Formal Ethics Training Merely Cosmetic

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Is Formal Ethics Training Merely Cosmetic?
A study of Ethics Training and Ethical
Organizational Culture

Companies are provided incentives by the U.S. Organizational Sentencing Guidelines if they are to develop formal ethics programs to promote ethical organizational cultures, to decrease corporate offenses. Are companies truly developing ethic programs to ensure that they are performing ethically, or are they merely doing this for the incentives that they will receive. In my research, a study of bank employees before and after the formal ethics training was done to see the effects of the training.
“The United States Sentencing Guidelines for Organizations was introduced in 1991 to provide guidance to federal judges in crafting sanctions for a wide range of corporate crime cases”
(United States Sentencing Commission, 1991). During the 1990s and 2000s, the height of all the corporate scandals, it raises questions about a corporation’s an ability to change its culture through a formal ethics program. Are these programs used to reduce doubt, or are they really sincerely used to help improve the culture of an organization. …show more content…

According to this theory, self-regulation is seen as optimal and only should be replaced or supplemented by additional layers of formal controls when there is evidence of firm failures. The response regulation approach taken by the commission is that they feel that the corporation self-regulation would be accomplished through ethical programs. The ideal result that the commission is looking for a corporation to encourage ethical and discourage unethical behavior.
Hypothesis 1: Levels of observed unethical behavior will be initially lower after comprehensive ethics training than before comprehensive ethics

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