Preliminary character. Postmodern ethicists are often seen as more pessimistic than their modern counterparts. They know that ethical decisions are subject to non-rational processes, and thus less controllable and predictable. Ethical reasoning therefore is a constant learning process, an ongoing struggle for practices that have a better fit, or for reasoning that just makes more sense and works better than the approaches tried out so far.
From the nature of a postmodern view on business ethics, it might already be clear that the notion of discussing the abstract case of Ethical Dilemma 3 is a nearly impossible venture. Indeed, postmodernist thinkers are sceptical of the vignette or hypothetical case method of learning about business ethics, preferring instead to engender moral commitment to others through real-life encounters. We would at best only be able to come up with some form of judgement if we travelled to Thailand, visited the site, talked to the people, and emphatically immersed ourselves in the real-life situation. We would then have a ‘moral impulse’ about what to feel about the situation and could come up with what we would regard as the moral way to decide in this situation.