ABSTRACT
Moral agency is the cornerstone of ethical accountability. Maintaining order within a complex and interdependent healthcare organization depends upon the collective decision making of its moral agents. They are responsible for building and binding trust and are the embodiment of an organization's values. This chapter illustrates the unity of individual and institutional moral agency with ethical decision-making through the metaphor of a healthcare organization's soul.
A morally rational and systematic discernment and decision-making process must include consideration of the needs and interests of its various stakeholders. Stakeholder theory applies moral theory and considerations of right behavior to management decisions. This chapter explores, through a specific use case, how deficiencies in governance, stakeholder abandonment, and uncritical decision-making can cause an organization to lose its moral soul.
This chapter further illustrates the dominant normative stakeholder concepts of ethics of care and stakeholder fairness as described and applied more fully throughout the book.
