The importance of morals and moral competence has always been acknowledged. This article attempts to study the moral judgment competence among the students of a university. The results of this study partly confirm and partly contrast with the literature. While the presence of a course in ethics does not seem to make much difference to moral judgment competence, gender seems to have a strong impact. One of the earlier assumptions of cultural differences as a reason for different moral judgment competence has also been tested and identified to be operational. Overall, this article reviews the moral judgment competence and presents an empirical study of the same among Indian students.

Darwin defined a moral being as “one who is capable of comparing his past and future actions or motives, and of approving or disapproving them” (Barrett and Freeman, 1988). He also rated the moral competence as higher than any other intellectual faculty. Kohlberg (1964) extended the definition to describe a morally competent person as “one who has the capacity to make decisions and judgments which are moral (i.e., based on one’s internal principles), and to act in accordance with such judgments.” Oscar Arias, Former president of Costa Rica, Winner of 1987 Nobel Peace Prize, said that “in the 21st century, survival will be a more complicated and precarious question than ever before, and the ethics required of us must be correspondingly sophisticated” (Kiddler and Shiela, 2004). There was, there is, and there will always be an acknowledgment of the value of morals as an integral part of the social systems.

Strengthening its moral competence is thus one of the top priorities of the contemporary society. There are several entry points offered by the current sociological systems where there is a possibility to educate people on what is moral competence and how it can be developed. Two significant entry points would be the industrial organizations and academic institutions. Industrial organizations, as progressors of society, often try to build moral competence by bringing in a code-of-ethics that could guide the behavior and decision-making of employees at all levels. While that is one side of the story, this phenomenon inherently assumes that employees already have the willingness and the necessary competence to follow and use the codeof- ethics. Corporate governance could perhaps be a more inclusive word here for the industrial organizations. On the other hand, academic institutions, as building blocks of the society, teach and train the younger generations to mold them not only to be more productive, but also to be more morally competent.

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