The Moral Imagination describes how some of the most provocative thinkers of modern times, coming from different traditions, responding to different concerns, and writing in different genres, shared a moral passion that permeated their work. The second edition includes a revised introduction and three new essays on Adam Smith, Lord Acton, and Alfred Marshall.

After experiments with various economic systems, we appear to have conceded, to misquote Winston Churchill that "free enterprise is the worst economic system, except all the others that have been tried." Affirming that conclusion, I shall argue that in today's expanding global economy, we need to revisit our mind-sets about corporate governance and leadership to fit what will be new kinds of free enterprise. The aim is to develop a values-based model for corporate governance in this age of globalization that (...) will be appropriate in a variety of challenging cultural and economic settings. I shall present an analysis of mental models from a social constructivist perspective. I shall then develop the notion of moral imagination as one way to revisit traditional mind-sets about values-based corporate governance and outline what I mean by systems thinking. I shall conclude with examples for modeling corporate governance in multi-cultural settings and draw tentative conclusions about globalization. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Drawing upon the collective action model of institutional change, I reconceptualize moral imagination as both a social process and a cognitive one. I argue that moral outcomes are not produced by individual actors alone; rather, they emerge from collective action processes that are influenced by political conditions and involve behaviors that include issue framing and resource mobilization. I also contend that individual moral imagination involves the integration of moral sensitivity with consideration of collective action (...) dynamics. I illustrate my arguments with a case study of the Chad-Cameroon oil project. The paper suggests new directions in teaching and research on moral imagination. (shrink)

This study introduces the concept of moral imagination in a work context to provide an ethical approach to the controversial relationships between dirty work and dirty workers. Moral imagination is assessed as an essential faculty to overcome the stigma associated with dirty work and facilitate the daily work lives of workers.The exercise of moral imagination helps dirty workers to face the moral conflicts inherent in their tasks and to build a personal stance toward (...) their occupation. Finally, we argue that organizations with dirty work groups should actively adopt measures to encourage their employees' exercise of moral imagination. This study investigates how organizations might create conditions that inspire moral imagination, particularly with regard to the importance of organizational culture as a means to enhance workers' moral sensitivity. Furthermore, this investigation analyzes different company practices that may derive from a culture committed to moral imagination. (shrink)

Moral imagination, according to John Kekes, is indispensable to a fulfilling and responsible life.

Successful application of heuristics depends on how a problem is represented, mentally. Moral imagination is a good technique for reflecting on, and sharing, mental representations of ethical dilemmas, including those involving emerging technologies. Future research on moral heuristics should use more ecologically valid problems and combine quantitative and qualitative methods.

This paper develops the basis for a new account of radical moral imagination, understood as the transformation of moral understandings through creative response to the sensed inadequacy of one's moral concepts or morally significant appraisals of lived experience. Against Miranda Fricker, I argue that this kind of transition from moral perplexity to increased moral insight is not primarily a matter of the “top-down” use of concepts. Against Susan Babbitt, I argue that it is not (...) primarily a matter of “bottom-up” intuitive responsiveness to experience. Beyond courage and hope, radical moral imagination involves the articulation of inchoate experience, which allows individuals to make new kinds of moral moves and to lay claim to others' acknowledgment of the meaning of these moves. (shrink)

Moral imagination is a central component of moral agency and person‐centred care. Becoming moral agents who can sustain attention on patients and their families through their illness and suffering involves imagining the other, what moral possibilities are available, what choices to make, and how one wants to be. This relationship between moral agency, moral imagination, and personhood can be effaced by a focus on task‐driven technical rationality within the multifaceted challenges of contemporary (...) healthcare. Similarly, facilitating students' moral agency can also be obscured by the task‐driven technical rationality of teaching. The development of moral agency requires deliberate attention across the trajectory of nursing education. To prepare nursing students for one practice challenge, workplace violence, we developed a multimodal education intervention which included a simulated learning experience (SLE). To enhance the realism and consistency of the educational experience, 11 nursing students were trained as simulated participants (SP). As part of a larger study to examine knowledge acquisition and practice confidence of learners who completed the SLE, we explored the experience of being the SP through interviews and a focus group with the SP students. The SP described how their multiple performances contributed to imagining the situation ‘on both sides’ prompting empathy, a reconsideration of their moral agency, and the potential to prevent violence in the workplace beyond technical rational techniques, such as verbal de‐escalation scripts. The empirical findings from the SP prompted a philosophical exploration into moral imagination. We summarise the multimodal educational intervention and relevant findings, and then, using Johnson's conception of moral imagination and relevant nursing literature, we discuss the significance of the SP embodied experiences and their professional formation. We suggest that SLEs offer a unique avenue to create pedagogical spaces which promote moral imagination, thereby teaching for moral agency and person‐centred care. (shrink)

Moral imagination has been described by Murdoch as ‘a way of seeing’. The focus of concern here is the influence of belief upon moral imagination and those attitudes that are needed if moral imagination is to be developed. The perspective adopted endorses a Humean recognition of the potent influence of personal experience upon those beliefs that are held, and therefore upon how we see the world. Kantian commitment to the power of the will, and (...) to the ability of individuals to choose who they wish to be, allows room for optimism, a view which is supported by the findings of Liaschenko. (shrink)

In this paper I outline an approach to managerial decision making that incorporates the important role that metaphors and moral imagination play in our moral reasoning coupled with an organisational moral concept I call the Health of the Organisation. I have used this concept in my managerial (and philosophical) career to interpret and evaluate potential, and actual, courses of action. I have concluded that this concept fits in nicely with Mark Johnson’s analysis of the metaphor of (...) morality is health, which he argues is one of the central moral metaphors in the conceptual framework that we use to interpret and evaluate actions from a reasonable moral point of view. He argues that metaphors are the essential components in defining the rational mental framework utilised in interpreting, evaluating, predicting likely outcomes from various alternatives, and choosing morally acceptable courses of action. I argue that the metaphor morality is health explicated as the Health of the Organisation can serve as an antidote to the unimaginative moral decision making processes that Patricia Werhane has shown can result in bad moral decisions. I do this by demonstrating that a healthy organisation is one that is optimally functional. This means that the components that make up the organisation are so structured that there is no better possible organisational arrangement available for achieving the goals designed to ensure successful performance in the marketplace. (shrink)

Edmund Burke : apologist for Judaism? -- George Eliot : the wisdom of Dorothea -- Jane Austen : the education of Emma -- Charles Dickens : "a low writer" -- Benjamin Disraeli : the Tory imagination -- John Stuart Mill : the other Mill -- Walter Bagehot : "a divided nature" -- John Buchan : an untimely appreciation -- The Knoxes : a God-haunted family -- Michael Oakeshott : the conservative disposition -- Winston Churchill : "quite simply, a great (...) man" -- Lionel Trilling : the moral imagination. (shrink)

John Paul Lederach's work in the field of conciliation and mediation is internationally recognized. As founding Director of the Conflict Transformation Program and Institute of Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University, he has provided consultation and direct mediation in a range of situations from the Miskito/Sandinista conflict in Nicaragua to Somalia, Northern Ireland, the Basque Country, and the Philippines. His influential 1997 book Building Peace has become a classic in the discipline. This new book represents his thinking and learning over the (...) past several years. He explores the evolution of his understanding of peacebuilding by reflecting on his own experiences in the field. Peacebuilding, in his view, is both a learned skill and an art. Finding this art, he says, requires a worldview shift. Conflict professionals must envision their work as a creative act - an exercise of what Lederach terms the "moral imagination.". (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to show how moral imagination can be cultivated through meditation. Moral imagination was conceived as a three-stage process of ethical development. The first stage is reproductive imagination, that involves attaining awareness of the contextual factors that affect perception of a moral problem. The second stage, productive imagination, consists of reframing the problem from different perspectives. The third stage, creative imagination, entails developing morally acceptable alternatives to solve (...) the ethical problem. This article contends that moral imagination can be cultivated through three kinds of meditation: non-discursive, semidiscursive, and discursive meditation. Part one shows how the seed of reproductive moral imagination is planted during sessions of nondiscursive meditation. Productive moral imagination, as will be shown in part two, is nurtured through semidiscursive meditation. Part three will demonstrate the flowering of creative moral imagination through discursive meditation. Reflection and small group discussion on each form of meditation will help to show business people how to cultivate moral imagination. (shrink)

This paper exhorts geographers to become more active in debate about ethical research practice. It also suggests that ethical theory, practical problems, and lessons learned from postmodern thought make the prospects of establishing prescriptive codes of ethics unlikely. Instead, flexible prompts for moral contemplation might be used to encourage careful thought on matters of ethics. Because the practical feasibility of moral prompts rests on the existence of moral imaginations, it is vital to consider ways in which those (...) imaginations might be stimulated and nurtured. Professional associations and university academics have significant roles to play in this. Geographers must position themselves as effective agents in the processes by which professional research ethics are shaped rather than awaiting the potentially inappropriate outcomes of other agencies ' deliberations. (shrink)

Can the individual and society be both moral and imaginative? In Western society the moral person tends to be regarded as either simple and naive or narrow and bigoted. In contrast, the imaginative person is looked on as someone not bound by the customs of the group and therefore likely to be fanciful and out of touch with reality.

The paper uses the example of the failure of bankers and financial managers to understand the risks of dealing in structured financial products, before the financial collapse, to investigate how people respond to crises. It focuses on whether crises cause people to challenge their habitual frames by the application of moral imagination. It is proposed that the structure of financial products and their markets triggered the use of heuristics that contributed to the underestimation of risks. It is further (...) proposed that such framing heuristics are highly specialised to specific contexts and are part of a wider set of heuristics that people carry in their cognitive ‘adaptive toolboxes’. Consequently, it is argued, when a crisis occurs, the heuristics are not challenged, but are simply put away, and other more appropriate heuristics are put to use until a sense of normality returns, and the use of the old heuristics is resumed. (shrink)

Moral imagination is often viewed as a necessary condition for ethical leadership on account of its role in managerial decision-making and organizational management. This article argues that an extension of the notion beyond this limited context sheds light on recent reconceptualizations of the nature of business and the relation of business and society proffered by several well-known business leaders. It is suggested that an account of moral imagination which takes into consideration its contribution to the development (...) of a morally deeper and broader perspective and its bearing on character is of particular value for business leaders. (shrink)

Using path-breaking discoveries of cognitive science, Mark Johnson argues that humans are fundamentally imaginative moral animals, challenging the view that morality is simply a system of universal laws dictated by reason. According to the Western moral tradition, we make ethical decisions by applying universal laws to concrete situations. But Johnson shows how research in cognitive science undermines this view and reveals that imagination has an essential role in ethical deliberation. Expanding his innovative studies of human reason in (...) Metaphors We Live By and The Body in the Mind, Johnson provides the tools for more practical, realistic, and constructive moral reflection. (shrink)

Taking the lead from Susan Wolf's and Linda Emanuel's work on systems thinking, and developing ideas from Moberg's, Seabright's and my work on mental models and moral imagination, in this paper I shall argue that what is often missing in management decision-making is a systems approach. Systems thinking requires conceiving of management dilemmas as arising from within a system with interdependent elements, subsystems, and networks of relationships and patterns of interaction. Taking a systems approach and coupling it with (...) moral imagination, now engaged on the organizational and systemic as well as individual levels of decision-making, I shall conclude, is a methodology that encourages managers and companies to think more imaginatively and to engage in integrating moral decision-making into ordinary business decisions. More importantly this sort of thinking is a means to circumvent what often appear to be intractable problems created by systemic constraints for which no individual appears to be responsible. (shrink)

Based upon research done by evolutionary psychologists into the reason why human beings feel depression in social situations, I argue that philosophers have significant warrant to consider depression as an important feature conditioning moral imagination. The moral imagination come up with new enterprises and new ways of organizing social life. This reorganization would meet many of the goals put forth by pragmatist philosopher John Dewey. I argue that depression will work as a leading clue and unique (...) imaginative “space” to reconstruct various social situations. (shrink)

The idea that science is or should be value-free, and that values are or should be formed independently of science, has been under fire by philosophers of science for decades. Science and Moral Imagination directly challenges the idea that science and values cannot and should not influence each other. Matthew J. Brown argues that science and values mutually influence and implicate one another, that the influence of values on science is pervasive and must be responsibly managed, and that (...) science can and should have an influence on our values. This interplay, he explains, must be guided by accounts of scientific inquiry and value judgment that are sensitive to the complexities of their interactions. Brown presents scientific inquiry and value judgment as types of problem-solving practices and provides a new framework for thinking about how we might ethically evaluate episodes and decisions in science, while offering guidance for scientific practitioners and institutions about how they can incorporate value judgments into their work. His framework, dubbed "the ideal of moral imagination," emphasizes the role of imagination in value judgment and the positive role that value judgment plays in science. (shrink)

Moral sensitivity and moral reasoning are essential competencies biomedical researchers have to develop to make ethical decisions in their daily practices. Previous research has shown that these competencies can be developed through ethics education. However, it is unclear which underlying mechanisms best support the development of these competencies. In this article we argue that the development of moral sensitivity and moral reasoning can be fostered through teaching strategies that tap into students’ moral imagination. We (...) describe how moral imagination can stimulate the development of these competencies through three different merits of moral imagination. Moral imagination can help students to 1) transfer and apply abstract moral concepts to concrete situations and contexts, 2) explore the perspective of others, 3) explore and foresee the moral consequences of different decisions and actions. We explain these three merits of moral imagination in the context of biomedical research and present a theoretical model for how these merits can be used to stimulate the development of moral sensitivity and moral reasoning. Furthermore, we describe multiple teaching strategies for biomedical curricula that tap into the three merits of moral imagination. These teaching strategies can inspire teachers to design ethics education that activates students’ moral imagination for the development of moral sensitivity and moral reasoning. (shrink)

The societal and ethical impacts of emerging technological and business systems cannot entirely be foreseen; therefore, management of these innovations will require at least some ethicists to work closely with researchers. This is particularly critical in the development of new systems because the maximum degrees of freedom for changing technological direction occurs at or just after the point of breakthrough; that is also the point where the long-term implications are hardest to visualize. Recent work on shared expertise in Science & (...) Technology Studies (STS) can help create productive collaborations among scientists, engineers, ethicists and other stakeholders as these new systems are designed and implemented. But collaboration across these disciplines will be successful only if scientists, engineers, and ethicists can communicate meaningfully with each other. The establishment of a trading zone coupled with moral imagination present one method for such collaborative communication. (shrink)

We propose a ‘Moral Imagination’ methodology to facilitate a culture of responsible innovation for engineering and product teams in technology companies. Our approach has been operationalized over the past two years at Google, where we have conducted over 50 workshops with teams from across the organization. We argue that our approach is a crucial complement to existing formal and informal initiatives for fostering a culture of ethical awareness, deliberation, and decision-making in technology design such as company principles, ethics (...) and privacy review procedures, and compliance controls. We characterize some distinctive benefits of our methodology for the technology sector in particular. (shrink)

We argue that the relationship between Kant’s theory of imagination and his moral philosophy has not been well understood. Missing is an adequate connection between his idea of sensus communis and the power of imagination to exceed the senses. This connection is close and important, and it has serious implications for how we are to apply and further theorize moral relations among human beings. Especially important in this regard is the ability among humans, in their social (...) setting, to imagine other persons. We do this pre-cognitively, at the level of feeling. The effects of imagining other persons prior to all knowledge of them (as, for instance, rational agents), grounds the autonomy of other persons in a relationship that is far broader than knowledge. (shrink)

The 2023 theme for the Society of Christian Ethics invites us to consider what fuels our collective imagination in the United States today, its impact, and implications for the future of the field of ethics. American exceptionalism, racial anxieties and fear help feed influential myths that prevent the nation from “making real the promises of democracy,” much less approaching the Beloved Community (King). Whereas ethics often focuses upon critique, its scholars and practitioners are also invited to undertake the work (...) of repair, which entails attention to affect, art, and activism—particularly given the malformation of moral imagination. Such shifts have implications for pedagogy and the framing and terrain of the field of Christian ethics, as well. (shrink)

This book helps break down and analyze the process of solid decision making.

abstract In this paper we question the basis on which judgements are made about the ‘quality’ of the lives of people whose embodied experience is anomalous, specifically in cases of impairments. In moral and political philosophy it is often assumed that, suitably informed, we can overcome epistemic gaps through the exercise of moral imagination: ‘putting ourselves in the place of others’, we can share their points of view. Drawing on phenomenology and theories of embodied cognition, and on (...) empirical studies, we suggest that there are barriers to imagining oneself differently situated, or imagining being another person, arising in part from the way imagination is constrained by embodied experience. We argue that the role of imagination in moral engagement with others is to expand the scope of our sympathies rather than to enable us to put ourselves in the other's place. We argue for explicit acknowledgement that our assessments of others’ QOL are likely to be shaped by the specifics of our own embodiment, and by the assumptions we make as a consequence about what is necessary for a good quality of life. (shrink)

Susan Babbitt dissects a common moral perspective for judging importance which she calls 'moral imagination.' In order to explain ourselves, and to recognize in others, what we often already perceive intuitively to be right or good, we instinctively create a story as a framework. She argues that we intentionally create stories which appear artless or chaotic, something capable of imperfection. This allows the story-maker to eventually deviate if he or she chooses, without a loss of hope, even (...) if that direction and goal may not yet be able to be fully articulated or defended. (shrink)

As corporate scandals proliferate, organizational researchers and practitioners have made calls for research providing guidance for those wishing to influence positive moral decision-making and behavior in the workplace. This study incorporates social cognitive theory and a vignette-based cognitive measure for moral imagination to examine (a) moral attentiveness and employee creativity as important antecedents of moral imagination and (b) creativity as a moderator of the positive relationship between moral attentiveness and moral imagination. (...) Based on the results from supervisor–subordinate dyadic data (N = 162) obtained from employed students, hypotheses were largely supported as expected. Implications are discussed. (shrink)

Abstract:This essay responds to Patricia Werhane’s 1994 Ruffin Lecture address, “Moral Imagination and the Search for Ethical Decision-making in Management,” using institutional theory as an analytical framework to explore conditions that either inhibit or promote moral imagination in organizational problem-solving. Implications of the analysis for managing organizational change and for business ethics theory development are proposed.

Moral distress has been covered extensively in the nursing literature and increasingly in the literature of other health professions. Cases that cause nurses’ moral distress that are mentioned most frequently are those concerned with prolonging the dying process. Given the standard of aggressive treatment that is typical in intensive care units (ICUs), much of the existing moral distress research focuses on the experiences of critical care nurses. However, moral distress does not automatically occur in all end-of-life (...) circumstances, nor does every critical care nurse suffer its damaging effects. What are the practices of these nurses? What specifically do they do to navigate around or through the distressing situations? The nursing literature is lacking an answer to these questions. This article reports a study that used narrative analysis to explore the reported practices of experienced critical care nurses who are skilled at and comfortable working with families and physicians regarding the withdrawal of aggressive treatment. A major finding was that these nurses did not report experiencing the dam-Moral Agency, Moral Imagination, and Moral Community: Antidotes to Moral Distress Terri Traudt, Joan Liaschenko, and Cynthia Peden-McAlpine Terri Traudt, MBC, MA, is a Communications Consultant specializing in bioethics at the Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota, in Minneapolis. [email protected] Joan Liaschenko, PhD, RN, FAAN, is a Professor at the Center for Bioethics and Nursing at the University of Minnesota. Cynthia Peden-McAlpine, PhD, ACNS, BC, is an Associate Professor in the School of Nursing at the University of Minnesota. © 2016 by The Journal of Clinical Ethics. All rights reserved. aging effects of moral distress as described in the nursing literature. The verbal communication and stated practices relevant to this finding are organized under three major themes: (1) moral agency, (2) moral imagination, and (3) moral community. Further, a total of eight subthemes are identified. The practices that constitute these themes and subthemes are further detailed and discussed in this article. Understanding these practices can help mitigate critical care nurses’ moral distress. (shrink)

The issues may change with the passing of the years, but the categories of concern change very little: sexuality and the sexes; medical decision-making; justice for the poor, the powerless, the underclass; reproductive decision-making; moral decision-making in business; and personal moral choices. Stevens attempts to present alternative positions on hotly debated new moral issues from a different standpoint, using an ethical pluralism approach. In doing this, he hopes to help readers arrive at their own non-polarized positions by (...) learning from and respecting all parties in the discussion. (shrink)

The majority of philosophers of religion, at least since Plantinga’s reply to Mackie’s logical problem of evil, agree that it is logically possible for an omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God to exist who permits some of the evils we see in the actual world. This is conceivable essentially because of the possible world known as heaven. That is, heaven is an imaginable world in a similar way that logically possible scenarios in any fiction are imaginable. However, like some of the (...) imaginable stories in fiction where we are asked to envision an immoral act as a moral one, we resist. I will employ the works of Tamar Gendler on imaginative resistance and Keith Buhler’s Virtue Ethics approach to moral imaginative resistance and apply them to the conception of heaven and the problem of evil. While we can imagine God as an omnibenevolent parent permitting evil to allow for morally significant freedom and the rewards in heaven or punishments in hell (both possible worlds), we should not. This paper is not intended to be a refutation of particular theodicies; rather it provides a very general groundwork connecting issues of horrendous suffering and imaginative resistance to heaven as a possible world. (shrink)

While examining the important role of imagination in making moral judgments, John Dewey and Moral Imagination focuses new attention on the relationship between American pragmatism and ethics. Steven Fesmire takes up threads of Dewey's thought that have been largely unexplored and elaborates pragmatism's distinctive contribution to understandings of moral experience, inquiry, and judgment. Building on two Deweyan notions—that moral character, belief, and reasoning are part of a social and historical context and that moral (...) deliberation is an imaginative, dramatic rehearsal of possibilities—Fesmire shows that moral imagination can be conceived as a process of aesthetic perception and artistic creativity. Fesmire's original readings of Dewey shed new light on the imaginative process, human emotional make-up and expression, and the nature of moral judgment. This original book presents a robust and distinctly pragmatic approach to ethics, politics, moral education, and moral conduct. [The downloadable sample is Chapter Seven, "The Moral Artist."]. (shrink)

This chapter examines Nietzsche's thinking on the concept of Mitleid and discusses the complexities of translating this concept into English in Dawn. It describes how Nietzsche's critical engagement with this concept is importantly dependent on the role of drives in his wider moral psychology. The chapter also examines the role of mood and social transmission of feeling in his critique, arguing that these factors play key roles in Nietzsche's development of a substantial critique of an ethic of compassion, and (...) in his pursuit of an alternative ethic. It shows how Nietzsche's exposure of an ethic of compassion as fundamentally flawed opens up the possibility of a reconfiguration of the concept of moral imagination, and facilitates development of a more robust, creative, and experimental concept of ethical imagination as a part of Nietzsche's broader effort to provide a framework for ongoing moral therapy. (shrink)

This book explores the significance of the Resurrection for human moral imagination and moral life. It shows that the Resurrection, contemplatively apprehended, shifts our ethically conditioned understanding of what it means to be human. It shifts our relationship to mortality and finitude, and opens up new possibilities and sources for human life and hope. It thereby transforms the picture of human being operative in moral thinking about justice and personal relations, as well as some of our (...) fundamental moral concepts. (shrink)

This article reviews recent developments within a number of academic disciplines pointing toward an increasing importance of imagination for understanding morality and cognition. Using elements from hermeneutics and metaphor theory, it works toward a framework for a more context-sensitive understanding of human agency, especially focusing on moral deliberation and change. The analytic framework is used to analyze the story of a patient making tough decisions in the context of prenatal diagnosis. We show how a relatively stable outlook on (...) the world, here called the “baseline of choice,” is challenged by unexpected events and how imaginative processes enter into the active creation of a new moral order. The ensuing interpretation is then placed within a broader philosophical landscape. John Dewey’s notion of “dramatic rehearsal” is put forward as one particularly promising way of understanding moral imagination, deliberation, and decision-making. (shrink)

We are living in what is widely considered the sixth major extinction. Most ecologists believe that biodiversity is disappearing at an alarming rate, with up to 150 species going extinct per day according to scientists working with the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. Part of the reason the loss signified by biological extinction feels painful is that it seems irremediable. These creatures are gone, and there's nothing to be done about it. In recent years, however, the possibility has been (...) broached that, just possibly, something can be done, in at least some cases. Human ingenuity, a contributing factor in the extinction crisis, might achieve their “de‐extinction”—in at least some cases, and with sometimes significant qualifications about whether the original species had been “recreated” and whether it could resume its original place in the environment. De‐extinction is an entry point into a larger set of questions about how biotechnological tools can support, coexist with, or undermine the goals of conservation and about the very meaning of conservation. Are we beings in control of the world or beings who prosper by accommodating ourselves to webs of symbiotic interdependencies? Are we creators or creatures, or both—and if both, then how can we achieve the balance between them that might be called humility? The interplay of perfecting and accommodating is not unique to human beings—perhaps it characterizes all forms of life on Earth—but with humans, these modes of being are distinctive, and our technology greatly expands their scale and effects. It is such questions that the ten essays in this special report explore. (shrink)

In business schools, there is a persistent myth according to which management education is, and should be, ‘value-free’. This article reflects on the experiences of two business schools from Finland and Australia in which the UN Principles for Responsible Management Education have been pragmatically used as a platform for breaking with this institutionalized guise of positivist value neutrality. This use of PRME makes it possible to create learning environments in which values and value tensions inherent in management education can be (...) explored and exposed. Inspired by Rorty’s understanding of ethics—notably his discussion of ‘final vocabularies’ and ‘moral imagination’—and Flyvbjerg’s reading of phronēsis, the article discusses an approach to learning that helps both teachers and students in exploring and exposing values in management education by problematizing dominant business school vocabularies, thereby leading to moral development, in the Rortian sense. The article presents a number of final vocabularies that business students come to class with, some learning methods used to challenge these vocabularies through discussion of alternative vocabularies, and the new directions for moral imagination that may result. (shrink)

Moral imagination is a process that involves a thorough consideration of the ethical elements of a decision. We sought to explore what might distinguish moral imagination from other ethical approaches within a complex business simulation. Using a three-component model of moral imagination, we sought to discover whether organization cultures with a salient ethics theme activate moral imagination. Finding an effect, we sought an answer to whether some individuals were more prone to being (...) influenced in this way by ethical cultures. We found that employees with strong moral identities are less influenced by such cultures than employees whose sense of self is not defined in moral terms. (shrink)

Much debate concerning ‘precedent autonomy’ – that is, the authority of former, competent selves to govern the welfare of later, non-competent selves – has assumed a radical discontinuity between selves, and has overlooked the ‘bridging’ role of intimate proxy decision-makers. I consider a recent proposal by Lynn et al. (1999) that presents a provocative alternative, foregrounding an imagined dialogue between the formerly competent patient and her/his trusted others. I consider what standards must be met for such dialogues to have (...) class='Hi'>moral force, appealing to narrative and feminist ethics. I then critique the dualistic construction of selves implicit in much of the advance directive literature, noting the continuities of dependence, character, and body, as well as the social dimension of the construction of selves. (shrink)

Abstract:Moral imagination is a reasoning process thought to counter the organizational factors that corrupt ethical judgment. We describe the psychology of moral imagination as composed of the four decision processes identified by Rest (1986), i.e., moral sensitivity, moral judgment, moral intention, and moral behavior. We examine each process in depth, distilling extant psychological research and indicating organizational implications. The conclusion offers suggestions for future research.The majority of men are subjective toward themselves and (...) objective toward all others—terribly objective sometimes—but the real task is in fact to be objective toward one’s self and subjective toward all others. (shrink)