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Abstract: Nearly two decades after publication of his seminal work, The Functions of the Executive, Chester Barnard had the insight that moral responsibility and accountability might be a more powerful principle for guiding individual actions within organizations than the executive authority he emphasized in his earlier work. This article begins the work of elaborating one direction in which Barnard might have developed his insight, by adopting ethical acceptance rather than self-interested indifference as the metaphor describing members' willingness to act in accordance with organizational needs rather than purely individual preferences. The alternative metaphor opens up opportunities for understanding how organizations structure their members' ethical commitments and suggests that leaders and managers can enhance organizational behavior and performance by working systematically to recognize, understand and (re)design organizational spaces of accountability and discretion.
