Diversity of Ethical Decision-Making Frames and Departmental Differences. A Structural Topic Model Analysis of Open-Ended Responses

Abstract

Ethical decision-making research has accumulated extensive findings on the factors that shape judgments and choices, but less attention has been paid to how people frame and jutify their responses to the same ethical dilemma in their own words. This study analyzes open-ended responses from Japanese university students to a vignette involving corporate mis- conduct in order to examine the diversity of ethical decision-making frames. Using a Structural Topic Model (STM), we extracted latent topics from the responses and estimated differences in topic prevalence by department and role. The analysis identified 13 topics, revealing notable differences between business and engineering students in the frames they emphasized, whereas no clear differences were found between the accountant and director conditions. These findings extend ethical decision-making research by showing that group differences may appear not only in choices themselves but also in the interpretive frames and justifications underlying those choices.