Moral ambiguity and judgment: a reply to “Acting to Know”

In this dialogue, we reply to Yang, Fan, and Zeng's (2026) extension of our model of moral ambiguity in entrepreneurial action (Vorholzer & Brattström, 2025). Our original model theorizes how an individual entrepreneur processes conflicting interpretations of an action's moral qualities, distinguishing attributional ambiguity (conflicting interpretations of one's accountability) from motivational ambiguity (conflicting moral standards and aspirations). We address two issues raised by Yang and colleagues. First, we clarify what it means for action to be stalled: moral ambiguity prevents an action decision, and entrepreneurs may engage in bounded, staged experimentation to reduce ambiguity, an activity qualitatively distinct from the focal action it informs. Second, we consider how moral judgment unfolds across levels of analysis, building on their notion of distributed moral sensemaking to outline how value negotiations operate at the individual, team, and venture levels. We close by identifying directions for rigorous, practically relevant research on entrepreneurial ethics.