To Overcome Ethical Dilemmas in an Organization: Paradox and Ethics of Freedom Can Help

Abstract

A theoretical model for managers responding to a morally challenging situation is developed in the article. This model explores and examines how managers deal with paradoxes created by ethical dilemmas. To explain their strategy, the authors’ model combines a moral philosophy approach – existentialism ‒ with paradox theories. Starting with an emblematic situation such as a dilemma, the lens of Smith and Tushman’s Paradoxical Cognition is used to develop the theoretical construct. Then, with the help of Sartre’s ethics of freedom, two stages that managers pass through to find a solution are explained. Drawing on those theories, a model of ethical cognition to solve the paradoxical tension issues from ethical dilemmas is submitted. A reflexive process that includes awareness, freedom, and personal projects is combined and described. Every stage with examples of issues from the previous research of human resource managers is illustrated. This model allows people to escape those paradoxical tensions and suggests how a person articulates and creates ethical principles to handle a paradoxical conflict. Based on the in-depth interviews reanalyzed, concrete illustrations about paradoxical cognition are shown. These semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted to determine how French-Canadian HR managers make ethical decisions (respondents: 37 HR managers working in Montreal and its suburbs (Quebec, Canada); period: 2013‒2017; number of questions: 16, divided into 4 sections; discourse analysis of data: using AtlasTi software). In doing so, the gap between theory and empirical with Sartre’s concepts such as Awareness, Freedom, and Project is overcome. This conceptual model can be used in the individual to solve of a moral dilemma and can be most valuable for manager when they are facing some moral paradoxical situations.