A study of ethical responses to contemporary cultural influences in the workplace: In particular the construction industry in Queensland with implications for vocational education and training

The study explored ways to intervene in Vocational Education and Training (VET) for enhancing ethical action of workers in the Building and Construction Industry in Queensland It was undertaken through a hermeneutic or interpretive design in which the data were grounded in the ethical issues from events experienced by 14 participants who identified with various sectors of the industry and its particular culture. The participants took part in unstructured interviews and their individual recorded transcripts were analysed through a conceptual framework highlighting five concerns: the events, the ethical actions, the influences of prior learning, the educational interventions and the cultural context. A three-stage analysis process progressively identified the key issues in terms of the conceptual framework From the analysis emerged 23 ethical qualities distributed across Thur variable dimensions of ethical action, each with a bipolar ethical extremes: the social dimension of altruism to egoism, the temporal dimension of actions to consequences, the spatial dimension of situationalism to universalism and the existential dimension of personal to others. From these dimensions was drawn an understanding of the contemporary cultural context as it unfolded within the ethical events and the particular application to ethics portrayed by the qualities. Early upbringing emerged as the most influential factor in learning of ethical sensitivities Other learning experiences, especially schooling, work-experience, other social contexts and ungrounded self-attribution also contributed to the development of ethical knowledge and skill. The study related these influential factors to the four variable dimensions of ethical action That process revealed an association of different ethical emphases and different enviromnents, for example, an emphasis on ethical action and virtues was strongly associated with upbringing as an influential factor and an emphasis on ethical consequences and situationalism was strongly associated with learning on the job. Leading on fiom these categories and associations is the study's main focus on findings pertaining to the educational interventions. These were drawn out of the data and the implications of the foregoing findings A model was created to depict the indicated interventions and their relationship with the field of VET in four categories: educational imperatives, the desired educational outcomes, the educational engagements and the industry context. Eifteen principles of ethical learning in VET were here identified: (a) three principles identif~iing educational imperatives (those of vocational, early intervention and formal intervention); (b) six principles identif~ting desired educational outcomes (of specialised knowledge, self-preservation, situatedness, colleagiality, negotiation and diversity); (c) four principles recommending educational engagements (of experiential learning, individuality, feedback and modelling); (d) and two principles related to the industry context (normalisation and image) It was concluded from the study that the industry exemplifies a situationalist ethic It was argued finally that ethics learning might best be offered through a contextually reflexive and flexibly provided VET environment - that ethics can be taught to workers and that it can be done effectively within the workplace.