Amorality

Two Types of Amorality

The amoral person may intentionally or unintentionally not subject decisions, actions, or behaviors to moral evaluation. Such a distinction led some scholars to identify two types of amoral persons—intentionally amoral and unintentionally amoral. The intentional amoral person consciously and deliberately chooses not to acknowledge ethical considerations in his or her deliberations. The unintentional moral person, on the other hand, does not subject his or her decisions, actions, or behaviors to moral evaluation due to carelessness or lack of sensitivity or knowledge.

A manager who holds that the realm of ethics and that of business are separate is an intentionally amoral person. He or she deliberately excludes ethical notions from the spheres of business. For example, an intentionally amoral manager may reject a proposal to expand an investigation of the effects of a new drug on patients that extends beyond the requirements of the Food and Drug Administration on the grounds that a concern for the implications on the well-being of patients beyond what is required by law is not within the scope of business. The sole criterion for evaluating proposals is their impact on the corporation's financial bottom line. On the other hand, an unintentionally amoral manager may include height as a selection criterion when hiring construction workers, for example, without considering the negative impact that this criterion would have on women and certain minorities. Women and some minorities may be systematically excluded from the hiring process due to their disadvantage on height when compared with average white males. In this example, the manager did not take the care to consider the moral implications of his or her decision criteria. He or she was thus unintentionally amoral.

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