Tacit norms of ethical decision-making in business

As part of a PhD project focusing on ethical blindness in everyday business decisions, a number of what are being introduced as tacit norms for ethical decision-making in business were identified. Ethical blindness was discussed during twenty-four interviews with decision-makers in organisations. ‘Ethics goes against the nature of business’, ‘decision-makers cannot be a hundred percent ethical’, and ‘being too naïve in business leads to organisational failure’, are a sample of the tacit norms identified in this paper. These norms seem to condition ethical decision-making in a way that decision-makers act within their confines. I first introduce the salient literature related to ethical blindness, express the methodology used for this research, and present findings as a set of tacit norms that constrain ethical decision-making in organisations. These then lead to an argument that tacit norms condition ethical decision-making in organisations, and are a form of ethical blindness on a large scale. Yet, it is (albeit painfully and slowly) possible to bring about meaningful change through awareness.