Business as Usual?: Ethics in the Fast-Changing and Complex World of Organizations

The authors suggest that, since Eric Berne (1966) defined contract as “an explicit bilateral commitment to a well-defined course of action” (p. 362), bilateral relations seem to dominate thinking about ethics within the transactional analysis community. Ethics, however, deal with human relations in all their complexity, ambiguity, and uncertainty. The fast-changing nature of organizations requires that we take into account the complexity inherent in that world. If we do not, today's solutions will create tomorrow's problems. Using what may seem like a simple model in relation to three organizational dilemmas, the authors suggest questions that must be considered in order to deal with ethics within complex organizations. Today's unusual challenges will not be met, if the world—and we are the world!—continues doing business as usual.