The Role of Strategic Ambiguity in Moral Injury: A Case Study of Dutch Border Guards Facing Moral Challenges

Abstract

There is widespread agreement that lower level organizational members face moral challenges because their personal values conflict with organizational directions. Yet we argue that intentional strategic ambiguity, too, may lead to moral challenges, particularly among organizational members operating in high-stake situations. Drawing on interviews with border guards deployed during the European migration crisis, we use vignettes to present two coping strategies. First, members may disengage from moral challenges and redefine their work as a clear-cut duty. Second, they may embrace moral disorientation and conflicts, and follow felt moral obligations. Both may lead to “moral injury.” Moral injury refers to psychological suffering that is engendered by performing, failing to prevent, or falling victim to actions that conflict with one’s moral belief system. We make three theoretical contributions by (a) identifying the roots of moral challenges in strategic decision-making, (b) signaling different coping mechanisms, and (c) challenging pragmatic perspectives on strategic ambiguity.

Moral Recovery and Ethical Leadership

“…Moral Injury has just begun to appear in papers submitted to management journals. Kalkman and Molendijk (2019) have highlighted the role that high-level organizational practices such as strategic ambiguity have in creating conditions which lead the moral disorientation at lower level employees which subsequently contributes to Moral Injury. Although this article addresses normative and positivistic models and theories of ethical leadership but proposing that distressing psychological experiences and ethical violations can produce pro-social and pro-environmental activities, it is important that future studies of Moral Recovery in the workplace incorporate critical approaches which are not overly celebratory of the 'crucible experiences' which Moral Injury can produce.…”

“…These are not only limited to management practices such as 'strategic ambiguity' but can also relate to job design and HR procedures for helping employees. Nurses, social workers, police officers, educators, and clinicians have all been identified as occupations (Kalkman and Molendijk, 2019;Corley 2002) which are open to 'moral distress': a position where an individual is constrained from doing what is right by management directives, organizational policies, or legal instruments. Awareness of the ethically compromised environment of financial (Ho 2009) and 'Big Tech' firms (Zuboff 2019) continues to grow, but the experiences of lower level employees who must make decisions at the 'moral coalface' of such firms require more investigation.…”

Emergency responders’ moral sensemaking: the influence of compartmentalization

“…Colville et al, 2013). The daily confrontations with moral dilemmas feature in the moral doubts and (di)stress that emergency responders report, and explain the prevalence of trauma and moral injury among crisis professionals (Cadeau, 2021;Kalkman and Molendijk, 2021;Margolis and Molinsky, 2008). Compartmentalization will affect not only the moral experiences of emergency responder but also their moral sensemaking.…”

Responsible Management Education

“…It was from betrayal, from moral betrayal. Sherman (20202: 24) Until recently, studies of moral injury have largely focused on military personnel (e.g., Shay, 1994;Sherman's 2020 study discussed above) or the situation of others in similar military-like and highly regulated contexts, for example border guards (Kalkman & Molendijk, 2021). There has been relatively little attention to other areas, despite expectations that moral injury is a more general phenomenon (Griffin et al, 2019) and can, cumulatively, influence societies as a whole (Jones, 2018).…”