Moral Domain Expertise and the Complement Model: The Marriage of Virtue Ethics and Situationism for Business Ethics Programs

Abstract

When a business organization designs an ethics program, should it adopt a situationist conception of moral psychology or a virtue approach to character building? In this dissertation I argue that the answer is, both. The complement model is a recommendation for business ethics programs that blends the best aspects of these two theories in social psychology and philosophy. I start by giving a critique of the experimental literature surrounding situationism and argue that older adults have different prosocial competencies than the younger college-age subjects used in the situationist experiments. I give an explanation of virtue development, which concludes with the claim that older adults are an overlooked resource to be used in formal ethics mentoring programs. I also present the findings from a study I conducted with business ethics professionals, which provided information that I used to formulate the recommendations for the complement model.