Integrity at work: managing routine moral stress in professional roles

Area of Science:

• Professional Ethics
• Organizational Psychology
• Sociology of Work

Background:

• Occupational roles often create moral burdens for professionals.
• Tensions arise between normative role expectations and personal moral values.
• Managerialism may introduce significant moral costs in professional settings.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore the routine moral burden of occupying a professional role.
• To examine the negotiation of tensions between role identification and separation.
• To discuss implications for role construction and managerialism.

Main Methods:

• Conceptual analysis of role occupation ethics.
• Exploration of tensions between identifying with and separating from professional roles.
• Examination of power and resources in ethical negotiation.

Main Results:

• Ethical integrity in professional roles hinges on successfully negotiating internal and external tensions.
• The ability to negotiate these tensions is influenced by available power and resources.
• Managerialism poses potential moral costs within professional contexts.

Conclusions:

• The ethics of role occupation are crucial for understanding professional integrity.
• Successful negotiation of role tensions is vital for ethical practice.
• Concerns regarding the moral costs of managerialism are substantiated by this analysis.