Investigating and Assessing the Quality of Employee Ethics Training Programs Among US-Based Global Organizations

Reoccurring instances of unethical employee behavior raises the question of the effectiveness of organization’s employee ethics training programs. This research seeks to examine employee ethics training programs among US-based global organizations by asking members of the Ethics and Compliance Officer Association to describe various elements of their organizations’ ethics training programs. This investigation and assessment reveal that there are some effective aspects of ethics training but five serious concerns are identified and discussed as potential contributions to the lack of ethics among business organizations’ employees.

[1]  Richard Charnigo,et al.  Use of Balanced Experiential Inquiry to build ethical strength in the workplace , 2012 .

[2]  Mark S. Schwartz,et al.  Effective Corporate Codes of Ethics: Perceptions of Code Users , 2004 .

[3]  James C. Anderson,et al.  What you can learn from your customer’s customer , 2013 .

[4]  Jana Craft,et al.  Making the case for ongoing and interactive organizational ethics training , 2010 .

[5]  Judith A. Kolb,et al.  The effects of an ethics training program on attitude, knowledge, and transfer of training of office professionals: A treatment‐ and control‐group design , 2008 .

[6]  J. V. Maanen,et al.  Toward a theory of organizational socialization , 1977 .

[7]  Greg Wood,et al.  A model of organizational ethics education , 2011 .

[8]  Terence Jackson,et al.  Management ethics and corporate policy: a cross cultural comparison , 2000 .

[9]  Brooks C. Holtom,et al.  Survey response rate levels and trends in organizational research , 2008 .

[10]  Lane F. Birkel.  The Lecture Method: Villain or Victim. , 1973 .

[11]  Leslie E. Sekerka,et al.  Organizational Ethics Education and Training: A Review of Best Practices and Their Application , 2009 .

[12]  Rosemary S. Caffarella,et al.  Self‐directed learning , 1993 .

[13]  Kate Brown.  Using role play to integrate ethics into the business curriculum a financial management example , 1994 .

[14]  Cheri Ostroff,et al.  ORGANIZATIONAL SOCIALIZATION AS A LEARNING PROCESS: THE ROLE OF INFORMATION ACQUISITION , 2006 .

[15]  James Weber,et al.  Scenarios in Business Ethics Research: Review, Critical Assessment, and Recommendations , 1992, Business Ethics Quarterly.

[16]  John A. Weber.  Business Ethics Training: Insights from Learning Theory , 2006 .

[17]  Jaana Woiceshyn,et al.  Enhancing Business Ethics: Using Cases to Teach Moral Reasoning , 2008 .

[18]  Sheldene K. Simola.  Use of a “Coping-Modeling, Problem-Solving” Program in Business Ethics Education , 2010 .

[19]  Scott D. Johnson,et al.  Comparative analysis of learner satisfaction and learning outcomes in online and face-to-face learning environments , 2000 .

[20]  Deborah L. Leitsch.  Differences in the Perceptions of Moral Intensity in the Moral Decision Process: An Empirical Examination of Accounting Students , 2004 .

[21]  Linda Klebe Trevino,et al.  Corporate Ethics Practices in the Mid-1990s: An Empirical Study of the Fortune 1000 , 2013 .

[22]  Kim S. Cameron,et al.  Ethics and Ethos: The Buffering and Amplifying Effects of Ethical Behavior and Virtuousness , 2004 .

[23]  Andrea Werner,et al.  Corporate Codes of Ethics: Necessary But Not Sufficient , 2008 .

[24]  Bente Elkjaer.  Organizational learning with a pragmatic slant , 2003 .

[25]  Joseph Petrick,et al.  Business Ethics in North America: Trends and Challenges , 2011 .

[26]  R. Bagozzi,et al.  The Role of Moral Values in Instigating Morally Responsible Decisions , 2013 .

[27]  A. King.  From Sage on the Stage to Guide on the Side , 1993 .

[28]  Paul Vanetti,et al.  Are Corporations Institutionalizing Ethics , 1986 .

[29]  Stefan Seiler,et al.  Developing Moral Decision-Making Competence: A Quasi-Experimental Intervention Study in the Swiss Armed Forces , 2011 .

[30]  Gary M. Fleischman,et al.  Ethics Programs, Perceived Corporate Social Responsibility and Job Satisfaction , 2007 .

[31]  Shane Connelly,et al.  Structuring Case-Based Ethics Training: How Comparing Cases and Structured Prompts Influence Training Effectiveness , 2013 .

[32]  Janice S. Miller,et al.  The Positive Ethical Organization: Enacting a Living Code of Ethics and Ethical Organizational Identity , 2007 .

[33]  Roger C Schank,et al.  What We Learn When We Learn by Doing , 1995 .

[34]  G. Izzo.  Compulsory Ethics Education and the Cognitive Moral Development of Salespeople: A Quasi-Experimental Assessment , 2000 .

[35]  Adriaan Taylor,et al.  Ethics training for accountants: does it add up? , 2013 .

[36]  Michael L. Moore,et al.  Training Needs Analysis: Review and Critique , 1978 .

[37]  Debra R. Comer,et al.  Organizational Newcomers' Acquisition of Information from Peers , 1991 .

[38]  Theresa M. Glomb,et al.  EMOTION REGULATION IN WORKGROUPS: THE ROLES OF DEMOGRAPHIC DIVERSITY AND RELATIONAL WORK CONTEXT , 2013 .

[39]  Dirk D. Steiner,et al.  The trainer‐trainee interaction: An attributional model of training , 1991 .

[40]  M. R. Louis,et al.  THE AVAILABILITY AND HELPFULNESS OF SOCIALIZATION PRACTICES , 1983 .

[41]  Jw Hoff,et al.  Instilling ethical values in large corporations , 1992 .

[42]  Daniel C. Mack,et al.  Ethics Resource Center , 2001 .

[43]  D. Comer,et al.  Using the PET Assessment Instrument to Help Students Identify Factors that Could Impede Moral Behavior , 2007 .

[44]  Sharon Clarke,et al.  Safety leadership: A meta‐analytic review of transformational and transactional leadership styles as antecedents of safety behaviours , 2013 .

[45]  Ioannis N. Lagoudis,et al.  Decision support systems for human resource training and development , 2012 .

[46]  Muhammad Zahid Iqbal,et al.  The Growing Concept and Uses of Training Needs Assessment: A Review with Proposed Model , 2011 .

[47]  J. T. Delaney,et al.  Do company ethics training programs make a difference? An empirical analysis , 1992 .

[48]  M. Nadeem.  Role of Training in Determining the Employee Corporate Behavior with Respect to Organizational Productivity: Developing and Proposing a Conceptual Model , 2010 .

[49]  Rudolph Corvini,et al.  Training in Business and Industry. , 1962 .

[50]  Philippe Monin,et al.  Constructing differences in a cross-cultural context: National distance, social differentiation or functional distinction , 2013 .

[51]  Designing Trustworthy Organizations , 2013 .

[52]  Paul J. Taylor,et al.  A new integrated framework for training needs analysis , 1998 .