Learning Ethics at Work through Play: An Experimental Study on Role-Playing Game

Abstract

As ethics increasingly permeates organizational practice, culture and decision-making, the demand for ethics literacy training that goes beyond compliance and rule adherence continues to grow. Traditional corporate ethics programs often emphasize avoiding reputational risks and adhering to internal policies, overlooking the subtle, everyday interpersonal dilemmas employees face in decisions about, for example, employees’ recognition, promotion, or accountability. These programs also lack interactivity and emotional engagement, limiting the development of reflective and autonomous moral reasoning. This study investigates gamification as an innovative approach with the potential to address the aforementioned challenges and enhance ethics literacy within organizational settings. A business educational game was developed, incorporating five realistic workplace dilemmas and focusing on role-playing as a key gamification feature for ethics literacy. Two mechanisms, role switching and reflective perspective shifting, are experimentally tested in a 2 (changing roles: yes vs. no) × 2 (shift of perspective: self-immersed vs. self-distanced) between-subjects online experiment involving approximately 200 employees. We expect to obtain empirical evidence on how these mechanisms influence engagement, learning strategies and ethics learning outcomes. Theoretically, the research integrates perspectives from gamification, moral development, business management, and educational psychology; practically, it provides design principles and a scalable ethics training tool applicable in both corporate and academic environments.