Understanding Ethical Behaviour towards Better Institutional Functioning in the Armed Forces

At the heart of ethical choices lies the complex interplay between individual intentions and environmental vectors. Factors such as stress, misguided motivations and the failure to handle positional power make the issue so very intriguing. Further, ethical dilemmas are often laden with inherent individual subjectivities, making it difficult to arrive at a singularly agreeable distinction between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. Why do individuals transgress? Why do individuals give and take bribes? Why is it so difficult to report a course mate? This article seeks to focus on the behavioural side of ethics. It investigates the behavioural realm of ethics through the application of various principles from the newly emerging field of behavioural ethics, in order to expand the individual and organisational understanding of ethics and morality in the broader context of the military paradigm.