The moral responsibility of project selectors

Abstract

The starting point of this paper asserts that managers who elicit and select projects have a moral responsibility. Correspondingly, its purpose is to provide a means for project selectors to appreciate this responsibility so that it can be put into practice. A model of the moral responsibility involved in project selection is presented. This model combines a) an explication of responsibility into attributability—what choices the project manager can ultimately be praised or blamed for, and accountability—the necessity of being prepared to answer for one’s choices; with b) an explication of the project selection process into an initialisation phase, an appraisal phase, and a decision phase. Various moral philosophers are called upon to make explicit the moral issues that are at stake for each of these two dimensions of responsibility at each stage of the project selection process. Concluding remarks point to the need for project selectors to contextualise their use of the model.