The Ordinary Ethics of Clinical Trials

The purpose of this paper is to explore the moral philosophical underpinnings of pharmaceutical research and how clinical trial professionals exercise ethical judgments and define the right course of action. Within business ethics research, ethical decision-making is often understood as a category of actions distinct and different from social life in general. This paper intends to challenge this understanding by demonstrating that the ethical is an inherent part of everyday action.Based on an extended ethnographic fieldwork within a pharmaceutical company and drawing on the theoretical concepts of ethical affordances and ordinary ethics, this paper argues that clinical trial professionals and the legislation surrounding their work are guided by a utilitarian logic and that ethical judgments are made at the intersection of several competing elements, including time, resources, future earnings and patient safety.Besides questioning widespread notions of the ethical as a particular category of action, this paper further contributes with an ethnographic perspective on a corner of business ethicsresearch that is dominated by quantitative studies.