Unfortunately, several structures exist within many organizations that constrain people’s ability to act per their moral convictions. These structures include an organization’s culture, corporations’ legal status, moral mazes, and the myth of rationality.

As you read the following sections, you will note some of the items discussed are specific to Western business practices (e.g., corporations’ legal status). Every item listed below may not apply to every culture, and other cultures may have different structures constraining action. Be sure to develop your institutional and contextual (cultural) rationality of the social context in which you operate.

We will start this discussion by considering the role of organizational culture in constraining our willingness to act in pursuit of our values.

The Role of Organizational Culture

In the same way that nations or ethnic groups develop distinct cultures, so do organizations. Cultures promote specific values and behaviours among their members. The stronger an organization’s culture, the more likely employees will identify with its moral code.^[1]

If the behaviours and morals promoted by an organization’s culture align with the broader society’s norms, life may be fine. If there are differences between the community’s behaviours versus the organization, however, employees may find themselves in situations where they must act contrary to societal (and perhaps their own) values.

How does an organizational culture promoting behaviours contrary to society’s morals arise?

It happens slowly. An organization may, for example, pursue the value of competitiveness. If this value dominates, employees become infused with the desire to beat the competition at all costs.

In pursuit of victory over competitors, leaders model desired behaviours, and individuals are rewarded for certain actions and punished for others. People develop and reinforce policies that begin to justify morally gray actions in the name of winning.

People further exhibit the ability to compartmentalize their actions, mentally separating unethical behaviours at work from the rest of their life. Thus, they retain the belief they are good people despite the morally questionable actions they perform for their job.^[2]

The Impact of Corporations’ Legal Standing

In societies adopting Western business practices, the legal status of corporations exacerbates these dynamics. Western societies define corporations as individuals under the law. Legally, it is the organization that acts unethically, not the people. Victims of an organization’s action may pursue legal action against it, but not the people working for it.

For the people working in the organization, this dynamic depersonalizes the consequences of their actions. They may feel that they are not acting unethically; the organization is. They may further feel the organization is justified in its actions since it pursues a value that the culture honours.^[3]

Moral Mazes

The bureaucracy of organizations can create a sense of moral relativism among its members. In many organizations, an individual’s success is not based on doing the right thing but by impressing the right people, having the right contacts, and fitting into the social setting. Those who climb the corporate ladder do so through their ability to adapt their beliefs, values, and behaviours to align with its culture.

Thus, people who are successful in this environment become susceptible to allowing others to direct their actions rather than acting per their internal values. In such an environment, doing whatever it takes to win while avoiding blame for failures is key to success.^[4]

The Myth of Rationality

Further structures amplify this dynamic in Western businesses. Western business schools promote the values of productivity, efficiency, and competitiveness coupled with a reliance on disembedded rationalities (e.g. economic, technocratic, and bureaucratic).

Under such systems, it becomes easy for organizations (or rather, the people in an organization) to exploit individuals for profit. Humans become tools to achieve goals. Once members of an organization dehumanize people in this way, any behaviour becomes possible.^[5]

Moreover, exclusive reliance on disembedded rationalities implies a lack of emotions. Recall from Chapter V that emotional rationality conveys important information about the status of our social setting and how well our actions align with our values. It is through emotions that we create connections between people within our social setting.

Disregarding emotions and other subjective forms of rationality creates blind spots, allows us to dehumanize others, and limits an organization’s ability to challenge questionable actions.^[6]

Western businesses rely on disembedded rationalities to make their operations run smoothly and predictably. Their goal is to eliminate operational uncertainty.

You can only eliminate uncertainty, however, if you possess perfect knowledge, which, of course, no one possesses. The exclusive reliance on disembedded rationality creates the illusion of certainty by hiding or ignoring what we do not know. Such reliance helps deflect criticism and inconvenient issues by dismissing them as subjective (and therefore irrational) or irrelevant to the financial analysis.^[7]

“When managers put aside their personal moral convictions in pursuit of supposed rationality or some perceived social pressure, they can act with neither courage nor wisdom.”^[8]

The above section paints a bleak picture of the organizational landscape. There is, however, hope. Just as there exist structures constraining moral actions, other structures enable them.