Personal characteristics in college students' evaluations of business ethics and corporate social responsibility

A survey of 138 college students reveals an undergraduate major has a greater influence on corporate social responsibility than business ethics. Business students are no less ethical than nonbusiness students. Females are more ethical and socially responsible than males. Age is negatively related to one's Machiavellian orientation and positively related to negative attitudes about corporate efforts at social responsibility. The results suggest a greater need to focus busines ethics instruction based on student characteristics. Peter Arlow is Professor of Management at Youngstown State University, Youngstown, Ohio, U.S.A., where he teaches M.B.A. and undergraduate management courses. He has previously published in the Academy of Management Review, Business Horizons, International Journal of Management, Long-Range Planning, Journal of Business Ethics, Akron Business and Economic Review, and other Journals.     

Internationalizing the business ethics curriculum: A survey

This article reports on a telephone survey of business school faculty in the United Kingdom, Asia and North America concerning efforts to internationalize the teaching of business ethics. International dimensions of business ethics are currently given only limited coverage in the business school curriculum with over half of the faculty surveyed indicating that less then 10% of their ethics teaching focuses on global issues. Teaching objectives vary widely with some faculty emphasizing a relativistic, diversity oriented perspective while others stress the universality of values. The respondents identified a great need to develop teaching materials based upon non-U.S. corporations and/or non-U.S. incidents.Christopher J. Cowton is University Lecturer in Management Studies at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Templeton College. An author on many facets of management, his previous paper in theJournal of Business Ethics was on corporate philanthropy in the United Kingdom. Current research interests include the implications of just-in-time production for accounting, and ethical (or socially responsible) investment.Thomas W. Dunfee is the Kolodny Professor of Social Responsibility at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He was President of the American Business Law Association 1989–1990, served as Editor-in-Chief of theAmerican Business Law Journal 1975–1977 and is a member of the Executive Committee of the Society for Business Ethics. He has published articles in theAcademy of Management Review, Business Ethics Quarterly, theBusiness and Professional Ethics Journal, and theJournal of Social Philosophy in addition to a variety of business and legal journals.     

Aristotelian virtue and business ethics education

In recent years there has been an increased interest in the application of Aristotelian virtue to business ethics. The objective of this paper is to describe the moral and intellectual virtues defined by Aristotle and the types of pedagogy that might be used to integrate virtue ethics into the business curriculum. Virtues are acquired human qualities, the excellences of character, which enable a person to achieve the good life. In business, the virtues facilitate successful cooperation and enable the community to achieve its collective goals. The cultivation of virtue in students requires imparting knowledge about virtue and training students to be virtuous. A variety of instructional techniques are discussed including using case studies, collaborative and cooperative learning, role-playing, and video presentations. Business educators should emphasize to students that virtue considerations apply both to possible actions they may take and to themselves as moral agents. Since faculty may be viewed as role models, it is especially important that they set proper standards of behavior for students to emulate. Steven M. Mintz is the Dean of the School of Business and Public Administration at California State University, San Bernardino. His accounting ethics casebook, Cases in Accounting Ethics and Professionalism, is in its third edition and is published by McGraw-Hill.     

Can business ethics be theological? What Athens can learn from Jerusalem

The work of philosophers in business ethics has been important in providing a systematic framework to analyze moral obligations of corporations and their many stakeholders. Yet the field of ethics as defined by the philosophers of the past two centuries is too narrow to do justice to what is at stake in the business world. Ethics in the theological perspective is not primarily concerned with analyzing situations so that one can make right decisions, but rather with reflecting on what is constitutive of the good life. Theological business ethics can apply a crucial corrective to the business ethics of philosophers by broadening the endeavor to include a vision of what constitutes a good life — of the kind of persons we want to be and the kind of communities we want to form. Oliver F. Williams, C.S.C., is on the faculty of the Department of Management at the University of Notre Dame where he teaches and researches in the field of business, society and ethics. He holds a Ph.D. in theology from Vanderbilt University and has had the experience of a research year at the Graduate School of Business Administration of Stanford University. His publications include five books, the most recent of which is The Apartheid Crisis: How We Can Do Justice in a Land of Violence (Harper & Row). He has published articles on business ethics in journals including Theology Today, California Management Review, Harvard Business Review and Business Horizons.     

Why students take elective business ethics courses: Applying the theory of planned behavior

Despite the prevalence of elective business ethics courses, little research has sought to explain and predict why some students enroll in these courses and while others do not. Using the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen and Madden, 1986) as a theoretical foundation, 178 graduate students in Ireland were surveyed about their intention to sign up for an elective ethics class. Their behavior was measured two months later. The results reveal the power of the theory of planned behavior to explain and predict who takes elective ethics classes.Donna M. Randall is an associate professor and chair in the Department of Management and Systems at Washington State University. Her research interests include business ethics, organizational commitment, and reproductive risk in the work place. Her work has appeared inJournal of Business Ethics, Decision Sciences, Academy of Management Review, Journal of Vocational Behavior, Journal of Business Research, and others.     

The transactional ethic: The ethical foundations of free enterprise reconsidered

A review of the evolution of the ethical foundations of free enterprise reveals the essentially utilitarian ethical foundation prevailing today. To enrich those foundations the article attempts to establish the ethical validity of free transactions by relating them to the basic principle of interpersonal ethics: the Golden Rule. The validity of the transactional ethic is presented as an articulation of freedom in a valid social and economic context. Jeffrey A. Barach is Professor of Management, A. B. Freeman School of Business, Tulane University. His DBA ('67), MBA ('61), and AB ('56) are from Harvard. His interests include business ethics, business policy and marketing. He has published articles and cases in these areas and on pedagogy. His text Individual, Business, and Society was published in 1977. Recent articles concern social marketing (Business Horizons), management of family firms (Sloan Management Review), and the ethics of hardball (California Management Review).John B. Elstrott, Jr., is the Sponsored Research Coordinator at the Freeman School of Business, Tulane University. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Colorado (1975). His interests include business ethics, entrepreneurship, economic development, and environmental economics. He is working on several interdisciplinary research projects including one on economic evaluation of solid waste management alternatives. Dr. Elstrott is an active entrepreneur and serves on the board of several profit and not for profit corporations.     

Will the ethics of business change? A survey of future executives

This article reports the results of a study of attitudes of future business executives towards issues of social responsibility and business ethics. The 455 respondents, who were MBA students during 1985 at one dozen schools from various regions in the United States, were asked to respond to a series of open-ended and closed-ended questions. From the responses to the questions the authors were able to conclude that future executives display considerable sensitivity, though to varying degrees, towards ethical issues in business. Women, in particular, tend to evince strong feelings regarding such issues. Thomas M. Jones is Associate Professor of Organization and Environment at the School of Business Administration, University of Washington. He is the author of several articles which have been published in journals such as Academy of Management Review and California Management Review. Frederick H. Gautschi, III, is Associate Professor of Engineering Management at Old Dominion University. His articles have been published in Research in Corporate Social Performance and Policy and Industrial and Labor Relations Review.     

Zimbardo's “Stanford Prison Experiment” and the relevance of social psychology for teaching business ethics

The prevailing pedagogical approach in business ethics generally underestimates or even ignores the powerful influences of situational factors on ethical analysis and decision-making. This is due largely to the predominance of philosophy-oriented teaching materials. Social psychology offers relevant concepts and experiments that can broaden pedagogy to help students understand more fully the influence of situational contexts and role expectations in ethical analysis. Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment is used to illustrate the relevance of social psychology experiments for business ethics instruction. F. Neil Brady is an Associate Professor of Management at San Diego State University. He has published a dozen articles in the field of business ethics, three of which have appeared in the Academy of Management Review. Jeanne M. Logsdon is an Assistant Professor of Management at Santa Clara University. Her research on various aspects of corporate social performance has appeared in the Journal of Business Ethics, Research in Corporate Social Performance and Policy, and California Management Review.     

The market ethic: Moral dilemmas and microeconomics

Brief cases written as multiple choice questions can provide the basis for a classroom game based on business ethics. This teaching note describes the organization of such a game and provides five sample cases.Julianne Nelson is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the Stern School of Business of New York University. She has also taught at the Ecole Superieure de Commerce in Tours, France. Her publications have appeared in theInternational Economic Review, Economics Letters, theJournal of Regulatory Economics, theJournal of Business Ethics, andJapan and the World Economy.I would like to thank my students for their suggestions and support of this project. This research was supported by a grant from the Rundin Foundation.     

The Unholy Alliance of Business and Science

This paper will build on a recent article appearing in the Harvard Business Review that blamed the alleged crisis in management education on the scientific model that has been adopted as the sole means of gaining knowledge about human behavior and organizations. The solution, they argue, is for business schools to realize that business management is not a scientific discipline but a profession, and deal with the things a professional education requires. We will expand on this article and discuss its implications by looking at the scientific model from a philosophical perspective and dealing with the issue of whether management is a profession. Our discussion of these issues has implications for our understanding of business in society and the design of the business school curriculum. Rogene A. Buchholz is the Legendre-Soule Chair in Business Ethics Emeritus in the College of Business Administration at Loyola University of New Orleans. He has published over seventy-five articles and is the author of ten books in the areas of business and public policy, business ethics, and the environment. He is on the editorial board of several journals and served as chair of the Social Issues in Management Division of the Academy of Management. Sandra B. Rosenthal is Provost Eminent Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University of New Orleans. She has published approximately 200 articles and 11 books on various dimensions of American pragmatism and its relevance for other areas of philosophy, and in both books and articles has applied pragmatism to a wide range of business ethics issues. She is a member of the editorial board of several journals, and has served as president of numerous philosophical societies.     

Intelligence Vs. Wisdom: The Love of Money, Machiavellianism, and Unethical Behavior across College Major and Gender

This research investigates the efficacy of business ethics intervention, tests a theoretical model that the love of money is directly or indirectly related to propensity to engage in unethical behavior (PUB), and treats college major (business vs. psychology) and gender (male vs. female) as moderators in multi-group analyses. Results suggested that business students who received business ethics intervention significantly changed their conceptions of unethical behavior and reduced their propensity to engage in theft; while psychology students without intervention had no such changes. Therefore, ethics training had some impacts on business students’ learning and education (intelligence). For our theoretical model, results of the whole sample (N = 298) revealed that Machiavellianism (measured at Time 1) was a mediator of the relationship between the love of money (measured at Time 1) and unethical behavior (measured at Time 2) (the Love of Money → Machiavellianism → Unethical Behavior). Further, this mediating effect existed for business students (n = 198) but not for psychology students (n = 100), for male students (n = 165) but not for female students (n = 133), and for male business students (n = 128) but not for female business students (n = 70). Moreover, when examined alone, the direct effect (the Love of Money → Unethical Behavior) existed for business students but not for psychology students. We concluded that a short business ethics intervention may have no impact on the issue of virtue (wisdom). Thomas Li-Ping Tang (Ph.D., Case Western Reserve University) is a Full Professor of Management in the Department of Management and Marketing, Jennings A. Jones College of Business at Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU). He has taught Industrial and Organizational Psychology at National Taiwan University and at MTSU. Professor Tang teaches, has taught, MBA/EMBA courses in China (Hong Kong and Shanghai), France (Nantes), and Spain (Valencia). He serves, has served, on 6 editorial review boards and reviews papers for 28 journals. His research interests focus upon compensation, the Love of Money, business ethics, pay satisfaction, and cross-cultural issues. He has published more than 100 journal articles in top behavior sciences and management journals (e.g., Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, Human Relations, Journal of Management, Management Research, Management and Organization Review, Journal of Organizational Behavior, and Journal of Business Ethics.) and presented more than 190 papers in professional conferences and invited seminars. He was the winner of two Outstanding Research Awards (1991,1999) and Distinguished International Service Award (1999) at Middle Tennessee State University. He also received the Best Reviewer Awards from the International Management Division of the Academy of Management in Seattle, WA (2003) and in Philadelphia, PA (2007). Yuh-Jia Chen (Ph.D., Columbia University) is an Associate Professor of Business Statistics in the Rinker of School of Business at Palm Beach Atlantic University, West Palm Beach, FL 33416. He has taught statistics at Middle Tennessee State University and Teachers College, Columbia University. His research interests lie in money attitude, choice and decision-making, risk-taking behavior, and compensation. His publications have appeared in behavior sciences and management journals (e.g., Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, Journal of Business and Psychology, and Journal of Business Ethics).     

The relative importance of social responsibility in determining organizational effectiveness: Student responses II

This paper, Study II, is the second in a series of papers investigating the relative importance of social responsibility criteria in determining organizational effectiveness, using student samples. A revised version of the Organizational Effectiveness Menu was used as a questionnaire with a sample of 182 senior undergraduate and the MBA students from three universities. Each respondent was asked to rate the importance of the criteria from a manager's perspective. The results support the earlier findings that students responding as managers rate social responsibility criteria, individually and collectively, among the least important of the potential determinants of organizational effectiveness.Dr. Kenneth L. Kraft is Director of Graduate studies at The University of Tampa. He has published numerous articles on Business Ethics, Organization Design, and Strategic Planning in journals such as theAcademy of Management Review, American Business Review, andJournal of Business Ethics. His current research interest centers on the measurement of moral intensity.Dr. Anusorn Singhapakdi is Assistant of Marketing at Old Dominion University. His research has been primarily in marketing/business ethics. He has published in theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Macromarketing, Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, as well as various other journals and proceedings.     

Authorship trends and collaboration patterns in business ethics literature

The primary aim of this study is to clarify the authorship trends, collaboration patterns, and impact factors in business ethics literature by looking at articles published between 1960 and 2015 in four leading business ethics journals: Business and Society, Business Ethics: A European Review, Business Ethics Quarterly, and the Journal of Business Ethics. This study showed the growth type of business ethics literature, authorship trends, collaboration patterns, authors' productivity evolved by subperiods and journals, and authors' dominance factor by subperiods and journals. After providing an evaluation of the results of the study, the authors discuss the study's limitations and suggestions for future research.     

Business ethics in a competitive market

Consequentialist reasoning and neoclassical assumptions about perfectly competitive markets encourage business school faculty and students to overlook the role of ethics in a market system. In a perfectly competitive economy, self-interest suffices to bring about a desirable outcome. However, discrepancies between an economist's assumptions and the realities of a market economy establish a need for business ethics. This essay, written as a lecture for MBA students, first reviews Pareto optimality as an argument in favor of market allocations. It then uses the discrepancies between actual and hypothetical markets to derive a Rawlsian duty of civility. This neoclassical case for business ethics requires individuals to avoid exploiting the defects that are inevitable in any social structure.Julianne Nelson is an Assistant Professor of Justice at the School of Public Affairs in the American University in Washington, D.C. She has also taught at the Stern School of Business of the New York University and at the Ecole Superieure de Commerce in Tours, France. Her publications have appeared in theInternational Economic Review, Economics Letters, The Journal of Regulatory Economics, Japan and the World Economy, The Journal of Business Ethics andEconomics and Philosophy.Editorial note: Date of acceptance July 4, 1991. This article follows the article published in Volume 11 (4), pp. 317–320.My thanks go to Tom Donaldson, Bob Lindsay and Kerry Whiteside for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this work. This research was supported by a grant from the Rundin Foundation.     

A longitudinal survey of business school graduates' assessments of business ethics

A longitudinal survey of business graduates over a four-year period revealed stability over time in their assessments of proposals to improve business ethics except for significantly greater disapproval of government regulation. A comparison of graduates and executives indicate both favor developing general ethical business principles, business ethics courses, and codes of ethics, while disapproving government regulation and participation by religious leaders in ethical norms for business. The mean rankings by business graduates over time of factors influencing ethical conduct show significant declines in school-university training and significant increases for religious training and industry practices. Graduates and executives rank family training as the most important influence and school-university training as least important. The authors conclude that a more careful consideration be given to matching reform proposals and influence factors, and to increasing the depth of change efforts in individual business ethics. Peter Arlow is Associate Professor of Management at Youngstown State University, Youngstown, Ohio 44555, U.S.A., where he teaches MBA and undergraduate management courses. His previous publications have appeared in the Academy of Management Review, Business Horizons, Long-Range Planning, and other journals. Thomas A. Ulrich is Professor of Accounting at Loyola College in Maryland. He received his doctorate from Michigan State University and is a Certified Management Accountant as well as a Chartered Financial Analyst. Dr. Ulrich has published previously in the Journal of Accountancy, Management Accounting, The Internal Auditor, Journal of Commercial Bank Lending, Bankers Magazine, The Magazine of Bank Administration, Journal of Small Business Management and the American Journal of Small Business.     

Toward the development of a multidimensional scale for improving evaluations of Business Ethics

This study represents an improvement in the ethics scales inventory published in a 1988 Journal of Business Ethics article. The article presents the distillation and validation process whereby the original 33 item inventory was reduced to eight items. These eight items comprise the following ethical dimensions: a moral equity dimension, a relativism dimension, and a contractualism dimension. The multidimensional ethics scale demonstrates significant predictive ability.Dr Reidenbach is the Director of the Center for Business Development and Research and Professor of Marketing at the University of Southern Mississippi. He is the co-author of two books on business ethics and has contributed numerous articles on ethics to various academic and applied business journals. Dr Donald P. Robin, Professor of Business Ethics and Professor of Marketing, is co-author with Dr R. Eric Reidenbach of two recent books (1989) on business ethics. Both books, Business Ethics: Where Profits Meet Value Systems and Ethics and Profits: A Convergence of Corporate America's Economic and Social Responsibilities were published by Prentice-Hall. Dr Robin is a frequent lecturer on business ethics and has written several articles on the subject for both ethics and business journals.     

Endorsement of managers following accusations of breaches in confidentiality

Two related studies focused on the effects that a questionable supervisory conduct has on the endorsement and vulnerability of the supervisor, as well as on judgments of supervisory morality. Male and female undergraduate and graduate business students were asked to read the account of a personnel manager who violates employee confidentiality concerning certain personality test results, but who has had a previous record of increasing or decreasing productivity. The studies revealed varying patterns of leadership endorsement, vulnerability, and judgments of morality following this questionable or unethical conduct as a result of the personnel's manager's record and the subjects' sex. Robert Augustine Giacalone, Professor of Management at the University of Southwestern Louisiana, received his B.S. from Hofstra University and his Ph.D. from SUNY at Albany. Dr. Giacalone was the 1985 recipient of the Outstanding Young Men in America Award. His research interests include organizational social influence strategies and business ethics. Dr. Giacalone is the editor of Impression Management in the Organization (Lawrence Erlbaum Publishers).Paul Rosenfeld (Ph.D., SUNY Albany) is a Personnel Research Psychologist at the Navy Personnel Research and Development Center in San Diego, CA. Dr. Rosenfeld is currently conducting research on computerized organizational surveys. Stephen L. Payne is a Professor of Management at the University of Southwestern Louisiana. His primary research interests include business ethics, employee theft, and management education. Previous articles by Dr. Payne have appeared in this journal and others including The Academy of Management Review, Personnel Administrator, The Organizational Behavior Teaching Review, and Business and Society Review.     

Principled moral reasoning: Is it a viable approach to promote ethical integrity?

In response to recent recommendations for the teaching of principled moral reasoning in business school curricula, this paper assesses the viability of such an approach. The results indicate that, while business students' level of moral reasoning in this sample are like most 18- to 21-year-olds, they may be incapable of grasping the concepts embodied in principled moral reasoning. Implications of these findings are discussed. James Weber is currently an Assistant Professor of Management at Marquette University. He has published articles on managerial values and moral reasoning and the teaching of business ethics in Research in Corporate Social Performance and Policy: Empirical Studies of Business Ethics and Values, International Journal of Value Based Management, Human Relations, and Journal of Business Ethics. Sharon Green is currently an Assistant Professor of Accounting at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research emphasizes information processing aspects of decision making in governmental, auditing and educational contexts. Her publications have appeared in Accounting Review and Research in Governmental and Non-Profit Accounting.     

Ethics programs and their dimensions

All organizations have ethics programs which consist of both explicit and implicit parts. This paper defines corporate ethics programs and identifies a number of their components. Corporate ethics programs' structural and behavioral dimensions are proposed which may allow further examination of such program components and their impacts. Finally, fifteen propositions are suggested which describe the influence of founder values, competitive pressures, leadership, and organizational problems on corporate ethics programs and the manageability of such programs.Steven N. Brenner is currently Sponsored Professor of Business Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility at Portland State University, Portland, Oregon. He served from 1983 through 1987 as Associate Dean for Graduate Programs in its School of Business Administration. Dr. Brenner has written articles forHarvard Business Review, The Academy of Management national MeetingsProceedings, The JAI PressResearch on Corporate Social Performance and Policy, and other publications. He has served as the Chairman and Program Chairman for the Social Issues in Management Division of the Academy of Management and is Chairman of the International Association of Business and Society's 1992 meeting to be held in Leuven, Belgium. He teaches courses in corporate social responsibility, business ethics, managing in a regulated world, business/government relations, business policy and organizational politics. During 1989–90 he was on a sabbatical leave doing research on corporate social responsibility and acting as Chair of the Academy of Management's Ethics Task Force which wrote the Academy's Code of Ethical Conduct.This work was supported in part by a grant from the Chiles Foundation, Portland, Oregon.     

Differing National Approaches to Business Ethics

What is unique about the development of business ethics in the USA, and how does it compare with various countries of Europe and with Japan? Institutional, legal, social and cultural factors are identified by the Professor of Business and Public Policy at the Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley. An earlier version of this article titled “The Globalization of Business Ethics: Why America Remains Distinctive” was published in the Fall 1992 issue of the California Management Review, Vol. 35, No. 1. Reprinted by Permission of The Regents of the University of California.