PEDAGOGY
in us, so that we won’t always perceive their influence on the choices we make. Getting to know these factors better is a personal matter and goes far beyond the aims of ethics teaching centred on decision-making. On the other hand, it is our responsibility to make students aware of them. Since the initial development of business ethics as a discipline, the number of factors considered to influence ethical decision‑making has risen from around 10 to 20. However, this does not include the block of individual factors relating to the decision-maker’s personality and contextual factors relating to an organisation and its culture, rules, hierarchy, industry, nature of roles employed and so on. In the meantime, a block of cultural factors is rapidly gaining ground in studies, drawing attention in particular to moral tensions that can be experienced by decision-makers whose culture of origin is not that of the country in which they operate. One way of raising students’ awareness of these influential factors is to give them two weeks after the end of the course to reflect individually on an ethical dilemma that they have previously experienced in their professional life. After describing the circumstances of the dilemma in detail, they are given the opportunity to indicate what decision they would make today, in light of the course concepts. This invites them to apply the resolution methodology to identify the decision-making options open to them and evaluate them. In the process, they can also evaluate the decision they made at the time, whether they were satisfied with it or not and investigate what factors may have influenced it. Of course, such an exercise must be done voluntarily and the names of the places and people involved must all be changed to fictitious ones. However, after more than 20 years of experimentation on several continents, my colleagues and I have concluded that, in many cases, this reflective work is a dormant deposit which, in the case of the youngest people, is activated by contact with the first ethical dilemmas they encounter and in the case of the most experienced, leads them to decisions they simply would not have taken without it.
The teamwork involved helps students improve their decision- making skills in various ways. The process of correctly identifying and naming moral evil, for example, helps students realise that they need to be rigorous. Exploring several possible decision- making options allows them to understand that they need not limit themselves to the first spontaneous options that spring to mind when an ethical dilemma arises, as these are often narrow and limited. Drawing up the table, meanwhile, introduces them to the main forms of ethical reasoning and the theories that support them. Lastly, having to justify their final choice prepares them to test their moral arguments and consolidate them where necessary. methodology for resolving ethical dilemmas must be balanced with teaching around the individual and contextual factors that influence ethical decision-making. This is because using a framework in isolation presupposes that the subject performing the moral deliberation is an entirely rational individual, free from any influence other than his or her own reflective capacities. In reality, of course, this is not the case. Factors that influence the choices we make Of course, the rationalism provided by a step-by-step Freud’s discovery of the unconscious introduced us to the idea that our deepest motivations are partly unknown to us, while psychology has long highlighted the main cognitive biases that affect our decision-making ability. In addition, our culture will have forged implicit and habitual ways of feeling and acting
BIOGRAPHY
Jean-Luc Castro is a professor in the Organisation Studies and Ethics Department at Audencia Business School in Nantes, France, where he teaches business ethics and organisational behaviour. A co-author of the 2022 book Towards a Polyphonic Approach to Change Management , Castro’s research interests lie in the fields of business ethics and change management. He holds a doctorate in management science from Paris Dauphine University.
30 Ambition • ISSUE 2 • 2025
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