Greatest Good for the Greatest Number – the Role of Managers’ Ethical Meaning-Making and Subjective Wellbeing Complexity

Archana Mishra (), Lance Newey () and Paul Spee ()
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Archana Mishra: The University of Queensland Business School
Lance Newey: The University of Queensland Business School
Paul Spee: The University of Queensland Business School

Journal of Business Ethics, 2025, vol. 197, issue 3, No 7, 557-579

Abstract: Abstract Despite the appeal of ‘the greatest good for the greatest number’ as an ethical ideal for businesses to pursue, applying this utilitarian principle in practice proves challenging. This is not least due to fundamental disagreements as to what constitutes the ‘greatest good.’ For example, the concept of ‘wellbeing’ now commonly proposed as a way of apprehending the greatest good is itself subject to widely varying interpretations. Drawing on an in-depth qualitative study of 64 managers in different sectors and country contexts, we explore this variation through the lens of constructivist ethics, asking how and why managers systematically differ in their ethical meaning-making around wellbeing. Our theorizing advances constructivist ethics by relating these differences to developmental stages identified in constructivist psychology, finding that systematic variations in ethical meaning-making are shaped by differences in actors’ capacities to process complexity. Our analysis reveals that managers’ ethical meaning-making about wellbeing is subjective, socially constructed, dynamic, and evolutionary, progressing in stages that we differentiate with a novel concept of ‘subjective wellbeing complexity.’ We contribute to practice by discussing how managers’ ability to work with more complex conceptions of wellbeing can be purposefully enhanced through stage-by-stage capacity-building in the form of ‘vertical development.’

Keywords: Utilitarian; Constructivist ethics; Subjective wellbeing complexity; Vertical leader development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1007/s10551-024-05748-2

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