Sustainable Ethical Decision-Making: From Management & Adorno to Habermas & Complexity Science

The aim of this paper is to put forward a different perspective on the decision-making process, which would allow it to become sustainable. To achieve this, it defines ethically sustainable decision-making operationally, as a process that is technically solvent, ethically responsible and shared by the stakeholders involved. Having analysed the scientific literature, both from the perspective of Business Ethics, and the contributions made by Management Science to our understanding of the decision-making process, we have seen that there is a series of limitations when decision-making is restricted purely to the individual sphere, indicating, therefore, the need to transfer these ethical decisions to another unit of analysis: the group. From there on, and taking on board the criticism made by Adorno of the violence that can be exerted by any human group on itself, the communicative proposal of Habermas is presented as a foundation on which the decision-making process may be structured. In the final section of the paper, a series of potentially productive sources is suggested which could be used to continue with the pending task highlighted in this paper, which is to make Habermas’ proposal practicable at a group level.