Assessing moral sensitivity in business personnel

Statement of the problem. In order to effectively train individuals in business ethics it is necessary to ensure that the participants have the requisite skills or entry behaviors required. Moral sensitivity is one of these requisite skills. James Rest defines moral sensitivity as "what moral issues people are aware of in a social situation." This is one of the four components Rest (1983) theorizes is necessary for moral behavior. Moral sensitivity has been investigated in dentistry students, college students, and accounting auditors. No work has been done with individuals involved in other areas of business outside the accounting area. This study determined whether business personnel could identify ethical issues when they occurred in a case study with distracting issues.; Method. Volunteers were solicited from a large organization. Each was asked to identify business issues in a case study that had seven ethical issues included along with numerous distracters. Three of these ethical issues had previously been classified as being caring/relationship based and three as law/organizational policy (justice) based. The participants were not informed as to the exact nature of the study. The participants also completed a short demographic information sheet.; Results. Two hundred ten usable responses were received. The average number of ethical issues identified was 5.12 out of 7, with a standard deviation of 1.60. Using t tests no significant difference in total scores was identified for gender or education level. Managers did score significantly higher than nonmanagers. A MANOVA showed no significance between gender and identification of caring or justice issues. There was no correlation between total score and time with organization. A significant and positive but low correlation exists between age and total score.; Conclusions. The overall conclusion is that a majority of business personnel are able to identify ethical issues when they are asked to do so in a case study. In this study 71% of the participants identified five or more of the ethical issues yet 29% identified four or less. Job status and age were the only variables identified that proved to be a significant factor in showing why these differences exist.