Business Ethics Teaching for Effective Learning

This paper is concerned with answering thequestion: ``How can business ethics be taught tostudents so that effective learning takesplace?'' It is the contention of this paperthat the question is best answered by focusingon six areas important to teaching businessethics: goals, relevancy, experientialpedagogy, classroom climate, debriefing, andoutcomes assessment.     

Business Ethics Training: Insights from Learning Theory

This paper explores research in educational psychology and learning theory in a search for insights to enhance business ethics training Useful educational principles uncovered are then applied to the development of an ethics training initiative for sales professionals. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research to help enrich business ethics training.

Designing and Delivering Business Ethics Teaching and Learning

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.     

Business and Community: Integrating Service Learning in Graduate Business Education

For the past five years at the Daniels College of Business at the University of Denver a community service or service learning component has been included in the Values in Action class (now Values-Based Leadership), a core MBA course that integrates ethics, law, and public policy perspectives on business issues. This paper summarizes the educational philosophy and the mechanics of this required component. Few empirical studies have been conducted to gauge the perceived value and impact of a service learning requirement on students. Thus, several surveys were conducted to understand better the choices made by students as well as the impact of the requirement on students. Preliminary results reveal generally a positive effect on students, including some evidence that such a service learning requirement may influence students to make a greater lifetime commitment to community service.     

A Business Ethics Experiential Learning Module: the Maryland Business School Experience

In this paper we describe the principal activities of the initial implementation in May of 1996 of one of the Experiential Learning Modules (ELMs) entitled Business Ethics (UMCP 1995, p. 7) that is part of the full-time MBA program at the College of Business and Management (Maryland Business School) of the University of Maryland at College Park (UMCP). Additionally, we briefly consider the location of this Business Ethics ELM in the curriculum of the Maryland Business School's full-time MBA program. We also outline how the Business Ethics ELM was developed. Further, we provide a discussion and a short conclusion.     

Developing a Learning Community Approach to Business Ethics Education

In this paper we discuss a project, still in progress, that moves away from a traditional lecture based educational pedagogy. We present a team taught approach to ethics teaching that embraces a progressive philosophy of education and is focused on the development of a discussion based learning community. We describe our primary pedagogical tools of case discussion and the development of student expert role assignments as a locus, and how they relate to the learning community, course content and course objectives. Finally, we provide our preliminary review of outcomes and emerging issues.     

Ethics in Business

The concept of ethics in business is presented through an examination of ethnical theories and through the application of the theories to several case incidents. A set of guidelines and implications for management, intended to stimulate ethics in the practice of business, are presented and discussed.     

Who's Who in Business Ethics Teaching Business Ethics in Post-Communist Prague

Management students at the Economic University of Prague have recently been introduced to the subject of Business Ethics. Lidmila Něemcová, who designed and teaches the course, describes their and her reactions.     

Business Ethics Teaching: Using Conversational Learning to Build an Effective Classroom Learning Environment

Building an effective classroom learningenvironment requires that business ethicsteachers pay particular attention to creating aclassroom environment that values the ideasothers have to offer. This article discussesthe importance of conversational learning tobusiness ethics teaching for effectivelearning. The paper also considers thebusiness ethics teacher's role in using aconversational learning approach to teachingbusiness ethics and some learning processesused to create a classroom climate conducive tothis approach for those interested in creatingnew kinds of conversation in their businessethics teaching efforts.     

Teaching Business Ethics: The Role of Ethics in Business and in Business Education

The paper begins with an examination of traditional attitudes towards business ethics. I suggest that these attitudes fail to recognize that a principal function of ethics is to facilitate cooperation. Further that despite the emphasis on competition in modern market economies, business like all other forms of social activity is possible only where people are prepared to respect rules in the absence of which cooperation is rendered difficult or impossible. Rules or what I call the ethics of doing, however, constitute just one dimension of ethics. A second has to do with what we see and how we see it; a third with who we or what I describe as the ethics of being. Of these three dimensions, the first and the third have been most carefully explored by philosophers and are most frequently the focus of attention when teaching business ethics is being discussed. I argue that this focus is unfortunate in as much as it is the second dimension which falls most naturally into the ambit of modern secular educational institutions. It is here that moral education is most obviously unavoidable, and most clearly justifiable in modern secular teaching environments. I conclude by describing the importance of this second dimension for the modern world of business.     

Business Ethics in Belgium

Business Ethics has really taken off in Belgium. The author is Professor at the Catholic University of Leuven, and an Associate Editor.     

Business Ethics in Spain

This article is an introduction to the selection of papers on "Business Ethics in Spain" included in this monographic issue of the Journal of Business Ethics. Specifically, this article is a survey of the development of the social, political, cultural and economic background of business in Spain since 1940, in order to show how the ethical values, attitudes and problems of the Spanish managers changed in these years. First, the global evolution of this background is explained, and then several relevant problems are discussed, namely those of the attitudes of business towards the State and the law (with an aside on the attitudes of society towards profit and wealth), corruption, and the grey economy, taxes, and irregular labour. The article concludes with a survey of the scientific developments of business ethics in Spain.     

FOCUS: Business Ethics in Europe Current Developments in German Business Ethics

Germany is at the leading edge of European reflection on the nature and requirements of ethical business. Two scholars in the field provide a survey of the main lines of discussion in the current German business ethics scene, and discuss three important books which are helping set the scene for further developments. Prof. Dr. Horst Steinmann holds the Chair for Business Administration and Management at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Lange Gasse 20, D-90403 Nürnberg, and Dipl.-Hdl. Brigitte Kustermann is research assistant to the same chair.     

Business Ethics in Japan

Business ethics in Japan has developed in five stages. Especially in the last stage (in the 1990s), there have appeared two clear-cut trends in business ethics activities: positive and passive. For the rise of business ethics, the passive trend is much more important. Once entered the 1990s, an increasing number of business scandals have been revealed. Because of this, the Japanese business community cannot but help take business ethics much more seriously than it ever has.Not only business practitioners but also business ethicists have inaugurated a variety of ethics-related studies and activities. This article mainly puts focus on the studies, which have been done in the 1990s. At the end of the article, ethical challenges, which the Japanese business and academia meet presently, are described.     

Business Ethics in Russia

Most of the features of modern Russian business are transient, determined by the transitional character of the Russian economy and drastic changes in the social structure, ideology, and consciousness of Russian society in general. There are three main normative experiences in the traditions of Russian business: a) the experience of pre-Revolutionary business, specifically developed and practiced by the merchants of the old-believers extraction; b) the experience of socialist economy, which was more or less oriented to the public good and presupposed selfless aspirations by the economic agents; c) the experience of legally and administratively constrained private business and illegal shadow business, which expected businessmen to be vigorous, industrious and enterprising. The process of privatization was developed under the aegis of state, specifically the state bureaucracy. The influence of changes in the social-economic system has been ambivalent for social morals. However, the reforms could stimulate their improvement. The recent development in the cultural environment of business testify to the emerging space of civilized business, which manifests that it is practically useful for businessmen to be ethical.     

Business Ethics in China

First I briefly review the emergence and development of business ethics, following three stages (1978–1984; 1984–1994; 1994 to the present) and driven by four factors: the inheritance of Chinese traditional ethics; the influence of Marxist philosophy and ethics; the reflections on the economic reform; and the influence of business ethics from abroad. Then, from a practical and a theoretical perspective, I discuss the main challenges for business ethics in China: issues of the economic system, of corporate ethics, and of management. After commenting on the role of business ethics for the social development in China, I offer some reflections about what China can contribute to, and learn from, other peoples.