Professional Biases on Ethics Practices and Ethics Education: An Empirical Investigation of Seven Professions

Yoann Guntzburger; Joé Trempe-Martineau; Thierry C. Pauchant

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Professional Biases on Ethics Practices and Ethics Education: An Empirical Investigation of Seven Professions

Yoann Guntzburger, Joé Trempe-Martineau, and Thierry C. Pauchant

HEC Montreal, Canada

Volume 12: 2015, pp. 25-40: ABSTRACT

The increasing complexity of business activities triggers the interaction of many diverse actors, with different professional trainings and backgrounds. The purpose of this study is to better uncover the potential biases diverse professions may exhibit in relation to ethics practices in order to better tailor educational programs. Our results suggest that few practices among the 25 most widely implemented in organization are judged similarly by all the identified seven professions and that many others show different degree of preference and resistance. Based on our results, we argue on the necessity to consider ethics practices as important as ethics issues in order to avoid discrepancies in the support to the organizational answer to those issues. In conclusion, we suggest ways by which educational programs in ethics can capitalise on common grounds, anticipate potential resistance and harvest differences in order to increase the diversity and performance of ethics programs.