Abstract
Despite the increasing inclusion of ethics and compliance issues in corporate training, the business world remains rife with breaches of responsible management conduct. This situation indicates a knowledge–practice gap among professionals, i.e., a discrepancy between their knowledge of responsible management principles and their behavior in day-to-day business life. With this in mind, this paper addresses the formative, developmental question of how companies’ ethics and compliance training programs should be organized in a manner that enhances their potential to be effective. Drawing on both the qualitative analysis of existing ethics and compliance training and the conceptual literature on behavioral ethics, a framework is proposed that consecutively aligns various types of training into a comprehensive ethics and compliance training program. The strengths and limitations of the suggested framework are discussed.
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Acknowledgements
This paper was partially developed while I was a visiting scholar at the Basel Institute on Governance, associated institute to the University of Basel. I would like to thank the institute for its kind hospitality. Furthermore, I am grateful to my colleagues at the University of Applied Sciences of the Grisons involved in the underlying research projects for their manifold contributions and input, including data collection, translation and language assistance. Moreover, the paper benefited from helpful suggestions and comments on earlier versions by participants of the 5th Responsible Management Education Research Conference, Erica Steckler, the guest editors and three anonymous referees. Funding from the Swiss Commission for Technology and Innovation (CTI) is thankfully acknowledged. The usual disclaimer applies.
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Christian Hauser is Professor of Business Economics and International Management at the University of Applied Sciences of the Grisons and Fellow at the Digital Society Initiative of the University of Zurich, Switzerland. He is a member of the topical platform Ethics of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences (SATW), member of the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) Working Group on Anti-Corruption and head of the first PRME Business Integrity Action Center in Europe. His research interests include international entrepreneurship, SME and private sector development, corporate responsibility and business integrity.
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Hauser, C. From Preaching to Behavioral Change: Fostering Ethics and Compliance Learning in the Workplace. J Bus Ethics 162, 835–855 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-019-04364-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-019-04364-9
Keywords
- Business ethics
- Responsible management learning
- Ethics training
- Employee training
- Ethical employee behavior
- Compliance