In light of the continued erosion of business ethics in America, the ongoing question is what are the nation's business schools doing to prepare ethically responsible future leaders of industry and government? This paper reports the findings of a survey mailed to every program accredited by the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business. The curriculum treatment of business ethics is identified at the undergraduate and the graduate levels in public as well as in private colleges and universities. In addition, (...) the paper presents the status (required versus elective), credits, and enrollment patterns associated with institutions offering a special course whose primary focus is the ethical or moral component of business decisions. Depending on one's perspective, the results range from encouraging to disappointing and suggest that more can and should be done within the curriculum of American post-secondary higher education. (shrink)

This essay was written for the 1984 General Motors Intercollegiate Business Understanding Program. It consists of three sections, each responding to a separate issue posed by General Motors. The opinions expressed are not those of the General Motors management.The first section attempts to document, through the use of Harvard Business Review articles, a shift in the notion of managerial responsibility from a narrowly focused role responsibility to a more widely focused moral responsibility.

Sustainability informs the framework for a seminar that we teach for junior and senior undergraduates entitled "The Ethics and Economics of Sustainable Societies." One of the class requirements has each student research and write a life-cycle case study, an exercise in which they trace the full, or partial, life-cycle of some product with which they are familiar. Students are expected to examine the economic, ethical, and ecological implications along each step in the life-cycle of the product. We believe that life-cycle (...) cases in general are very helpful in revealing the full economic, ethical, and ecological consequences of product development, marketing, use, and disposal. We also believe that asking students to research the product themselves provides additional pedagogical benefits. After a brief review of the philosophical case for our alternative view of corporate social responsibility, we will describe the life-cycle case method, offer several examples from our own classes, and make the case for the pedagogical benefits of this approach. (shrink)

How is ethical theory used in contemporary teaching in business ethics? To answer this question, we undertook a survey of twenty-five of the leading business ethics texts. Our purpose was to examine the ways in which normative moral theory is introduced and applied to cases and issues. We focused especially on the authors' views of the conflicts and tensions posed by basic theoretical debates. How can these theories be made useful if fundamental tensions are acknowledged? Our analysis resulted in a (...) typology, presented here, of the ways in which normative theory, and the difficulties within it, are handled in business ethics texts. We conclude that there is a serious lack of clarity about how to apply the theories to cases and a persistent unwillingness to grapple with tensions between theories of ethical reasoning. These deficiencies hamper teaching and ethical decision-making. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to assess the perceptions of business students and of business practitioners regarding ethics in business. A survey consisting of a series of brief ethical situations was completed by 537 senior business majors and 158 experienced business people. They responded to the situations, first, as they believed the typical business person would respond and, second, as they believed the ethical response would be.The results indicate that both students and business people perceived a significant gap between (...) the ethical response to the given situations and the typical business person's response. Students were significantly more accepting than business people of questionable ethical responses, and they also had a more negative view of the ethics of business people than did the experienced business people. (shrink)

Ethics instructors often use cases to help students understand ethics within a corporate context, but we need to know more about the impact a case-based pedagogy has on students’ ability to make ethical decisions. We used a pre- and post-test methodology to assess the effect of using cases to teach ethics in a finance course. We also wanted to determine whether recent corporate ethics scandals might have impacted students’ perceptions of the importance and prevalence of ethics in business, so we (...) used in-depth case studies of several of the major scandals (e.g., Enron, Tyco, Adelphia). Our results are somewhat surprising since studying ethics scandals positively impacts students’ ethical decision making and their perceptions of the ethics of businesspeople. (shrink)

This paper takes a critical look at the empirical studies assessing the effectiveness of teaching courses in business and society and business ethics. It is generally found that students' ethical awareness or reasoning skills improve after taking the courses, yet this improvement appears to be short-lived. The generalizability of these findings is limited due to the lack of extensive empirical research and the inconsistencies in research design, empirical measures, and statistical analysis across studies. Thus, recommendations are presented and discussed for (...) improving the generalizability and sophistication of future research efforts in this area. (shrink)

The recent corporate scandals in the United States have caused a renewed interest and focus on teaching business ethics. Business schools and their faculties are reexamining the teaching of business ethics and are reassessing their responsibilities to produce honest and truthful managers who live lives of integrity and ethical accountability. The authors recognize that no agreement exists among business schools and their faculties regarding what should be the content and pedagogy of a course in business ethics. However, the authors hold (...) that regardless of one’s biases regarding the content and pedagogy, the effective teaching of business ethics requires that the instructor in designing and delivering a business ethics course needs to focus particular attention on four principal questions: (1) what are the objectives or targeted learning outcomes of the course? (2) what kind of learning environment should be created? (3) what learning processes need to be employed to achieve the goals? and (4) what are the roles of the participants in the learning experience? The answers to these questions provide the foundations for any business ethics course. The answers are major determinants of the impact of a business ethics course on the thinking of students and the views on the ethical and professional accountabilities and responsibilities of managers in the workplace. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to examine the various guidelines presented in the literature for instituting an ethics curriculum and to empirically study their effectiveness. Three questions are addressed concerning the trainability of ethics material and the proper integration and implementation of an ethics curriculum. An empirical study then tested the effect of ethics training on moral awareness and reasoning. The sample consisted of two business classes, one exposed to additional ethics curriculum (experimental), and one not exposed (control). For (...) the experimental group, ethics exercises and discussion relevant to each topic were completed. Findings suggested gender differences such that, relative to other groups, women in the experimental group showed significantly improved moral awareness and decision-making processes. An explanation of the underlying cognitive processes is presented to explain the gender effect. (shrink)

An examination of ninety-nine syllabi for undergraduate courses in business ethics, collected by the Center for Business Ethics at Bentley College, reveals that half the courses are offered to freshmen and sophomores. Because of the fact that these students will have minimal knowledge of the functional areas of business firms, and because these courses rely heavily on case analysis, it is likely that the students in these courses are not able to deal effectively with the material in the course. Therefore, (...) any expectation that the business ethics course will raise the students' ethical sensitivity when considering business problems or decisions is unrealistic. (shrink)

This paper describes a live ethics case project that can be used to teach ethics in a broad variety of business classes. The live case differs from regular cases in that it involves a current situation. Students select an on-going or current event that involves ethical violations and write a case about it. They then present their case and run a debate about the challenges and issues outlined in the case and the actions that could have or should have been (...) taken. The dynamic project fulfills the key criteria for effective ethics education since it increases awareness of the complexity of ethical challenges, allows application of concepts, creates a personal emotional engagement in the case, is relevant, holds students accountable for their position, and creates a setting that encourages students to think critically about ethics. (shrink)

Much has been written about the ethics and values of today's business student, but this research has generally been characterized by a variety of methodological shortcomings — the use of convenience samples, a failure to establish the relevance of comparison groups employed, attempts to understand behavior in terms of unidimensional values preselected by the researcher, and the lack of well-designed longitudinal studies. The research reported here addresses many of these concerns by comparing the values and ethical decision making behavior of (...) a large cohort of students entering an M. B. A. program to students entering law school. Using the Rokeach value survey and several ethical decision making vignettes, significant differences were found between the two groups which have important implications for both the business and legal professions and the education of their future leaders. (shrink)

Classroom cases and decision making models used in the teaching of business ethics may be inconsistent with the actual needs of practicing manager students. Three summary cases written by practicing manager students are included in this paper as well as evidence that concerns a focus more on interpersonal dilemmas rather than top management decisions. As well, the relevancy of philosophical perspectives of ethical decision models is questioned. More practical, hands-on models for ethical decisions are provided. Finally, conclusions of relevancy for (...) the field are drawn. (shrink)

To prepare for ethically challenging situations in the workplace, it is useful for students to explore their attitudes toward ethical issues and their own value systems. An experiential assignment to teach ethics in business programs is presented. This method allows instructors to incorporate a “stand alone” assignment in ethics into a course that focuses on another area in management. The assignment, student-developed case studies of ethical situations in the workplace, requires students to develop individual case studies in ethics drawing on (...) their workplace experiences to illustrate ethical principles. The assignment requires students to describe an ethical situation they encountered in the workplace, their relevant value systems, sources of information consulted, their role in the organization, and how they resolved the ethical situation, considering how their experiences since the time of the situation might influence analogous decision making today. To assess student learning, we used thematic analysis to evaluate the content of the case studies, and descriptive statistics to analyze responses to a post-assignment survey. Based on our analysis of the content of the case studies and student responses, this appears to be an effective learning tool to actively engage students in a consideration of, and discussion about, ethical issues in management, and to learn from the experiences of others. (shrink)