When Moral Reasons Lose Professional Standing: Institutional Epistemic Capture and Architectural Responsibility in Management

Scavino Alfaro V. · Philosophy of Management (2026) · DOI: 10.1007/s40926-026-00405-2

Resumen

This article develops institutional epistemic capture as a middle-range normative diagnostic for organizational settings. The construct identifies a stable, architecturally produced discrepancy between the contextually justifiable status of an accessible consideration - after legitimate professional role filters - and the lower professional recognition, admissibility, or epistemically mediated contributory weight assigned to it within authorized deliberation. This formulation separates capture from ignorance and ethical fading, where the consideration is not adequately recognized; from silence, where a recognized concern is not expressed; from akrasia, where an agent acts against an already formed better judgment or resolution; and from practical blockage, where a correctly understood consideration cannot affect implementation. Management research on sensemaking, institutional logics, behavioral ethics, ethical infrastructure, organizational design, voice, routines, learning, and resilience can explain mechanisms that generate or correct the focal configuration. Capture does not replace those explanations. Its contribution is configurational, diagnostic, and attributive: it specifies what must be compared, locates the discrepancy functionally prior to overall judgment, and directs responsibility toward agents who control the design, maintenance, or correction of the relevant architecture. The framework is illustrated through evidence concerning credit rating agencies before the 2007–2008 financial crisis. The analysis shows why commercial and methodological episodes are strong candidates for capture while surveillance and documentation failures require a mixed diagnosis. The article reframes management as the governance of organizational reason-responsiveness. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2026.