How do business leaders make ethical decisions? Given the significant and wide-spread impact of business people's decisions on multiple constituents (e.g., customers, employees, shareholders, competitors, and suppliers), how they make decisions matters. Unethical decisions harm the decision makers themselves as well as others, whereas ethical decisions have the opposite effect. Based on data from a study on strategic decision making by 16 effective chief executive officers (and three not-soeffective ones as contrast), I propose a model for ethical decision making in business in which reasoning (conscious processing) and intuition (subconscious processing) interact through forming, recalling, and applying moral principles necessary for long-term success in business. Following the CEOs in the study, I employ a relatively new theory, rational egoism, as the substantive content of the model and argue it to be consistent with the requirements of longterm business success. Besides explaining the processes of forming and applying principles (integration by essentials and spiraling), I briefly describe rational egoism and illustrate the model with a contemporary moral dilemma of downsizing. I conclude with implications for further research and ethical decision making in business.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to address the imbalance between inductive and deductive research in management and organizational studies and to suggest changes in the journal review and publishing process that would help correct the imbalance by encouraging more inductive research.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors briefly review the ongoing debate about the “developmental” vs “as-is/light-touch” journal review modes, trace the roots of the prevailing developmental review to the hypothetico-deductive research approach, and contrast publishing deductive and inductive research from the perspectives of authors, editors, and reviewers.
Findings
Application of the same developmental evaluation and review mode to both deductive and inductive research, despite their fundamental differences, discourages inductive research. The authors argue that a light-touch review is more appropriate for inductive research, given its different logic.
Practical implications
Specific criteria for the light-touch evaluation and review of and some concrete suggestions for facilitating inductive research.
Social implications
Advancing knowledge requires a better balance of inductive and deductive research, which can be facilitated by light-touch evaluation and review of inductive research.
Originality/value
Building on the debate on journal publishing, the authors differentiate the evaluation and review of inductive and deductive research based on their philosophical underpinnings and draw implications of pursuing inductive research for authors, editors, and reviewers.
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