As examined by Bird and Waters in this article, many managers act in moral ways but yet do not describe their actions in moral terms. Managers avoid moral talk for three reasons. It threatens organizational harmony, organizational efficiency, and the manager's own image of power and effectiveness. Though managers believe that these qualities are better preserved if they avoid moral talk, moral muteness eventually creates far more damage in the long run for organizations. These damages include creation of moral amnesia, inappropriate narrowness in conceptions of morality, moral stress for individual managers, neglect of moral abuses, and decreased authority of moral standards. If managers were encouraged to engage in discussions about morality, means must be provided to allow for legitimate dissent by managers who will not be personally punished for their views, business people must also learn to incorporate moral expressions into their exchanges, and grant time to support this change.
             Many managers avoid moral talk in the work place because they believe it has a negative impact in three areas of organizational harmony, organizational efficiency, and their own reputation for power and effectiveness. First, moral talk threatens harmony within an organization, in that these discourses often prompt personal confrontations. In these confrontations, questions are raised about certain actions of others whether they are superiors or colleagues or in more serious cases, unethical practices of particular persons are revealed. In any of these circumstances, managers find them hard to deal with because these problems would only bring more accusations and their organizations do not want to be disrupted by these moral issues. Second, moral talk is also a threat to organizational efficiency in that it distracts people from finding real solutions to difficult problems. Because moral talk is used to praise and blame people for their c...