Blog: Ethical conflicts

In my previous reflections, I argued that virtues by themselves are not inherently ethical. Their direction and meaning come from the ethical frameworks in which they are embedded. This naturally raises a larger question: could it be that most, if not all, significant conflicts in history are ultimately clashes between ethical frameworks?

The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, in After Virtue, makes a powerful case for this view. He points out that in our modern world, moral debates often feel endless and unresolved. That is because different groups argue from fundamentally different premises: about what is good, what is just, what is worth striving for. Without a shared framework, disagreements cannot be rationally settled; they become intractable conflicts.

History offers many examples. The Cold War was not only a struggle for geopolitical dominance but also a confrontation between two ethical frameworks: liberal democracy, with its emphasis on individual rights and freedoms, and communism, with its focus on equality and collective ownership. The debate was not simply about policies or strategies—it was about the fundamental lens through which each side viewed justice and the good society.

The same can be said about the American Civil Rights Movement. On one side stood those who held to an ethical framework that assumed inequality between races as natural or divinely sanctioned. On the other were those who embraced a framework rooted in the belief that all humans are fundamentally equal. Both sides claimed to act with integrity, courage, and authenticity—but because their ethical frameworks clashed, the conflict was inevitable.

Even religious wars can be understood this way. If one framework sees the world as governed by divine will and another interprets it as guided by human reason or chance, then conflicts over law, authority, and meaning are not just political—they are deeply ethical in origin.

Of course, not every disagreement reduces neatly to a clash of ethical frameworks. Economic interests, power struggles, and cultural misunderstandings also play a role. Yet, as MacIntyre suggests, when conflicts become entrenched, it is often because the parties do not merely disagree on facts, but on the very foundations by which those facts are judged.

For organisations, this insight is critical. Internal conflicts often escalate not because of technical issues, but because groups operate from different ethical assumptions. One team may see the environment as a resource to be maximised, while another sees it as a responsibility to protect. One manager may view employees as costs to control, while another sees them as partners to develop. Unless these frameworks are surfaced and discussed, the conflict cannot be resolved at the level of rules or procedures.

This is why achieving organisational integrity requires more than promoting virtues like courage or authenticity—it requires clearly defining the ethical framework of the organisation. Without clarity on the fundamental perspectives that guide behaviour—such as whether people are considered equal, how we view the environment, or what we believe about the nature of human responsibility—virtues remain directionless. By making the organisation’s ethical framework explicit, leaders provide a compass that ensures virtues are consistently applied in service of the organisation’s telos, and not co-opted in conflicting or destructive ways.

So, can we say that all major conflicts are caused by differences in ethical frameworks? Perhaps not all—but many of the deepest and most persistent ones are. Recognising this doesn’t make conflicts disappear, but it gives us a language for understanding them. And it reminds us that building integrity in organisations, and in society, is not just about encouraging virtues, but about making explicit the frameworks that give those virtues meaning.