Moral intensity and managerial problem solving

There is an increasing interest in how managers describe and respond to wha t they regard as moral versus nonmoral problems in organizations. In this s tudy, forty managers described a moral problem and a nonmoral problem that they had encountered in their organization, each of which had been resolved . Analyses indicated that: (1) the two types of problems could be significa ntly differentiated using four of Jones' (1991) components of moral intensi ty; (2) the labels managers used to describe problems varied systematically between the two types of problems and according to the problem's moral int ensity; and (3) problem management processes varied according to the proble m's type and moral intensity.