1 NARRATIVE ENGAGEMENT: AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH TO MORAL DEVELOPMENT AND T RANSFORMATION Mollie Painter-Morland De Paul University INTRODUCTION There has probably never been a time when professionals have had to deal with more uncertainty and complexity than at present. A number of significant technological, economic, political, social, cultural and scien- tific developments have, over the last three decades, combined to pro- duce contemporary ethical issues of unprecedented complexity and scope. Professionals in various fields are now regularly confronted with moral dilemmas that pit personal, societal and professional values against one another. Not surprisingly, it is a situation that often leads to tension, confusion and a general feeling of disorientation. Professionals are hardly ignorant of the fact that their decisions often have profound and far- reaching consequences. In the highly complex and unstable environment within which many function today, it has however become almost impos- sible to predict with any degree of certainty and exactitude the concrete implications of any particular course of action. No wonder then that so many professionals today feel distinctly rudderless on what is often expe- rienced as a turbulent sea of overwhelming moral chaos. In some quarters, the perceived need among professionals for a more adequate form of moral guidance has been interpreted as a renewed mandate for the establishment of some form of commonly acceptable moral consensus. Naturally, efforts of this nature are based upon the assumption that common ground can indeed be found among the various stakeholders within a particular field of professional endeavor. The unenviable task of discovering or developing such an enclave of stable moral orientation amidst the complex dynamics of per- vasive social fluidity is then routinely, and somewhat expediently, “out sourced” to regulators and legislators. In consequence, professionals all over the world have been bombarded, over the last number of years, with a barrage of new regulations, the implicit or express purpose of which