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Mindfulness, Moral Reasoning and Responsibility: Towards Virtue in Ethical Decision-Making

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Abstract

Ethical decision-making is a multi-faceted phenomenon, and our understanding of ethics rests on diverse perspectives. While considering how leaders ought to act, scholars have created integrated models of moral reasoning processes that encompass diverse influences on ethical choice. With this, there has been a call to continually develop an understanding of the micro-level factors that determine moral decisions. Both rationalist, such as moral processing, and non-rationalist factors, such as virtue and humanity, shape ethical decision-making. Focusing on the role of moral judgement and moral intent in moral reasoning, this study asks what bearings a trait of mindfulness and a sense of moral responsibility may have on this process. A survey measuring mindfulness, moral responsibility and moral judgement completed by 171 respondents was used for four hypotheses on moral judgement and intent in relation to moral responsibility and mindfulness. The results indicate that mindfulness predict moral responsibility but not moral judgement. Moral responsibility does not predict moral judgement, but moral judgement predicts moral intent. The findings give further insight into the outcomes of mindfulness and expand insights into the models of ethical decision-making. We offer suggestions for further research on the role of mindfulness and moral responsibility in ethical decision-making.

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Notes

  1. Crossan et al. (2013) described three categorisations in ethical choice: (a) consequentialism, which suggests ethics is determined by consideration of costs and benefit outcomes; (b) deontological thinking, which implies that ethics is determined by adherence to universal principles; and (c) virtue ethics, which indicates that it results from good personal character or virtues.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Gordon Institute of Business Science, University of Pretoria, South Africa, 26 Melville Road, Illovo, Sandton, 2196, South Africa

    Cherise Small & Charlene Lew

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  1. Cherise Small
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Small, C., Lew, C. Mindfulness, Moral Reasoning and Responsibility: Towards Virtue in Ethical Decision-Making. J Bus Ethics 169, 103–117 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-019-04272-y

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