Moral management in the extractive industries during turbulent times: see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil

We develop an inclusive overarching moral framework for understanding corporate behaviour in turbulent times (or non-normal situations). We test this framework empirically using a case study from the extractives sector, the planned Dominga mining project in Chile. Chile experienced turbulent times (social and political turmoil) with the 18-O social revolution (on 18 October 2019), the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the economic and social lives of people, and with public shock following the release of the Pandora Papers in August 2021, which exposed high-level corruption. We undertook multi-phased, multi-method fieldwork across several research visits to Chile between 2019 and 2022. We considered various corporate moral management concepts such as moral silence, moral muteness, moral deafness, moral blindness, moral myopia, moral hypocrisy, moral paralysis, and moral nihilism. While these concepts are conceptually clear, in our research, we found that they were hard to differentiate. Nevertheless, by clarifying and bringing together some of the concepts, we believe that together they provide a useful and comprehensive framework to analyse the ethical decision-making of managers. We contributed to the theory around the morality of corporate behaviour by demonstrating that a corporation’s behaviour can be analysed by applying our moral framework. Our findings are significant because, by identifying the ways corporations justify or obscure their actions, we provide a useful tool for stakeholders, regulators, and civil society to assess corporate moral behaviour.