ABSTRACT
This chapter assesses the impact of the Giving Voice to Values (GVV) program. The GVV program takes a very different approach to ethics education and shifts the focus from the traditional why actions are unethical to how one can effectively resolve ethical conflict. The GVV program encourages reflection on potential actions and reactions through practice with voicing one’s values. We chose to implement this program in our advanced financial accounting courses with three-week modules using scripted role-plays to encourage our students to voice their values. After implementing this program and empirically assessing the impact of the ethics intervention, we find that students are more likely to speak up and confront unethical actions by voicing their values to internal management, the CFO, and company hotlines. While not a primary focus of the study, the intervention also appears to have increased the students’ ability to recognize and increase their sensitivity to ethical issues.
In a second implementation of the GVV, we expanded the discussion and analysis in our courses to encourage resolving ethical actions to more members in the management hierarchy. We found that both the standard and modified implementation of GVV increases participant confidence in dealing with ethical issues and their likelihood of reporting concerns for these accounting issues within the management hierarchy. In addition, we found both implementations resulted in an unanticipated increase to participants’ moral sensitivity. Further, our most significant (and unanticipated) finding was that the modified course offering resulted in increases in moral judgment and moral intent.
