ABSTRACT
In The Moral Dimension, Amitai Etzioni presents a perspective of social action that seeks to bridge the gap between the idealized images of the undersocialized rational actor and the oversocialized romantic communitarian. He argues that people attempt to balance these “codeterminants” of action—what he refers to as the “I & We”—into a “judicious mix” during day-to-day affairs (1988, 67). A crucial question left unanswered by Etzioni is how people make sense of the mixture of self-interest and moral commitment in their decision making and routine actions. This is not simply an information-processing problem (i.e., How do I effectively manage information about self-interest and moral commitment in my decisions?) or a maximization problem (i.e., Do I prefer to maximize selfinterest or moral commitment?). It is a question that fundamentally links sense making about the codeterminants of action to social context.
