Carroll.

Such factors as organization structure and information flow, then, can be

used to affect the degree of complicity organization members include in their

determinations of attributions of responsibility. Their behavior will be modi-

fied accordingly.

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THE EFFECT OF ORGANIZATIONAL FORCES 441

Extent of Pressure to Comply. Organizations can also be the source of pres-

sure to comply with decisions that are ethically questionable. In our example

problem, an individual contemplating his/her response to organizational wrong-

doing, the agent must take into account the fact that individuals within the

organization often will not be anxious to have their wrongdoing exposed. If

these individuals are in positions of authority, they can bring direct pressure to

bear on the agent. This pressure can take the form of direct threats termina-

tion, denied promotions, salary stagnation, undesirable transfers, etc. or subtler

forms such as reminders that performance reviews are based on a broad range of

factors including being a “team player.” Other organizational factors that create

pressure to comply include performance standards that focus on ends quotas,

cost cutting targets, profit levels, etc.-and ignore limits to the means by which

these goals are met. In the Pinto fires case, top Ford executives, including Lee

Iaccoca, were aware of the exploding gas tank problem, but dealt with it by

reminding lower level managers that cost targets, weight limits, and production

schedules must be met. Implicit in this mandate was the fact that a “fix” to the

gas tank problem would involve added cost, added weight, and production sched-

ule delays. Ford executives did not have to say “don’t fix the problem,” directly;

their intent was clear (Dowie, 1977). In his revealing book, Moral Mazes, Rob-

ert Jackall (1988) stresses that corporate executives rarely order a subordinate

to do something unethical, let alone illegal, directly, they simply stress the fac-

ets of a decision that are important ends, not means.

In addition, the compensation packages for many corporate personnel often de-

pend on performance measures that may be negatively affected by revelations of

company wrongdoing. Status factors within the general business atmosphere also

create organizational pressures to succeed in economic terms, not moral terms. As

Stone (1975) points out, in business, prestige generally accrues to those who achieve

economic success profitability not ethical purity; reputations may be more ex-

tensively harmed by weak Elnancial performance than by ethical breaches. In addition,

peer pressure within organizations can weigh heavily on individuals who consider

reporting organizational wrongdoing. In an examination of “peer reporting,” Trevino

and Victor (1992) found that, although individuals who engaged in this practice

were considered to be highly ethical, they were also considered to be unlikable. A

potential peer reporter must weigh his/her moral standards against his/her desire

to be liked by other group members.

Finally, in organizations, as in life in general, there is a tendency to punish

the messenger who delivers bad news, often without regard to the ultimate ben-

efit that the news may cause. Individuals within organizations are often aware

of this tendency and are understandably reluctant to be the bearer of bad news,

a role they must play if organizational wrongdoing is to be avoided. Organiza-

tional pressures to comply can also be designed to promote ethical rather than

unethical behavior. Codes of ethics, for example, can specify penalties for cer-

tain kinds of unethical conduct. Top managers can make it clear that ethical

means must be employed in the pursuit of organizational ends; moral limits can

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442 BUSINESS ETHICS QUARTERLY

be set. Indeed, organizations can strive to develop cultures in which ethical con-

cerns are on the same plane as other organizational goals; they can use their

influence on individuals for good as well as for evil.

Through direct pressure or such indirect means as quotas or compensation

packages, organizations can affect the strength of the extenuating circumstances

an organization member believes may attenuate his/her moral responsibility. As

pressure increases, attributions of responsibility are reduced, as is the likeli-

hood of moral behavior.

In conclusion, this section has pointed out some of the numerous ways that

organizations can affect the attributions of responsibility that individual

members make with regard to the ethical issues they face. Attributed moral

responsibility increases with perceived increases in severity of consequences,

moral certainty, and degree of complicity, and decreases in extent of pressure to

comply. Each of these factors can be affected by organization forces. Thus the

organization can play a major role in moral approbation and, hence, in the prob-

ability that an individual moral agent will act on a moral judgment. If attributed

moral responsibility is high, moral judgment and moral action are more likely to

be closely linked than if moral responsibility is low. Organizations can affect

moral behavior, both for better and for worse.

Conclusions

In this paper, we have addressed a facet of ethical decision making and be-

havior that has been given insufficient attention in the literature thus far the

link between ethical judgment and behavior. To date, although we know a great

deal about moral reasoning, largely because of the work of Kohlberg (1976) and

Rest (1986) on cognitive moral development, we know very little about why

moral development is so weakly linked to actual moral behavior. Drawing on

the recent work of Jones and Ryan (1997), we suggest that the moral approba-

tion construct constitutes a viable theoretical connection between moral judgment

and moral action. Human beings require moral approval from their referent

groups themselves or others-and organizations can play a major role in the

gaining of that approval. First, organizations or subgroups of their members can

be part of the individual’s referent group. Second, organizational forces can

affect the factors that individuals employ in determining the level of their

moral responsibility, a key determinant of the moral approbation that they ex-

pect to receive.

This paper focuses directly on the means by which organizations affect indi-

vidual decision making and behavior and, as such, suggests several possibilities

for empirical research. Other areas for research also are implied by the moral

approbation construct. For example, we strongly suspect that desired moral ap-

probation will vary significantly among individuals; that is, moral approbation

is likely to be an individual difference variable useful for studies of morality in

human beings. The sources of individual differences are likely to be varied, but

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THE EFFECT OF ORGANIZATIONAL FORCES 443

philosophy, religion, socialization, biology, and cognitive development are po-

tential determinants.

In short, the addition of moral approbation to the mix of variables currently

under scrutiny should help us to better understand both individual morality and

the effects of organizational forces on that morality. More colloquially, this pa-

per make us better able to understand why “good people do bad things” in

organizational settings.

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Contents

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Issue Table of Contents

Business Ethics Quarterly, Vol. 8, No. 3, Psychological and Pedagogical Issues in Business Ethics (Jul., 1998), pp. 375-615
Front Matter
A Word from the Editors [p. 375]
Guest Editors’ Introduction [pp. 377-383]
Motivational Appeal in Normative Theories of Enterprise [pp. 385-407]
Psychological Pragmatism and the Imperative of Aims: A New Approach for Business Ethics [pp. 409-430]
The Effect of Organizational Forces on Individual Morality: Judgment, Moral Approbation, and Behavior [pp. 431-445]
The Ethical Context in Organizations: Influences on Employee Attitudes and Behaviors [pp. 447-476]
On the Power of a Clear Definition of Rationality [pp. 477-480]
Paradigms Linked: A Normative-Empirical Dialogue about Business Ethics [pp. 481-496]
Virtue Ethics, the Firm, and Moral Psychology [pp. 497-513]
The Moral Psychology of Business: Care and Compassion in the Corporation [pp. 515-533]
Drama: A Tool for Teaching Business Ethics [pp. 535-545]
The Role of Character in Business Ethics [pp. 547-559]
The One Necessary Condition for a Successful Business Ethics Course: The Teacher Must Be a Philosopher [pp. 561-574]
One Voice? Or Many? A Response to Ellen Klein [pp. 575-579]
Can Ethical Character Be Stimulated and Enabled? An Action-Learning Approach to Teaching and Learning Organization Ethics [pp. 581-604]
Review Articles
Review: Michael Novak’s “Business as a Calling: Work and the Examined Life” [pp. 605-611]
Review: Erratum: Authority and Autonomy [pp. 613-615]
Back Matter

Pinto Fires and Personal Ethics: A Script Analysis of Missed Opportunities
Author(s): Dennis A. Gioia
Source: Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 11, No. 5/6, Behavioral Aspects of Business Ethics
(May, 1992), pp. 379-389
Published by: Springer
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Pinto Fires and Personal Ethics:

A Script Analysis of Missed Opportunities Dennis A. Gioia

ABSTRACT. This article details the personal involvement of
the author in the early stages of the infamous Pinto fire case.
The paper first presents an insider account of the context
and decision environment within which he failed to initiate

an early recall of defective vehicles. A cognitive script
analysis of the personal experience is then offered as an
explanation of factors that led to a decision that now is
commonly seen as a definitive study in unethical corporate
behavior. The main analytical thesis is that script sch mas
that were guiding cognition and action at the time pre
cluded consideration of issues in ethical terms because the

scripts did not include ethical dimensions.

In the summer of 1972 I made one of those impor
tant transitions in life, the t significance of which
becomes obvious only in retrospect. I left academe
with a BS in Engineering Science and an MBA to
enter the world of big business. I joined Ford Motor
Company at World Headquarters in Dearborn
Michigan, fulfilling a long-standing dream to work
in the heart of the auto industry. I felt confident that
I was in the right place at the right time to make a

Dennis A. Gioia is Associate Projessor oj Organizational Behavior

in the Department oj Management and Organization, The
Smeal College ojBusiness Administration, Pennsylvania State
University. Projessor Gioia’s primary research and writing jocus
ojthe nature and uses oj complex cognitive processes by organiza
tion members and the ways that these processes affect sensemak

ing, communication, influence and organizational change. His
most recent research interests have to do with the less rational,

more intuitive, emotional, and political aspects oj organizational
life those fascinating arenas where people in organizations tend

to subvert management scholars’ heartfelt attempts to have them
behave more rationally. Prior to this ivory tower career, he worked

in the real world as an engineering aide for Boeing Aerospace at

Kennedy Space Center and as vehicle recall coordinator for Ford
Motor Company in Dearborn, Michigan.

difference. My initial job title was “Problem Analyst”
a catchall label that superficially described what I

would be thinking about and doing in the coming
years. On some deeper level, however, the title
paradoxically came to connote the many critical
things that I would not be thinking about and acting
upon.

By that summer of 1972 I was very full of myself.
I had met my life’s goals to that point with some
notable success. I had virtually everything I wanted,
including a strongly-held value system that had led

me to question many of the perspectives and prac
tices I observed in the world around me. Not the

least of these was a profound distaste for the
Vietnam war, a distaste that had found me partici
pating in various demonstrations against its conduct
and speaking as a part of a collective voice on the

moral and ethical failure of a democratic govern
ment that would attempt to justify it. I also found
myself in MBA classes railing against the conduct of
businesses of the era, whose actions struck me as

ranging from inconsiderate to indifferent to simply
unethical. To me the typical stance of business
seemed to be one of disdain for, rather than respon
sibility toward, the society of which they were
prominent members. I wanted something to change.
Accordingly, I cultivated my social awareness; I held
my principles high; I espoused my intention to help
a troubled world; and I wore my hair long. By any

measure I was a prototypical “Child of the ’60s.”
Therefore, it struck quite a few of my friends in

the MBA program as rather strange that I was in the
program at all. (“If you are so disappointed in
business, why study business?”). Subsequently, they
were practically dumbstruck when I accepted the job
offer from Ford, apparently one of the great pur
veyors of the very actions I reviled. I countered that

it was an ideal strategy, arguing that I would have a

Journal of Business Ethics 11: 379-389, 1992.
1992 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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380 Dennis A. Gioia

greater chance of influencing social change in busi
ness if I worked behind the scenes on the inside,
rather than as a strident voice on the outside. It was

clear to me that somebody needed to prod these
staid companies into socially responsible action. I
certainly aimed to do my part. Besides, I liked cars.

Into the fray: setting the personal stage

Predictably enough, I found myself on the fast track
at Ford, participating in a “tournament” type of
socialization (Van Maanen, 1978), engaged in a
competition for recognition with other MBA’s who
had recently joined the company. And I quickly
became caught up in the game. The company itself
was dynamic; the environment of business, especially
the auto industry, was intriguing; the job was
challenging and the pay was great. The psychic
rewards of working and succeeding in a major
corporation proved unexpectedly seductive. I really
became involved in the job.

Market forces (international competition) and
government regulation (vehicle safety and emissions)
were affecting the auto industry in disruptive ways
that only later would be common to the wider
business and social arena. They also produced an
industry and a company that felt buffeted, belea
guered, and threatened by the changes. The threats
were mostly external, of course, and led to a strong
feeling of we-vs-them, where we (Ford members)
needed to defend ourselves against them (all the
outside parties and voices demanding that we change
our ways). Even at this time, an intriguing question
for me was whether I was a “we” or a “them.” It was

becoming apparent to me that my perspective was
changing. I had long since cut my hair.

By the summer of 1973 I was pitched into the
thick of the battle. I became Ford’s Field Recall

Coordinator not a position that was particularly
high in the hierarchy, but one that wielded influence
for beyond its level. I was in charge of the opera
tional coordination of all of the recall campaigns
currently underway and also in charge of tracking
incoming information to identify developing prob
lems. Therefore, I was in a position to make initial
recommendations about possible future recalls. The
most critical type of recalls were labeled “safety
campaigns” those that dealt with the possibility of

customer injury or death. These ranged from
straight-forward occurrences such as brake failure
and wheels falling off vehicles, to more exotic and
faintly humorous failure modes such as detaching
axles that announced their presence by spinning
forward and slamming into the starded driver’s door
and speed control units that locked on, and refused
to disengage, as the care accelerated wildly while the
spooked driver futilely tried to shut it off. Safety
recall campaigns, however, also encompassed the

more sobering possibility of on-board gasoline fires
and explosions….

The Pinto case: setting the corporate stage

In 1970 Ford introduced the Pinto, a small car that

was intended to compete with the then current
challenge from European cars and the ominous
presence on the horizon of Japanese manufacturers.
The Pinto was brought from inception to produc
tion in the record time of approximately 25 months
(compared to the industry average of 43 months), a
time frame that suggested the necessity for doing
things expediently. In addition to the time pressure,
the engineering and development teams were re
quired to adhere to the production “limits of 2 000”
for the diminutive car: it was not to exceed either

$2 000 in cost or 2 000 pounds in weight. Any
decisions that threatened these targets or the timing
of the car’s introduction were discouraged. Under
normal conditions design, styling, product planning,
engineering, etc., were completed prior to produc
tion tooling. Because of the foreshortened time
frame, however, some of these usually sequential
processes were executed in parallel.

As a consequence, tooling was already well under
way (thus “freezing” the basic design) when routine
crash testing revealed that the Pinto’s fuel tank often
ruptured when struck from the rear at a relatively
low speed (31 mph in crash tests). Reports (revealed

much later) showed that the fuel tank failures were
the result of some rather marginal design features.
The tank was positioned between the rear bumper
and the rear axle ( a standard industry practice for
the time). During impact, however, several studs
protruding from the rear of the axle housing would
puncture holes in the tank; the fuel filler neck also
was likely to rip away. Spilled gasoline then could be

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Pinto Fires and Personal Ethics 381

ignited by sparks. Ford had in fact crash-tested 11
vehicles; 8 of these cars suffered potentially cata
strophic gas tank ruptures. The only 3 cars that
survived intact had each been modified in some way
to protect the tank.

These crash tests, however, were conducted under

the guidelines of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety
Standard 301 which had been proposed in 1968 and
strenuously opposed by the auto industry. FMVSS
301 was not actually adopted until 1976; thus, at the
time of the tests, Ford was not in violation of the

law. There were several possibilities for fixing the
problem, including the option of redesigning the
tank and its location, which would have produced
tank integrity in a high-speed crash. That solution,
however, was not only time consuming and expen
sive, but also usurped trunk space, which was seen as
a critical competitive sales factor. One of the pro
duction modifications to the tank, however, would

have cost only $11 to install, but given the tight
margins and restrictions of the “limits of 2 000,”
there was reluctance to make even this relatively

minor change. There were other reasons for not
approving the change, as well, including a wide
spread industry belief that all small cars were
inherently unsafe solely because of their size and

weight. Another more prominent reason was a
corporate belief that “safety doesn’t sell.” This obser
vation was attributed to Lee Iacocca and stemmed

from Ford’s earlier attempt to make safety a sales
theme, an attempt that failed rather dismally in the

marketplace.
Perhaps the most controversial reason for reject

ing the production change to the gas tank, however,
was Ford’s use of cost-benefit analysis to justify the
decision. The National Highway Traffic Safety Asso
ciation (NHTSA, a federal agency) had approved the
use of cost-benefit analysis as an appropriate means
for establishing automotive safety design standards.
The controversial aspect in making such calculations
was that they required the assignment of some
specific value for a human life. In 1970, that value

was deemed to be approximately $200 000 as a “cost
to society” for each fatality. Ford used NHTSA’s
figures in estimating the costs and benefits of
altering the tank production design. An internal
memo, later revealed in court, indicates the follow

ing tabulations concerning potential fires (Dowie,
1977):

Costs: $137000000
(Estimated as the costs of a production fix to all similarly
designed cars and trucks with the gas tank aft of the axle
(12 500 000 vehicles X $11/vehicle))

Benefits: $49530000
(Estimated as the savings from preventing (180 projected

deaths x $200 000/ death) + (180 projected burn injuries
X $67 000/injury) + (2 100 burned cars X $700/car))

The cost-benefit decision was then construed as

straightforward: No production fix would be under
taken. The philosophical and ethical implications of
assigning a financial value for human life or dis
figurement do not seem to have been a major
consideration in reaching this decision.

Pintos and personal experience

When I took over the Recall Coordinator’s job in
1973 I inherited the oversight of about 100 active
recall campaigns, more than half of which were
safety-related. These ranged from minimal in size
(replacing front wheels that were likely to break on
12 heavy trucks) to maximal (repairing the power
steering pump on millions of cars). In addition, there

were quite a number of safety problems that were
under consideration as candidates for addition to the

recall list. (Actually, “problem” was a word whose
public use was forbidden by the legal office at the
time, even in service bulletins, because it suggested
corporate admission of culpability. “Condition” was
the sanctioned catchword.) In addition to these
potential recall candidates, there were many files
containing field reports of alleged component failure
(another forbidden word) that had led to accidents,
and in some cases, passenger injury. Beyond these
existing files, I began to construct my own files of
incoming safety problems.

One of these new files concerned reports of Pintos

“lighting up” (in the words of a field representative)
in rear-end accidents. There were actually very few
reports, perhaps because component failure was not
initially assumed. These cars simply were consumed
by fire after apparently very low speed accidents.

Was there a problem? Not as far as I was concerned.
My cue for labeling a case as a problem either
required high frequencies of occurrence or directly
traceable causes. I had little time for speculative

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382 Dennis A. Gioia

contemplation on potential problems that did not fit
a pattern that suggested known courses of action
leading to possible recall. I do, however, remember
being disquieted by a field report accompanied by
graphic, detailed photos of the remains of a burned
out Pinto in which several people had died. Al
though that report became part of my file, I did not
flag it as any special case.

It is difficult to convey the overwhelming com
plexity and pace of the job of keeping track of so
many active or potential recall campaigns. It remains
the busiest, most information-filled job I have ever
held or would want to hold. Each case required a
myriad of information-gathering and execution
stages. I distinctly remember that the information
processing demands led me to confuse the facts of
one problem case with another on several occasions
because the tell-tale signs of recall candidate cases
were so similar. I thought of myself as a fireman a
fireman who perfectly fit the description by one of
my colleagues: “In this office everything is a crisis.
You only have time to put out the big fires and spit
on the little ones.” By those standards the Pinto
problem was distinctly a little one.

It is also important to convey the muting of
emotion involved in the Recall Coordinator’s job. I
remember contemplating the fact that my job
literally involved life-and-death matters. I was some
times responsible for finding and fixing cars NOW,
because somebody’s life might depend on it. I took it
very seriously. Early in the job, I sometimes woke up
at night wondering whether I had covered all the
bases. Had I left some unknown person at risk
because I had not thought of something? That soon
faded, however, and of necessity the consideration of
people’s lives became a fairly removed, dispassionate
process. To do the job “well” there was little room
for emotion. Allowing it to surface was potentially
paralyzing and prevented rational decisions about
which cases to recommend for recall. On moral

grounds I knew I could recommend most of the
vehicles on my safety tracking list for recall (and risk
earning the label of a “bleeding heart”). On practical
grounds, I recognized that people implicitly accept
risks in cars. We could not recall all cars with

potential problems and stay in business. I learned to
be responsive to those cases that suggested an immi
nent, dangerous problem.

I should also note, that the country was in the

midst of its first, and worst, oil crisis at this time.

The effects of the crisis had cast a pall over Ford and
the rest of the automobile industry. Ford’s product
line, with the perhaps notable exception of the Pinto
and Maverick small cars, was not well-suited to

dealing with the crisis. Layoffs were imminent for
many people. Recalling the Pinto in this context
would have damaged one of the few trump cards the
company had (although, quite frankly, I do not
remember overtly thinking about that issue).

Pinto reports continued to trickle in, but at such a
slow rate that they really did not capture particular
attention relative to other, more pressing safety
problems. However, I later saw a crumpled, burned
car at a Ford depot where alleged problem com
ponents and vehicles were delivered for inspection
and analysis (a place known as the “Chamber of
Horrors” by some of the people who worked there).
The revulsion on seeing this incinerated hulk was
immediate and profound. Soon afterwards, and
despite the fact that the file was very sparse, I recom
mended the Pinto case for preliminary department
level review concerning possible recall. After the
usual round of discussion about criteria and justifi
cation for recall, everyone voted against recom
mending recall including me. It did not fit the
pattern of recallable standards; the evidence was not
overwhelming that the car was defective in some
way, so the case was actually fairly straightforward. It
was a good business decision, even if people might
be dying. (We did not then know about the pre
production crash test data that suggested a high rate
of tank failures in “normal” accidents (cf., Perrow,
1984) or an abnormal failure mode.)

Later, the existence of the crash test data did

become known within Ford, which suggested that
the Pinto might actually have a recallable problem.
This information led to a reconsideration of the case

within our office. The data, however, prompted a
comparison of the Pinto’s survivability in a rear end
accident with that of other competitors’ small cars.
These comparisons revealed that although many cars
in this subcompact class suffered appalling deforma
tion in relatively low speed collisions, the Pinto was

merely the worst of a bad lot. Furthermore, the gap
between the Pinto and the competition was not
dramatic in terms of the speed at which fuel tank
rupture was likely to occur. On that basis it would
be difficult to justify the recall of cars that were

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Pinto Fires and Personal Ethics 383

comparable with others on the market. In the face of
even more compelling evidence that people were
probably going to die in this car, I again included
myself in a group of decision makers who voted not
to recommend recall to the higher levels of the
organization.

Coda to the corporate case

Subsequent to my departure from Ford in 1975,
reports of Pinto fires escalated, attracting increasing

media attention, almost all of it critical of Ford.

Anderson and Whitten (1976) revealed the internal
memos concerning the gas tank problem and ques
tioned how the few dollars saved per car could be
justified when human lives were at stake. Shortly
thereafter, a scathing article by Dowie (1977) at
tacked not only the Pinto’s design, but also accused
Ford of gross negligence, stonewalling, and unethical
corporate conduct by alleging that Ford knowingly
sold “firetraps” after willfully calculating the cost of
lives against profits (see also Gatewood and Carroll,
1983). Dowie’s provocative quote speculating on
“how long the Ford Motor Company would con
tinue to market lethal cars were Henry Ford II and
Lee Iacocca serving 20 year terms in Leavenworth
for consumer homicide” (1977, p. 32) was particu
larly effective in focusing attention on the case.
Public sentiment edged toward labeling Ford as
socially deviant because management was seen as
knowing that the car was defective, choosing profit
over lives, resisting demands to fix the car, and
apparently showing no public remorse (Swigert and
Farrell, 1980-81).

Shortly after Dowie’s (1977) expos , NHTSA
initiated its own investigation. Then, early in 1978 a
jury awarded a Pinto burn victim $125 million in
punitive damages (later reduced to $6.6 million , a
judgment upheld on an appeal that prompted the
judge to assert that “Ford’s institutional mentality
was shown to be one of callous indifference to public
safety” (quoted in Cullen et al, 1987, p. 164)). A siege
atmosphere emerged at Ford. Insiders characterized
the mounting media campaign as “hysterical” and “a
crusade against us” (personal communications). The
crisis deepened. In the summer of 1978 NHTSA
issued a formal determination that the Pinto was
defective. Ford then launched a reluctant recall of all

1971 1976 cars (those built for the 1977 model year
were equipped with a production fix prompted by
the adoption of the FMVSS 301 gas tank standard).
Ford hoped that the issue would then recede, but
worse was yet to come.

The culmination of the case and the demise of the

Pinto itself began in Indiana on August 10, 1978,
when three teenage girls died in a fire triggered after
their 1973 Pinto was hit from behind by a van. A
grand jury took the unheard of step of indicting
Ford on charges of reckless homicide (Cullen et al,
1987). Because of the precedent-setting possibilities
for all manufacturing industries, Ford assembled a
formidable legal team headed by Watergate prose
cutor James Neal to defend itself at the trial. The
trial was a media event; it was the first time that a

corporation was tried for alleged criminal behavior.
After a protracted, acrimonious courtroom battle
that included vivid clashes among the opposing
attorneys, surprise witnesses, etc., the jury ultimately
found in favor of Ford. Ford had dodged a bullet in
the form of a consequential legal precedent, but
because of the negative publicity of the case and the
charges of corporate crime and ethical deviance, the
conduct of manufacturing businesses was altered,
probably forever. As a relatively minor footnote to
the case, Ford ceased production of the Pinto.

Coda to the personal case

In the intervening years since my early involvement
with the Pinto fire case, I have given repeated
consideration to my role in it. Although most of the
ethically questionable actions that have been cited in
the press are associated with Ford’s intentional
stonewalling after it was clear that the Pinto was
defective (see Cullen et al, 1986; Dowie, 1977;
Gatewood and Carroll, 1983) and thus postdate
my involvement with the case and the company I
still nonetheless wonder about my own culpability.

Why didn’t I see the gravity of the problem and its
ethical overtones? What happened to the value
system I carried with me into Ford? Should I have
acted differently, given what I knew then? The
experience with myself has sometimes not been
pleasant. Somehow, it seems I should have done
something different that might have made a differ
ence.

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384 Dennis A. Gioia

As a consequence of this line of thinking and
feeling, some years ago I decided to construct a
“living case” out of my experience with the Pinto fire
problem for use in my MBA classes. The written case
description contains many of the facts detailed
above; the analytical task of the class is to ask
appropriate questions of me as a figure in the case to
reveal the central issues involved. It is somewhat of a

trying experience to get through these classes. After
getting to know me for most of the semester, and
then finding out that I did not vote to recommend
recall, students are often incredulous, even angry at

me for apparently not having lived what I have been
teaching. To be fair and even-handed here, many
students understand my actions in the context of the

times and the attitudes prevalent then. Others,
however, are very disappointed that I appear to have
failed during a time of trial. Consequently, I am
accused of being a charlatan and otherwise vilified
by those who maintain that ethical and moral prin
ciples should have prevailed in this case no matter
what the mitigating circumstances. Those are the
ones that hurt.

Those are also the ones, however, that keep the
case and its lessons alive in my mind and cause me to

have an on-going dialogue with myself about it. It is
fascinating to me that for several years after I first
conducted the living case with myself as the focus, I
remained convinced that I had made the “right”
decision in not recommending recall of the cars. In
light of the times and the evidence available, I
thought I had pursued a reasonable course of action.

More recently, however, I have come to think that I
really should have done everything I could to get
those cars off the road.

In retrospect I know that in the context of the
times my actions were legal (they were all well

within the framework of the law); they probably also
were ethical according to most prevailing definitions
(they were in accord with accepted professional
standards and codes of conduct); the major concern
for me is whether they were moral (in the sense of
adhering to some higher standards of inner con
science and conviction about the “right” actions to
take). This simple typology implies that I had passed
at least two hurdles on a personal continuum that
ranged from more rigorous, but arguably less signifi
cant criteria, to less rigorous, but more personally,

organizationally, and perhaps societally significant
standards:

X X ?

Legal Ethical Moral

It is that last criterion that remains troublesome.

Perhaps these reflections are all just personal
revisionist history. After all, I am still stuck in my
cognitive structures, as everyone is. I do not think
these concerns are all retrospective reconstruction,
however. Another telling piece of information is this:
The entire time I was dealing with the Pinto fire
problem, I owned a Pinto (!). I even sold it to my
sister. What does that say?

What happened here?

I, of course, have some thoughts about my experi
ence with this damningly visible case. At the risk of
breaking some of the accepted rules of scholarly
analysis, rather than engaging in the usual compre
hensive, dense, arms-length critique, I would instead
like to offer a rather selective and subjective focus on
certain characteristics of human information pro
cessing relevant to this kind of situation, of which I
was my own unwitting victim. I make no claim that
my analysis necessarily “explains more variance”
than other possible explanations. I do think that this
selective view is enlightening in that it offers an
alternative explanation for some ethically question
able actions in business.

The subjective stance adopted in the analysis is
intentional also. This case obviously stems from a
series of personal experiences, accounts, and intro
spections. The analytical style is intended to be
consistent with the self-based case example; there
fore, it appears to be less “formal” than the typical
objectivist mode of explanation. I suspect that my
chosen focus will be fairly non-obvious to the reader
familiar with the ethical literature (as it typically
is to the ethical actor). Although this analysis might
be judged as somewhat self-serving, I nonetheless
believe that it provides an informative explanation
for some of the ethical foibles we see enacted around
us.

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Pinto Fires and Personal Ethics 385

To me, there are two major issues to address.
First, how could my value system apparently have
flip-flopped in the relatively short space of 1 2
years? Secondly, how could I have failed to take
action on a retrospectively obvious safety problem
when I was in the perfect position to do so? To
begin, I would like to consider several possible
explanations for my thoughts and actions (or lack
thereof) during the early stages of the Pinto fire case.

One explanation is that I was simply revealed as a
phony when the chips were down; that my previous
values were not strongly inculcated; that I was all
bluster, not particularly ethical, and as a result acted
expediently when confronted with a reality test of
those values. In other words, I turned traitor to my
own expressed values. Another explanation is that I
was simply intimidated; in the face of strong pres
sure to heel to company preferences, I folded put
ethical concerns aside, or at least traded them for a

monumental guilt trip and did what anybody would
do to keep a good job. A third explanation is that I
was following a strictly utilitarian set of decision
criteria (Valasquez et al, 1983) and, predictably
enough, opted for a personal form of Ford’s own
cost-benefit analysis, with similar disappointing re
sults. Another explanation might suggest that the
interaction of my stage of moral development
(Kohlberg, 1969) and the culture and decision
environment at Ford led me to think about and act

upon an ethical dilemma in a fashion that reflected a

lower level of actual moral development than I
espoused for myself (Trevino, 1986 and this issue).
Yet another explanation is that I was co-opted;
rather than working from the inside to change a
lumbering system as I had intended, the tables were
turned and the system beat me at my own game.

More charitably, perhaps, it is possible that I simply
was a good person making bad ethical choices
because of the corporate milieu (Gellerman, 1986).

I doubt that this list is exhaustive. I am quite sure
that cynics could match my own MBA students’
labels, which in the worst case include phrases like
“moral failure” and “doubly reprehensible because
you were in a position to make a difference.” I
believe, however, on the basis of a number of years
of work on social cognition in organizations that a
viable explanation is one that is not quite so melo
dramatic. It is an explanation that rests on a recogni

tion that even the best-intentioned organization
members organize information into cognitive struc
tures or sch mas that serve as (fallible) mental
templates for handling incoming information and as
guides for acting upon it. Of the many sch mas that
have been hypothesized to exist, the one that is most
relevant to my experience at Ford is the notion of a
script (Abelson, 1976, 1981).
My central thesis is this: My own schematized

(scripted) knowledge influenced me to perceive recall issues
in terms of the prevailing decision environment and to
unconsciously overlook key features of the Pinto case, mainly
because they did not fit an existing script. Although the
outcomes of the case carry retrospectively obvious ethical
overtones, the sch mas driving my perceptions and actions

precluded consideration of the issues in ethical terms because
the scripts did not include ethical dimensions.

Script sch mas

A schema is a cognitive framework that people use to
impose structure upon information, situations, and
expectations to facilitate understanding (Gioia and
Poole, 1984; Taylor and Crocker, 1981). Schemas
derive from consideration of prior experience or
vicarious learning that results in the formation of
“organized” knowledge knowledge that, once
formed, precludes the necessity for further active
cognition. As a consequence, such structured knowl
edge allows virtually effortless interpretation of
information and events (cf., Canter and Mischel,
1979). A script is a specialized type of schema that
retains knowledge of actions appropriate for specific
situations and contexts (Abelson, 1976, 1981). One of
the most important characteristics of scripts is that
they simultaneously provide a cognitive framework
for understanding information and events as well as a
guide to appropriate behavior to deal with the situa
tion faced. They thus serve as linkages between
cognition and action (Gioia and Manz, 1985).

The structuring of knowledge in scripted form is
a fundamental human information processing tend
ency that in many ways results in a relatively closed
cognitive system that influences both perception and
action. Scripts, like all sch mas, operate on the basis
of prototypes, which are abstract representations that
contain the main features or characteristics of a

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386 Dennis A. Gioia

given knowledge category (e.g., “safety problems”).
Protoscripts (Gioia and Poole, 1984) serve as tem
plates against which incoming information can be
assessed. A pattern in current information that
generally matches the template associated with a
given script signals that active thought and analysis is
not required. Under these conditions the entire
existing script can be called forth and enacted
automatically and unconsciously, usually without
adjustment for subtle differences in information
patterns that might be important.

Given the complexity of the organizational world,
it is obvious that the schematizing or scripting of
knowledge implies a great information processing
advantage a decision maker need not actively
think about each new presentation of information,
situations, or problems; the mode of handling such
problems has already been worked out in advance
and remanded to a working stock of knowledge held
in individual (or organizational) memory. Scripted
knowledge saves a significant amount of mental
work, a savings that in fact prevents the cognitive
paralysis that would inevitably come from trying to
treat each specific instance of a class of problems as
a unique case that requires contemplation. Scripted
decision making is thus efficient decision making
but not necessarily good decision making (Gioia and
Poole, 1984).

Of course, every advantage comes with its own set
of built-in disadvantages. There is a price to pay for
scripted knowledge. On the one hand, existing
scripts lead people to selectively perceive informa
tion that is consistent with a script and thus to
ignore anomalous information. Conversely, if there
is missing information, the gaps in knowledge are
filled with expected features supplied by the script
(Bower et al, 1979; Graesser et al, 1980). In some
cases, a pattern that matches an existing script,
except for some key differences, can be “tagged” as a
distinctive case (Graesser et al, 1979) and thus be
made more memorable. In the worst case scenario,
however, a situation that does not fit the characteris

tics of the scripted perspective for handling problem
cases often is simply not noticed. Scripts thus offer a
viable explanation for why experienced decision
makers (perhaps especially experienced decision mak
ers) tend to overlook what others would construe as
obvious factors in making a decision.

Given the relatively rare occurrence of truly novel

information, the nature of script processing implies
that it is a default mode of organizational cognition.
That is, instead of spending the predominance of
their mental energy thinking in some active fashion,
decision makers might better be characterized as
typically not thinking, i.e., dealing with information
in a mode that is akin to “cruising on automatic
pilot” (cf., Gioia, 1986). The scripted view casts
decision makers as needing some sort of prod in the
form of novel or unexpected information to kick
them into a thinking mode a prod that often does
not come because of the wealth of similar data that

they must process. Therefore, instead of focusing
what people pay attention to, it might be more
enlightening to focus on what they do not pay
attention to.

Pinto problem perception and scripts

It is illustrative to consider my situation in handling
the early stages of the Pinto fire case in light of script
theory. When I was dealing with the first trickling
in of field reports that might have suggested a
significant problem with the Pinto, the reports were
essentially similar to many others that I was dealing
with (and dismissing) all the time. The sort of infor
mation they contained, which did not convey en
ough prototypical features to capture my attention,
never got past my screening script. I had seen this
type of information pattern before (hundreds of
times!); I was making this kind of decision automati
cally every day. I had trained myself to respond to
prototypical cues, and these didn’t fit the relevant
prototype for crisis cases. (Yes, the Pinto reports fit a
prototype but it was a prototype for “normal
accidents” that did not deviate significantly from
expected problems). The frequency of the reports
relative to other, more serious problems (i.e., those
that displayed more characteristic features of safety
problems) also did not pass my scripted criteria for
singling out the Pinto case. Consequently, I looked
right past them.

Overlooking uncharacteristic cues also was exac
erbated by the nature of the job. The overwhelming
information overload that characterized the role as

well as its hectic pace actually forced a greater
reliance on scripted responses. It was impossible to
handle the job requirements without relying on some

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Pinto Fires and Personal Ethics 387

sort of automatic way of assessing whether a case
deserved active attention. There was so much to do

and so much information to attend to that the only
way to deal with it was by means of schematic
processing. In fact, the one anomaly in the case that
might have cued me to gravity of the problem (the
field report accompanied by graphic photographs)
still did not distinguish the problem as one that was
distinctive enough to snap me out of my standard
response mode and tag it as a failure that deserved
closer monitoring.

Even the presence of an emotional component
that might have short-circuited standard script pro
cessing instead became part of the script itself.

Months of squelching the disturbing emotions asso
ciated with serious safety problems soon made
muffled emotions a standard (and not very salient)
component of the script for handling any safety
problem. This observation, that emotion was muted
by experience, and therefore de-emphasized in the
script, differs from Fiske’s (1982) widely accepted
position that emotion is tied to the top of a schema
(i.e., is the most salient and initially-tapped aspect of
schematic processing). On the basis of my experi
ence, I would argue that for organization members
trained to control emotions to perform the job role
(cf., Pitre, 1990), emotion is either not a part of the
internalized script, or at best becomes a difficult-to
access part of any script for job performance.

The one instance of emotion penetrating the
operating script was the revulsion that swept over
me at the sight of the burned vehicle at the return
depot. That event was so strong that it prompted me
to put the case up for preliminary consideration (in
theoretical terms, it prompted me cognitively to
“tag” the Pinto case as a potentially distinctive one). I
soon “came to my senses,” however, when rational
consideration of the problem characteristics sug
gested that they did not meet the scripted criteria
that were consensually shared among members of
the Field Recall Office. At the preliminary review
other members of the decision team, enacting their
own scripts in the absence of my emotional experi
ence, wondered why I had even brought the case up.
To me this meeting demonstrated that even when
controlled analytic information processing occurred,
it was nonetheless based on prior schematization of
information. In other words, even when information

processing was not automatically executed, it still

depended upon sch mas (cf., Gioia, 1986). As a result
of the social construction of the situation, I ended up

agreeing with my colleagues and voting not to recall.
The remaining major issue to be dealt with, of

course, concerns the apparent shift in my values. In a

period of less than two years I appeared to change
my stripes and adopt the cultural values of the
organization. How did that apparent shift occur?
Again, scripts are relevant. I would argue that my
pre-Ford values for changing corporate America
were bona fide. I had internalized values for doing
what was right as I then understood “rightness” in
grand terms. They key is, however, that I had not
internalized a script for enacting those values in any
specific context outside my limited experience. The
insider’s view at Ford, of course, provided me with a
specific and immediate context for developing such
a script. Scripts are formed from salient experience
and there was no more salient experience in my
relatively young life than joining a major corpora
tion and moving quickly into a position of clear and
present responsibility. The strongest possible param
eters for script formation were all there, not only
because of the job role specifications, but also from
the corporate culture. Organizational culture, in one
very powerful sense, amounts to a collection of
scripts writ large. Did I sell out? No. Were my
cognitive structures altered by salient experience?

Without question. Scripts for understanding and
action were formed and reformed in a relatively
short time in a way that not only altered perceptions
of issues but also the likely actions associated with
those altered perceptions.

I might characterize the differing cognitive struc
tures as “outsider” versus “insider” scripts. I view
them also as “idealist” versus “realist” scripts. I might
further note that the outsider/idealist script was one
that was more individually-based than the insider/
realist script, which was more collective and subject
to the influence of the corporate milieu and culture.

Personal identity as captured in the revised script
became much more corporate than individual. Given
that scripts are socially constructed and recon
structed cognitive structures, it is understandable
that their content and process would be much more
responsive to the corporate culture, because of its
saliency and immediacy.

The recall coordinator’s job was serious business.
The scripts associated with it influenced me much

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388 Dennis A. Gioia

more than I influenced it. Before I went to Ford I

would have argued strongly that Ford had an ethical
obligation to recall. After I left Ford I now argue and
teach that Ford had an ethical obligation to recall.
But, while I was there, I perceived no strong obligation
to recall and I remember no strong ethical overtones

to the case whatsoever. It was a very straightforward
decision, driven by dominant scripts for the time,
place, and context.

Whither ethics and scripts?

Most models of ethical decision making in organiza
tions implicitly assume that people recognize and
think about a moral or ethical dilemma when they
are confronted with one (cf., Kohlberg, 1969 and
Trevino’s review in this issue). I call this seemingly
fundamental assumption into question. The unex
plored ethical issue for me is the arguably prevalent
case where organizational representatives are not
aware that they are dealing with a problem that
might have ethical overtones. If the case involves a
familiar class of problems or issues, it is likely to be
handled via existing cognitive structures or scripts
scripts that typically include no ethical component in their
cognitive content.

Although we might hope that people in charge of
important decisions like vehicle safety recalls might
engage in active, logical analysis and consider the
subtleties in the many different situations they face,
the context of the decisions and their necessary
reliance on schematic processing tends to preclude
such consideration (cf., Gioia, 1989). Accounting for
the subtleties of ethical consideration in work situa

tions that are typically handled by schema-based
processing is very difficult indeed. Scripts are built
out of situations that are normal, not those that are

abnormal, ill-structured, or unusual (which often
can characterize ethical domains). The ambiguities
associated with most ethical dilemmas imply that
such situations demand a “custom” decision, which

means that the inclusion of an ethical dimension as a

component of an evolving script is not easy to
accomplish.

How might ethical considerations be internalized
as part of the script for understanding and action? It
is easier to say what will not be likely to work than

what will. Clearly, mere mention of ethics in policy

or training manuals will not do the job. Even ex
hortations to be concerned with ethics in decision

making are seldom likely to migrate into the script.
Just as clearly, codes of ethics typically will not work.

They are too often cast at a level of generality that
can not be associated with any specific script. Fur
thermore, for all practical purposes, codes of ethics
often are stated in a way that makes them “context
free,” which makes them virtually impossible to
associate with active scripts, which always are con
text-bound.

Tactics for script development that have more
potential involve learning or training that con
centrates on exposure to information or models that
explicitly display a focus on ethical considerations.
This implies that ethics be included in job descrip
tions, management development training, mentor
ing, etc. Tactics for script revision involve learning or
training that concentrate on “script-breaking” exam
ples. Organization members must be exposed either
to vicarious or personal experiences that interrupt
tacit knowledge of “appropriate” action so that script
revision can be initiated. Training scenarios, and
especially role playing, that portray expected se
quences that are then interrupted to call explicit
attention to ethical issues can be tagged by the
perceiver as requiring attention. This tactic amounts
to installing a decision node in the revised scripts
that tells the actor “Now think” (Abelson, 1981).

Only by means of similar script-breaking strategies
can existing cognitive structures be modified to
accommodate the necessary cycles of automatic and
controlled processing (cf., Louis and Sutton, 1991).

The upshot of the scripted view of organizational
understanding and behavior is both an encourage
ment and an indictment of people facing situations
laced with ethical overtones. It is encouraging
because it suggests that organizational decision
makers are not necessarily lacking in ethical stand
ards; they are simply fallible information processors
who fail to notice the ethical implications of a usual
way of handling issues. It is an indictment because
ethical dimensions are not usually a central feature
of the cognitive structures that drive decision mak
ing. Obviously, they should be, but it will take
substantial concentration on the ethical dimension

of the corporate culture, as well as overt attempts to

emphasize ethics in education, training, and decision
making before typical organizational scripts are

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Pinto Fires and Personal Ethics 389

likely to be modified to include the crucial ethical
component.

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Pennsylvania State University,

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Contents

[379]
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389

Issue Table of Contents

Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 11, No. 5/6, Behavioral Aspects of Business Ethics (May, 1992), pp. 329-484
Introduction [p. 329-329]
Fairness in the Selection of Employees [pp. 331-340]
The Politics of Age Discrimination in Organizations [pp. 341-350]
Contemporary Ethical Issues in Labor-Management Relations [pp. 351-360]
Ethical Issues in the Selection Interview [pp. 361-367]
Ethical Decision-Making in Business: Behavioral Issues and Concerns [pp. 369-377]
Pinto Fires and Personal Ethics: A Script Analysis of Missed Opportunities [pp. 379-389]
Ethics Programs and Their Dimensions [pp. 391-399]
Accounting for Organizational Misconduct [pp. 401-411]
Alienation and Empowerment: Some Ethical Imperatives in Business [pp. 413-422]
Ethics of Managing Interpersonal Conflict in Organizations [pp. 423-432]
Establishing the Role of Empirical Studies of Organizational Justice in Philosophical Inquiries into Business Ethics [pp. 433-444]
Moral Reasoning and Business Ethics: Implications for Research, Education, and Management [pp. 445-459]
Judging the Morality of Business Practices: The Influence of Personal Moral Philosophies [pp. 461-470]
Cognitive-Contingency Theory and the Study of Ethics in Accounting [pp. 471-478]
Ethical Leaders: An Essay about Being in Love [pp. 479-484]

The Role of Construction, Intuition, and Justification in Responding to Ethical Issues at
Work: The Sensemaking-Intuition Model
Author(s): Scott Sonenshein
Source: The Academy of Management Review, Vol. 32, No. 4 (Oct., 2007), pp. 1022-1040
Published by: Academy of Management
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? Academy o? Management Review
2007, Vol. 32. No. 4, 1022-1040.

THE ROLE OF CONSTRUCTION, INTUITION,
AND JUSTIFICATION IN RESPONDING TO

ETHICAL ISSUES AT WORK: THE
SENSEMAKING-INTUITION MODEL

SCOTT SONENSHEIN
Rice University

Proponents of a popular view of how individuals respond to ethical issues at work
claim that individuals use deliberate and extensive moral reasoning under conditions
that ignore equivocality and uncertainty. I discuss the limitations of these “rationalist
approaches” and reconsider their empirical support using an alternative explanation
from social psychological and sensemaking perspectives. I then introduce a new
theoretical model composed of issue construction, intuitive judgment, and post hoc
explanation and justification. I discuss the implications for management theory,
methods, and practice.

Several prominent theories claim that individ
uals use deliberate and extensive moral reason
ing to respond to ethical issues, such as weigh
ing evidence and applying abstract moral
principles. These “rationalist approaches” have
flourished, in part, because of their cumulative
research agenda and the absence of well
developed alternative theoretical perspectives
(Randall & Gibson, 1990). Despite their popular
ity and usefulness, it is important to evaluate
these approaches to understand their limita
tions. I question several assumptions of ratio
nalist approaches and answer scholars’ calls to
develop alternative theoretical views (OTallon
& Butterfield, 2005). I present a model based on
social psychological and sensemaking perspec
tives?something I call the “sensemaking
intuition model” (SIM).

I argue that individuals engage in sensemak
ing under conditions of equivocality and uncer
tainty (Weick, 1979, 1995). Individuals’ expecta
tions and motivations affect this process such
that they vary in how they construct ethical is
sues. Individuals then make intuitive judgments
about their constructions of ethical issues. This
view challenges the privileged status of moral

reasoning in rationalist models by claiming that
responses to ethical issues are not always
based on deliberate and extensive moral rea
soning. Although in previous research scholars
have found partial support for rationalist ap
proaches, I reconsider these findings in light of
an alternative explanation using social psycho
logical and sensemaking perspectives.

I first briefly review rationalist approaches
and then discuss the limitations of this view. I
then outline the alternative assumptions of my
approach and describe the key components of
the SIM: issue construction, intuitive judgment,
and explanation and justification. I conclude by
detailing the implications of this research for
theory, methods, and practice.

REVIEW OF RATIONALIST APPROACHES

Philosophers back to at least Plato took a strong
interest in how individuals respond to ethical is
sues, but social scientists have only recently be
gun to focus on responses to ethical issues in the
context of business. I briefly review three promi
nent streams of research on how organizational
actors respond to ethical issues?managers as
“philosophers,” person-situation, and issue
contingent approaches?and consider these as
examples of rationalist approaches.

Managers As Philosophers Research
Some of the earliest models of individuals’

responses to ethical issues borrowed directly

I thank Kathie Sutcliffe for her valuable feedback on this
paper. I also thank Jane Dutton, Adam Grant, Patricia Wer
hane, Phoebe Ellsworth, Marlys Christianson, former asso
ciate editor Tom Donaldson, and the AMR reviewers for their
comments on a previous draft. I presented an earlier version
of this paper at the Society for Business Ethics 2004 annual
meeting in New Orleans.

Contents

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2007 Sonenshein 1023

from traditional philosophical ethics. These
views propose that managers, much like philos
ophers, draw on normative theories to make de
cisions about ethical issues. As a result, propo
nents claim that individuals often use
deliberate and extensive moral reasoning. For
example, Fritzsche and Becker (1984) presented
individuals with a series of vignettes and asked
them how they would respond to a morally ques
tionable behavior, and why (see also Premeaux,
2004, and Premeaux & Mondy, 1993). The re
searchers classified individuals’ explanations
into major schools of philosophy, such as deon
tological and utilitarian reasoning. Hunt and
Vitell (1986; see also Mayo & Marks, 1990) cre
ated a similar model, in which “the ultimate
underlying assumption is that people … do in
fact engage in both deontological and teleolog
ical evaluations in determining their ethical
judgments, and ultimately, their behaviors”
(Hunt & Vitell, 1986: 7). Both forms of reasoning
involve ordinary organizational actors’ use of
rather intricate philosophical theories to reason
and make calculations about ethical issues. De
ontological reasoning involves comparisons be
tween potential behaviors and predetermined
deontological norms (e.g., honesty, fair treat
ment, etc.). Teleological evaluations involve cal
culations, such as perceived consequences of
alternative actions for stakeholder groups (Hunt
& Vitell, 1986: 9).

Person-Situation Research

Trevi?o (1986) raised the possibility that indi
viduals may not actually use philosophical the
ories as the basis of moral reasoning; she more
deeply rooted her theory in social science. Her
“person-situation model” (see also Church, Gaa,
Nainar, & Shehata, 2005) proposes that re
sponses to ethical issues are a function of (1) a
person’s cognitions determined by his or her
stage of moral development (Kohlberg, 1981,
1984), (2) individual-difference moderators (ego
strength, field dependence, and locus of control),
and (3) situational moderators (organizational
culture and characteristics of the work). While
the person-situation model drops an explicit fo
cus on philosophical reasoning, it retains a ra
tionalist foundation by treating a manager’s
stage of moral development as an important
explanatory device in how individuals respond
to ethical issues (Trevi?o, 1986: 604). For exam

pie, Trevi?o and Youngblood (1990) provided a
management decision-making exercise for MBA
students and found that individuals’ responses
to ethical issues are affected by their reasoning
processes, as well as by rewards and punish
ments.

Issue-Contingent Research

Building on both the managers as philoso
phers and person-situation models, Jones (1991)
published an “issue-contingent model,” which
calls attention to the importance of the charac
teristics of ethical issues. Jones posits that the
“moral intensity” of an issue explains how peo
ple will react to ethical issues. Moral intensity is
composed of differences in consequences
(harms or benefits done to victims/beneficia
ries), social consensus (degree of social agree
ment that a proposed act is evil/good), probabil
ity of effect (joint probability the act in question
will happen and the predicted harm/benefit will
occur), temporal immediacy (distance between
the present and the onset of the act’s conse
quences), proximity (feeling near to the victim/
beneficiary), and concentration of effect (the in
verse function of the number of individuals
affected by the act’s magnitude).
One of the central claims of Jones’ (1991)

model, following Rest (1986), is that responses to
ethical issues contain four components: recogni
tion of a moral issue, ethical judgment, moral
intent, and ethical behavior. All four compo
nents are affected by an issue’s moral intensity.
As an issue’s moral intensity increases, individ
uals are more likely to recognize moral issues,
make ethical judgments, establish moral intent,
and engage in ethical behavior. Empirical re
search shows that the social consensus and
magnitude of consequences components receive
the strongest support, with other factors receiv
ing mixed support (O’Fallon & Butterfield, 2005).

LIMITATIONS OF RATIONALIST APPROACHES

Rationalist approaches have been useful for
advancing scholarly understanding of how indi
viduals respond to ethical issues. Unlike much
of the work on ethical issues (Randall & Gibson,
1990), rationalist models are grounded using
clear and testable theoretical claims that allow
for theory extension. Not surprisingly, a recent
review found 174 empirical articles where the

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1024 Academy of Management Review October

dependent variable was one of the four stages of
Rest’s (1986, and, by extension, Jones’ [1991])
model, including 32 using moral intensity
(O’Fallon & Butterfield, 2005). Despite this atten
tion, rationalist perspectives have important
limitations that scholars rarely surface, in part
because of a lack of theoretical alternatives
(O’Fallon & Butterfield, 2005; Randall & Gibson,
1990).

In this section I discuss four limitations. Ra
tionalist approaches tend to (1) fail to address
the presence of equivocality and uncertainty
common in natural settings, (2) view deliberate
and extensive reasoning as a precursor for eth
ical behavior, (3) underemphasize the construc
tive nature of “ethical issues,” and (4) claim that

moral reasoning is used to make moral judg
ments. Although not all three theories I re
viewed above are subject to all four criticisms,
they are historically intertwined with one an
other and collectively illustrate the rationalist
approach by emphasizing deliberate and exten
sive reasoning and reflection.

Equivocality and Uncertainty

Equivocality involves the existence of several
different, simultaneous interpretations (Weick,
1995: 91f). Uncertainty refers to a lack of informa
tion that makes constructing a plausible inter
pretation about a situation difficult. For exam
ple, individuals may have imprecise estimates
about the consequences of their current actions
on the future (March, 1994), such as if committing
an action will harm others.

Equivocality and uncertainty are common
themes in organizational theory, including

Weick’s theory of organizing (1979, 1995) and
Dutton’s (1997) view of strategic issues. While
these views of equivocality and uncertainty

were developed outside the specific domain of
ethical issues, there are likely to be important
applications to ethical issues. For example, Mc
Caskey (1982) has proposed several factors that
lead to equivocal situations. His “differences in
value orientations” is something especially sa
lient for moral problems given moral pluralism,
and “unclear or conflicting goals” often arise
when individuals are forced to choose between
right and right (Badaracco, 1997) and need to
satisfy conflicting stakeholder needs (Phillips,
2003).

While organizational scholars have histori
cally recognized the importance of equivocality
and uncertainty, some rationalist models fail to
address these concepts?specifically, those
based on issue-contingent approaches. To illus
trate this point, I examine the two components of

moral intensity that receive the most attention
(and support) in the literature: (1) magnitude of
consequences and (2) social consensus (May &
Pauli, 2002).

Jones provides the following example for
magnitude of consequences: an “act that causes
1,000 people to suffer a particular injury is of
greater magnitude of consequence than an act
that causes 10 people the same injury” (Jones,
1991: 374). This example assumes that whether
1,000 people or 10 people suffer, and to what
degree, are known prior to individuals’ engag
ing in (un)ethical behavior. But the hard part
about ethical issues is often figuring out exactly
what will happen from different (real or poten
tial) behavioral responses. When individuals

make guesses about such outcomes, they may
have a positive illusion that prevents them from
recognizing that their decision will even harm
others (Taylor & Brown, 1988). Alternatively, in
dividuals may develop several interpretations
about the issue, which vary in the degree to
which an act will have harmful consequences.
In the former case, an absence of any interpre
tation involving harm exists, leading to uncer
tainty. In the latter case, multiple interpreta
tions about potential harms lead to equivocality.
A second example comes from Jones’ idea of

social consensus: “the evil involved in bribing a
customs official in Texas has greater social con
sensus than the evil involved in bribing a cus
toms official in Mexico” (1991: 375). Others have
pointed out that this conception of social con
sensus is a “relatively objective issue-related
factor” (Butterfield, Trevi?o, & Weaver 2000: 990),
implying that the issue varies, not its interpre
tation. But individuals are likely to vary in how
they understand a social consensus. An individ
ual who has already committed a bribe in Mex
ico (and got caught) may infer a different social
consensus than someone who did not get
caught. Other individuals may not have any in
terpretation (i.e., they are uncertain) about the
social consensus of bribery in Mexico compared
to Texas. They might try to make predictions
about the results of a poll of the relevant refer
ent group on their thoughts of offering a bribe in

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2007 Sonenshein 1025

either Texas or Mexico. But what is the relevant
referent group anyway?workgroup, organiza
tion, industry, society? Do the referent groups
provide conflicting answers that create equivo
cality?

In addition to equivocality and uncertainty
about the “facts” of an issue, equivocality and
uncertainty may exist in the abstract rules and
principles used in moral reasoning. Kohlberg’s
(1981,1984) conventional stage of moral develop

ment?where he thinks most adults peak?
stresses the importance of adopting the moral
standards of others, including society. Kohlberg
is less concerned with the specific content of
those standards and focuses more on individu
als’ orientations to rules. But from a practical
standpoint, such standards are not always
known and clear to individuals, and there may
even be conflicts (e.g., general social norms ver
sus a local community). Whose standards apply
in these cases? While Kohlberg implies that de
ontological reasoning is more advanced than
utilitarian moral reasoning (Kohlberg, 1981,
1984), this itself is a controversial philosophical
and psychological claim that does not seem
readily resolvable (Thomas, 1997). Even assum
ing individuals agree on a set of moral stan
dards, figuring out what these standards mean,
along with their application, is often so difficult
(Sonenshein, 2005; Walzer, 1987) that it may only
rarely happen inside organizations.

Ethical Behavior Requires Deliberate and
Extensive Reasoning

Rationalist approaches assume that deliber
ate and extensive reasoning is required to en
gage in ethical behavior. For example, Street,
Douglas, Geiger, and Martinko’s (2001) “cogni
tive elaboration model” posits that when both
the motivation and ability to engage in moral
reasoning are low, individuals will be less
likely to recognize the ethical implications of
issues. But when such reasoning is high, issues

will be resolved in accordance with rationalist
models (e.g., Jones, 1991; Rest, 1986). In short, the
cognitive elaboration model claims that deliber
ate and extensive reasoning is a prerequisite for
moral awareness and subsequent (actual or po
tential) behavioral responses consistent with a

moral viewpoint (see also Moore & Loewenstein,
2004).

What remains an open question is how fre
quently individuals use deliberate and exten
sive reasoning. After all, research in psychology
posits important boundaries to individuals’ cog
nitive capacities (Simon, 1955), and business
ethics scholars make related claims about indi
viduals’ “bounded moral rationality” (Donald
son & Dunfee, 1994). Moreover, social psycholog
ical research shows that individuals rarely
engage in the deliberate, extensive reasoning
proposed by rationalist models (Bargh & Char
trand, 1999; Greenwald & Banaji, 1995). Instead,
individuals engage in mental processes outside
their conscious awareness and guidance (Bargh
& Chartrand, 1999).

This research, which is beginning to trickle
into discussions about business ethics (Bazer

man & Banaji, 2004), challenges the idea that
individuals reason deliberately and with great
effort to respond to ethical issues (Banaji, Bazer
man, & Chugh, 2003). For example, the “bounded
personal ethics” model claims that individuals
are often unaware of the ethical implications of
their actions, which leads them to favor their
self-interest (Murnighan, Cantelon, & Elyashiv,
2001). But the current literature shows a general
belief that satisfactory responses (actual or po
tential behaviors consistent with a moral view
point) cannot emerge from anything other than
deliberate and extensive reasoning (Moore &
Loewenstein, 2004; Street et al., 2001).

Objectivity, Construction, and Interpretation

Issue-contingent models are predicated on the
idea that previous research does not do more
“than hint that characteristics of the moral issue
itself will affect the moral decision-making pro
cess” (Jones 1991: 369). This observation was in
tended to point out a limitation in prior re
search?namely, that individuals will “decide
and behave in the same manner whether the
issue is the theft of a few supplies… or the
release of a dangerous product” (Jones 1991:371).
However, to make this claim, it became neces
sary to emphasize the properties of issues (i.e.,
moral intensity [Jones, 1991]). In fact, rationalist
approaches sometimes suggest that the “pro
cess begins with a problem” (Jones, 1991: 380)
and that “the individual reacts to an ethical
dilemma” (Trevi?o, 1986: 602). This emphasizes
the properties of issues, which exist prior to (and
independent of) individuals’ actions. Whether

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1026 Academy of Management Review October

ethical issues are actually out there and indi
cated by a set of objective indicators (such as
moral intensity) is a deep philosophical ques
tion that takes the reader into debates between
realist and antirealist ontologies. My purpose is
not to settle this important question here (see
Fairclough, 2005, and Tsoukas, 2000). Instead, I
posit the more tempered (epistemological and
not ontological) claim that even if ethical issues
are mind independent, individuals can still dif
fer in how they interpret such issues (Best, 1995)
and will do so based on their motivations and
expectations. Accordingly, it is important that
scholars study the interpretive processes that
construct ethical issues out of social stimuli in
the environment.
Research shows that individuals frequently

develop subjective interpretations of issues that
go beyond the objective features (assuming, for
now, that such features exist) of those issues
(Ross, 1987,1989; Ross & Nisbett, 1991) because of
their expectations and motivations. Expecta
tions, often encapsulated in scripts, place limi
tations on what individuals perceive (Fiske &
Taylor, 1991; Gioia, 1992). This challenges their
ability to consider all relevant information when
making decisions. At the same time, individuals
have strong motivational drives that affect how
they see social stimuli, making them very parti
san actors (Pittman, 1998), often without being
aware of it (Griffin & Buehler, 1993).

One way that rationalist models have tried to
incorporate the idea of interpretive variation of
ethical issues is with the “moral awareness”
(Butterfield et al., 2000) or the “recognizing moral
issues” (Jones, 1991) phase. In fact, Rest’s (1986: 5)

model acknowledges that individuals will inter
pret issues differently, and it even notes that
“relatively simple situations” can nevertheless
lead to interpretive difficulties. While these
parts of rationalist models are more consistent
with the alternative I present below, moral
awareness is often viewed as binary?you ei
ther recognize the ethical issue or you fail to do
so (Jones, 1991: 380; May & Pauli, 2002: 97). Con
sequently, research has tended to focus on
whether moral awareness is present or absent
as a precondition for activating the other stages
of rationalist models (Jones, 1991: 383), and not
on how individuals construct their own interpre
tations of “issues” in more nuanced ways.

To further account for differences in percep
tions of issues, extensions of rationalist models

have started to move toward perceived moral
intensity. Singer (1996) concludes that different
respondent groups may vary in their weighting
of moral intensity components. And Morris and
McDonald (1995) criticize Jones (1991) for assum
ing that moral intensity is issue specific as op
posed to based on individuals’ perceptions.

Moral Reasoning and Moral Judgment

One of the central tenets of rationalist ap
proaches is that individuals use deliberate and
extensive moral reasoning to make moral judg
ments about how to respond to issues (e.g., Kohl
berg, 1981, 1984; Rest, 1986). This view considers
individuals to be pensive moral deliberators
who are “gathering facts [and] applying moral
principles” (Jones, 1991: 384) in order to evaluate
a specific course of behavior. Some rationalist
approaches acknowledge that intuitions may
arise during the early response to an issue, but
they consider these “primitive cognitions … [as]
poor guides for action” (Rest, 1986: 6).

Despite the prominence of deliberate and ex
tensive reasoning in rationalist theories, less
clear from empirical findings is the degree to
which such reasoning actually occurs. For ex
ample, in tests of the managers as philosophers
view, researchers asked research participants to
rate the likelihood they would engage in ques
tionable moral behavior and then to explain
why they made that decision (Fritzsche &
Becker, 1984; Premeaux, 2004; Premeaux &
Mondy, 1993). When respondents answered
“against company policy” (Premeaux, 2004: 273),
researchers interpreted this explanation as evi
dence for “rule utilitarian reasoning.” But some
one simply indicating an explanation for why he
or she acted (e.g., against company policy) does
not mean that the individual used rule utilitari
anism, nor that any reasoning (generally) in
formed his or her judgment (the “reasoning”
could be an explanation that emerged after the
fact).

The questionable empirical support for ratio
nalist approaches becomes more problematic
when juxtaposed with growing social psycho
logical evidence that “moral reasoning is rarely
the direct cause of ethical judgment” (Haidt,
2001: 815). Consistent with this argument is re
cent neurological research proposing that indi
viduals frequently use nonconscious pattern
matching, which recognizes not only the de

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2007 Sonenshein 1027

scriptive aspects of ethical issues but also pre
scribed ways for resolving them (Reynolds,
2006). How individuals respond to issues can
come from moral intuitions?immediate reac
tions that contain an affective valence (good or
bad; Zajonc, 1980)?without requiring conscious
awareness of the process. Although scholars ob
serve individuals engaging in moral reasoning,
such reasoning may be an attribution that cre
ates only the illusion of considered reasoning
(Haidt, 2001). Put another way, post hoc attribu
tions can reflect individuals’ engagement in
sensemaking processes (Weick, 1995), in which
individuals infer their own behavior after the
fact through self-perception (Bern, 1967).
Moral reasoning serves as a means for indi

viduals to explain/justify their own behavior,
but it does not necessarily cause that behavior;
indeed, moral reasoning may even be a conse
quence of that behavior. On this account, indi
viduals’ rational descriptions of their judgments
can reflect normative standards of how moral
decision making ought to proceed?carefully
and deliberately (Kohlberg, 1981, 1984; Rest,
1986). Thus, empirical research that supports
such rationalist approaches is subject to an al
ternative explanation: individuals have intui
tive reactions to issues but then engage in post
hoc moral reasoning to explain/justify those
judgments.
To illustrate the idea of explanation and jus

tification, suppose that a purchasing manager is
offered a “payment” to facilitate completing a
contract with another company. The purchasing
manager has an immediate affective valence
come into her conscience (this feels bad) and
then acts: she kindly turns the offer down. How
ever, the purchasing manager wants to explain
her behavior?why she acted the way she did. In
searching for an explanation, she turns to the
rational processes often prescribed in resolving
moral issues, or decision making, generally (Ba
zerman, 2002)?for example, abstract reasoning,
the consideration of alternatives, complex com
putations, and so forth. However, these rational
processes occur after the purchasing manager
intuitively judged that taking the bribe would be

wrong?limiting the use of moral reasoning to a
way of explaining and/or justifying her re
sponse. In the former case, the purchasing man
ager may start reasoning about the bribe imme
diately after her judgment as a way of making
sense out of why that judgment entered into her

consciousness. In the latter case, the purchasing
manager uses moral reasoning as a way of pro
viding legitimacy to her instantaneous feeling
that something was wrong.1

Summary

Rationalist models have made important con
tributions to the study of how individuals re
spond to ethical issues. Yet in the preceding
arguments I cast doubt on some of the assump
tions of these approaches. Organizational life is
often equivocal and uncertain, and the very con
struction of a particular issue reflects (at least in
part) each individual’s expectations and motiva
tions. I also challenged whether individuals al

ways use moral reasoning and moral principles
to make moral judgments and engage in ethical
behavior. Indeed, individuals often describe
their reactions in rationalist terms, but I offered
the alternative theoretical explanation that in
dividuals first use intuitions and then use post
hoc (moral) reasoning.

THE SIM
In this section I articulate an alternative to

rationalist approaches that overcomes some of
the limitations raised above. This alternative
perspective, the SIM, is composed of three
stages (see Figure 1 for an overview of the mod
el): issue construction, intuitive judgment, and
explanation and justification.

Individuals construct issues from social stim
uli in equivocal and uncertain environments,
and these constructions are affected by their
expectations and motivations. Recall that I held
in abeyance ontological claims about the mind
independent properties of ethical issues and

made the more moderate epistemological claim
that individuals will vary in their interpretation
of ethical issues (regardless of whether or not
such issues truly exist). As soon as an individual
constructs an ethical issue, that individual in
stantaneously makes an intuitive judgment.
Such intuitions come from an individual-level
factor (experience) and a collective-level factor

1 In the case that the purchasing manager has a positive
affective reaction (this feels good), she will likely accept the
bribe. Here her post hoc justification will likely rationalize
her reaction by pointing out that there was nothing morally
wrong with it (Ashforth & Anand, 2003).

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1028 Academy of Management Review October

FIGURE 1
The Sensemaking-Intuition Model (SIM)

Expectations Motivational drives

Experience”

Issue construction

Individual

Intuitive judgment
Explanation and

justification

Social pressures

Social anchors Representation

Collective

(social pressures). After this intuition emerges,
an individual explains and justifies his or her
response to him/herself and others. Before expli
cating each phase of the model, I outline two
assumptions of the SIM. I then discuss issue
construction, intuitive judgment, and explana
tion/justification.

Starting Assumptions

First, I assume that the SIM is triggered when
individuals use sensemaking to respond to con
ditions of equivocality and uncertainty (Weick,
1995, especially Chapter 4). When equivocality
involves multiple interpretations, individuals
engage in sensemaking because of confusion?
they simply do not know how to mediate among
interpretations (Weick, 1995). For uncertainty,
sensemaking arises because individuals lack

access to a plausible interpretation?they can
not see (or are unsure) how their actions will
affect the future (Weick, 1995). In either case,
sensemaking gets triggered because it is diffi
cult to determine a course of action.2

Second, while sensemaking never ends?as
soon as we make sense of something we must
make sense out of that something?individuals

2 In cases where individuals tolerate uncertainty or equiv
ocality, they may have an artificially high degree of confi
dence in what actions to take. As a result, they may develop
intuitive reactions (discussed below) to the artificially cer
tain interpretation. In such situations individuals often react
in dangerous ways because they cannot create order out of
the equivocality and uncertainty in their environments
(Weick, 1993). When there is an absence of uncertainty or
equivocality, rationalist approaches may have more merit
because the strength of social stimuli may overpower indi
viduals’ expectations and motivations.

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2007 Sonenshein 1029

reach temporary resting points where they have
a depiction of a social object; they bracket the
phenomenon to simplify equivocality and uncer
tainty and focus on a plausible account of an
issue that can induce action (Weick, Sutcliffe, &

Obstfeld, 2005). Pressed for time, individuals’
search for the accurate answer (assuming that
one can even be reached) will stifle action,
something encapsulated in the speed versus ac
curacy trade-off most managers make (Fiske,
1992). However, rationalist approaches seem to
discourage such a trade-off, since they require
“time and energy” for morally intense issues
(Jones, 1991: 384).

Phase One: Issue Construction

Several studies in the rationalist tradition
start with the moral awareness phase, which
finds important differences in whether individ
uals recognize issues as having moral implica
tions. For example, Butterfield et al. (2000) found
that individuals are more likely to recognize the
moral implications of an issue if that issue has
more severe consequences. This information
processing view emphasizes precoded mean
ings that invoke responses because they are
vivid and salient (Jones, 1991). By “issue con
struction” I offer a supplemental view of inter
pretation that focuses on how individuals create
their own meaning from a set of stimuli in the
environment through stories: “We narrativize
our experience almost continually as we recog
nize unusual or unexpected events … and con
struct stories which make sense of them” (Bo
land & Tenkasi, 1995: 353). Construction
processes are important because individuals
make up stories to give meaning to a set of
unfolding events in the environment, regardless
of whether these stories are accurate (Bruner,
1990). This calls attention to how individuals
construct meaning as opposed to detect stimuli
(e.g., vivid and salient; Boland & Tenkasi, 1995).
As equivocality and uncertainty increase, indi
viduals are afforded more opportunities to go
beyond the “facts” (Bruner, 1957) and to construct
more idiosyncratic interpretations of social
stimuli. I argue that these idiosyncratic interpre
tations come from individual- and collective
level factors.

Individual level: Expectations and motiva
tions. Individuals’ expectations affect how they
construct meaning?something supported by so

cial psychological (e.g., Abelson, 1981; Higgins &
Bargh, 1987; Ross & Nisbett, 1991) and organiza
tional (e.g., Ashforth & Fried, 1988; Dearborn &
Simon, 1958; Gioia & Manz, 1985; Gioia & Poole,
1984; Snook, 2000) research. In fact, Bruner and
Postman note that “perceptual organization is
powerfully determined by expectations built
upon past commerce with the environment.
When such expectations are violated by the en
vironment, the perceiver’s behavior can be de
scribed as resistance to the recognition of the
unexpected or incongruous” (1949: 222).
While this research has not been widely ap

plied to ethical issues (see Gioia, 1992, and
Weaver & Agle, 2002, for important exceptions),
the same mechanism is likely at play. The pres
ence of uncertainty or equivocality around an
issue increases the chances that individuals

will go beyond the information given (Bruner,
1957) by relying on their expectations. When in
dividuals rely on their expectations to address
an issue, they may overlook the ethical implica
tions of that issue because their expectations at

work often do not include moral criteria (Moore
& Loewenstein, 2004). For example, economics
students, who are educated to think in terms of
utility maximization models, are more prone to
self-interested behavior than other groups of
students (Frank, Gilovich, & Regan, 1993; see
also Ponemon & Glazer, 1990, for studies of ac
counting students). The repeated framing of so
cial phenomena (Tversky & Kahneman, 1981)
around business/economics may lead individu
als to overlook that they are facing an ethical
issue (see also Butterfield et al., 2000, and

Weaver & Agle, 2002). Closing a factory, build
ing SUVs that require more fuel than standard
cars, cheating a supplier?all of these can be
constructed by managers as “business issues”
because their expectations tell them so and be
cause the context of business pushes them in
this direction (Kelley & Elm, 2003).

Individuals see what they expect to see, but
they also see what they want to see. The under
lying psychological process comes from motiva
tional drives, which represent an individual’s
(unconscious) desires. In one of the earliest stud
ies about how motivational drives lead to differ
ences in perception, Hastorf and Cantril (1954)
asked Dartmouth and Princeton students to as
sess a football game between the two schools.
Subjects (students of the respective schools)
were given a tape of the football game and

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1030 Academy of Management Review October

asked to count the number of infractions com
mitted by each team using a set of specific cri
teria. Despite watching the same clip of the
game and having the same criteria for scoring
an infraction, the students differed in their esti
mates of observed infractions, with subjects
tending to favor their school (i.e., fewer observed
infractions) over the opposing school (i.e., more
observed infractions). Hastorf and Cantril con
cluded that because of motivational drives fa
voring their particular schools, the Princeton
and Dartmouth students were effectively watch
ing different football games. Subconscious mo
tivational drives produce variance in how indi
viduals interpret social stimuli.

Consistent with how Princeton students
viewed the Dartmouth team as committing sub
stantially more infractions than the Princeton
team (and therefore judged the game as unfair),
and vice versa, employees’ different goals (e.g.,
pleasing a boss, getting promoted, etc.) and
identities (e.g., preserving social identities) will
affect how they construct an issue. For example,
suppose that an employee who is vying for a
promotion needs to close one more sales deal
and therefore subsequently promises a poten
tial client something the organization cannot
deliver. This employee may view this promise
as slightly exaggerating the capabilities of the
organization (with minimal consequences and
as consistent with the rules of business),
whereas an observer may view such behavior
as lying (with serious consequences). Similarly,
individuals reframe the meaning of actions to
create rationalizations that other members of
their group will accept as legitimate (Ashforth &
Anand, 2003). For example, other salespersons
may accept the “exaggeration account” because
of their vested interest in legitimating such be
havior (e.g., closing deals and maintaining an
identity of integrity). Even if we assume the best
of intentions of human actors, they may unknow
ingly behave in ways that advance their self
interest?a view that explains why accountants
cannot objectively audit a firm who also pro
vides large consulting fees to their firm (Bazer
man, Loewenstein, & Moore, 2002) or why well
intentioned (but overly optimistic) Enron
employees still engaged in unethical conduct
(Prentice, 2003).
Collective level: Social anchors and represen

tation. The idea that characteristics of the situ
ation affect individuals’ likelihood of engaging

in ethical behavior is an important component
of some rationalist models (e.g., Trevi?o, 1986).
Jones (1991) also recognized the importance of
organizational factors in his model (such as
those in Trevi?o’s [1986]), although he viewed
these factors as most relevant for the moral in
tent and behavior stages (3 and 4; Jones, 1991:
391). From my perspective, the important con
ceptual question to understand is how social
influences in a situation affect individuals’ con
struction of issues. I use two key theoretical con
cepts from sensemaking?social anchors and
representation?to address this question.

By “social anchors” I refer to having interloc
utors who help an actor test his or her interpre
tation of social stimuli. Managers rarely rely on
others to help them respond to situations that
may have ethical implications (Bird & Waters,
1989), for a variety of reasons. First, dominant
institutional logics (Friedland & Alford, 1991),
such as that business is only about economic
performance (Friedman, 1962), may render ille
gitimate the discussion of issues not directly
tied to economic performance. For example, in
dividuals are less likely to champion issues not
tied to economic performance (Dutton & Ashford,
1993), and when they do advocate such issues,
they reframe them using economic language
(Sonenshein, 2006). Second, respect for others’

world views may prevent individuals from seek
ing out social anchors for advice about sensitive
issues (Fort, 1996; Greenawalt, 1995). Third, or
ganizations are particularly adept at silencing
controversial issues, especially ethical issues
(Bird, 1996). Managers often value unity, agree

ment, and consensus, which may result in the
suppression of other viewpoints (Morrison & Mil
liken, 2000).
While dominant institutional logics, social

conflict, and general organizational barriers to
raising ethical issues may thwart the use of
social anchors, individuals can sometimes over
come these obstacles. Because of the equivocal
ity and uncertainty involved in many ethical
issues, individuals may seek help from others to
understand these issues (e.g., Pentland, 1992).
Communication or even friendship networks
(Brass, 1984) may provide the medium through
which individuals seek out social anchors to
access interpretations beyond their own in ways
that complicate their understandings (Bartunek,

Gordon, & Weathersby, 1983).

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2007 Sonenshein 1031

A second important concept from sensemak
ing is representation, in which individuals have
a mental model of how others see a situation.
For example, in their study of aircraft carriers,
Weick and Roberts (1993) found that the staff
engaged in representation by understanding
how others viewed their roles and the larger
system through informal communication. This
serves not only to provide individuals with in
formation on others’ interpretations but also to
broaden their own interpretations. The former
facilitates perspective taking (Davis, Conklin,
Smith, & Luce, 1996; Parker & Axtell, 2001) by
giving actors access to others’ cognitive models.
The latter suggests that the more an actor un
derstands others’ cognitive models, the more he
or she can understand his or her own model and
behavior. An understanding of one’s and others’
mental models allows an actor to more compre
hensively construct an issue. In lieu of conver
sations with others, one still may be able to
engage in the necessary moral imagination to
account for others’ perspectives. Werhane’s
(1999) explanation for why good companies
sometimes engage in inappropriate conduct fo
cuses on individuals’ narrow perspective on sit
uations. While one may be able to develop a
wider band of perspectives through critical
thinking, as Werhane suggests, the reliance on
other individuals more directly, such as through
social anchors and representation, is another
approach that focuses less on deliberate reason
ing.

Seeking out social anchors and using repre
sentation can help broaden individuals’ con
struction of issues, but the effects of these sense
making approaches likely will vary. On the one
hand, having more complicated understandings
helps overcome narrow frames of reference so
as to better understand the impact of (potential)
actions (Bartunek et al., 1983). On the other hand,
turning to others (especially during socializa
tion) can lead individuals to follow “role mod
els” who have normalized corrupt behavior
(Ashforth & Anand, 2003). These effects are more
pronounced when social anchors are intention
ally trying to influence others’ interpretations of
an issue (Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991). However,
the larger point is that the SIM directs theoreti
cal and empirical questions to understanding
when and how individuals vary in their con
struction of ethical issues. It is not simply a
matter of whether or not individuals recognize

an ethical issue (e.g., as binary?yes/no) through
reasoning. Rather, it is important to understand
what specific constructions, influenced by ex
pectations, motivations, and others, individuals
create to give meaning to social stimuli.

Phase Two: Intuitive Judgment

I noted above that the construction process (at
least temporarily) ends when an individual
reaches a plausible interpretation. Individuals
then develop intuitions?an automatic, affective
reaction (Dane & Pratt, 2007) such as “good” or
“bad” (Zajonc, 1980). My contention is not that

moral reasoning does not happen but that it
may occur after an individual has responded to
the issue using intuition (I return to this point
during the third phase of the model).

Individuals routinely develop intuitions about
social stimuli (especially at work [Burke &

Miller, 1999]), and while moral reasoning might
be used to override an individual’s initial intui
tions, such “reasoning is rarely used to question
one’s own attitudes or beliefs” (Haidt, 2001: 819).
In fact, research has shown that individuals in
frequently change their minds from their initial
responses to moral issues, even when presented
with new evidence and after engaging in care
ful reasoning (Lord, Ross, & Lepper, 1979). Neu
rological research also suggests that more de
liberate cognitive processing is used primarily
to rationalize intuitions, rather than to make ac
tive judgments about ethical issues (Reynolds,
2006). Accordingly, individuals search for confir
matory evidence and act more like attorneys,
attempting to justify their initial intuitions, than
like judges, who carefully weigh all available
evidence (Baumeister & Newman, 1994).

The idea of using intuitions contrasts with
rationalist approaches in two ways. First, the
SIM proposes that a judgment (i.e., what poten
tial behaviors a person considers morally ac
ceptable) is instantaneous. Once individuals
have made sense of the issue they are facing,
they have an immediate reaction that serves as
a moral judgment. Rationalist models, however,
argue for much more extensive moral delibera
tions. As Jones puts it, “The argument presented
here focuses on conditions under which effi
ciency will be sacrificed for a more thorough
understanding” (1991: 384). Second, to ground
moral judgments, the SIM focuses on individu
als’ affective reactions to issues. I discuss both

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1032 Academy of Management Review October

differences below and then illustrate a mecha
nism that links an intuition to a judgment.

Automatic reaction. Dual process theories of
attitude change (Chaiken, 1980; Petty & Wege
ner, 1998) claim that individuals have both a
high-effort (or central) and low-effort (or periph
eral) system of cognition. Low-effort systems are
activated when individuals construct issues
that suggest equivocal accountability?for ex
ample, it is not clear who is ultimately respon
sible; they are distracted?for example, because
organizations predominantly focus on economic,
not ethical, performance; or they lack ability?
for example, managers are trained to make stra
tegic decisions, not ethical ones (Petty & Wege
ner, 1998; Street et al., 2001).

Low-effort cognitive systems include intui
tions, which often appear “suddenly and effort
lessly in consciousness” (Haidt, 2001: 818; em
phasis added). These sudden and effortless
cognitive processes are induced at work be
cause managers often need to rely on quick and
instantaneous reactions. Several accounts
(Burke & Miller, 1999; Klein, 2002; Way, 1995) por
tray managerial work as work in which quick
reactions are needed and in which managers
use experience (Sadler-Smith & Shefy, 2004),
such as using pattern matching to a preexisting
category (Behling & Eckel, 1991; Crossan, Lane,
& White, 1999; Dane & Pratt, 2007). Bazerman and
Banaji suggest that “many instances of ethically
compromised behavior are either entirely or
partially committed in unwitting ways” (2004:
114). In other words, moral reasoning is not
faulty, but, rather, individuals do not always
directly recognize what they are doing because
they are not engaging in high degrees of cogni
tion. I would extend this claim, however, to pro
pose that acts of behavior consistent with a
moral viewpoint may also be a function of im
plicit cognition. That is, individuals develop in
stantaneous reactions to how they construct is
sues, and these reactions are pivotal in
understanding their responses (acceptable or
unacceptable) to issues.

The role of affect. In Plato’s Republic, philos
ophers were granted privileged status because
of their ability to reason. However, other philos
ophers have recognized the importance of affect
in resolving ethical issues, most notably Adam
Smith (2002/1759) and David Hume, who dis
cussed moral sentiments as an “immediate feel

ing and finer internal sense” (Hume, 1998/1751:
?1. 3).
Organizational scholars (including business

ethicists) also recognize the importance of affect
in moral judgments. Margolis (2004), referring to
“moral sentiments,” argues that individuals
have certain moral predispositions, including
sympathy, cooperation, conflict resolution, and
mutual aid. And Solomon (2004), echoing Adam
Smith, considers morality to be found in affect,
not only moral principles. Weaver and Agle
(2002) note that rationalist approaches (particu
larly Rest [1986]) may be influenced by two im
portant nonrationalist processes. First, they pro
pose that behavioral scripts from religion (such
as the Good Samaritan story) can be sub
consciously triggered and can lead to ethical
behavior without explicit moral reasoning. Sec
ond, they posit that affect (such as moral anger,
guilt, or shame) can motivate individuals to re
dress moral wrongs beyond any moral reason
ing.

In psychology, researchers are also increas
ingly finding empirical support for the role of
affect in how individuals respond to ethical is
sues. In fact, critics of moral development
charge that different contexts may activate dif
ferent kinds of responses to ethical issues (Krebs
& Dent?n, 2005). For example, academic con
texts?where rationalist models are often test
ed?may artificially induce cold, hard, logical
reasoning to the exclusion of the more affective
responses likely in real-life contexts (Gigerenzer
& Todd, 1999). In real-life dilemmas, individuals
often know the objects of their moral judgments
and have relationships and feelings about them
(Krebs, Dent?n, & Wark, 1997). Consequently, real
life dilemmas often induce a strong affective
component (Krebs & Dent?n, 2005).

Affect can emerge prior to cognitions, largely
at a subconscious level (Zajonc, 1980). Individu
als simply become aware of a preference for
something, prior to engaging in a complete ap
praisal of that something. These intuitive reac
tions indicate whether something feels wrong or
right. Individuals are aware of the outcome of
this process?their “gut” reaction to an issue?
but remain largely blind as to how they reached
that reaction (Haidt, 2001).

Van den Bos’s (2003) model of social justice
provides further support for the role of affect in
responding to ethical issues. He proposes that,
under conditions of uncertainty, individuals are

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2007 Sonenshein 1033

more apt to rely on their feelings about an issue
to reach an evaluation of that issue. Affect be
comes an important data point for information
starved individuals to make assessments over
whether an issue is just (van den Bos, 2003).
Consequently, individuals’ determinations of
what is just are not necessarily a function of
rational cognitive process but, rather, are influ
enced by a “how do I feel about it” heuristic
(Schwarz & Clore, 1983).

Intuition and judgment. An important issue is
to understand how an intuition (or an automatic
reaction based on affect) actually leads to a
judgment. The general mechanism focuses on
processes of approach avoidance, based on va
lences (Zajonc, 1980). Individuals routinely de
velop instantaneous reactions to issues,
whether something is good or bad (Osgood,
1962). Positive valences are associated with ap
proach behaviors, whereas negative valences
are associated with avoidance behaviors. Ten
dencies to approach positively valenced objects
and avoid negatively valenced ones will result
in corresponding judgments about potential be
havioral responses: negatively valenced poten
tial behavioral responses are to be avoided,
whereas positively valenced potential behav
ioral responses are to be approached.
Theoretical support for this point can be

traced back to Lewin’s notion that there is a
direct relationship between evaluation and ap
proach/avoidance. Objects have valences that
direct behavior in a particular situation, either
toward an object?positive valences?or away
from an object?negative valences (Lewin, 1935).
In more recent research scholars have tested
this theory in experimental settings. For exam
ple, Chen and Bargh (1999) found that positive
evaluations of an attitude object result in imme
diate approach tendencies, whereas avoidance
tendencies come from negative evaluations. For
ethical issues, this implies that negative va
lences can lead to judgments that consider a
response ethically questionable, whereas posi
tive valences can lead to judgments that con
sider a response ethically acceptable.

Where Do Intuitions Come From?

Philosophers (Audi, 2005; Ross, 1930) and psy
chologists (Haidt, 2001) have debated several
possibilities about how intuitions emerge. Here I
address experience and social pressures be

cause of their importance for managerial deci
sion making (Ashforth & Anand, 2003; Sadler
Smith & Shefy, 2004).

Individual level: Experience. The idea that or
ganizational actors (and especially managers)
rely on intuitions goes back at least as far as
Barnard (1938), who proposed both “logical” and
“nonlogical” processing styles. Since Barnard’s
proposition, researchers in cognitive science
have developed a much deeper understanding
of these nonlogical (or intuitive) processes (Si
mon, 1987). The basic idea is that as individuals
develop experience, they can internalize that
experience into intuitions (Reber, 1996). Accord
ingly, individuals with little experience may
have few intuitions about ethical issues. These
“novices” may follow the more rational, rules
based processes of rationalist approaches dur
ing the novice stage (Dreyfus & Dreyfus, 1986).
But as individuals develop more experience,
they advance to “experts.” That is, they use less
rule-based behavior and rely more on their in
tuitions, which capture past experiences (Drey
fus & Dreyfus, 1986). This suggests that unethi
cal behavior may come from novices, who often
struggle with applying the right rule in situa
tions often requiring many rules.
Consider all of the rules that must be followed

when driving a car; the action is so complex that
it becomes difficult to document all of the rules.
But experts think about the action more holisti
cally and respond to changes based on how they
acted in past instances. The novice decomposes
the environment into discrete elements, but the
expert uses interpretation and intuition to un
derstand the environment more holistically. As
individuals encounter more ethical issues, I ex
pect them to move toward the expert category.
By “expert” I do not mean that they more likely
have morally acceptable responses to issues.
Rather, they are more likely to make intuitive
judgments based on experience and feelings
(Sadler-Smith & Shefy, 2004).
Collective level: Social pressures. Moral intu

itions develop early. Children participate in cul
tural practices and imitate others around them
(Haidt, 2001). During these formative years, they
try to fit in with their peers (as opposed to their
parents), and consequently learn about moral
values from them (Harris, 1995). While basic
principles of right or wrong may be acquired
early on during childhood, more specific appli
cations for organizational life may be acquired

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1034 Academy of Management Review October

inside organizations, which may have distinct
ethics (Margolis & Phillips, 1999).

There is little direct research about how or
ganizational actors develop moral intuitions,
but one useful place to look is in the socializa
tion literature, which shows that organizations
strongly influence how their members behave
and what they believe (Van Maanen & Schein,
1979). During socialization, individuals may in
ternalize the moral values (or lack thereof) of an
organization. For example, Ashforth and Anand
(2003) describe how corruption can become nor

malized inside organizations through trying to
fit into a group. Similar to how children mimic
early behaviors of their peers to develop moral
intuitions, newcomers to an organization may

mimic corrupt behaviors to fit into their peer
group and to foster a common social identity
(Ashforth & Mael, 1989). Moreover, managers

may displace their responsibility to act morally
if they view their actions as stemming from so
cial pressures and if others accept responsibil
ity for those actions (Bandura, Caprara, & Zsol
nai, 2000). Alternatively, individuals may mimic
moral exemplars (Moberg, 2000). In both cases,
individuals’ feelings about an issue can be af
fected by others (Salancik & Pfeffer, 1978).

Phase Three: Explanation and Justification

In phase one I argued that individuals con
struct ethical issues, in equivocal and uncertain
situations. In phase two I proposed that individ
uals then develop intuitive judgments about the
construction of an ethical issue. In phase three I
now posit that individuals explain and justify
their intuitive judgments about the ethical is
sues they construct.

Because intuitions occur rapidly and subcon
sciously, individuals are unaware of the process
of how they reached a determination about an
ethical issue (Haidt, 2001). While they may be
unaware of the process, individuals can observe
the outcome, including their reaction to an issue
and any subsequent behavior. To explain their
reaction, individuals make attributions through
self-perception (Bern, 1967) by asking such ques
tions as “Why did I react the way I did?”
Organizational scholarship recognizes that

individuals often rationalize their actions
through the use of socially constructed accounts
that maintain a favorable identity in the face of
corrupt behavior (Ashforth & Anand, 2003). But

from a sensemaking perspective, such explana
tions often occur for all kinds of behavior (Weick,
1995). Moreover, these explanations and justifi
cations may include moral reasoning, since
there is a strong prescriptive notion (at least in
American culture) that individuals ought to use
moral reasoning, rationality, and logic to re
spond to ethical issues (Kohlberg, 1981, 1984). As
Haidt notes in his critique of rationalist views of
morality, “If people have no access to the pro
cesses behind their automatic initial evalua
tions then how do they go about providing jus
tifications? They do so by consulting their a
priori moral theories” (2001: 822). Because intui
tive judgments about an issue occur rapidly and
without individuals’ awareness, individuals in
fer that they must have reasoned in some logical
and rational way to reach their assessment of
that issue?even if no such reasoning occurred.

In addition to explaining their judgments us
ing moral reasoning, individuals may also jus
tify that judgment (to themselves and/or to oth
ers) using moral reasoning. Telling a colleague
that one judged a current practice as ethically
suspect because of an intuition conflicts with
accepted ways of making decisions about ethi
cal issues.3 To bolster their own confidence in
the decision?as well as others?individuals
employ the tools of rational analysis, after the
fact. That is, they describe their decision in ra
tionalist terms, even if that decision was made

without the use of abstract moral principles. The
post hoc employment of these rational tools is
consistent with findings in a variety of influence
literature, including organizational influence
(Yukl, Gui?an, & Sottolano, 1995) and issue sell
ing (Dutton & Ashford, 1993), which claim that
rational descriptions of events are perceived as
more credible.

Relationship Among the Three Phases

The SIM proposes that individuals construct
ethical issues from equivocal and uncertain en
vironments, develop intuitive judgments about
these constructions, and then explain and justify
those reactions. While I have analytically pre
sented the SIM as a three-phase model, the

3 For example, most business ethics textbooks advocate
the use of abstract moral reasoning prior to ethical judg
ment. For an illustrative example, see Donaldson and Wer
hane (1996).

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2007 Sonenshein 1035

boundaries among the phases are likely to be
blurry. For example, intuitions may emerge dur
ing the construction phase, causing individuals
to engage in post hoc moral reasoning while
they are making sense out of social stimuli. In
dividuals may also have intuitive reactions to
social stimuli without relying on others during
the construction phase. In fact, the very idea of
sensemaking collapses distinctions between
cognition and action (Weick, 1979), making clear
bifurcations among stages difficult. My strategy
has been to analytically separate the three com
ponents to elucidate the model during this early
stage of theory development, but empirical re
search will likely find a more complicated pic
ture.

DISCUSSION

In this paper I have illustrated several impor
tant limitations of rationalist approaches to re
sponding to ethical issues and presented an al
ternative model based on sensemaking and
social psychological perspectives. I have shown
how rationalist approaches ignore the equivo
cality and uncertainty present in natural orga
nizational settings and privilege moral reason
ing over intuition. While previous research has
offered some empirical support for rationalist
approaches, this support is subject to the alter
native explanation that individuals use moral
reasoning as a post hoc explanation and justifi
cation of their intuitions. In this section I delin
eate some of the implications of this paper as it
relates to theory, method, and their interaction.
Afterwards, I discuss implications for promoting
ethical behavior in organizations.

Implications for Theory and Methods

Sensemaking and construction. The sense
making part of the theory, largely captured in
the first (construction) and third (explanation/
justification) phases of the model, suggests im
portant changes in how scholars think about
individuals’ responses to ethical issues. Varia
tion in responses to issues may emerge from
how individuals color social stimuli using ex
pectations, motivations, and interactions with
others. Surprisingly, researchers know little em
pirically about these processes of sensemaking,
in part because of the research methodologies

(scenario studies) frequently used to study re
sponses to ethical issues.

Because of the short length of most scenarios
used to test rationalist approaches and the need
for manipulations of the independent variables
(e.g., components of moral intensity) to be strong
enough to produce variance on the dependent
measures, the scenarios often depict situations
with less equivocality and uncertainty than in
natural settings. This minimizes the role of issue
construction (e.g., by framing the issue as a
clear choice between X and Y), thereby reducing
the chances of detecting important effects based
on issue interpretation. But limited and abstract
information is likely the norm under the condi
tions of equivocality and uncertainty more com

mon in natural organizational settings.
Ironically, Rest (1986) acknowledged the diffi

culties in using scenario methodologies. His De
fining Issues Test, which uses scenarios, fo
cuses on moral judgments only because “the
very presentation of the moral dilemmas (as
written paragraphs or as short vignettes ver
bally presented by an interviewer) has already
precoded and interpreted the situation (already
identifying what courses of action are possible,
identifying who has a stake in the situation,
suggesting what the consequences are of each
course of action)” (1986: 9). Moreover, from the
perspective of the SIM, even scenarios limited to
the judgment phase assume that the situation
described is an issue with ethical implications
for the subject (Marshall & De we, 1997), thereby
priming those who would otherwise not con
sider the issue to have ethical implications. Yet
these complications have not stopped scholars
from using scenarios to test rationalist ap
proaches (O’Fallon & Butterfield, 2005). But if an
important part of how individuals respond to
ethical issues involves sensemaking, scholars
should minimize the amount of precoded inter
pretation in scenarios or adopt new methods
that minimize preconstructed interpretations.
For example, scholars can rely on methods that
have employees narrativize an issue they face
(emulating the construction phase) and examine
how different constructions of similar issues af
fect judgments.

Sensemaking and explanation/justification.
Researchers often assume that individuals’ post
hoc descriptions of how they reacted to an issue
map onto forms of deliberate reasoning. But if
individuals explain/justify intuitions, scholars

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1036 Academy of Management Review October

should acknowledge the possibility that post
hoc explanations are, in fact, explanations?
and not diagnostic of actual responses.

Unfortunately, methodologies used to test ra
tionalist approaches often encourage research
participants to make post hoc explanations, but
they then treat these explanations as support for
rationalist processes. For example, Butterfield et
al. (2000) measured perceived social consensus
(a component of moral intensity) by asking sub
jects after they made moral judgments to rate
the degree of social consensus about an issue.
This postjudgment assessment of social consen
sus was then explained as a predictor of moral
awareness. However, subjects’ ratings of social
consensus could have easily emerged as expla
nations/justifications for their moral judgments,
especially given that participants first reported
their moral judgments and then only afterwards
were asked about the degree of social consen
sus about the issue.
These explanations and justifications are

themselves important indicators of the process
of how individuals respond to issues, not neces
sarily indicative of reasoning. For example, the
finding that individuals engage in “moral rea
soning” may be a more accurate reflection of
normative standards about acceptable methods
for responding to ethical issues than it is diag
nostic of individuals’ actual responses. Scholars
can test for such justification/explanation pro
cesses by providing “new facts” that invalidate
participants’ reasoning and then examine if
they change a judgment or articulate a new ex
planation. The continued introduction of new
reasons to support the same judgment (despite
invalidating information) suggests strong ex
planation/justification processes.

Moral intuitions. The intuition part of the SIM
builds on a growing interest among organiza
tional and business ethics scholars in implicit
cognition (e.g., Bazerman & Banaji, 2004). Schol
ars now recognize that unethical behavior (and,
as I argued, ethical behavior) is, in part, a func
tion of psychological processes not immediately
accessible to individuals (Moore & Loewenstein,
2004). This perspective points to the importance
of generating understandings of responses to
ethical issues that thoroughly assess underly
ing processes (intuition) that may not be observ
able to individuals (or scholars). To test the in
tuition phase of the model, scholars can
examine the speed with which individuals react

to ethical issues in more natural settings
(quicker reactions lend more credence to models
such as the SIM) and manipulate affective states
(which may influence intuitions but not reason
ing).

Toward a unified understanding. My critique
of rationalist approaches and proposal of the
SIM does not imply that rationalist models
should be shunted aside. There are two bound
ary conditions for the SIM. First, rationalist ap
proaches may have more merit when there is
minimal equivocality and uncertainty. Under
these conditions, the strength of the social stim
uli may overpower individuals’ expectations
and motivations. Second, when individuals are
novices, they may have poorly formed intuitions
and may instead follow a more rationalist ap
proach that includes applying rules. Beyond
these boundary conditions, the rationalist and
SIM models can be complementary ways of un
derstanding how individuals respond to ethical
issues, while recognizing important shifts in fig
ure-ground relationships. Rationalist ap
proaches sometimes recognize the importance
of affect but treat this as less important than
deliberate moral reasoning (Rest, 1986). The SIM
reserves an important place for deliberate cog
nitions during the construction phase of the
model but primarily emphasizes intuition after
issue construction.

Implications for Practice

The SIM also has implications for practice.
First, the SIM calls attention to the importance of
developing moral intuitions about issues likely
to arise inside organizations. There is growing
practitioner interest in how managers develop
intuitions at work (Klein, 2002), and various ac
counts exist about how best to develop such
intuitions (Behling & Eckel, 1991; Burke & Miller,
1999; Sadler-Smith & Shefy, 2004). If individuals
respond to ethical issues in automatic and af
fective ways, training individuals to develop

more elaborate cognitive processing may not be
the most viable way to encourage ethical behav
ior. Instead, it may be important to recognize
that individuals (especially managers [Mintz
berg, 1973]) lack adequate time for such reflec
tion and develop their automatic responses to
promote ethical behavior, such as via experi
ence.

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2007 Sonenshein 1037

Second, organizations may be able to increase
their capacity to make sense of issues. The idea
of complicating understandings is a central te
net of sensemaking research (Bartunek et al.,
1983). One way of accomplishing this could be to
foster discussions about issues that celebrate

multiple perspectives in an organization, as op
posed to the more common suppression of op
posing viewpoints (Morrison & Milliken, 2000).
Encouraging collective sensemaking processes
may provide individuals with (1) access to a
wider variety of interpretations from others and
(2) an understanding of the overlap in interpre
tations among individuals.

CONCLUSION

While scholarship within the rationalist per
spective has offered many important insights
into how individuals respond to ethical issues, I
have raised important challenges to these ap
proaches. These challenges should strengthen
rationalist research by having scholars consider
alternative explanations and devise fairer em
pirical tests. At the same time, I also have intro
duced the SIM as an alternative theory that calls
attention to sensemaking and implicit social
psychological processes that may be used in
individuals’ responses to ethical issues.
Strengthening the rationalist model and explor
ing alternative theoretical perspectives are two

moves needed in an area of scholarship that
lacks adequate theoretical development and of
ten escapes critical evaluation. The SIM will
hopefully serve as further encouragement for
continuing these important endeavors.

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Scott Sonenshein (ScottS@rice.edu) is an assistant professor at the Jesse H. Jones
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dilemmas.

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Issue Table of Contents

The Academy of Management Review, Vol. 32, No. 4 (Oct., 2007) pp. 1005-1296
Volume Information
Front Matter
Editor’s Comments: Award Winners for 2006-2007 [pp. 1012-1013]
The Role of Construction, Intuition, and Justification in Responding to Ethical Issues at Work: The Sensemaking-Intuition Model [pp. 1022-1040]
Group Learning [pp. 1041-1059]
Contract Design as a Firm Capability: An Integration of Learning and Transaction Cost Perspectives [pp. 1060-1077]
The Potential Paradox of Organizational Citizenship Behavior: Good Citizens at What Cost? [pp. 1078-1095]
Toward a Political Conception of Corporate Responsibility: Business and Society Seen from a Habermasian Perspective [pp. 1096-1120]
A Feminist Analysis of Organizational Research on Sex Differences [pp. 1121-1143]
Special Topic Forum on the Interplay between Theory and Method
Introduction to Special Topic Forum: The Interplay between Theory and Method [pp. 1145-1154]
Methodological Fit in Management Field Research [pp. 1155-1179]
A Set-Theoretic Approach to Organizational Configurations [pp. 1180-1198]
What’s the Difference? Diversity Constructs as Separation, Variety, or Disparity in Organizations [pp. 1199-1228]
Simulation Modeling in Organizational and Management Research [pp. 1229-1245]
Sample Selection and Theory Development: Implications of Firms’ Varying Abilities to Appropriately Select New Ventures [pp. 1246-1264]
Constructing Mystery: Empirical Matters in Theory Development [pp. 1265-1281]
Book Reviews
Review: untitled [pp. 1282-1285]
Review: untitled [pp. 1285-1288]
Review: untitled [pp. 1288-1291]
Back Matter

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