Moral development in business education – social conditions influencing moral judgement competence

Abstract

Workplace relations like any social relation first and foremost have a moral dimension. Thus, if vocational education sees one of its major goals in helping apprentices to deal with moral issues, one of the core objectives in vocational education is the support of the apprentice’s development of moral judgement competence. Since Lawrence Kohlberg has provided his cognitive-developmental approach we know a lot about moral development. But we know little about the influence of social environment on moral cognitive structures. With this paper the author intends to explore questions concerned with the developmental conditions of moral judgement within apprenticeship. To do so, the paper firstly provides a theoretical approach on certain social conditions for moral development; secondly gives some empirical evidence for this approach concerning data raised in context of a longitudinal study in Germany; and thirdly suggests some ideas for using this approach within the vocational education system.

Keywords:

• VET and development
• learning theory
• workplace learning
• vocational education and training
• VET and economic development

Notes

1. In contrast to the occupational and rather functional concepts of competence developed in Anglo-Saxon countries (Hyland 1992, 142–143; Deißinger, Heine, and Ott 2011, 398), this meaning of ‘competence’ is not mechanistically labelled as the measurement of outcomes, but in a much more holistic way (for deeper explanation see Section 2.1 and Note 5).

2. Admittedly it may be short sighted to find the only reasons for the financial crisis in personal failures of particular individuals, but particularly systematic thinking with respect to a sociocentric or even universalistic perspective instead of egocentric thinking (and acting) might at least have been helpful to avoid this crisis.

3. This ‘educational approach’ concerning personal development instead of mechanistically training skills is supported and, moreover, legally obliged by § 14 in the German Vocational Education Act (‘Berufsbildungsgesetz’). It points out that training employers have to ensure that the employees’ character is promoted (Bundesregierung 2007, 6).

4. Education here refers to the more or less untranslatable term ‘Bildung’ (Hentig 1999).

5. As a side effect this specific understanding of ‘competence’ leads to remarkable differences between the German and the European interpretation of the European Qualification Framework (EQF): while the basic structure of the EQF consists of eight levels and three competence dimensions, namely knowledge, skills and competence, ‘the German framework has now been presented with four competence dimensions (technical competence, methodical competence, social competence, personal competence)’ (Deißinger, Heine, and Ott 2011, 399). Especially social competence, which means the willingness and ability to live and to form social relationships, to realise and to understand social affections and tensions and to argue with other individuals rational and responsible, as noted in the German framework curricula for vocational education (cf. e.g. Kultusministerkonferenz 2002, 4), elucidates an understanding of competence in the context of the German VET system, which goes beyond skill certification, demonstrating ‘competence in the performance of work tasks, and that alone’ (Ryan 2001, 136–137).

6. As an example for this may serve the vocational grammar school, which leads to both, a vocational qualification according to federal state law and ‘Abitur’ as a degree leading to university (cf. Deißinger, Heine, and Ott 2011, 403).

7. This is derived from the criterion of universalisability, because an individual can only claim his judgement to be universalisable if he or she can state that his or her reasons is based on principles (Kohlberg, Levine, and Hewer 1983; Bienengräber 2000, 2002).

8. Because a moral judgment is made in order to find a just solution, there must necessarily be some principles to decide whether something is just or not.

9. This does not necessarily mean a verbalised communication.

10. To be strictly accurate, the level of moral judgement competence is determined by the corresponding developmental status of the single structural elements. This means that the development of moral judgement competence as a whole happens through the development of the single structural components.

11. This means that, e.g. in the Heinz-Dilemma, which is one of the standard vignettes Kohlberg used to measure the stage of moral judgement competence (Oser and Althof 1997), the pharmacist’s fundamental right of ownership is topped by Heinz’ wife’s basic right to health and life. Without the competence of tolerating ambiguities, a moral judgment like this would not be possible (Spielthenner 1996).

12. In fact, in the Kohlbergian tradition there have been proposed two ways of direct educational cognitive stimulation, the so-called ‘+1-hypothesis’ (Blatt and Kohlberg 1975), and the strategy of confronting the individual with counter arguments at the same stage as his or her own reasoning (Walker 1986; Beck et al. 2002). While these approaches are not taken into further consideration in this paper, a third approach will be focused on which suggests an indirect, sociological way of moral development by identifying a set of social conditions influencing the above-mentioned components of moral judgement competence (Lempert 1994, 2006; Bienengräber 2001, 2002).

13. These four conditions are those according to the Bienengräber-approach. Lempert (1993), by derogation from this, additionally names cooperation and scope of action.

14. This refers to the distinction between interests, norms or even values as possible categories of different orientations.

15. For the more detailed allocation of the social conditions to the structural components see Lempert (1993) and Bienengräber (2000, 2001, 2002).

16. Stage 4, the ‘social system morality’ (Colby and Kohlberg 1987a) is characterised by the orientation at norms, which supersedes the orientation at personal interests.

17. This may lead to the question if moral development is following some universal structure (like Kohlberg has assumed [Colby and Kohlberg 1987a, 7–8]) or whether there are some kinds of ‘moral domains’ (like ‘vocational morals’ in general [James 2010] or like economic business morals in particular [Beck 2007]. Though this question is of great importance for moral education, it shall not be discussed in this paper. For deeper concerns of this question see e.g. Beck [1996] and Kornmilch-Bienengräber [2007]).

18. This, in fact, should not be necessary in vocational schools, mentioned above as a social environment of socialisation, because usually apprentices are at an age in which the preconventional level is overcome.

19. For example, an individual on stage 1, who already knows about interests, might develop progressively by learning the principle of mutual exchange, which can be used so solve conflicts between two or more interests.

20. With this restriction, Table 3, like Table 2, only shows an excerpt of the complete approach. Whereas Table 2 was picking out perceptive competence as one of four developmental conditions, Table 3 only illuminates the development from stage 1 onto stage 2.

21. Some of these assumptions, namely those referring to Lempert, have already been tested in some qualitative studies (Lempert 1988; Lempert and Corsten 1996, 1997 and are considered to be well confirmed.

22. According to Lempert (1993, 3) and Bienengräber (2002, 316), developmental conditions are estimated to last at least two years to unfold their influence.

23. For the explanation of ‘positive’ in this context see Note 29.

24. This is not a random sampling in the strict sense. But this sample of convenience meets the criteria of a random sample for a theoretical population of inference (Bortz and Döring 2006, 401), as there are no factually logical deliberations for the assumption that the moral judgement data collected are different from the moral judgement data of apprentices from other schools – first and foremost according to the postulated universalism of processes of moral development (Kohlberg, Levine, and Hewer 1983).

25. The first dilemma concentrates on a within-company social conflict: Mr Holm, an employee of an insurance company, is asked by his superior, Mr Olten, to forge the sales report in order to raise the amount of commission. The superior needs the money urgently to master private short-term financial problems. The second dilemma concerns an external conflict between company and client: Mr Weber, an employee of an insurance company, is asked by a widow called Mrs Danz to prompt the payment of her late husband’s life insurance benefits. However, by chance Weber has got information that Mr Danz, the deceased husband, had already been seriously ill when he signed the contract without mentioning a special risk. Should Weber retain the information and trigger payment, or should he pass the information on and refuse payment?

26. Questions concerning regard were e.g. ‘Do you think in your company you are accepted as a whole person by your trainer and not only because you are doing your job well?’

27. The data were recorded according to the Lempert approach (see Note 8) which differs from the Bienengräber approach not only by its larger number of developmental conditions but by the lower precision with which they are modelled theoretically. Whereas, according to Lempert, e.g. regard is only divided into the manners granted or not granted as a role occupant or as a unique person (Beck et al. 2002, 95), Bienengräber distinguishes more accurately, as shown in Table 3.

28. Negative effect in this context means that the developmental condition is shaped in a ‘negative’ way (for regard it is ‘not granted’, for communication it is ‘restricted’, for social conflicts it is ‘hidden’ and for responsibility it is ‘inadequate’.

29. This can be supported by a single case study which was performed on the same data but could not be reported here for reasons of space. The results are published by Bienengräber (2002). Concerning this study, no case could be found where progressive development had taken place while regard was obstructive.

30. For communications skills, this interrelation between the individual’s development and the perception of a social climate is shown by (Kastenmüller et al. 2012).