In view of corporate wrongdoings like Enron’s accounting fraud and Volkswagen’s emissions scandal, the need to prevent unethical decision-making in the business sector has become widely accepted. Human resource development is of high relevance in this regard: a multiplicity of companies utilizes ethics training programs to teach their managers and employees business ethics and to develop their ethical competences. However, knowledge about the efficacy of these training programs is still rather fragile. In the present study, we (a) develop a framework of relevant design categories to consider in creating ethics training programs; (b) consolidate empirical insights by reviewing 92 studies about the effectiveness of standalone business ethics training programs regarding their impact, dependent variable and measurement methods, design, and conceptual foundation; and (c) identify remaining research gaps and provide theoretical-conceptual considerations for further investigation.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.