Ethical leadership and ethical decision making: A meta-analysis of research related to ethics education

Ethical leadership and ethical decision making in organizations have been the focus of many concerns related to ethics, especially in light of high-profile corporate scandals. The importance of educational preparation for ethical leadership has been highlighted in the general literature and the library and information science literature. This article is based on a meta-analysis of research related to ethics education in business. The meta-analysis considers issues of research design, methodologies used, populations studied and other data analyzed, the nature of the researchers, and the dissemination of the research in the journal literature. It is intended to inform the study of ethics and ethics education in general and in other professional disciplines, such as library and information science. The research results indicate the limited number of research methodologies that have been used in the study of ethics education. Past research has largely focused on undergraduates, particularly in relation to the impact of ethics curricula on their learning/cognitive development and on measures of perceptions and changes in perceptions of ethical issues. (c) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.