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Journal of Business Ethics

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16-09-2021 | Review Paper

Vignette Themes and Moral Reasoning in Business Contexts: The Case for the Defining Issues Test

Published in: Journal of Business Ethics | Issue 4/2022

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Abstract

Some researchers interested in assessing moral reasoning among business practitioners or students have developed their own vignettes or scenarios set in business contexts, based on assumptions that the situations presented in the often-used Defining Issues Test (DIT) will somehow be inappropriate for these specific types of respondents. This paper is the first to examine in depth both the actual details contained in these business-oriented scenarios and empirical findings emerging from them. Among this paper’s conclusions are: (1) assumptions underpinning the presumed superiority of business-oriented vignettes have yet to be tested; (2) the DIT possesses considerable advantages unavailable in alternative measures; (3) many business-oriented scenarios have underlying Dilemma themes that seem inherently ambiguous and thus of questionable relevance for assessing moral reasoning; (4) these scenarios have no obvious equivalent in the DIT and thus cannot definitively be placed under the umbrella of the latter’s demonstrated construct validity; and (5) meaningful empirical findings have not clearly emerged from investigations using business-oriented vignettes. In light of these conclusions, we recommend that investigators interested in moral reasoning advance knowledge in a coherent and unified way by using the DIT that seems entirely appropriate for use among respondents with business experience or training. Although alternative measures may have value for assessing ethical judgments, evidence of their validity as a measure of moral reasoning is lacking.

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Alternative measures of moral reasoning relevant to non-business and non-management settings have also been created, but are beyond the scope of this paper.

Some criticisms of the DIT apply equally to alternative measures employing a similar format; for example, the use of recognition data rather than verbal production data. However, apparent connections between DIT scores and political ideology represent a challenge to validity unique to the DIT, with some accounting researchers contending that the DIT primarily measures liberal political belief (Bailey et al., 2010, p.17). Of note is that the DIT does not assess such beliefs directly, and DIT N2 scores have emerged as orthogonal to a measure of political conservatism-liberalism (Crowson et al., 2007). Rest and colleagues (1999, Chapter 4) also devote considerable attention to addressing and resolving various criticisms of DIT research.

Detailed discussions of moral reasoning levels and stages are available in numerous published reports and standard textbooks, and thus no additional exposition seems required.

Although weak relationships between moral reasoning scores and various ethical orientations cast doubt upon claims of construct validity in the DIT, such relationships may often be attributable to nothing more than researcher use of a suboptimal moral reasoning index in that context (see Mudrack & Mason, 2019).

Doyle and colleagues (2009, p.43) extolled the potential value of U scores in that these can provide “useful... insight” but were silent on the fact that such a complex index cannot be calculated in their own, or any other, business-oriented moral reasoning measure.

When presented with Shafer’s (2002) vignette and provided with an opportunity to evaluate the behavior of both protagonists, respondents indicated that the supervisor was far more unethical than was the accountant (Mudrack and Mason, 2013a, p.642). Moreover, the subordinate accountant was seen as far less unethical than the same accountant in Shafer’s research, in which respondents were asked only to evaluate the ethics of the subordinate. The specific questions asked of respondents appear to play a decisive role in determining their reactions, with the supervisor’s contribution to the sequence of events seemingly largely unnoticed unless respondents are asked directly about this.

The negative comments in Alice’s letter could reduce sales of a product offered by the accounting firm. Alice’s boss is evaluated at least partly based on these. Now that Bob has made Cora’s management fully aware of a possible need to make a separate disclosure of the management fee at issue, they now have a choice as to whether “to protect the rights of minority shareholders” (Thorne, 2000, p.165) and possibly forego tax savings or else continue to hide the management fee in the context of financial statements and thus hopefully maintain such savings. Cora’s management are evaluated at least partly (if not exclusively) on their firm’s bottom line. Moreover, if Cora’s managers had done their job of protecting shareholder rights in the subsidiary company, then the outside auditor would not have been placed in the uncomfortable position of disagreeing with a client that provides the auditing firm with income.

Although Bob could attempt to force the hand of Cora’s management by ‘blowing the whistle’ on Cora’s practices to external authority or otherwise publicizing the charging of the exorbitant fee, such activities that would likely draw the ire of Cora’s management and perhaps also the other partners in Bob’s own firm are personally risky to Bob’s career prospects.

Thorne’s (2000, p.144) respondents were sometimes asked to approach the situation as if they were “a member of a professional disciplinary committee” in an effort to assess “prescriptive reasoning.” In a real situation, such committee members would no doubt find the behavior of Alice’s boss to be unusually germane. Prescriptive reasoning, moreover, involves normative considerations of what ideally “should be done” in a situation (p.141), with respondents, as mentioned, both asked to assume a particular role and specifically instructed to offer an ideal response of the accountant. Such requirements have no parallel in the DIT in which respondents are explicitly reminded that “there are no ‘right’ answers” and that the objective is to find out “what [they] think about several problem stories” (Rest, 1979, p.289) rather than what they might think when occupying a different role or “how a subject perceives others’ moral thinking” (Rest, p.81; emphasis in original). This incomplete overlap between Thorne’s instrument and the DIT casts doubt about the extent to which the former can fairly be said to assess moral reasoning, at least as it pertains to prescriptive recommendations.

The exorbitant management fee imposed upon the subsidiary company by Cora’s management was undertaken “several years ago upon the advice of his [Bob] own firm’s tax department” (Thorne, 2000, p.164). If Bob “did not insist that the management fee be disclosed” (Point 2) this means that no undue attention would be drawn to the existence of this fee, and Bob would have essentially acquiesced to the tax department’s recommended approach. As a result, the ability of Cora’s management to continue charging the fee as per the advice of the tax department would not be threatened. As it cannot possibly be unfair “to the tax department” (Point 2) if Bob were to behave in a way that allowed the client to continue being able to follow the tax department’s advice, the logic behind asking for respondent reactions to this item is not readily apparent. This item had perhaps been intended as an example of a “nonsense” item (Thorne, 2000, p.145), specifically designed to be “meaningless but complex-sounding” or “pretentious-sounding” (Rest, 1979, p.91) in order to weed out respondents who seem not to be endorsing items based on their actual meaning. This seems unlikely, however, because Point 2 is devoid of any “pretentious” or unduly complex words or phrases that superficially seem lofty (“Would it be fair to the tax department if Bob did not insist that the management fee be disclosed”), unlike Item 6 which reads in part “What is the quintessence of an audit apart from displacement.”.

Any lack of awareness on the part of senior management also implies that at least one of the considerations relevant to this scenario may not actually make sense; that is, “Not contradicting her boss this time may mean a more rapid advancement for Evelyn in the company” (Weber and McGivern, 2010, p.163). If Evelyn did not contradict her boss she would essentially be saying nothing, and the boss would have no way of knowing what an accurate report that was never written would have concluded. Employees rarely get promoted simply by remaining silent about matters of which their boss is unaware.

For example, Reidenbach and Robin’s (1990) overeager salesperson withholds needed information (ethically questionable) from potential customers (victims; highly salient because they were mentioned in the vignette itself) and personally benefits by increasing the likelihood of sales which can result in higher commissions or bonuses and enhanced performance evaluations (self-interest). Shafer’s (2002) accountant was ordered to backdate sales invoices (ethically questionable) which can deceive anyone relying on the accuracy of financial statements (victims; not salient because they received no mention in the vignette as written). Although the protagonist does not benefit directly by complying, it definitely behoves him not to risk losing his job (self-interest).

Thorne (2000) created two versions of the accounting vignettes used, and reported correlations are derived from the “deliberative” version; that is, perceptions of how the protagonist would “realistically respond” to the situation described (p.144). In the context of “prescriptive” versions designed to assess opinions about how the protagonist “ideally, ought to respond” (p.144), with respondents asked to imagine themselves as a member of a professional disciplinary committee, relevant correlations with DIT P scores were 0.65 among students (Table 1) and 0.36 among practitioners (Table 3). As the DIT has no connection with normative beliefs about what “should” be done, connections with scores derived from “prescriptive modes” are inadequate evidence for suggesting that any alternative measure assesses the same moral reasoning construct derived from the DIT (see also Note 9). In the context of available results, that also include several examples of authors that did not provide the magnitude of relationships between DIT scores and scores on an alternative business-oriented measure when both had been administered to the same respondents (Doyle et al., 2013; Thorne and Hartwick, 2001; Thorne et al., 2003, 2004), the reported correlation of 0.65 seems anomalous.

P scores are relevant only to respondent rankings of the importance of various considerations (Rest, 1979). As Weber and Elm (2018, p.430) referred only to ratings in their Methodology section (see also Weber, 2018, p.1453), labelling the values emerging from this process as “P scores” was a misnomer.

Some investigations have reported relatively strong positive relationships between DIT P scores and respondent age (e.g., r = 0.40, Olsen, 1997; r = 0.33, Su et al., 2003).

An auditor named “John” became aware of something about “Client A” that would be of great interest to “Client B” (Thorne, 2000). If revealed, B would benefit by learning the information while A’s confidentiality would be violated. However, not revealing the information would maintain confidentiality for A while depriving B of something of potential value. Neither option benefits John directly. See Mudrack and Mason (2013a) for additional discussion of this Runaway Trolley theme that boils down to a choice between which party to help and which to harm. Thorne’s victimless vignette involved a staff auditor named “Bill” that was asked to provide non-audit related assistance to a client company that involved recommending a candidate for a position.

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Title: Vignette Themes and Moral Reasoning in Business Contexts: The Case for the Defining Issues Test
Publication date: 16-09-2021
Published in: Journal of Business Ethics / Issue 4/2022
Print ISSN: 0167-4544
Electronic ISSN: 1573-0697
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-021-04944-8

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