Limitations

Discovering a more accurate vision of the unconscious is challenging in different ways. On the one hand the unconscious can offer help to override “poorly trained” System 2 thinking, e.g. when existing schemata and thinking patterns are based on the rational, homo oeconomicus paradigm. On the other hand, the unconscious can also lead to judgment errors and bound ethical decision-making, hence work as cognitive barriers to sound judgments which - from a normative standpoint - are clearly unethical. The field of cognitive biases and behavioral economics, especially System 1 thinking, is still a relatively undiscovered topic with a vast potential for further research and thought. The role of the unconscious as both a poise and help for decision-making offers a lot of room for more research on this topic.

Similar to this view of System 1 thinking is the idea that experience and the use of analogy can serve good as well as immoral purposes. For an individual who engages in diversity awareness programs, but already possesses relatively persistent stereotyping schemes, an e.g.

too short training might in fact have opposite effect on ethical thought and behavior.

Moreover, experience that increases the individual‟s tendency to apply cost benefit

34 Not all cognitive biases are “bad” in a sense of that they lead to unethical outcomes. The same accounts for our intuitive judgments. While some intuitive judgments are from a normative perspective required to be overridden, emotions such as compassion and empathy can be very helpful to promote ethical behavior and should not be moved to more conscious System 2 cost benefit decisions.

approaches may stifle the individual‟s ability to conceive of the moral dimension of a problem, and thereby lead to more immoral behavior.

The position of this paper is that it takes practice, commitment and discipline to promote moral competence, and that not all areas of the multidimensional construct moral competence are addressed in existing approaches to teaching ethics. Promoting moral competence can in certain ways be compared to learning a language. In fact, it also involves learning a “new”

language. To master a language, we need not only to study the basic grammar rules and vocabulary, but also learn how to express ourselves in different situations and accept the fact that sometimes it is more difficult to say what we feel and think than at other times. We sometimes are also misunderstood by others. We need to both study consciously and digest

“unconsciously” our acquired knowledge. We need experience about which words to use in certain situations and which not. We must learn that there are several ways to describe the

“same thing”. Lastly, we must constantly cultivate and practice a language. While some people are more “gifted” than others to learn a new language / acquire moral competence (e.g.

to identify and understand claims of some stakeholders), others are more challenged with taking a reciprocal perspectives or thinking in different roles. The perspective of this paper is that personal background and family values, as well as childhood experiences play an important role in the formation of personal values and the acquisition of moral competence³⁵, but are not deterministic.

Discovering ethical problems is a never-ending journey, or as Pedersen (2009) writes “an ever-changing arena that is created, negotiated and evolved inter-subjectively by the actors and agents involved”. For corporations that means, as Pedersen (2009) asserts, that they must always (re)formulate (moral) problems. This has a profound impact on management as a hole.

As he conclusively points out, the developed systems which aim for individuals to manage problems need to be dynamic rather than routinized. Successful organizations change their view on what behavior is appropriate over time. Cultures and ethical standards must therefore be modified and tested against new developments and the changing behavior of competitors and society at large. Successful organizations also acknowledge the fact that there is a need

35In this context it is worth noting that the role of a rich moral vocabulary that is expanded by experience of the individual and the ability to see problems from multiple perspectives are not panaceas for more ethical behavior, but must be seen in a broader context of ethical development (Pederson, 2009).

for a joint view of ethical problems, as the ethical domain is not as easy to narrow down as e.g. financial and analytical data.

Finally, as highlighted earlier in this thesis, ethical problems don‟t necessarily have a right answer. Most often, there is no textbook response to ethical situations as opposed to pure financial ones. Nor is it always clear when System 1 and 2 judgments are unethical. The problem, however, is that often it is assumed that ethical problems do not exist in finance other analytic settings, as they are assumed to only reside in softer fields such as human resource management and marketing. By ignoring salient moral dimensions of problems or following System 1 judgments blind, students and managers sometimes make decisions, which are against their conscious ethical values and unintentionally unethical.

The fact that salient moral dimensions of problems are often crowded out indicates that good ethical decisions may take longer time than commonly given by corporations, where the need to act fast in lights of competitiveness is generally emphasized. Information overload, especially of clearly measurable analytical data contributes to the individual to put his or her moral faculties “on hold”. We clearly need to fundamentally rethink the way we train people and corporations for success (Brooks, 2011). Our tendency to value the things we can measure more than complex human traits such as character, cognitive biases and morality clearly increases insensitivity to moral domains.

Finally, this paper argued that in order to improve ethical decision-making, individuals shall consciously and continuously commit to de-bias their “unethical” cognitive shortfalls. This paper has for simplification taken a black and white view of cognitive biases, which is not reflecting decision-making reality. To the opposite, ethical problems and awareness of them are much more ambiguous and grayish than assumed in this paper.