Ethical regulation in business managers decision making

Recently there has been increasing interest in understanding how decisions that have ethical components are made in organizations and what considerations are taken in resolving these ethical issues. In each and every day business leaders must make ethical decisions that involve choises between two or more courses of actions, each of which is a complicated bundle of ethical responsibilities, personal commitment, moral hazard and practical pressures and constrains (Badaracco 1997). On the personal level those managers has to reconcile between the requirement of achieving and preserving managerial success (professional self) and between ethical demands of which they, as responsible persons and distinguished member of the community (moral self) , are ,or ought to be aware. (Ulrich & Thielemann 1993).Consequently there is an urgent need to understand more fully the ethical decision making process of business leaders in complex competitive environment they face every day. The objectives of the current study are: A. To explore, how do business leaders, reconcile between achieving managerial and economic success, with ethical demands and responsibilities in a competitive turbulent business environment. B. To describe decisions patterns of business managers in resolving ethical issues.The moral balance model (Nisan,1991) offers a description of the principles underlying moral choice. Decisions concerning moral behavior (and judgments of other?s moral behavior) are affected by the perceived moral status of the actor and include some sort of quantitative weighing of the morally relevant actions performed by the actor in the recent past. Accordingly, a moral decision as to whether to allow oneself or another, to deviate from what is perceived as correct moral behavior, will be affected by one?s perception of actor?s moral balance.In an open interview 40 Israeli CEO were asked to describe two moral issues they encountered during the present working year and to explain the reasons for course of actions they chose for resolving those issues. content analysis of the interviews reveals narratives which are consistent with the propositions of moral balance model. The results suggest that when making moral evaluations and decisions, business leaders take into account, previously relevant behavior by considering their own level of moral balance within a given time span. The present study provide comprehensive explanation of moral decision making of business leaders in a complicated business environment and explain the role of emotions in those decisions. A new updated model of ethical decision making in business contexts, is suggested by the author.