Giving Voice To Values Research Articles

Developing Dynamic Moral Capacities in Business Ethics Education: Extending the Giving Voice to Values (GVV) Framework

Business ethics education aims to enable students to become conscious of their own values and develop the capacity to voice such values and make value-consistent decisions. However, a student’s personal values and the capacity to act on them tend to change after graduation. In this study, we discuss how moral learning is different in real work life compared to a business school setting, and we explain why graduates may downplay or abandon their values after graduation. We launch the concept of dynamic moral capacity (DMC), defined as the metacognitive routines for processing moral decision outcomes, motivated by humility goals. We suggest that future courses in business ethics develop DMC to avoid value drift and negative moral learning over time after graduation. Finally, we discuss how DMC can be included in the instructional framework of giving voice to values and thus increase its impact on moral learning after graduation.

Giving Voice to Values Ethics Education Legal Educators Seminar delivered by Dr Liz Curran On-line for Association of Law Teachers UK, Presentation Slides

Giving Voice to Values (GVV) is basically a tool kit for people to feel empowered to have difficult conversations when their ethics, values, or something wrong is being urged. This is very pertinent for any profession (e.g. lawyers nurses) when a course of action might risk error, breach of ethics and responsibilities, regulations or patient/client harm. My colleague at ANU, Viv Holmes, was one of the first to adapt Mary Gentile (the pioneering architect of GVV – see resources section) into a legal context. I, Viv, Anneka Ferguson and Pamela Taylor- Barnett have consistently taught it in the Graduate Diploma of Legal Practice using Gentile’s tools for seven years at ANU. I have, in recent years also been using it in the professional development of lawyers and more recently for nurses and nursing students.This seminar was for legal educators across the UK. It explains Giving Voice to Values and why it helps to do it? It makes the connection between it and good, safe practice and mental well being and improved organizational responses. It discusses the Approach & Methodology, the Tools and some outcomes. It also flags some higher education and professional development training work I have been doing where I have been adapting GVV in different disciplines and contexts and my desire to evaluate it to build an empirical foundation for it.

Measuring the value of integrating GVV into a standalone accounting ethics course

This paper empirically assesses the efficacy of the Giving Voice to Values (GVV) curricular offering. GVV training purports to increase both a person’s confidence level in dealing with ethical issues and his or her likelihood to try to resolve and actually report an ethical issue when encountered. While the GVV curriculum has been piloted in nearly 1000 schools, companies, and other organizations on all seven continents, very little empirical research has been conducted to assess its efficacy, especially in accounting education. We integrated the GVV offering utilizing an ethical decision-making framework developed by Mintz and Morris (2014), based on Rest (1986) model of ethical action, into a semester-long accounting ethics class. We extend the existing literature in the field by developing an important theoretical link between Rest (1986) four-stage model of moral action and GVV. When using ANOVA to analyze the treatment and control groups separately, we find significant increases in all four stages of Rest’s model for the treatment group. When applying multivariate analysis to the incremental change between the treatment and the control groups, we find significant increases in both students’ confidence and their intent to confront ethical issues. Additionally, we find similar increases in students’ ethical sensitivity (ability to recognize ethical issues), ethical judgment (determining the best course of action), and their intent to try to resolve and report them between our treatment and control groups for certain vignettes. Student comments suggest the GVV material to be more enjoyable, and faculty believe the depth of the analysis utilizing GVV is better. Faculty also suggest that student engagement is higher with GVV. Our findings suggest that integrating GVV into the curriculum of an accounting ethics course is of value and worth pursuing. Given the ease with which the offering can be implemented, our study may encourage accounting academics to include GVV coverage in other accounting courses as well.

Ma Jun and the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (A)

This case is part of the Giving Voice to Values (GVV) curriculum. To see other material in the GVV curriculum, please visit http://store.darden.virginia.edu/giving-voice-to-values. After joining an international environmental consultancy firm, Ma Jun, a journalist in the People's Republic of China, was increasingly interested in environmental issues. Wanting to do more than report on these issues, he started to consider founding a nongovernmental organization (NGO) focusing on environmental protection and relying on public participation to keep companies accountable. This idea became the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE). In the course of establishing the IPE, Ma encountered so many crucial problems and challenges that he wondered if he could still go on, and how he could do so effectively. Excerpt UVA-OB-1303 Giving Voice to Values Mar. 3, 2020 Ma Jun and the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (A) In June 2005, Ma Jun ended a one-year study at Yale University and returned to China. At that time he faced a major choice. Given the increasingly prominent problems of environmental pollution and ecological deterioration in China, what could he do to more effectively promote China's environmental and ecological protection? Was founding a nongovernmental organization (NGO) the best choice? How could an NGO interact with the government and enterprises in order to promote and improve China's environmental protection more effectively? Ma needed to think carefully and prudently. Ten Years in the Newspaper Industry . . .

Balance-Statement Reporting at Premium Capital Funds (A)

This case is part of the Giving Voice to Values (GVV) curriculum. To see other material in the GVV curriculum, please visit http://store.darden.virginia.edu/giving-voice-to-values. In 2009, Ricardo Martinez, management assistant at Premium Capital Investment Advisors (PCIA), was asked to fabricate some of the information to be included in the monthly account balance statements addressed to five shareholders in Premium Capital Funds (Premium), a piece within a complex network of firms founded by Interbolsa, the largest brokerage firm in Colombia. The request, Martinez had been told by his supervisor, came from the top. Martinez found himself at a crossroads: however outrageous the order was, refusing to obey it would certainly have negative consequences for his immediate future and medium-term career. Reporting the issue to the authorities appeared as though it would be totally useless—and yet, obeying was out of question. What, then, could he do to try to stop this falsification from happening? Excerpt UVA-OB-1306 Giving Voice to Values Rev. Mar. 23, 2020 Balance-Statement Reporting at Premium Capital Funds (A) On the afternoon of May 6, 2009, Ricardo Martinez walked out of Rachid Maluf's office. Maluf was managing director of Premium Capital Investment Advisors (PCIA), and Martinez was one of his most trusted subordinates. Martinez had just been asked to fabricate some of the information to be included in the monthly account balance statements addressed to five Premium Capital Funds (Premium) shareholders. The request, Martinez had been told, came from the top. Premium was an investment fund incorporated in Curacaoi in 2000 and run primarily from Colombia. It was a piece within a complex network of firms founded by Interbolsa's main shareholders. By 2009, Interbolsa was the largest brokerage firm in Colombia. By then, the fund had about 900 shareholders, and was allowed to engage in a wide variety of security-investment and trading activities, including but not limited to publicly traded equity, debt of emerging-markets companies, unlisted securities, and private placements investments, with the objective of seeking maximum capital appreciation and keeping low volatilities. . . .

The Misallocation Dilemma

Accounting students experience an ethical dilemma through the lens of a recently degreed non-certified accountant working in his Uncle’s construction company where nepotism is a factor. Students identify an ethical dilemma, critically analyze alternative courses of action and recommend a course of action. This case is unlike most ethics teaching cases where the accountant is not by a professional code of ethical conduct such as the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants’ (AICPA) Code of Professional Conduct (AICPA, 2018). Students are exposed to the Giving Voice to Values (GVV) framework (Gentile, 2012) as an alternative to address an ethical dilemma

Assessing the Impact of the Giving Voice to Values Program in Accounting Ethics Education

This paper assesses the impact of the Giving Voice to Values (GVV) program. The GVV program takes a very different approach to ethics education and shifts the focus from the traditional why actions are unethical to how one can effectively resolve ethical conflict. The GVV program encourages reflection on potential actions and reactions through practice with voicing one’s values. We chose to implement this program in an advanced financial accounting course and encouraged our students to voice their values through scripted role-plays. After implementing this program and empirically assessing the impact of the ethics intervention, we find that students are more likely to speak up and confront unethical actions by voicing their values to internal management, the CFO, and company hotlines after completing the module. While not a primary focus of the study, the intervention also appears to have increased the students’ ability to recognize and increase their sensitivity to ethical issues.

Giving Voice To Values: A global partnership with UNGC PRME to transform management education

Giving Voice To Values (GVV), an innovative approach to values-driven leadership development, was initiated at almost the same time as the launch of the United Nations Global Compact's Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME). In 2007 at the Global Compact Leaders Summit, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon launched PRME with the goal of aligning management education with the broader goals of the Global Compact and its commitment to values and corporate responsibility.: Similarly, as GVV was initiated, also a decade ago, with support from The Aspen Institute Business & Society Program (also the Incubator for the work) and Yale School of Management, its purpose was to transform the pedagogy and curriculum for values-driven leadership and business ethics around the globe. It is fitting therefore that GVV and the UNGC PRME have found many ways to partner in this work. The following pages outline: the conceptual foundations for Giving Voice To Values; the impact it is having in business education (and beyond); a number of formative collaborations with PRME over the past decade; and finally opportunities for future collaboration in the service of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

To Be, or Not to Be, That's the Question: Vijay's Dilemma (a)

This case is part of the Giving Voice to Values (GVV) curriculum. To see other material in the GVV curriculum, please visit http://store.darden.virginia.edu/giving-voice-to-values.The case discusses how power can be distributed unevenly in an organization and how power can be used by individuals to promote their own self-interests. It highlights how the different influencing tactics can be used by individuals to give voice to what they know is correct. Excerpt UVA-OB-1180 Giving Voice to Values Rev. Jan. 12, 2017 To Be, or Not to Be, That's the Question: Vijay's Dilemma (A), As Vijay held the improved version of The T Company Code of Conduct on the morning of March 3, 2008, he breathed a huge sigh of relief. This was the moment when he finally felt vindicated. He turned to the page that was titled “Conflict of Interest” and felt a sense of satisfaction. He then took a look at the medal of appreciation on his desk from the felicitation ceremony held earlier in the day and his thoughts sailed back in time. It was the morning of July 13, 2006 when Vijay finally heard the good news. His manager announced that beginning the following month, he was going to be promoted to the role of senior procurement manager (Appendix 1). Vijay had joined the T Company three years prior and had been working as assistant manager in the manufacturing department. He had never failed to deliver and thus had secured an Exceeds Expectations rating in all his appraisal cycles. He had also received the award of “Most Promising Employee” in the company's annual felicitation ceremony that year. . . .

“Doing Bad to Do Good” (a)

This case is part of the Giving Voice to Values (GVV) curriculum. To see other material in the GVV curriculum, please visit http://store.darden.virginia.edu/giving-voice-to-values. A consultant was asked by a state agency to carry out a financial evaluation of a community organization that worked with severely disabled clients and assisted them with their applications for state financial income and medical support. While conducting the evaluation, she learned that in some cases the information provided on the client's application for statutory support was exaggerated in order to secure the highest allotment of funding for the client. Excerpt UVA-OB-1146 Giving Voice to Values Rev. Nov. 15, 2016 “Doing Bad to Do Good” (A), Caroline ran a small consultancy firm that specialized in offering business support services to local community organizations and social enterprises. Caroline grew up in the local community where she worked and members of her extended family still lived there. Her first job was as a community economic development worker, facilitating the development of social enterprises within the community. Over the past 20 years, Caroline had worked with (and for) many community and state organizations and had a reputation as a conscientious, trustworthy, and ethical consultant. Even though the community organizations or social enterprises were Caroline's direct clients in her consultancy business, often the funding for the work came from program-based local state funding agencies or corporate donors. In addition to writing business plans and providing financial accounts and marketing services, Caroline was often asked to provide program evaluation services. For this work, Caroline was hired by the community organization (under contract) to carry out an evaluation of that organization's programs. Her fee, however, was arranged and paid directly by the state agency in order to facilitate transparency. . . .

A Social Cooperative Needs Saving: When Sales are Based on Values Sharing (a)

In March 2014, Marco and Nicola were anxious. They were preparing for a meeting that would be vital to the future of Paolo Babini, a social cooperative that they led, that served the people of Forli, Italy. Due to a 30% cut in Paolo Babini's funding, Marco and Nicola were going to pitch a new project to the cooperative's supervisory board that would help the organization become more financially self-sufficient.This case is part of the Giving Voice to Values (GVV) curriculum. To see other material in the GVV curriculum, please visit http://store.darden.virginia.edu/giving-voice-to-values. Excerpt UVA-OB-1205 Rev. Oct. 26, 2017 A Social Cooperative Needs Saving: When Sales are Based on Values Sharing (A) It was a cloudy day in March 2014 in Forli, Italy. Marco and Nicola were anxious. They were preparing for a meeting that would be vital to the future of Paolo Babini, a social cooperative that they led that served the people of Forli. Due to a 30% cut in Paolo Babini's funding, Marco and Nicola were going to pitch a new project to the cooperative's supervisory board that would help the organization become more financially self-sufficient. Without a new source of revenue, the organization would shrink substantially, meaning that fewer of the people who needed Paolo Babini's services would be able to receive them. Marco and Nicola knew, on the one hand, this could be the last chance to gain economic security for their organization but, on the other hand, that opening a restaurant could be perceived as a profound change in Paolo Babini's operating model and image. And this change could compromise the stakeholders' perception of the value of the organization, and Paolo Babini could lose their support. Although Marco and Nicola had determined that pursuing the new project was the right course of action, they knew that convincing key stakeholders would be challenging. Paolo Babini . . .

Soft Issues in the Software Industry (a)

This case is part of the Giving Voice to Values (GVV) curriculum. To see other material in the GVV curriculum, please visit http://store.darden.virginia.edu/giving-voice-to-values.Rahul had to make an important decision that could affect the career of several people, including his boss. Excerpt UVA-OB-1172 Giving Voice to Values Rev. Dec. 28, 2016 Soft Issues in the Software Industry (A), On the evening of 30 September 2008, Rahul sat in his cubicle at XYZ's Gurgaon office, with his head in his hands. Over the next few hours, he had to make an important decision that could affect the career of several people, including his boss. Just 36 hours ago, his client's main database, which included a record of all transactions on the client's online supply-chain portal, had been critically affected when more than 10 million transactions were deleted. On discovering this, Rahul's team had worked continuously and tirelessly to rectify the mistake with minimum data losses. The whole team had sighed with relief after the problem had been resolved. . . .

Developing Ethical Confidence: The Impact of Action-Oriented Ethics Instruction in an Accounting Curriculum

While there is considerable support for integrating ethics education in accounting curricula, research presents conflicting evidence on how best to incorporate it. A review of accounting ethics scholarship highlights criticisms of the literature, including limited research into actual behavior and a lack of theory. We report the results of a study that is theory based, captures behaviors rather than attitudes, and explores the effect of repeated practice to develop voice efficacy. We examine the impact of two types of ethics instructions. Across four classes in an accounting curriculum, one student cohort participated in traditional ethics instruction, while the other cohort participated in Giving Voice To Values (GVV) instruction. We collected student responses to an ethical challenge and conduct a between-subject analysis. The results reveal consistent unethical behavior in the traditional cohort but not in the GVV cohort, indicating that faculty should consider the use of this pedagogy in accounting ethics education.

Listening for Values

Giving Voice To Values (GVV) is an innovative approach to values-driven leadership development and ethical practice that is being introduced around the world in business practice, business education and beyond. As GVV expands, one of its core concepts — the efficacy of “rehearsal” for values-driven action and voice — is also being used to build the muscle and predilection for skillful “listening” to values issues. This essay describes this experience in several organizations.

Improving Organizational Responses to Sexual Harassment Using the Giving Voice to Values Approach

Despite significant expenditures on organizational responses to sexual harassment, it remains a persistent challenge. We argue that the legal environment has unduly and negatively influenced the ways in which organizations address the problem of sexual harassment and offer an alternative. Giving Voice to Values (GVV) is an action-oriented approach to business ethics education that can be used to improve the ways in which organizations address the phenomenon of sexual harassment (SH). Because of its focus on action and expressing personal values, GVV can be used to prepare targets, observers, and managers to intervene in instances where they may encounter this behavior at work. The original contribution of this article is a detailed application of GVV to the unique organizational issue of SH training. Ways of developing dialogue in response to sexual behavior at work are presented and implications of the GVV approach are discussed.

Giving Voice to Values as a Leverage Point in Business Ethics Education

The Giving Voice to Values (GVV) pedagogy and curriculum is described as an example of a powerful leverage point in the integration of business ethics and values-driven leadership across the business curriculum. GVV is post-decision-making in that it identifies an ethical course of action and asks practitioners to identify (i) who are the parties involved and what’s at stake for them; (ii) what are the main arguments (reasons and rationalizations) to be countered; and (iii) what levers that can be used to influence those who are in disagreement. The internalization of GVV’s constructs allows faculty to comfortably raise and endorse ethics as part of the natural order of business decision-making because the stakes of doing so have been normalized. Methods for introducing and using GVV in undergraduate through MBA courses are given. An illustration is given for economics courses.

Giving Voice to Values: An undergraduate nursing curriculum project

Among the competency standards stipulated by the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Council for graduating students are competencies in moral and ethical decision making and ethics education within professions such as nursing has traditionally focussed on these competencies, on raising ethical awareness and developing skills of analysis and reasoning. However, ethics education in tertiary settings places less emphasis on developing students' capacities to act on their values. This paper explains and explores the adoption of Dr. Mary Gentile's curriculum (the Giving Voice to Values curriculum).which specifically focuses on developing students' capacities to act on their values. The curriculum (Gentile, 2010) assists students and professionals to explore, script and rehearse responses which build upon their capacity to respond in accordance with their own values in complex workplace settings in which they face conflicts of value and belief. The paper firstly examines the theoretical underpinnings of the Giving Voice to Values (GVV) curriculum. It then presents the integration and evaluation phase of a Project inspired by the GVV methodology, using a case study approach within two areas of an undergraduate nursing curriculum. As a pilot project, this initiative has provided signposts to further curriculum development and to research pathways within the UNDA School of Nursing, by highlighting students' uncertainties regarding their own professional values, and their intense struggles to voice their values within health care contexts.

Situating ‘Giving Voice to Values’: A Metatheoretical Evaluation of a New Approach to Business Ethics

The evaluation of new theories and pedagogical approaches to business ethics is an essential task for ethicists. This is true not only for empirical and applied evaluation but also for metatheoretical evaluation. However, while there is increasing interest in the practical utility and empirical testing of ethical theories, there has been little systematic evaluation of how new theories relate to existing ones or what novel conceptual characteristics they might contribute. This paper aims to address this lack by discussing the role of metatheorising in assessing new approaches to ethics. The approach is illustrated through evaluating a new pedagogy and curriculum for ethics education called Giving Voice to Values (GVV). Our method involves identifying a number of metatheoretical lenses from existing reviews of ethical theories and applying these to examine GVV’s conceptual elements. Although GVV has been explicitly presented as a pedagogy and teaching curriculum, we argue that it has the potential to contribute significantly to the development of ethical theory. We discuss the general implications of this metatheoretical method of evaluation for new approaches to business ethics and for GVV and its future development.

Sustaining Voices: Applying Giving Voice to Values to Sustainability Issues

We apply an action-oriented approach to business ethics education, Giving Voice to Values (GVV), to the topic of sustainability. The increasingly problematic impact of unsustainable economic activi ...

Values-Driven Leadership Development: Where We Have Been and Where We Could Go

This essay revisits the premises upon which business ethics education has been based and then “flips” them, in an effort to help transform management education's approach to values-driven leadership development. Previous assumptions about what we teach, who we teach, and how we teach ethics are described, and a summary of how the Giving Voice to Values (GVV) pedagogy/curriculum flips these assumptions is provided. A brief review of the impact to date of this experiment is included, along with reflection on some of the new opportunities and challenges GVV has begun to face as a result of the rapid take-up of this approach around the globe.