Ensuring that ethical values are embedded into day‐to‐day working practice is a challenge for multinational organisations. Training on the subject can be dull and can fail to engage staff in the issues, but using scenarios helps to convey ethical messages and gives staff the tools to identify and deal with ethical dilemmas. The purpose of this paper is to summarise the case for business ethics training and the role of scenarios. It seeks to suggest ways to develop effective scenarios and to describe a case study of how one company incorporated them into its training.
This article is based on the Institute of Business Ethics' experience of developing scenarios for its subscriber organisations.
The paper shows that scenarios give employees practice at applying ethical frameworks and company standards to workplace situations. Scenario training is an opportunity for a “dry run” so that employees will know what to do when confronted with a real situation.
This work assists organisations with the development of effective training and communications to support their commitment to high ethical standards.
A more in‐depth examination of the subject is published in the IBE's Good Practice Guide Developing and Using Business Ethics Scenarios (available from www.ibe.org.uk). The study draws on original research to incorporate good practice in this area.
