Managerial Pluralism: Thirty Years of Teaching Business Ethics

The author reflects on 30 years of teaching business ethics at Harvard Business School. The paper presents tactical lessons for teaching courses in professional ethics and introduces “managerial pluralism.” This concept is akin to Isaiah Berlin’s value pluralism and directly addresses the complexity of ethical decision-making in business. Managerial pluralism also raises challenging questions about judgment, and the article argues that, while we can distinguish good and bad judgment, we fundamentally do not know what judgment is or how we make final judgments on complex moral and practical issues.