Commentary on “an empirical study of moral reasoning among managers”

Abstract

Managerial reasoning is characteristic of a care-relationship ethics:

• 1. If a corporation provides certain community values to corporate members not reducible to their self-interested economic or professional objectives;

• 2. If such values are generated by a division of labor based on interdependence, reciprocity and concern for another's self-realization;

• 3. If it's based on promoting an ethical corporate self independent of its economic value.

Such an ethic is appropriate, given employees' tremendous personal contributions, the unique position of private industry to provide distinctive resources without committing extensive social resources, and due to its potential for reducing managerial moral fragmentation and hypocrisy.