ABSTRACT
The global world of today dominated by fast technological change, scien tific innovations, communication, and openness implies new unanticipated ethical challenges. Not knowing the morally right way to act may have a se rious impact on all kinds of activities, including professional life. Given the high pace of changes inside and outside organizations, it is impossible to foresee ethical problems and conflicts, and it is therefore very difficult to construct ethical guidelines with any practical value. Under such condi tions, individual decision makers as well as groups and organizations must acquire high ethical competence and confidence in handling all possible ethical problems that may arise in everyday, real-life professional activities. What is needed is a psychological approach to ethical competence implying high ethical awareness, adaptive problem-solving and decision-making abil ities at personal and organizational levels, effective ethical argumentation skills, and high ethical confidence. In this chapter I discuss development of assessment methods as well as construction and implementation of train ing methods for ethical decision making and problem solving. Application in real-life professional activities has shown that individuals, groups, and organizations can be trained to cope with difficult ethical problems.
