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The Routes of Moral Development and the Impact of Exposure to the Milgram Obedience Study

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Abstract

This article examines how business students route themselves through the process of cognitive moral development (CMD) to arrive at a more autonomous level of CMD when there is an impetus to do so. In this study, two groups were given Rest’s Defining Issues Test; half the test 1 week and half three weeks later. In between, one group viewed a film of Milgram’s obedience study as a stimulus towards a more autonomous level of CMD. The results of the analysis indicate that viewing the Milgram study produced a positive response regarding subjects’ level of autonomous CMD. However, the response was not uniform across the subject pool. Females showed a greater consistent significant positive response to viewing Milgram while male subjects varied their response contingent upon their functional area of study. While subjects’ functional area of study alone made little difference in the results, when taken in conjunction with gender, significant differences were found between groups. Thus, researchers should take care when investigating differences between subjects’ area of study since gender differences may be present even within an apparently homogenous population-like business students.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the assistance of Jack Dunning of Algoma University, Tom Jones of the University of Washington, Chris Hamblin of Simon Fraser University and the two anonymous reviewers.

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  1. Faculty of Business Administration, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC, Canada, V5A 1S6

    Jerry Paul Sheppard

  2. Adler School of Professional Psychology,, 595 Burrard Street, Vancouver, BC, Canada, Ste. 753

    Marnie Young

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  1. Jerry Paul Sheppard
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Correspondence to Jerry Paul Sheppard.

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Marnie Young is currently completing her Masters in Counselling Psychology at the Adler School of Professional Psychology in Vancouver, BC, Canada. This article was developed from Her Honours BA thesis from Laurentian University where she graduated Cum Laude in 2000. She has presented research papers at the Administrative Sciences Association of Canada and the Academy of Management. Her paper presented to the Administrative Sciences Association of Canada in 2000 won Honourable Mention in the Business Education Division.

Jerry Paul Sheppard is an Associate Professor Strategic Management at Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada. His research focuses primarily on organizational decline, turnaround, survival and failure. His PhD dissertation from the University of Washington in 1989 won the Strategic Management Society Best Dissertation Award. He has published Journal articles in the Journal of Management, Long Range Planning and Social Science Research. His most recent work includes Strategic Management: Competitiveness & Globalization, 2nd Canadian Edition, with Hitt, Ireland, Hoskisson, and Rowe.

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Sheppard, J.P., Young, M. The Routes of Moral Development and the Impact of Exposure to the Milgram Obedience Study. J Bus Ethics 75, 315–333 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-006-9255-6

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