The role of construction, intuition and justification in responding to ethical issues at work. The sense making intuition model

Proponents of a popular view of how individuals respond to ethical issues at work claim that individuals use deliberate and extensive moral reasoning under conditions that ignore equivocality and uncertainty. I discuss the limitations of these “rationalist approaches ” and reconsider their empirical support using an alternative explanation from social psychological and sensemaking perspectives. I then introduce a new theoretical model composed of issue construction, intuitive judgment, and post hoc explanation and justification. I discuss the implications for management theory, methods, and practice. Several prominent theories claim that individ-uals use deliberate and extensive moral reason-ing to respond to ethical issues, such as weigh-ing evidence and applying abstract moral principles. These “rationalist approaches ” have flourished, in part, because of their cumulative research agenda and the absence of well