One real decision, worked end to end
Choose a policy, allocation or rule you genuinely own and carry it through every lesson. The final output is a position-blind design you can explain, test and use—not an abstract exercise.
Monarch Management Institute · Micro Course
Improving Managerial Decision-Making – Applying John Rawls’s Veil of Ignorance
Design fairer policies and allocations by learning to test a decision from every position it creates. Strengthen your professional judgement, credibility and ability to defend consequential choices to colleagues, stakeholders and decision-makers.
EnrollRegistration and course delivery take place in the MMI LMS.
Course introduction
See what this course makes possible.
Meet the course lead and explore the practical focus, learning experience, and professional value of this course.
Enroll in this course →Course overview
About This Course
Many organisational rules are designed from the standpoint of the people who already hold influence, information or advantage. The resulting policy may be described as fair while quietly favouring the position of its designer. Decide Behind the Veil introduces John Rawls’s veil of ignorance as a practical way to interrupt that pattern.
Participants select one real decision—a policy, allocation or rule with meaningful consequences—and examine it without knowing which resulting position they themselves will occupy. Across the course they learn to protect the least advantaged, apply Rawls’s principles in sequence, test the utilitarian alternative and identify where self-interest has entered the reasoning.
The result is not a survey of philosophy. It is a repeatable decision discipline that helps managers design fairer processes, explain trade-offs more clearly and defend consequential choices with greater credibility. The course also addresses major critiques of Rawls so participants understand both the power and the limits of the tool.
Why this course is different
Most fairness training asks leaders to be impartial without explaining how. This course gives participants a disciplined test they can run on a real decision: remove knowledge of their own position, protect those who may fare worst, apply Rawls’s principles in order and identify self-interest disguised as merit. Philosophy becomes a practical safeguard for clearer governance, stronger stakeholder trust and decisions that remain defensible under scrutiny.
A practical test, not an admired principle
“Be fair” is an aspiration, not a method. You will learn a repeatable procedure for stripping away standpoint, protecting the worst-off position, applying Rawls’s two principles and detecting hidden self-interest.
Taught with its limits in view
Rawls’s framework is influential and contested. The course introduces the principal alternatives and critiques so that you can use the veil responsibly, identify where it may mislead and defend why it fits a particular decision.
Learning objectives
- Distinguish the veil of ignorance from bargaining, majority preference and welfare maximisation.
- Remove position-specific advantage while retaining the facts needed for a sound decision.
- Use maximin reasoning to examine the position of the least advantaged.
- Apply Rawls’s two principles of justice in their proper order.
- Evaluate major critiques and identify where the framework may require qualification.
Practical outcomes
- A clearly framed policy or allocation decision.
- A position-blind assessment of affected stakeholders.
- A defensible test of the worst-off outcome.
- A documented application of Rawls’s two principles.
- A management-ready decision design that can withstand scrutiny.
Modules at a glance
Module 01Using the Veil of Ignorance as a Decision TestDuration = 1 Week
Learn to redesign one real policy or allocation by removing positional advantage, protecting the least advantaged, applying Rawls’s principles and testing the result against the framework’s principal critiques.
Principal themes
- The original position and veil of ignorance
- Primary goods and position-blind reasoning
- Maximin and the utilitarian alternative
- Rawls’s two principles of justice
- Major critiques and responsible application
Intended outcomes
You will learn to frame a consequential decision without reference to your own advantage, evaluate the position of the least advantaged, apply Rawls’s principles in sequence and produce a fairer, defensible decision design while stating where the method may be limited.
Dr. Madarasz
Director of the Monarch Research Institute
Dr. Norman Madarasz helps leaders examine the assumptions, values and power structures behind consequential decisions. An international specialist in political philosophy, ethics and geoeconomic relations, he has more than twenty years of academic experience across business administration, law and philosophy, has supervised over forty graduate research projects and has published extensively on ethics, economics, politics and international affairs. His teaching and research span Canada, France and Latin America, and he is a Certified Management & Business Educator. For MMI participants, Dr. Madarasz translates rigorous philosophical reasoning into practical tools for clearer judgement, fairer policy design and decisions that remain credible under stakeholder and public scrutiny.