Alternative Moral Theories in Organizational Ethics: The Application of Care Theory and Virtue Ethics
Wenli Cheng

College of Arts, The University Of Melbourne, Melbourne Australia, 3010;

Abstract: This paper points out that the traditional justice-oriented frameworks centered on deontology and consequentialism in organizational ethics, while underpinning management practices such as corporate compliance mechanisms and KPI assessment, have limitations including being abstract, lacking humanistic care, being difficult to adapt to complex situations, and failing to address power inequality. It focuses on analyzing the organizational applications of care ethics and virtue ethics: the former, with focusing on others' needs and maintaining relationships as its core, is embodied in personalized employee support and the creation of a psychologically safe atmosphere, among other aspects, and faces challenges such as issues related to fairness; the latter, which focuses on character cultivation, is applied in virtue-oriented leadership and the construction of ethical culture, among other areas, and has problems such as subjectivity. The paper affirms the value of both, holding that they promote organizational ethics to become more humanistic.

Keywords: Organizational ethics; justice perspective theory; deontology; consequentialism; ethics of care; virtue ethics; ethical leadership; organizational culture

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