Conflict and Consensus: Ethics as a Shared Value Horizon for Strategic Planning 1

Ethics has become a buzzword in modern managerial language. Unfortunately, the literature provides only meager support in operationalizing this concept so that it can be constructively used as a value horizon for strategic planning in the organization. Depending upon the author, ethics is typically considered to be either intuitive and very personal or a set of top-down rules. Both approaches hinder value-oriented conversation between decision makers and decision takers instead of stimulating such dialogue. In addition, almost all the literature, without argument, assumes that an enterprise can have ethics and that top management instrumentally should employ ethics to promote classical economic goals.

We consider ethics within the context of a self-organizing enterprise. An ethical decision is one which is rationally approved of by the stakeholders affected by it. This leads to a dialogue-based concept of culture and to a series of concrete recommendations as to the operationalization of ethics in an organization. Noteworthy is the ‘Ethical Accounting Statement’ which is now being employed in Denmark.