Real estate industry is a service industry that accounts for more than financial and insurance industry in terms of gross domestic product and its value creation. Of these, certified realtors have a wide range of influence on the public, considering its number of brokerage firms. Furthermore, current real estate industry is not only limited to simple brokerage, but it also shows opportunities for new leaps by expansion of the range of business such as development, sales, lease management. Recent global trend shows more complexity with development of information technology, financial technologies and the convergence of industrial technologies. As such, real estate industry also has an opportunity to take a leap forward and certified realtors to grow as professional group which has importance of protecting the property rights of the people and contributing to the national economy. However, the evaluation of the public for certified realtors, who usually handle the biggest assets of the public, is also negative. The absence of professional ethics and ethical awareness cannot restore public trust in realtors and the public''s trust in real estate industry.
In this study, a review of vocational ethics of certified realtors in the real estate industry was reviewed, and the questionnaire was measured and evaluated by the MCT analysis method. It also proposes "Dilemma Story Education" as an educational method to enhance the vocational ethics of the certified realtors and to provide practical implications. In addition, it attempts to develop an ethical inspection tool for certified realtors.
The results of the study implicates following. According to MCT analysis, 30.3% of the respondents were rated low moral judgments, 52.7% showed average moral judgment, indicating that 83.0% of the total respondents showed below average moral judgments. Such low level of moral judgment needs to be supplemented by ethical education considering the role of the certified realtors as a representative expert group in real estate industry. In addition, the correlation of moral judgments with gender of the certified realtors was not significant while the positive correlation was found with age of the certified realtors; showing lower moral judgement as the age of the group of the realtors becomes older. Low-educated group had a relatively low moral judgment, while the higher the educational level, the more positive effect (+) was found on moral judgement. Completion of education further than the mandatory education did not imply significant difference in moral judgment. Therefore, it can be concluded that current education of certified realtors does not have a great effect on improving the moral judgment of the certified realtors.
In addition, lower moral judgment was found in the low income group of respondents, and the power of moral judgment of simplified taxpayers was lower than that of the general taxpayer groups. Certified realtors without experience of receiving brokerage fee that is above statutory fees showed higher moral judgment than certified realtors with the experience. In addition, those who are not satisfied with their current brokerage business showed lower moral judgment. The results of the multiple regression analysis with multiple variables as explanatory variables shows that the variables that have a statistically significant effect are the age (-), education (+), intermediary taxpayers (-).
Numerous researchers, including Kohlberg, have proposed the use of a moral dilemma program to enhance ethical judgment. Therefore, we also proposed moral dilemma story education as a way to improve ethical consciousness of the certified realtors. Through the education of moral dilemma, it is possible to enhance the moral judgment of the certified realtors. By cultivating the ethical consciousness, it will enhance the ethical consciousness of the individual and the group and will improve the dignity and regain social trust. In addition, high level of ethical awareness will become a competitiveness for individual certified realtors and will become the basis of the leap and development for the industry.