Abstract

The study of organizational ethics continues to be the focus of significant academic attention, however it is a discourse that remains largely informed by a form of morality that is perhaps best described as ordered and cognitive. Traditional approaches to questions of organizational ethics emphasize a fundamentally static view of organizations and the people within them, reinforcing notions of mind/body dualism and reifying ethics as an outcome of human agency, choice, and deliberate intention (see MacKay and Chia). We challenge this approach and instead argue in favor of ethics research that adopts an ontology grounded in process metaphysics. Escaping the confines of Cartesian dualism, we reconceptualize organizational ethics as something that is in fact not held constant, is not a static termination point or an outcome of events, but is rather an input into the continually reconstituting context of the organization over time (see Langley, et al.). The process ethics we articulate provides a grounding for moral critique in diverse communities that is not undermined by relativism. Moreover, it provides guidance to managers and employees facing moral problems without forcing them to face a tyranny of principles. We consider how a process ethics would be enacted in organizations through managerial decision-making and in the treatment of employees.