ABSTRACT
Ethics and the moral obligations of management were an accepted component in the strategic planning process during the early development of Corporate Strategy as a field of study. Barnard led the way here, as he did in so many other conceptual segments of the discipline. He described the functions of the executive as the need to: (1) maintain communication channels (2) ensure individual contributions and (3) formulate organizational goals. He then continued with the statement that this executive process 'is not intellectual; it is aesthetic and moral, involving a sense of fitness, of appropriateness, of responsibility (1938 : 257). Further, in a quotation that is too little remembered, he talked of the need for the executive to 'inspire cooperative personal decisions by creating faith in common understanding, faith in the probability of success, faith in the ultimate satisfaction of personal motives, and faith in the integrity of common purpose' (Barnard, 1938 : 259).
