Embedded ethics and reflexivity: narrating a charter of ethical experience

Abstract

We address the call to situate organizational codes of ethics in practice and local values rather than authoritarian forms of control. Our contribution lies in: (1) drawing on Ricoeur’s work on the capable human being to develop the idea of embedded ethics, which we argue is a form of lived ethics situated in how people understand and enact ethical values in specific contexts; and (2) illustrating, through an action research project carried out in a large Italian non-profit organization, how a hermeneutic-inspired narrative methodology can be used to develop an ethics charter situated in lived values. A hermeneutic approach to research recognizes that each research encounter is unique and co-created, therefore participant interpretations are important. The originality of our work centers around the novel narrative form and approach to developing an ethical charter based on embedded ethics. We conclude by suggesting that this approach to developing an ethical charter encompasses a form of orientational learning in which people come to understand a sense or feel for issues in their reflexive dialogue around narratives that surface and explore ethical tensions.