Plan for Moral and Ethical Decision-Making Program of Research

摘要

DRDC Toronto has an ongoing commitment to investigating moral and ethical decision-making (MEDM) in Canadian Forces (CF) operations. Several projects had been previously funded through the Technology Investment Fund (TIF) awarded to the research team from the Command Effectiveness and Behaviour (CEB) section. This work has recently been extended into a 3-year Applied Research Program to further explore MEDM in operational contexts. This report proposes research ideas that could be explored in the context of this 3-year Applied Research Program (ARP). This research agenda is driven by two compatible motives: (1) to remain systematic and theory oriented and (2) to contribute to the CF's operational readiness in the domain of MEDM. The work on this research plan began with brainstorming a wide range of topics relevant to moral and ethical decision-making. Many of these topics derived from previous research exploring MEDM (Thomson, Adams, & Sartori, 2005; Thomson, Adams, & Sartori, 2006a; Thomson & Adams, 2007) and from focus group discussions with the DRDC Toronto MEDM Team. These research areas included person-based factors, team factors, contextual factors, situational factors, judgement and decision- making, emotion, and moral motivation and behaviour. Based on this initial mapping of the target domain, these broad areas were then narrowed to several focal areas, based on the following criteria: 1) their ability to contribute to the operational effectiveness of Canadian Forces; 2) their ability to contribute to the broader MEDM literature, and 3) on the skills and interests of the research team. Proposed focal areas include self-identity (person-based factor), team diversity (team factor), the role of collaborative processing (judgement and decision making), and the process of moral disengagement (moral motivation and behaviour).