Evaluating the effectiveness of ethical decision-making training in a South African organisation

Abstract

Ernst and Young have been identifying regulation and compliance as business’ top three risks for the last three years. Given the increasing ethical challenges in business, most organisations have tried to curb the situation by code of ethics, values, creating new ethics positions, offering compulsory ethics training and creating whistle blowing channels. The key problem identified was the fact that employees don’t always make appropriate decisions on ethical matters in spite of company policies and legislations. In this study, the impact of ethics training on moral judgement has been investigated. Hence the title is ‘evaluating the effectiveness of ethical decision making training in a South African organisation.’ Moral judgement was used in the context of Rest (1984) model. Additionally the size of the improvement was benchmarked with other studies. A quasi experiment was conducted to check if there were differences between managers that were trained and those that were not. Data was collected using a self-administered proprietary Defining Issues Test (DIT-2). The test tool has been validated by many scholars. Results showed that there was no difference between trained managers and the control group. Secondly, the offered training did not improve manager’s moral reasoning higher than the benchmark. Recommendations for training review and future research suggestions were made.