an article about how moral intensity impact decision making in a business context

The Impact of Moral Intensity on Decision Making in a Business Context

Bernhard F. Frey

Journal of Business Ethics , Vol. 26, No. 3 (Aug., 2000) , pp. 181-195

Published by: Springer

Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25074339

In this article, Frey is trying to investigate whether the nature of the issues that will result in moral dilemma can impact ethical decision-making processes. He initially proposes that each issue has its own Moral intensity (MI) that consists of six components can effect people’s ethical decision-making processes. These six components are

 “the magnitude or seriousness of potential consequences (MC), the degree to which other people are perceived to agree that an action is ethically questionable (SC), the probability of a decision actually resulting in the negative outcome (LE), the period of time between the decision and the effect (TI), the number of affected people for an effect of constant size (CE), and physical, psychological, or social distance between the decision maker and the people who are likely to be affected by the decision (PR)” (Fray, 2000, 182).

For data collection, he designs two original scenarios in which those six components can be independent manipulated. He manipulates those six components such that he gets 63 scenarios that have all the possible combinations of components. Then, he sends those combinations to 1890 business managers and owners who are randomly picked in New Zealand Business Who’s Who. Finally, he utilizes LE as the benchmark to evaluate the importance of those components. Compare to the LE, he finds out that MC and SC are the most important components and TI, CE and PR are lesser important components that can affect people’s ethical decision-making processes