Homogeneity of moral judgement? - apprentices solving business conflicts

In an ongoing longitudinal study, which started in 1994, we are examining t he moral development of business apprentices (sensu Kohlberg). The focal po int of this project is a critical analysis of Kohlberg's thesis of homogene ity, according to which people should judge every moral issue from the poin t of view of their "modal" stage (i.e. the most frequently used stage of mo ral reasoning) regardless of any situation-specificity. Empirical data-even Kohlberg's own-however, show that an individual's judgements are usually s pread around her/his modal stage. This is not necessarily due to measuremen t error but may also be interpreted as a situation-specific variation which could be described by the hypothesis of "moral segmentation". In this arti cle we present results on the status of moral development of apprentices in the business context (within different types of situations). Contrary to K ohlberg's theory, our results seem to support the hypothesis of segmentatio n. The data reflect a great amount of intra-individual variation unaccounte d for by the concept of "structured wholeness".