Organizational moral distress is an extension of the concept of individual moral distress. Moral distress at the individual level is the anguish a person may experience when he or she is convinced that he or she knows the right thing to do but is prevented from doing it. When applied at the level of organizations, it is a useful way to characterize and analyze conflicts or misalignment of values that can interfere with excellent organization function.

Organizations, like people, have goals and values. Organizations meet their goals by employing people to fill various roles, to take on responsibilities, and to function within the processes and [Page 2567]systems that the organization creates. How the organization prioritizes its goals; how it designs its systems, structures, or processes to ...