Chapter 8: Current Themes in Behavioral Business Ethics: Implications for Human Resources Training and Development

The spate of corporate scandals that occurred during the last 2 decades resulted not only in increased demands for corporate legal compliance, but also in more emphasis on ethical business practice as a foundation for regaining and maintaining stakeholder trust (Sloan & Gavin, 2010). In keeping with these trends, the use of ethics and compliance training programs has steadily increased in the last decade, such that in the United States some form of training is now used in approximately 81% of private sector organizations (Ethics Resource Centre, 2014). Additionally, a growing responsibility for ethics training and development has been ascribed to human resource (HR) professionals, not only by global human resource management (Garavan & McGuire, 2010; Sloan & Gavin, 2010; Valentine, Hollingworth, & Francis, 2013) and business ethics scholars (Treviño & Brown, 2004; Weaver & Treviño, 1999; Wells & Schminke, 2001), but also, within organizations themselves (Martin & Woldring, 2001; Parkes & Davis, 2013; Society for Human Resource Management & Ethics Resource Centre, 2008). However, despite the actual or expected involvement of HR professionals in selecting, designing, or implementing ethics-related training and development initiatives, ethics coverage has typically been quite limited within human resource management textbooks (Deckop, 2008). Moreover, even when HR scholars have tried to ameliorate this gap (e.g., Deckop, 2008), the information provided has not necessarily reflected the novel, significant and often counterintuitive insights that have emerged through recent research in behavioral business ethics (e.g., De Cremer & Tenbrunsel, 2012).