Caught between a rock and a hard place: how project practitioners navigate ethical tensions in decision-making

Purpose – While project practitioners confront a minefield of misbehaviours, ethical decision-making remains insufficiently understood. Ethical tensions prevail particularly in Africa since project management education and training are based on Western philosophies, yet decision-making styles are influenced by traditional beliefs. Thus, it is unclear whether project practitioners manage consistently with their traditional cultures or with what they are taught or strike a compromise or otherwise. This paper investigates how ethical dimensions of project practitioners affect their decision-making styles. Design/methodology/approach – Seven thought experiments were posed to 148 South African project practitioners to determine whether their ethical space (a combination of deontology, consequentialism and ubuntu ethics) influences their decision-making style (normative, behavioural/descriptive or prescriptive preference). Findings – The results reveal that there is no dominant ethical space, but the preferred decision-making style is normative, i.e. decisions focus on what should be done. Due to their education and training, which are influenced by Western thinking, project practitioners in South Africa pull from both their Western and African belief systems. Originality/value – The paper provides a novel framework grounded in the business ethics literature, which we coin the “ethical space of the decision-maker”, in which a project manager navigates ethical tensions in different circumstances. The paper sheds light on the potential relationship between the ethical space of a decision-maker and their decision-making style. It suggests that project practitioners who understand their ethical space can contextually utilise it as a guiding framework for their choices and actions.