Liiketoiminnan moraalia etsimässä : suomalaisten teollisuusjohtajien sidosryhmänäkemykset ja moraalinen päätöksenteko

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to find out how business morality and its change can be described and understood by examining stakeholder relations and moral decision-making. This task is achieved by answering four research questions: (1) how can moral issues in business be examined with the stakeholder approach? (2) what are managers' perceptions of moral issues in business, and how these perceptions have changed during the 1990's? (3) what kinds of ethical dimensions do managers reveal when they are making moral decisions, and how have these dimensions changed in the 1990's? and (4) how managers speak about morally problematic situations, what kind of morality they produce when they speak in the way they do, and, how managers reason for a moral choice? The empirical research is targeted at managing directors of large industrial companies in Finland. The data consist of five top manager interviews carried out in the years of 1992 and 1993, and two survey researches conducted in the years of 1994 and 1999. The study identifies a total of 50 moral issues in eight stakeholder relations and analyses managers' attitudes toward these issues. In addition, the research analyses managers' moral decision-making by examining what kinds of ethical factors emerge in managers' responses to four moral dilemmas. Moreover, a qualitative analysis of managers' moral decision-making and moral speech is carried out. The empirical results indicate positive attitudes toward moral issues in stakeholder relations, and, a positive change from the stakeholders' point of view during the 1990's among Finnish industrial managers. Managers' decision-making reflects a variety of ethical theories. Teleological thinking is strongly emphasised by Finnish managers, and relativist thinking is used as well, but often combined with either deontology or justice thinking. The results indicate that the ways of decision-making were more complex at the end of the 1990's than almost six years earlier. In addition, a six-category typology of managers' moral speech is presented. The content of the reasons for a moral choice varies depending on whether the response reflects disagreeing, agreeing or uncertain attitude towards the given moral dilemma. The research is concluded by arguing that the morality in business is moving from individual principles to relations between business actors, and that business and morality are tightly bound together.