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Abstract

Many models of (un)ethical decision making assume that people decide rationally and are in principle able to evaluate their decisions from a moral point of view. However, people might behave unethically without being aware of it. They are ethically blind. Adopting a sense making approach, we argue that ethical blindness results from a complex interplay between individual sense making activities and context factors.
Ethical Blindness
Guido Palazzo Franciska Krings Ulrich Hoffrage
Received: 1 June 2010 / Accepted: 22 November 2011 / Published online: 6 December 2011
Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011
Abstract Many models of (un)ethical decision making
assume that people decide rationally and are in principle
able to evaluate their decisions from a moral point of view.
However, people might behave unethically without being
aware of it. They are ethically blind. Adopting a sense-
making approach, we argue that ethical blindness results
from a complex interplay between individual sensemaking
activities and context factors.
Keywords Ethical decision-making Ethical/unethical
behavior Ethical fading Moral disengagement Bounded
awareness/ethicality Rigid framing
Introduction
Business history is rich with examples of extreme forms of
unethical behavior by and within companies. When these
cases are made public by traditional muckrakers like Upton
Sinclair in the nineteenth century or today’s NGOs, by
internal whistle-blowers or official investigations, the
public is often shocked. It seems to be difficult to under-
stand how behaviors that seem to violate any moral com-
mon sense are possible.
During the last three decades, the business ethics literature
has developed sophisticated models that have considerably
improved our understanding of why, how, and under what
conditions individuals make ethical decisions—and when
they fail to do so. These models suggest that (un)ethical
decisions are the result of an interplay between personal traits
of the decision maker and characteristics of the situation
(Trevino 1986). However, most research on ethical decision
making still builds on the assumption that decisions are made
by rational actors (see critically Sonenshein 2007). The
rationality assumption is displayed in several ways. Standing
in the tradition of moral philosophy, business ethicists usually
assume that there is a moral point of view from which the
ethicality of a decision can be evaluated. They acknowledge
that the moral point of view can be interpreted differently,
depending on the specific background philosophy (e.g., the
Kantian duty approach versus the Utilitarian calculation). But
they share the assumption that there is an objective and
impartial yardstick that people can (and do) use to weigh
arguments and come to a decision (Hunt and Vitell 1986). For
example, Sharp-Paine (1997) suggested that managers use
different philosophical lenses when making a decision—
reflecting on consequences (Utilitarian lens), principles
(Kantian lens) and objectives (economic lens)—to include as
many aspects as possible. In contrast, interactionist models
(Trevino 1986) question the assumption that managers sim-
ply take a Kantian or Utilitarian position, independently of
the context in which the decision is made. Indeed, context
factors can have an important impact on the decision-making
process. Nevertheless, even though person-situation models
have dropped the assumption that managers deliberate like
philosophers, they still conceive them as rational actors,
holding that ‘cognitive moral development is the critical
element in the judgment phase’ (Jones 1991, p. 371, see also
Sonenshein 2007).
Often, however, (un)ethical decision making is less
rational and deliberate but more intuitive and automatic
G. Palazzo (&)F. Krings U. Hoffrage
Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Lausanne,
Internef, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
e-mail: guido.palazzo@unil.ch
F. Krings
e-mail: franciska.krings@unil.ch
U. Hoffrage
e-mail: ulrich.hoffrage@unil.ch
123
J Bus Ethics (2012) 109:323–338
DOI 10.1007/s10551-011-1130-4
(Gigerenzer 2008; Haidt 2001; Reynolds 2006; Sonenshein
2007). As a consequence, the ethical dimension of a
decision is not necessarily visible to the decision maker.
People may behave unethically without being aware of it—
they may even be convinced that they are doing the right
thing. It is only later that they realize the unethical
dimension of their decision. We call this state ethical
blindness: the decision maker’s temporary inability to see
the ethical dimension of a decision at stake.
How can ethical blindness be explained? Some recent
accounts in the literature allude to this question. Tenb-
runsel and Messick (2004) argue that under specific cir-
cumstances the ethical aspect of a decision fades away so
that the decision maker gradually becomes unaware of it.
There are several triggers of ethical fading. One is the use
of euphemistic language. Another one is pointed out by
Chugh et al. (2005) who, in their work on bounded ethi-
cality, analyze how the computational limits of the human
mind lead to the use of simple heuristics which might, in
turn, give rise to unethical decisions beyond the decision
maker’s awareness. Bandura (1999,2002) argues that
unethical decisions are promoted by disengaging from the
decision’s moral dimension. He illustrates how moral dis-
engagement is driven by individual, situational and insti-
tutional forces. We build on and extend the above-
mentioned accounts of ethical decision making in two
ways: Firstly, we propose a theoretical model that con-
ceptualizes the interplay of psychological and sociological
forces on three analytical levels, namely the individual
sensemaking, the decision-making situation and the ideo-
logical context, carving out specific constellations that
make ethical blindness more or less probable. The debate
in previous accounts has mainly focused on psychological
forces and aspects of the immediate context. The institu-
tional context in which individuals and their organizations
are embedded has, so far, been neglected or discussed
separately from the psychological analysis. Secondly,
many authors underline that unethical decision making can
only be understood as the result of a process that unfolds
over time (den Nieuwenboer and Kaptein 2008; Fleming
and Zyglidopoulos 2008; McDevitt et al. 2007). However,
the notion of time and its mechanisms has not been
developed further yet. Our model discusses the role of time
in more detail, drawing on research on the temporal aspects
of decision making.
We position our model in the context of constructivism,
explaining ethical blindness as the result of a sensemaking
process. Ethical decision making unfolds in four steps,
starting with moral awareness (Rest 1986): Whether or not
people make ethical decisions depends on their ability to
process and encode incoming information in moral cate-
gories. If a person is not aware of the moral dimension of a
decision at stake, she can not proceed to the next steps, that
is, evaluate the information from a normative viewpoint,
establish a moral intention and make an ethical decision.
Butterfield et al. (2000) have demonstrated that the first
step, i.e., moral awareness, needs to be understood as a
social sensemaking process. Put differently, whether or not
a person becomes aware of a decision’s ethical dimension
depends on the sensemaking process unfolding within the
social group that the person is part of. We suggest that the
sensemaking process leading to ethical blindness is based
on the interplay between a tendency toward rigid framing
and contextual pressures. Frames make us view the world
from one particular and thus necessarily limited perspec-
tive. They have blind spots. The more rigidly people apply
specific frames when making decisions, the lower their
ability to switch to another perspective. They are locked
into one frame. We refer to this phenomenon as rigid
framing and describe it as the result of an interplay of
individual sensemaking activities with proximal and distal
contextual factors. The proximal context of sensemaking
includes situational as well as organizational factors, while
the distal context describes the overarching institutional
context in which individual and organizational actors are
embedded. As outlined below, ethical blindness is the
result of a complex interplay between sensemaking activ-
ities and context pressures that unfold over time. As such,
the phenomenon only occurs given a particular constella-
tion of framing tendencies and contextual influences.
Nevertheless, its consequences can be substantial.
In the following, we first describe the phenomenon of
ethical blindness and explain how it can result from rigid
framing. Then we explain how framing interacts with
proximal and distal context pressures. We subsequently
highlight the temporal dynamics behind the phenomenon.
Finally, we conclude with some reflections on the descrip-
tive and normative dimensions of ethical blindness.
What is Ethical Blindness?
Recent discussions on ‘bounded awareness’ (Chugh and
Bazerman 2007) and ‘bounded ethicality’’ (Chugh et al.
2005) highlight the fact that people can make decisions that
run counter to their own values and principles, without
being aware of it. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the
ethical dimensions might indeed escape decision maker’s
attention. For instance, in reflecting upon his own role in
the Ford Pinto case, Gioia (1992, p. 383) asked himself:
‘Why didn’t I see the gravity of the problem and its ethical
overtones?’ In a similar vein, one of the guards taking part
in the classic Stanford prison experiment reported after the
experiment: ‘While I was doing it, I didn’t feel any regret,
I didn’t feel any guilt. It was only afterwards, when I began
to reflect on what I had done, that this behavior began to
324 G. Palazzo et al.
123
dawn on me’ (Zimbardo 2007, p. 158). Also in the most
extreme forms of harm doing, mass murder for instance,
the phenomenon of blindness can be observed. Browning
(2001, p. 72) cites a German policeman participating in the
genocide in Poland and Russia in the early 1940s:
‘Truthfully I must say that at the time we didn’t reflect
about it at all. Only years later did any of us become truly
conscious of what had happened then. Only later did it first
occur to me that [it] had not been right.’
Formally, ethical blindness can be defined as the tem-
porary inability of a decision maker to see the ethical
dimension of a decision at stake. The phenomenon can be
understood along three aspects. First, it builds on the
assumption that people deviate from their own values and
principles. These values and principles are part of their
identity and they have tried to live up to them in the past.
Ethical blindness refers to the fact that ‘good people behave
in pathological ways that are alien to their nature’’ (Zim-
bardo 2007, p. 195; see also Bandura 2002). It results from
people’s inability to access ethical values or prototypes
(Reynolds 2006) that, in principle, are available to them.
Second, ethical blindness is context-bound and thus a tem-
porary state. It describes a psychological state of people
with normal (or even high) levels of integrity and the ability
for moral reasoning. But for some reasons (often related to
the situation, as we outline further below), they are not able
to use these capacities when making the decision. However,
when the situation changes, they are likely to return to
practicing their original values and principles. This charac-
teristic is well illustrated by the fact that the perpetrators
might be surprised or even shocked by their own behavior
once the context has changed (Gioia 1992; Chugh and
Bazerman 2007). This sentiment indicates that under dif-
ferent circumstances, those people may have been able and
willing to make a more ethical decision. Third, ethical
blindness is unconscious. People who are ethically blind are
not aware of the fact that they deviate from their values and/
or that they cannot and do not access those values when
making a decision. This aspect has also been observed by
Tenbrunsel and Smith-Crowe (2008) who examine it as a
state of ‘unintended unethicality’’. As we argue further
below, ethical blindness results from the co-evolution and
mutual transformation of sensemaking and contextual for-
ces. At the beginning of the transformation process, people
often sense that something is wrong. They feel tensions
between the implications of their decision and their own
personal values. However, under certain conditions (i.e., a
specific constellation of context pressures), as time goes by,
sensemaking becomes more and more narrow and rigid,
tensions become less and less intense, and ethical concerns
start to fade away (Tenbrunsel and Messick 2004). This
process continues, in small steps, until the person loses sight
of the ethical dimension. She becomes ethically blind.
Ethical blindness is in line with recent models that
underline the automatic, intuitive or unconscious compo-
nents of ethical decision making (e.g., Sonenshein 2007).
Those models challenge the idea that an ethical decision is
the result of a deliberative and rational decision-making
process where people weigh alternative options against
their own values, general principles, and the potential
consequences for important others or the world in general
(Jones 1991; Kohlberg 1969; Rest 1986), pragmatically
applying appropriate combinations of Kantian principles
and Utilitarian calculations (Hare 1981; Sharp-Paine 1997).
According to the rational actor view, even a person who
opts for an unethical decision knows (at least in principle)
the difference between right and wrong in a given situation.
She just weighs positive and negative incentives against
personal interests and sees more advantages in the uneth-
ical decision (Ashkanasy et al. 2006; Becker 1968). Recent
models questioning these assumptions refer to intuition
(Haidt 2001), sensemaking (Sonenshein 2007), neurocog-
nitive processes (Reynolds 2006) or heuristics (Gigerenzer
2008,2009) instead. Frames, schemas, prototypes, and
their related concepts are indispensable building blocks of
our cognitive system, guiding our perceptions and under-
standing of the world. However, as we argue further below,
frames bear some inherent risks because they tend to have
blind spots and they can be applied in a more or less rigid
manner. As a consequence, the ethical dimension of a
decision may be difficult to identify for the actor. More-
over, specific ways in which frames or schemata are used
may be reinforced by aspects of the context which, in turn,
may further increase the risk of ethical blindness. The
model proposed in this article shows how specific inter-
actions between the tendency toward rigid framing and
situational or institutional pressures are especially likely to
give rise to ethical blindness. In what follows, we first
introduce the concept of rigid framing and then outline the
model in more detail.
Rigid Framing and Ethical Blindness
Research in (neo)institutional theory (DiMaggio and
Powell 1983) and sensemaking (Weick 1995) show that
individuals construct and enact the reality in which they
operate. These constructionist approaches have been lar-
gely neglected in the business ethics literature (Sonenshein
2007) but are, in our view, particularly useful to explain
ethical blindness (Werhane et al. 2011).
According to the constructionist view (Berger and
Luckmann 1966; Weick 1995), individuals act upon frames
that they develop while interacting with their environment
(Ring and Rands 1989). Frames are ‘mental structures that
simplify and guide our understanding of a complex reality’’
Ethical Blindness 325
123
(Russo and Schoemaker 2004, p. 21) or, similarly, cogni-
tive frameworks ‘that people use to impose structure upon
information, situations, and expectations to facilitate
understanding’ (Gioia 1992, p. 385). Frames make us view
the world from one particular and thus necessarily limited
perspective. They filter what we see and how we see it.
These filters function as vocabularies ‘‘in which words that
are more abstract (frames) include and point to other less
abstract words (cues)’ (Weick 1995, p. 110). In the process
of sensemaking, people pull from several vocabularies that
are mainly shaped by the dominating ideology of their
society, by the organizations they work for, and by their
professional education (Weick 1995). As a result, frames
promote particular problem definitions, causal relations
between phenomena, normative evaluations and recom-
mendations for action (Entman 1993).
Frames develop through socialization processes where
stimuli and social phenomena are filtered repeatedly in a
specific way. In using these frames, often in an automatic
fashion, people make sense ‘by seeing a world on which
they already imposed what they believe’ (Weick 1995,
p. 15). Frames guide how information is processed, con-
trolling what information is attended to and, just as
important, what is obscured. Frames are indispensable.
Without these mental structures, we would not be able to
perceive and understand a complex situation. However,
frames have blind spots, because they impose ‘mental
boundaries on options’ (Schoemaker and Russo 2001,
p. 137). Blind spots in attention and perception have been
widely demonstrated in cognitive psychology (Neisser
1979; Chabris and Simons 2010). People sometimes fail to
perceive relevant things going on in front of their eyes—a
phenomenon that Mack and Rock (1998) have called ‘in-
attentional blindness’’. Social psychology is also rich with
examples that demonstrate how mental preconceptions
such as stereotypes bias our perceptions, often uncon-
sciously (Fiske 1998). Research in personality psychology
further demonstrates how individual differences in, for
example, morality influence cognition (Narvaez et al.
2006). In management research, the phenomenon has been
covered as well (e.g., Dearborn and Simon 1958; Zajac and
Bazerman 1991). For instance, Zahra and Couples (1993)
have demonstrated the impact of blind spots in competitive
analysis. Recently, Ng et al. (2009) discussed blind spots in
the way corporations perceive their value chain.
By masking some elements and highlighting others,
frames make people blind to some aspects of a problem.
Those blind spots can only be detected when looking at the
problem from a different perspective, that is, by using a
different frame. Another consequence of blind spots is that,
depending on the frames people use, they may hold
opposing views of the very same situation. For instance,
what is perceived as a ‘‘web of economic relationships’
can also be constructed as a ‘‘web of moral relationships’
(Werhane 1999, p. 6). Or the same phenomenon may be
perceived by managers as ‘the end of an old and inefficient
industry’’, whereas local stakeholders would see ‘families
uprooted and lives destroyed’ (Oestreich 2002, p. 215).
Similarly, Wheeler et al. (2002) argued that Shell’s prob-
lems in dealing with the critique and pressure of the Ogoni
people in Nigeria over environmental pollution can partly
be explained by a clash between the company’s scientific,
technical rationale and the Ogoni’s more spiritual, cultural
understanding of the environment.
Typically, frames are exclusive, in the sense that we use
only one frame at a time. As optical illusions such as
Rubin’s vase demonstrate, we can have one interpretation
(e.g., two bright faces looking at each other in front of a
dark background, with the edges being seen as part of the
faces) or another interpretation (e.g., a dark vase in front of
a bright background, with the edges being seen as part of
the vase), but we cannot adapt both views simultaneously
(Driver and Baylis 1996). Being locked in one frame
(Schoemaker and Russo 2001) and not being able to switch
to a different frame is what we refer to as rigid framing.
Rigid framing seriously impairs a person’s ability to see a
more complete or richer picture of the world. As a result,
people might create a particulate rationality (Welzer 2005)
in which they behave on the basis of a narrow and self-
referentially closed concept of reality. Through collective
interpretations, people in an organization may develop ‘‘a
moral microcosmos that likely could not survive outside
the organization’ (Brief et al. 2000a, p. 484; see also
Ashforth and Anand 2003). Nevertheless, they believe that
they ‘have the complete picture’ (Schoemaker and Russo
2001, p. 140) and ignore any information that cannot be
captured by the initially used frame (Lakoff 2004). As a
consequence, a decision that may look irrational, unethical,
and pathological from outside the microcosmos may be
considered rational, ethical, and normal from the inside.
Thus, unethical practice may appear as normal routine
when perceived through the lens of the sensemaker (Brief
et al. 2000a,b; Punch 1996).
Rigid framing makes it difficult to transcend a specific
view on the world and adopt another, different frame. As a
consequence, it prevents people from compensating for the
frame’s blind spots and from developing a deeper under-
standing of the situation. People risk losing the ‘‘functional
utility’ of their representation of the world (Walsh 1995,
p. 303). Conversely, using a repertoire of frames (i.e.,
applying multiple frames, Schoemaker and Russo 2001),
allows one to (consciously or unconsciously) alternate
between them when analyzing a problem. As a result, more
meanings can be extracted from a situation (Weick 1995).
A problem can be viewed from multiple perspectives, using
different frames (e.g., from an economic, a legal, an
326 G. Palazzo et al.
123
administrative, a technical, and an ethical perspective).
Even though it is not possible to adopt different frames at
the same time, it is possible to employ them in a sequential
fashion. Ideally, the insights gained from this sequential
process are later structured and integrated (e.g., by
assigning priorities) into a well-balanced and well-elabo-
rated decision: ‘The greater the variety of beliefs in a
repertoire, the more fully should any situation be seen, the
more solutions that should be identified, and the more
likely it should be that someone knows a great deal about
what is happening’ (Weick 1995, p. 87).
In sum, we suggest that rigid framing is related to
(dangerously) narrow and limited sensemaking. Ethical
blindness may thus result from framing a decision making
situation in a too rigid manner. For example, key (implicit)
assumptions of rigid economic, legal and scientific framing
are that profit maximization is inherently moral, that laws
are the only moral limit to profits and that scientific
expertise should prevail over the concerns of affected
laypersons, respectively. People who use those frames do
not necessarily make unethical decisions. However, using
these frames rigidly increases the probability that people
don’t see the ethical dimension of their decision (Tenb-
runsel and Messick 2004). In line with this argument,
Punch (1996) explained some managers’ unethical deci-
sions by the fact that they are dominated by an economic
frame upon which they automatically draw, blinding them
for other perspectives. The same may be true for using
ethical frames too rigidly. For example, it has been dem-
onstrated that Christian fundamentalists react with strong
outrage to those who, in their view, violate sacred values
(Tetlock et al. 2000).
Sensemaking in Context: The Interplay Between
Framing and Contextual Factors
In line with the person–situation interactionist model of
ethical decision making (Trevino 1986), we assume that
framing interacts with context factors. Sensemaking
depends on the surrounding context, specifically on context
factors that can amplify or attenuate a specific way in
which a frame is used. Most research following the inter-
actionist tradition only considers aspects of the organiza-
tion and the immediate situation. We distinguish between a
proximal and a distal context and discuss them further
below in separate sections. Proximal context comprises the
organization as well as the immediate decision making
situation. Distal context refers to the overarching institu-
tional constellation in which the organization and indi-
vidual actors are embedded. The impact of institutions on
ethical or unethical decision making has received little
attention (Misangyi et al. 2008) but is likely to have an
important influence on the construction and use of frames
and thus on ethical blindness. In what follows, we outline
the basic mechanisms of the sensemaking model to account
for ethical blindness, together with empirical evidence and
business examples illustrating the proposed interaction
between context pressures and rigid framing.
As Weick (2005) pointed out, people do not engage in
sensemaking starting from scratch, but by building on
previous experiences that have shaped their way of per-
ceiving the world. Our model (see Fig. 1) begins with an
individual sensemaking process that tends to be dominated
by a specific frame; that is, a person’s perception is char-
acterized by a certain degree of rigidity in framing. As a
Proximal context:
Situational / organizational pressures
Distal context:
Institutional pressures
Distal context:
Institutional pressures
moderate lowhigh moderate
Risk of rigid framing:
in concert with
applied frame
in concert with
applied frame
in concert with
applied frame
in opposition to
applied frame
in opposition to
applied frame
in opposition to
applied frame
Risk of ethical blindness: high moderate moderate low
interacting with
Individual sensemaking:
Applied frame
Fig. 1 Sensemaking model of ethical blindness
Ethical Blindness 327
123
consequence, she tends to see only certain aspects of the
situation and neglects others. She does not look at the
situation from different angles (i.e., apply different
frames), running the risk of staying locked into one frame.
Sensemaking is always embedded in context. As a
consequence, during the sensemaking process, the person is
confronted with a series of external pressures that are part
of her context and relevant for her decision. Those pres-
sures are part of proximal (organizational and situational
pressures) or distal context (institutional pressures).
Importantly, context pressures do not necessarily increase
the probability of ethical blindness. Some pressures are in
concert with a frame and thus reinforce initial framing
tendencies. Other pressures may be in opposition to the
applied frame, questioning its validity, thus weakening
initial framing tendencies and increasing the probability of
flexible framing. Hence, the risk of ethical blindness is
high, moderate, or low, depending on the nature of the
interplay (in concert or in opposition; see Fig. 1) between
context forces and framing. The model further shows that
the probability of rigid sensemaking and ethical blindness
varies, depending on the contextual constellation in which
the sensemaking takes place. A high risk situation could,
for instance, be imagined as follows (see the far left path of
the model in Fig. 1): People with classical business school
training might work in an organization that encourages
them to mainly focus on profits when making decisions
(e.g., by turning managers into deal makers). Additionally,
situational forces such as group pressure within a depart-
ment make it difficult for them to develop alternative
sensemaking options. If the organization is additionally
embedded in an institutional context that is dominated by
free market ideology with a strong focus on deregulation,
the probability of rigid framing is high. It is interesting to
see that exactly these conditions were met at Enron before
the whole system that was built up there collapsed (Sims
and Brinkmann 2003), lending support to our model’s
claim that a rigid framing can lead to ethical blindness,
which in turn increases the risk of unethical behavior.
Before describing the mechanisms and empirical
evidence in more detail, three notes on the model are
warranted. First, the model starts out with a specific
sensemaking process, namely one that is already charac-
terized by the dominance of a single frame. Rigid framing
may be the result of a socialization process and/or a con-
sequence of an overwhelming situational constellation (i.e.,
the situation strongly suggests the rigid use of one partic-
ular frame in most people; Reynolds et al. 2010). We return
to these points when we describe the evolution of the
outlined processes over time. At this point, we acknowl-
edge that sensemaking is not always characterized by rigid
framing but that a person may apply different frames in a
flexible, sequential fashion, as described earlier. We
assume that flexible framing bears a lower risk for ethical
blindness from the outset and that in this case, the risk of
ethical blindness would be higher only under extreme
external pressures.
Second, our approach builds on the assumption that a
decision maker is not necessarily aware of the ethical
dimension of a decision. We do not question the notion of
intentional unethicality as unethical decisions might indeed
result from the calculation of profits over risks by self-
interested but nonetheless rational people (Becker 1968).
However, our argument is that under a certain constellation
of proximal and distal context pressures that unfold over
time (see below), even intentional or conscious thinking
processes might morph into unconscious processes, bearing
the risk of ethical blindness. A decision maker might loose
sight of his or her initial transactional considerations and
might start to believe in his or her own rationalizations
(Ashforth and Anand 2003). Doubtful business practices
can be normalized and habitualized through routine (Mis-
angyi et al. 2008). We argue that there are numerous cases
of unethical behavior that do not easily fit the rationality
mold and are better explained by a sensemaking process
that leads to ethical blindness.
Third, because we describe ethical blindness as the
result of a sensemaking process based on interactions
between framing and context factors, a note on the role of
individual differences seems warranted, for instance, with
respect to personality. Personality traits are a set of rela-
tively stable dimensions of behavioral tendencies, provid-
ing a draft of an individual’s typical pattern of behavior,
thoughts and feelings (McAdams 2009). As such, the role
of personality for ethical decision making is two-fold: First,
it has a direct impact on ethical decision making, inde-
pendently of context. For example, personality traits rela-
ted to an increased experience of negative emotions (e.g.,
neuroticism, negative affectivity, trait anger) are related to
engaging more frequently in counterproductive work
behaviors such as stealing or aggression (Berry et al. 2007;
Fox et al. 2001). However, these direct effects are typically
not large and there is considerable variance. The second
role of personality seems more promising and more perti-
nent for our sensemaking model: personality influences the
way people construe situations and thus how they react to
them. For example, the social-cognitive model of the moral
personality suggests that individual differences in morality
are due to differences in chronic availability and accessi-
bility of moral constructs in social information-processing
(Lapsley and Narvaez 2004; Narvaez et al. 2006). Put
differently, people high in morality are more likely to have
moral schematas, scripts, or protoypes readily available
and presumably even chronically activated. Hence, indi-
vidual differences in morality colour perceptions and
interpretations of a given situation go along with different
328 G. Palazzo et al.
123
probabilities and intensities with which moral frames are
used. Further, personality may moderate how people react
to a given situation, rendering certain behaviors more
likely than others. For example, people high in trait anger
react more strongly (i.e., with more negative emotions) to
negative events at work than people low in trait anger. As a
consequence, they are more likely to engage in workplace
aggression when feeling unfairly treated (Fox et al. 2001).
Taken together, we acknowledge that stable individual
differences may have both direct and indirect effects but
put more emphasis on indirect effects when describing our
model below.
Interactions Between Framing and Proximal Context
The attention of decision-makers is always situated, that is,
placed in the context of organizational routines (Ocasio
1997; March 1988; Argyris and Scho
¨n1978). Routines tend
to reinforce existing world perceptions, whether they are still
appropriate or not. As a result, knowledge routines that were
core capabilities can turn into ‘core rigidities’’ (Leonard-
Barton 1992). Overall, as Miller (1993, p. 117) has argued,
organizations, especially if they are successful, tend toward
an ‘architecture of simplicity’ which manifests in more
narrow and ‘increasingly homogeneous managerial ‘lenses’
or world views’’. Thus, the organizational context has an
important impact on the use of frames. Individuals, teams
and communities that cooperate within organizations
determine to a certain degree individual framing activities
(Foldy et al. 2008; Smircich and Stubbart 1985). For
example, organizations that promote aggressive competition
are likely to support rigid and narrow world perceptions
among their members, by reinforcing the dominant use of a
frame that divides the world into ‘us’ and ‘‘them’’. Com-
petition between groups or teams over scarce resources such
as wealth or recognition has been repeatedly shown to give
rise to unethical behavior that includes hostility and dero-
gating members of other groups (Esses et al. 2005; Sherif
et al. 1961).
Similar processes can be observed in the corporate world.
For example, in his analysis of the Pinto case, Gioia (1992)
pointed out that there was a strong ‘‘us versus them’ culture
in the corporation, where Ford insiders perceived them-
selves as acting in a hostile political and media environment.
Clinard and Yeager (1980) showed that in the 1970s,
transgressions in some industries were closely linked to the
feeling of being over-regulated by people from outside who
have no clue of their industry. Jackall (1988, p. 147) talks
about managers’ feelings of ‘beleaguerment’ as if they
were ‘under siege’’. Strong distinctions between ‘us’’ and
‘them’’ are typical for cohesive teams and important ele-
ments of groupthink, that is, a mode of thinking that leads to
biased group decision making (Janis 1972).
Another example of the impact of organizational context is
the tendency of some corporations (especially of those that
operate in high-tech markets) to create a culture of objectivity
that strongly encourages the use of scientific rationalism as
the dominant frame. Decisions have to rely on ‘’hard’,
quantitative data and analysis’ (Feldman 2004, p. 698). As
Feldman (2004) argued regarding the NASA space shuttle
disasters, the narrow scientific frame reduced the range of
legitimate arguments and undermined the sensitivity to the
moral values and concerns that could have been relevant for
the decision. Here, ethical blindness can be amplified by
organizational routines (Brief et al. 2000a,b; Gioia 1992;
Vaughan 1996; March 1981; Perrow 1986) which tend to
overemphasize technical rationality thereby providing actors
with a specialized and precise language (Steffy and Grimes
1986). The low variety provided by that language makes it
easier to navigate in routinized situations but turns into a risk
when the environmental conditions change significantly
(Miles and Snow 1994; Perrow 1986) and when it would be
better to ‘drop your tools’ (Weick 1996).
Aspects of the immediate situation may further reinforce
rigid framing and thus increase the risk of ethical blind-
ness. Some situations are so powerful that they elicit a
specific behavior in many people, independently of inten-
tions, level of moral development, values or reasoning.
Research on the influence of authority is a good illustration
of the pervasive impact of a strong situation (Ashforth and
Anand 2003; Brief et al. 1995; Brief 2000a). Many people
are willing to engage in unethical behavior if they are
asked to do so by legitimate authority figures (Milgram
1974; Blass 1991; Burger 2009; Werhane et al. 2011). For
instance, managers are willing to discriminate against
Blacks or foreigners in hiring processes when asked to do
so by their superiors (Brief et al. 1995; Petersen and Dietz
2000). This behavior could in particular be observed when
managers were high in prejudice (Petersen and Dietz
2005), lending further support to the assumption that con-
text pressure may indeed reinforce initial rigid framing
if they are in concert with the frame (see Fig. 1; upper
half, left path), in this case, with the prejudices (of some
managers). Only strong organizational pressures (e.g.,
establishing strong organizational sanctions when employ-
ees breach the organization’s codes of conduct) can break
this influence of organizational authorities (Petersen and
Krings 2009), indicating that context pressures that run
counter to initial framing may indeed reduce the risk of
ethical blindness (see Fig. 1; upper half, right path). Con-
versely, certain people resist extreme authority pressures to
behave unethically (e.g., in Milgram’s experiments; Packer
2008), demonstrating that they may have applied a strong
ethical frame that ran counter to the forces operating within
the environment, ultimately reducing the risk of ethical
blindness.
Ethical Blindness 329
123
Peer or majority pressure is another situational factor
influencing framing, especially in organizational contexts
with strong cultural conformity. Toffler (2003) described in
her analysis of the collapse of Arthur Andersen how the
company tried to transform business school graduates into
highly interchangeable ‘Androids’ by imposing on them
the ‘Arthur Andersen way’’, a set of strong social norms.
The seminal work of Ash (1955) showed that the mere
existence of an opinion that is shared by a majority of the
members within a group has a strong impact on individual
judgments. In situations with a strong majority norm,
individuals adapt their opinions and behaviors to those of
the majority. Interestingly, it is not necessary that the
majority exerts pressure to attain compliance. Conforming
to socially shared group norms satisfies some of the most
basic human drives, namely the desire to belong and the
need to maintain a positive self-concept (Baumeister and
Leary 1995). The need to satisfy those desires through
conformity may be stronger in some organizational cul-
tures than in others. If this mechanism is encouraged by the
organizational culture (as at Arthur Andersen), it may
reinforce initial framing (at Arthur Andersen, the dominant
economic frame coming from business school education),
ultimately making people blind to the fact that conforming
with the majority may sometimes lead to unethical
decisions.
Finally, time pressure is another powerful situational
factor that affects individual framing (Sonenshein 2007). It
constrains cognitive resources and effort, leads people to
use more simple decision strategies (Rieskamp and Hof-
frage 2008) and has a stronger influence on behavior than
personality does when it comes, for instance, to helping
others who are in distress (Darley and Batson 1973). Given
that managerial decisions are often time sensitive, man-
agers normally favor speed over accuracy when making
sense of the world (Weick 1995), which, in turn, might
foster the use of more rigid frames.
Interactions Between Framing and Distal Context
Apart from aspects of the specific organizational context
and the immediate situation, sensemaking activities are
influenced by the societal institutions that build the over-
arching distal context of social praxis (Callon 2007). If
strong institutional norms are in line with the frame applied
in a decision, they will tend to increase the rigidity of the
actor’s sensemaking efforts (see Fig. 1, lower half). Insti-
tutions can be defined as ‘a reciprocal typification of
habitualized action’ (Berger and Luckmann 1966,p.54)or
as ‘shared definitions or meanings’ (Tolbert and Zucker
1996, p. 180). They provide the resources that actors use
when constructing their frames of world perception. Strong
institutions create strong belief systems. They impose
isomorphic pressures on individual and organizational
actors to follow established practices and interpretations
(DiMaggio and Powell 1983). Institutionalized norms and
practices reduce uncertainty and threat because they embed
the interaction between individuals and organizations in a
shared context of stable mutual expectations.
In a pluralistic societal context, there are various com-
peting institutional logics (Boltanski and The
´venot 2006;
Friedland and Alford 1991), offering a multiplicity of
interpretation schemes from which individuals and orga-
nizations can draw (Denis et al. 2007; Kraatz and Block
2008). However, sets of beliefs can also unfold a hege-
monic domination within society (Gramsci 1971), thereby
turning a specific interpretation of the world into an
objective unquestioned discourse (Foucault 1980). Reality
is then represented in schematic, efficient, but ‘‘reductive
categories’ (Said 1994, p. 239). Depending on the applied
institutional logics, actors might dispose of a more or less
pluralistic and a more or less narrow interpretation of
reality (Lakoff 2004; Tetlock 2000).
As a result of strong institutional logics, frame rigidity
of individual actors might be reinforced and ethical
blindness becomes more probable (see Fig. 1; far left path
of the model). Punch (1996) has argued that a strong anti-
government and anti-regulation ideology can provide the
rationalization for significant rule-breaking. As others have
argued, the persistence of corruption can be interpreted as a
result of institutional logics that reinforce certain behav-
ioral standards as taken for granted and normal (Misangyi
et al. 2008). Or, the atrocities at Abu Ghraib can be partly
explained by powerful institutional norms, manifesting in
governmental and military practice to condone or explicitly
support certain torture practices in the Iraq war (Zimbardo
2007). In a similar vein, interpretations of the Ford Pinto
scandal have been criticized as being dominated too much
by the organizational perspective, neglecting the fact that
the behavior of Ford was appropriately reflecting the
demands of the institutional standards and norms in which
the automotive industry was embedded: ‘‘Established
safety priorities, supplemented by long-standing industry
norms and a change-resistant legal culture, helped define
possible fuel tank ruptures as socially legitimate acceptable
norms’ (Lee and Ermann 1999, p. 32).
Powerful constellations of institutional entities such as
the free market and related institutional practices such as
specific industry standards can provide the ideological
support for a rigid economic framing of a decision. Trice
and Beyer (1993; see also Weick 1995) have described
ideology as structured simplifications. Such simplifications
are conveyed in business school education, thereby influ-
encing how management students frame decisions. For
instance, it has been shown that business school education
increases students’ focus on self-interests (Marwell and
330 G. Palazzo et al.
123
Ames 1981). In the light of the recent wave of business
scandals, there has been a critical discussion on the link
between mental models students learn at business schools
and their decisions later on as managers in organizations
(Ferraro et al. 2005; Ghoshal and Moran 1996; Khurana
2007; Mintzberg 2004). Note that we do not argue that
ethical blindness is exclusively linked to rigid economic
framing. Instead, we posit that using any frame, including
ethical frames in a rigid manner, increases the risk of
ethical blindness, given a specific context (just consider
how many people have been killed for religious reasons).
Many of our arguments and examples refer to economic
framing simply because we focus on decision making in
corporations.
Since there is a strong tendency to defend, protect and
enact the (learnt) norms and practices of one’s society,
actors living in a free market system, especially those who
strive for a career in business, tend to perceive common
business practices and market-driven procedures and out-
comes as fair, legitimate and morally just (Jost et al. 2003).
‘As a result of the increasing dominance of fair market
ideology, other ways of reasoning, other logical schemas,
and other values are unlikely to be seriously considered,
even if they would be preferable on moral grounds’’ (Jost
et al. 2003, p. 80). The situational cues of a business setting
might thus tend to reinforce the economic frame of the free
market ideology and suppress alternative frames (Frederick
and Hoffman 1995; Jackall 1988). A key assumption of
free market ideology is the strict separation of market
activities from other social forms of interaction (Gonin
et al. 2012). The market coordinates free and self-interested
individuals and automatically transforms their egoistic
interactions into a common good. It is thus not necessary,
and even counterproductive, to apply criteria other than
economic ones when making decisions in corporations
(Friedman 1970; Jensen 2002). As a result, managers tend
to amoralize even genuine ethical topics such as the sus-
tainability practices of their corporation (Crane 2000),
feeling the obligation to reframe their private ethical con-
cerns into a public economic language (Ashforth and
Anand 2003; Sonenshein 2006).
The Impact of Time on Ethical Blindness
We have described ethical blindness as the result of the
interaction between framing and (proximal and distal)
context. Previous accounts of unethical decision making
that we built on provided various building blocks for our
model. Many of these accounts also emphasized that time
plays a crucial role in unethical decision making. Various
scholars have criticized models of ethical decision as being
too static (den Nieuwenboer and Kaptein 2008; Fleming
and Zyglidopoulos 2008; McDevitt et al. 2007). For
example, Jones’ model explicitly refers to ‘single-event
moral decision making and eliminates elements that may
shape moral decision making over time’’ (Jones 1991,
p. 380). While this and similar interactionist models are
doubtlessly able to account for many instances of unethical
decisions, recent empirical studies and theorizing explicitly
conceptualize unethical decisions as the result of a process
that unfolds over time (e.g., Bandura 1999; Brief et al.
2000a,b; Chugh et al. 2005; Tenbrunsel and Messick
2004). The fact that many decisions become routinized
illustrates that time must play a key role in the under-
standing of ethical blindness.
While there seems to be a consensus on the relevance of
time for understanding (un)ethical decision making, the
temporal dynamics have not yet been analyzed or con-
ceptualized in detail. In what follows, we discuss the
impact of time along the two building blocks of our model,
framing and context.
Framing and Time
Brief et al. (2000a,b) described how newcomers in a
deviant organizational culture might first reluctantly accept
the wrongdoing but then gradually, over time, might
internalize and even embrace the values and beliefs linked
to the wrongdoing. Tenbrunsel and Messick (2004) intro-
duced the term of ethical fading to describe a process in
which filters of world perception become more and more
narrow. Over time, the probability that people see ethical
colors in their decision decreases and thus the risk of eth-
ical blindness increases. Such a process of slow and
incremental change (Tenbrunsel and Messick 2004;
Vaughan 1996) can be understood as a sequence of small
transgressions—as a former Enron executive stated: ‘‘You
did it once, it smelled bad,you did it again, it didn’t
smell as bad’ (McLean and Elkind 2003, p. 128). How can
this process be explained? What drives the temporal
dynamic toward ethical blindness? To find answers to this
question, we draw on four concepts that have been mainly
discussed in psychological research: temporal construal
theory, the concept of just-noticeable-differences, hindsight
bias, and the phenomenon of escalation of commitment.
Temporal Construal Theory
Trope and Liberman (2000,2003) demonstrated that peo-
ple construe situations differently depending on how tem-
porally close they are to the situation. It is easier to make
demanding but abstract ethical commitments for one’s
future behavior than specific commitments for one’s cur-
rent behavior. Believing that we can change our behavior
later might actually keep us from changing it now.
Ethical Blindness 331
123
Focusing on the temporal relation between decisions and
their consequences, the philosopher Hans Jonas argued that
a large temporal distance between the two has a negative
impact on the morality of the decision. People have diffi-
culties seeing or imagining consequences that are tempo-
rally distant. If they try imagining these consequences, they
are so abstract and speculative that people cannot emo-
tionally connect to them. Arendt (1963) described this as a
lack of moral imagination. Hence, in this case, knowledge
about the consequences does not lead to behavioral chan-
ges (Jonas 1985). If the temporal lag between a decision
and its consequences is large, ethical blindness becomes
more likely.
Just-Noticeable-Differences
The difference between two subsequent decisions over
time might give some insight into the temporal dynamics
underlying ethical blindness. Because change occurs at a
slow pace and often on a small scale, one small step after
the other, each often below a just-noticeable difference, it
may remain unnoticed (Hoffrage 2011). The concept of a
just-noticeable-difference (Gescheider 1985) refers to the
smallest difference between two stimuli that a person is
able to notice. If one holds a 30 g weight in one hand and a
40 g weight in the other, it is quite easy to tell which one is
heavier. In contrast, comparing 30 g and 31 g is a much
harder task for most people. While a 10 g difference is
clearly above the noticeability threshold, 1 g is below. The
Weber–Fechner law (Gescheider 1985) describes that the
just-noticeable difference is not absolute but depends on a
reference system, and, in fact, a 10 g difference can no
longer be noticed when comparing a weight of 930 g to one
of 940 g. In a process of behavioral change that evolves
over time, the point of reference for a decision is not an
imaginary point of nowhere, a moral starting point where a
person was still acting with integrity. The reference point
for today’s decision is yesterday’s decision and if today’s
transgression just goes a bit further than yesterday’s deci-
sion, the ethical difference remains acceptable and the
overall progression toward a more unethical course of
action goes unnoticed. People might view small steps of
harmdoing as not nice but acceptable because those steps
seem to deviate only very little from what they perceive as
the right thing to do (Welzer 2008). Thus, unethical deci-
sions may even evolve against the conscious intention of
the decision maker (Chugh and Bazerman 2007). Contin-
uing in small steps and comparing the next level of
harmdoing only to the previous one and not to an (imagi-
nary) objective moral point of view, makes it easier to
continue. Ultimately, this dynamic may lead into an esca-
lation process. Small transgressions spiral into more severe
ones. ‘The essence of the process involves causing
individuals, under pressure, to take small steps along a
continuum that ends with evildoing. Each step is so small
as to be essentially continuous with previous ones; after
each step, the individual is positioned to take the next one’
(Darley 1992, pp. 208, 210, cited in Brief et al. 2000a,b).
Hindsight Bias
The fact that the process of incremental change remains
unnoticed is strengthened by a phenomenon well-known in
memory research, namely the hindsight bias (Hoffrage and
Pohl 2003; Blank et al. 2007). If people hear about the
outcome of a story, they tend to think they knew it all
along. Moreover, their memories on what they themselves
predicted prior to receiving outcome information are also
systematically shifted toward the outcome information.
When attempting to reconstruct events, people engage in
‘‘rejudging’ the outcome (Hawkins and Hastie 1990,
p. 321). Such reconstruction attempts, however, are sys-
tematically distorted by outcome knowledge (Pohl et al.
2003; Hoffrage et al. 2000). Similarly, autobiographical
memories of past events are often adjusted to more recent
information, eliminating inconsistencies, so that, ulti-
mately, events form a coherent story (Mazzoni and Van-
nucci 2007). To the extent that memories of past beliefs
and behaviors are systematically distorted toward current
beliefs and behaviors, changes over time remain unnoticed.
Escalation of Commitment
The progression in small steps is propelled by a phenom-
enon described as the escalation of commitment (Arkes and
Blumer 1985; Staw 1976). People tend to continue a course
of action once it is taken, even if their former decisions turn
out to be poor or even blatantly wrong. The reason for this
tendency lays in the fact that once people have invested
time, money, or other resources in a decision, it creates
sunk costs. From a rational point of view, these costs
should be ignored when reconsidering a decision. How-
ever, in reality, they make it more difficult for people to
move away from a chosen path.
Two aspects emerge from the approaches described
above as particularly relevant for understanding the role of
time for unethical decision making: the temporal relation
between subsequent decisions and the temporal relation
between decisions and consequences. For the former, it is
temporal proximity, for the latter, it is the temporal dis-
tance that bears the risk of leading into ethical blindness.
Context and Time
Within our sensemaking model, the evolution of ethical
blindness is driven by the interaction between framing and
332 G. Palazzo et al.
123
context. Our previous discussion of context factors like
authority pressure or institutional norms might lead to the
misunderstanding that proximal and distal context factors
are descriptions of an objectively given environment that is
clearly separable from the individual. However, the
sensemaking approach posits that environments are enac-
ted and co-created through individual and shared inter-
pretation (Smircich and Stubbart 1985). As we have
argued, frames come from previous experiences made
within a social context and they have the potential to
change the very same context. Thus, repeatedly using a
specific frame may not only perpetuate the frame (Ashforth
and Anand 2003) but also change the context, for example,
the organizational culture (Vaughan 2005). Subsequently,
individuals act within the new, transformed context, the
one that they co-created (for example, in a culture where
unethical behavior is increasingly tolerated) (Ashforth and
Anand 2003). The consequences of yesterday’s actions
become the preconditions of tomorrow’s actions (Welzer
2005). Put differently, today’s decisions reinforce or even
create tomorrow’s situational and institutional pressures
(March and Simon 1958; Ocasio 1997). The escalating
commitment of individual decision makers might manifest
in organizational path dependence. This phenomenon
describes a process in which organizational decisions
become more and more routinized and rigid until the
organization is locked into a situation, where only a con-
siderably reduced range of decision making options is
perceived as possible (von Sydow et al. 2009). Given such
a dynamic, sensemaking processes of individuals as well as
their context will co-change over time. As frames become
more rigid, the risk of ethical blindness increases. This
development takes place step-by-step, gradually over time,
in a process of mutual confirmation that transforms both
individual actors and their context. If context and indi-
viduals co-evolve, the relation between the two remains
stable and, as a consequence, the individual cannot see the
change that took place (Chugh and Bazerman 2007; Welzer
2005).
To the extent that unethical decision making can be
understood as the result of a process that unfolds over time,
it might be worth to also consider the role of specific his-
toric moments in the past which manifest in specific
institutional constellations (in our model, distal context).
These constellations define normality for a particular
society and provide the context for individuals and their
organizations (in our model, proximal context). When the
maritime biologists Saenz Arroyo et al. (2005) set out to
examine how fish populations at the Gulf of California
change over time due to commercial fishing, they needed—
as a reference point—the natural population, that is, the
population that existed before it was influenced by human
activity. When interviewing fishermen, they found that
each generation of fishermen considered the fish stock that
was present when they started fishing as the natural stock.
As a consequence, the three generations of fishermen had
different perceptions of how the environment had changed:
While for younger fishers, changes in fish stock were small,
older fishers perceived them as dramatic. Importantly, the
young fishermen failed to realize previous changes and
were relatively relaxed about the small changes they
observed. Almost nobody (with the exception of a few very
old fishermen) could adopt a perspective that spanned more
than a single generation. Yet it is precisely this generation-
spanning, overarching perspective that would allow one to
recognize dramatic changes. Due to the shift in baselines
from one generation to the next, individuals could not see
them. The intriguing term ‘shifting baselines’ was intro-
duced by Pauly (1995): People perceive changes in the
environment only relative to their own experience; as a
consequence, they consider the state of environment they
live in as the ‘natural’’ state. Hence, what is dramatic at
one moment in history becomes normal in a following
moment in history. For example, Enron might be a phe-
nomenon that was only possible in the anything-goes
context of the new economy hype in the early 2000s. The
mutual transformation of decision makers and their distal
and proximal context establishes a new normality that, in
its most extreme form, may even allow genocide to appear
as normal (Welzer 2005; Hagan and Raymond-Richmond
2008).
Reducing the Risk of Ethical Blindness Through Moral
Imagination
If rigid framing is the problem behind ethical blindness,
flexible framing may be part of the solutions. Flexible
framing reduces the risk of ethical blindness, because it
challenges mindless routines and promotes moral imagi-
nation, that is ‘an ability to imaginatively discern various
possibilities for acting within a given situation and to
envision the potential help and harm that are likely to result
from a given action’ (Johnson 1993, p. 202). Moral
imagination requires that people are ‘frame-vigilant’
(Zimbardo 2007, p. 454) and understand that they cannot
see certain aspects because of the frame(s) they use.
Moreover, it requires that people understand how proximal
and distal context factors narrow their own sensemaking
activities. Also, people should be encouraged to engage in
‘script-breaking’’ behavior (Gioia 1992, p. 388). For
instance, managers’ rigid framing of situations in terms of
organizational loyalty may be challenged and progressively
replaced by a broader view of having duties toward various
stakeholders (Brief et al. 2000a,b). It is crucial that
organizations provide the appropriate support in terms of
Ethical Blindness 333
123
processes and norms. Brief et al. (2000a,b) have criticized
the fact that management scholars have focused on how to
ensure compliance rather than on how to promote dissent.
One way to introduce fruitful disagreement would be
to disperse or multiply authority (Brief et al. 2000a,b;
Kelman and Hamilton 1989). As a consequence, organi-
zational practices, policies, and decisions are exposed to
independent decision making parties and thus, multiple
perspectives, weakening strong routines.
Leadership qualities play an equally important role.
Leaders who openly invite dissent are more likely to
challenge rigid framing and foster sensemaking activities
characterized by flexible framing (Foldy et al. 2008). Russo
and Schoemaker (2004, p. 164) point at the dissent-pro-
moting leadership style of Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. at the
General Motor’s board of directors whom they cite as
follows: ‘Gentlemen, I take it we are all in complete
agreement on the decision here. Then I propose we
postpone further discussion of this matter until our next
meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement
and perhaps gain some understanding of what the decision
is all about’’.
We argued that the risk of ethical blindness is amplified
by institutional forces of the distal context. Those forces are
mostly not under the control of the individual or the orga-
nization. Nevertheless, what corporations can do is to
weaken the influence of specific overarching worldviews by
systematically creating multiple communication channels
with their environment. Thus, flexible framing might be
promoted by organizational boundary spanning that pro-
vides decision makers with a richer picture of their societal
context (Fennell and Alexander 1987). Boundary spanning
lays at the crossroads of proximal (organization) and distal
(society, other organizations) context factors. It provides
corporations with what Post and Altman (1992, p. 13) have
called ‘windows of the corporation through which man-
agement can perceive, monitor, and understand external
change, and simultaneously, a window in through which
society can influence corporate policy and practice’’. Suc-
cessful boundary spanning reduces the probability that
organizations develop their own microcosmos of particulate
rationality. If this microcosmos already exists, boundary
spanning might help to induce a strong external shock often
needed to overcome the dynamics of rigid framing and
ethical blindness (Ashforth and Anand 2003, p. 38).
Ethical Blindness as a Normative and Descriptive
Concept
The conceptual model developed in this article offers a
novel view on interactions between person and context
factors to explain the risk of unethical behavior, integrating
cognitive-psychological and constructivist literature. It
defines ethical blindness as a psychological state where
people are temporarily blind to ethical dimensions in a
decision making situation. As such, it increases the risk of
unethical behavior. Ethical blindness is the result of a
sensemaking process that unfolds over time during which
framing and context pressures mutually reinforce and
ultimately transform each other. Thus, when ethically
blind, even people with high levels of integrity may deviate
from their own values.
It is important to note that by highlighting the impact of
context forces and arguing that people are sometimes
unable to draw on their personal values and unable to see
ethical dimensions in a situation, we do not want to
‘excuse’’ unethical behavior. At the heart of the sense-
making process is the assumption that people actively
construct (and co-evolve with) the environment. Thus,
sensemaking is not an automated response but an active
construction process. Hence, people are responsible for
their decisions and for the environment they shape. How-
ever, it could be argued that the concept of moral respon-
sibility needs to be defined in a broader way: Those who
contribute to building a context that strengthens rigid
framing are morally responsible for unethical decisions
as well.
What is ethical? This question is not crucial for under-
standing ethical blindness. By adopting the insider per-
spective of the decision maker, the question of whether her
behavior is ethical or not from an objective and universal
point of view is irrelevant. The important thing is that the
decision maker deviates from her own values. Nevertheless,
in our view, the question of what is ethical is still important.
Individual values do not develop in a social vacuum but are
formed and nourished through socialization processes that
embed and situate individual actors in a context of normative
traditions. As such, individual values are not only a personal
but also a social category. The literature on ethical decision
making treats this category mainly in a descriptive way.
Accordingly, unethical behavior is defined as behavior ‘‘that
is either illegal or morally inacceptable to the larger com-
munity’ (Jones 1991, p. 367).
This position has been criticized as being too relativistic
because it avoids a precise normative stance on right and
wrong (Reynolds 2006; Tenbrunsel and Smith-Crowe
2008). In fact, as our discussion of the mutual transfor-
mation of individuals and context suggests, values and
normative standards of an entire community might shift,
developing into a self-referentially closed microcosmos,
and creating a new ‘normality’’. This new normality itself
might be morally dubious. Indeed, the analysis of past and
present genocides (Welzer 2005; Hagan and Rymond-
Richmond 2008) demonstrates that dominant norms of a
community can become questionable from a moral point of
334 G. Palazzo et al.
123
view because they violate hypernorms (Donaldson and
Dunfee 1994) or deviate from ‘cosmopolitan’ or ‘higher
order interests’ (Teegen et al. 2004, p. 471).
Thus, decisions can be unethical because organizational
decision makers act against their own moral standards and
those of their community (e.g., the organization) with the
community standards themselves being in line with higher
order principles such as those outlined in the principles of
the UN Global Compact. Furthermore, a decision can be
unethical despite the fact that it is in line with the com-
munity standards because these standards themselves might
violate universal moral principles that the decision maker
normally shares and supports. Importantly, the insider
perspective of the organizational decision maker remains
the point of reference but the yardstick for normative
evaluation can either be polis or cosmos, thereby allowing
for descriptive and normative research on ethical decision
making in corporations.
We deliberately abstained from taking a normative
position of what is right and wrong. However, this article
takes a normative standpoint with respect to the phenom-
enon of ethical blindness itself and its driving factors.
Overall, we posit that flexible framing is better than rigid
framing. Specifically, we argue that flexible framing
reduces the risk of ethical blindness and, ultimately, that of
unethical behavior. Flexible framing, however, should not
be confused with ethical relativity or opportunism. It refers
to the contention that good decisions depend on moral
imagination (Arendt 1963; Werhane 1999; Werhane et al.
2011), that is, on a person’s ability to see and consider a
multitude of aspects when making decisions. Seeing and
taking more aspects of an issue into consideration helps to
compensate for a frame’s blind spots and increases the
probability of considering ethics, together with other
aspects, in corporate decision making. To the extent that
flexible framing is superior to rigid framing on the indi-
vidual level, it makes sense to promote conditions in
societies and organizations that foster a climate of toler-
ance and pluralism instead of fundamentalism and dog-
matism (Habermas 1996; Popper 1995; Rorty 1991; Walzer
1997). Flexible framing is unlikely to develop if rigid
definitions of what is right and wrong dominate, and if
alternative opinions are suppressed and critical voices
silenced. The most effective cure for ethical blindness is an
atmosphere of open, democratic, and critical deliberation.
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... User-centred approaches and persuasive techniques sometimes conflict in the design process, confronting values between designers and other stakeholders. If designers do not mediate on ethics, contesting specific stakeholders' decisions, there is a risk of falling into 'ethical blindness' [64]. Ethical blindness refers to acting unintentionally unethically in certain circumstances. ...
... Ethical blindness refers to acting unintentionally unethically in certain circumstances. For instance, when stakeholders have a fixed set of values that nobody contests [64]. In this regard, Wong [83] explained how UX designers used tactics of soft resistance to confront different values of stakeholders when designing technology. ...
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