Improving Organizational Responses to Sexual Harassment Using the Giving Voice to Values Approach

Despite significant expenditures on organizational responses to sexual harassment, it remains a persistent challenge. We argue that the legal environment has unduly and negatively influenced the ways in which organizations address the problem of sexual harassment and offer an alternative. Giving Voice to Values (GVV) is an action-oriented approach to business ethics education that can be used to improve the ways in which organizations address the phenomenon of sexual harassment (SH). Because of its focus on action and expressing personal values, GVV can be used to prepare targets, observers, and managers to intervene in instances where they may encounter this behavior at work. The original contribution of this article is a detailed application of GVV to the unique organizational issue of SH training. Ways of developing dialogue in response to sexual behavior at work are presented and implications of the GVV approach are discussed.