Can business ethics be taught?

Business ethics training programs have always been an integral part of business education. More recently, high-profile corporate scandals from different industries and organizations raised the significance of moral values and behaviours in the workplace. Acknowledging the need for and importance of business ethics, researchers all around the world have been investigating how to design effective business ethics training programs for decades.

Haskayne researchers Duygu Gulseren and Nick Turner conducted a review of the research to identify best practices in business ethics training. The review suggests that business ethics training can be effective in developing moral attitudes and behaviours; however, certain design factors such as the participant and trainer characteristics, the length or scope of the program or the activities used during the training can affect the potency of the program.

Based on their review, Gulseren and Turner made six recommendations for business educators who are interested in designing evidence-based business ethics training programs:

1. Design specialized programs. Field-specific ethics programs are more promising in developing moral behaviours compared to general ethics programs. For example, ethics programs for accountants are more effective than general business ethics programs
2. Do not make ethics training mandatory. Voluntary ethics programs result in better moral outcomes than mandatory ethics training. 
3. Be prepared to deliver your program in 4 to 9 hours. Business ethics training programs that take between four and nine hours are more effective than longer or shorter programs.
4. Incorporate a debate component into your training. Although alternative forms such as lectures or case discussions are very common in this field, evidence shows that debates are the most effective technique for teaching ethics. Case competitions might or might not contain a debate component.
5. Offer ethics training to advanced students. Findings demonstrate that professional students benefit from ethics training more than undergraduate students. 
6. Hire expert instructors. Business ethics trainers with above-average expertise are more effective in teaching moral behaviours than trainers with average and below-average expertise. 

The full report can be accessed here.

References

Gulseren, D.B. & Turner, N. (2019). Evidence review of business ethics interventions: What works and when? [White paper]. Calgary: Canadian Centre for Advanced Leadership in Business.

Medeiros, K. E., Watts, L. L., Mulhearn, T. J., Steele, L. M., Mumford, M. D., & Connelly, S. (2017). What is working, what is not, and what we need to know: A meta-analytic review of business ethics instruction. Journal of Academic Ethics, 15(3), 245-275.

Watts, L. L., Medeiros, K. E., Mulhearn, T. J., Steele, L. M., Connelly, S., & Mumford, M. D. (2017). Are ethics training programs improving? A meta-analytic review of past and present ethics instruction in the sciences. Ethics & Behavior, 27(5), 351-384.