Cheating During the College Years: How do Business School Students Compare?

When it comes to cheating in higher education, business school students have often been accused of being the worst offenders; if true, this may be a contributing factor in the kinds of fraud that have plagued the business community in recent years. We examined the issue of cheating in the business school by surveying 268 students in business and other professional schools on their attitudes about, and experiences with, cheating. We found that while business school students actually cheated no more or less than students in other professional schools, their attitudes on what constitutes cheating are more lax than those of other professional school students. Additionally, we found that serious cheaters across all professional schools were more likely to be younger and have a lower grade point average. Helen A. Klein is an assistant professor in the Management Department at Grand Valley State University. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in Computer and Information Systems and is interested in Object Oriented Software development, business process redesign and the use of ERP as a tool for learning in higher education. Nancy M. Levenburg is an associate professor in the Management Department at Grand Valley State University. She received her Ph.D. degree from Union Institute & University, and has done post-graduate study at Harvard University and UCLA. Her primary research interests include electronic commerce and strategic applications of information technologies. Marie McKendall is a professor in the Management Department at Grand Valley State University. She received her Ph.D. in Management from Michigan State University. Her primary research interest is organizational illegality. William M. Mothersell is an assistant professor in the Management Department at Grand Valley State University. He received his Ph.D. from Michigan State University in Labor and Industrial Relations. His research interests include strategic human resource management, organizational behavior and development, and lean transformation.     

Do the Numbers Add Up to Different Views? Perceptions of Ethical Faculty Behavior Among Faculty in Quantitative Versus Qualitative Disciplines

Faculty across a wide range of academic disciplines at 89 AASCB-accredited U.S. business schools were surveyed regarding their perceptions of the ethical nature of faculty behaviors related to undergraduate course content, student evaluation, educational environment, research issues, financial and material transactions, and social and sexual relationships. We analyzed responses based on whether instruction in the academic discipline focused mainly on quantitative topics or largely on qualitative issues. Faculty who represented quantitative disciplines such as accounting and finance (n = 383) were more likely to view behaviors such as selling complimentary textbooks and grading on a strict curve as more ethical than faculty representing more qualitative disciplines such as management and marketing (n = 447). In contrast, faculty in quantitative disciplines were more likely to view behaviors such as showing controversial media and bringing up sexual or racial charged matters as less ethical than their counterparts. Whereas these differences may be attributed to the respondents’ academic backgrounds, the large level of agreement on ethical behaviors raises questions about the growing influence of business disciplines that operate within more unified research and teaching paradigms. Linda Kidwell (PhD, Louisiana State University) is an associate professor in the Accounting Department at the University of Wyoming where she teaches auditing as well as accounting ethics. Her research interests include academic ethics, auditing ethics, and governmental auditing. Her research has been published in the Journal of Business Ethics, Teaching Business Ethics, CPA Journal, Journal of Accounting and Public Policy and elsewhere. She has taught in the United States, Australia, and Canada. She has also been a frequent faculty mentor in the National Conference on Ethics in America held annually at the United States Military Academy (West Point). Roland Kidwell (PhD, Louisiana State University) is an associate professor in the Management and Marketing Department at the University of Wyoming where he teaches courses in new ventures, human resource management and general management. His current research interests include ethical issues involving family businesses and new ventures, social entrepreneurship, and workplace deviance such as withholding effort (free riding, shirking, social loafing) in organizational contexts. He is co-editor of a book of readings and cases, Managing Organizational Deviance (2005, Sage), and his research has appeared in Academy of Management Review, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Management, Journal of Business and Psychology and elsewhere.     

A critique of service learning projects in management education: Pedagogical foundations,barriers, and guidelines

This critique of nine service learning projects within schools of business is designed to encourage other educational institutions to add service learning requirements into business ethics and leadership courses. It champions the role of the faculty member teaching these courses while at the same time offering constructive analysis on pedagogy, a review of curriculum issues, identification of barriers to service learning, and guidelines for teaching service learning ventures. Challenges to all faculty involved in business ethics courses are made to better manage their courses and careers from a broader context outside of university settings.Thomas A. Kolenko is an associate professor of management at Kennesaw State College in Marietta, Georgia.Gayle Porter is a member of the Management Faculty at Rutgers, School of Business in Camden, N.J., where she teaches Social Responsibility of Business, Organizational Change and Development, and Organizational Behavior.Walter J. Wheatley is an associate professor of management/MIS at the University of West Florida.Marvelle Colby, is the Chairperson of the Business Management Division at Marymount Manhattan College in New York.     

Serving the homeless and low-income communities through Business & Society/Business Ethics class projects: The University of Wisconsin-Madison plan

For several years, MBA students enrolled in a Business & Society/Business Ethics class at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have been volunteering their services at homeless shelters and in low-income communities. Students also work with low-income residents and relevant stakeholders on evolutionary team projects aimed at improving living conditions in low-income communities. These projects include starting a grocery co-op, credit union, day-care center, job training center and a transportation business. In addition, student groups develop service networks that link low-income communities with student organizations, other university professors and United Way volunteers. This article provides an evolutionary summary of these projects with the hope that other professors will adopt them for their classes. Denis Collins is an Assistant Professor of Business Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has published numerous articles in the areas of business ethics, business and society, social philosophy, participatory management and gainsharing. He is coauthor, with Thomas O'Rourke, of Ethical Dilemmas in Business (South-Western Publishing, 1994) and coeditor, with Mark Starik, of Sustaining the Natural Environment: Empirical Studies on the Interface Between Nature and Organizations (JAI Press, 1995).     

Logistics Professional Identity: Strengthening the Discipline as Galaxies Collide

The merger of logistics, operations, supply management, and related disciplines into the broader field of supply chain management (SCM) has brought together academic fields with different professional identities and competing visions of what SCM ought to be, what students ought to be taught, and what the priorities for research and publication should be. This raises serious concerns because logistics faculty are less numerous than faculty in related fields. Logistics professional identity risks being diluted by the merger, resulting in potentially serious consequences for the future of logistics education and research. This paper explores these issues and offers suggestions to preserve logistics' professional identity, education and research in a supply chain world. We propose that logisticians expand the journals where they publish logistics research, continuing support for strengthening the Journal of Business Logistics as the “A” journal in logistics, rethink the way we train doctoral students, and work to preserve our community both inside and outside business schools.     

Corporate Ethical Codes: Effective Instruments For Influencing Behavior

This paper reviews studies of corporate ethical codes published since 2000 and concludes that codes be can effective instruments for shaping ethical behavior and guiding employee decision-making. Culture and effective communication are key components to a code’s success. If codes are embedded in the culture and embraced by the leaders, they are likely to be successful. Communicating the code’s precepts in an effective way is crucial to its success. Discussion between employees and management is a key component of successful ethical codes. Betsy Stevens as associate professor of Business Administration at Elon University. Her academic interests are business and management communication, business ethics, international communication, and hospitality management. An active researcher, she has published more than 20 articles in refereed journals such as The Journal of Business Communication, Business Communication Quarterly, The Journal of Business and Technical Communication, Journal of Business Ethics, Bquest and the Journal of Employment Counseling. She has an M.A. from the University of Cincinnati and a Ph.D. from Wayne State University. As a Fulbright Scholar, she taught university classes in Tomsk, Russia and has also been on the faculty of the Australian International Hotel School in Canberra, Australia     

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.     

Legislated Ethics or Ethics Education?: Faculty Views in the Post-Enron Era

The tension between external forces for better ethics in organizations, represented by legislation such as the Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX), and the call for internal forces represented by increased educational coverage, has never been as apparent. This study examines business school faculty attitudes about recent corporate ethics lapses, including opinions about root causes, potential solutions, and ethics coverage in their courses. In assessing root causes, faculty point to a failure of systems such as legal/professional and management (external) and declining personal values (internal). We also found that faculty recommend external forces as a remedy more often than increased ethics educational coverage; we contextualize this finding with recent ethics education literature. We conclude by proposing that neither legislation nor ethics education alone are complete when addressing widespread unethical corporate acts and offer a multi-faceted approach to ethics educational opportunities. Jeri Mullins Beggs is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Illinois State University. She earned her Ph.D. in marketing at Saint Louis University. Her current research interests are ethics education, health care marketing, and social marketing. Her work has been presented and published at various conferences and journals including most recently the Journal of Management Education, Marketing and Public Policy conference and the Consumer Satisfaction, Dissatisfaction, and Complaining Behavior conference. She also recently served as co-editor of a special issue of Journal of Management Education on Teaching Business ethics. Kathy Lund Dean is a member of the management department at Idaho State University. She earned her Ph.D. in organizational behavior and philosophy from Saint Louis University. Her current research interests lie in operationalizing non-traditional research methodologies, immersion pedagogies such as service-learning, and spiritual wholeness and authenticity in work place. Her research has appeared in multiple journals including Journal of Management Education, Journal of Management, Spirituality, and Religion, Journal of Organizational Change Management, International Journal of Public Administration, and Academy of Management Executive. She serves as the Associate Editor for the Journal of Management Education.     

A comparison of ethical evaluations of business school faculty and students: A pilot study

This paper reports the results of a pilot study of differences in ethical evaluations between business faculty and students at a Southern university. Data were collected from 137 business students (46 freshmen and 67 seniors) and 34 business faculty members. Significant differences were found in 7 of the 30 situations between freshmen and faculty and four situations between seniors and faculty. When the combined means for each group were tested, there was no significant difference in the means at the 0.05 level of significance. A trend was revealed, however, in that the majority of the time faculty members were the most ethically oriented followed by seniors and then freshmen.Dr. Robert E. Stevens is Professor of Marketing at Northeast Louisiana University and is the author of 11 books and more than 80 articles. Dr. Stevens has served as a consultant to local, regional, and national firms for research projects, feasibility studies, and market planning, and has been a partner in a marketing research company.Dr. O. Jeff Harris is Professor of Management at Northeast Louisiana University. Prior to coming to Northeast, he taught at Louisiana State University, the University of Arkansas, and the University of Texas. Professor Harris has written three books and numerous articles and position papers. He is a consultant to many health care and processing organizations.Dr. Stan Williamson is an assistant professor of management at Northeast Louisiana University. He teaches strategy, human resource management, and management principles. Before this, he served as a senior executive for a regional health care system for 13 years and as a consultant in the health care field.     

Developing a measure to capture marketing faculty's perceptions of unethical behavior

The study explores the factor structure of the Sirgy et al. [Sirgy MJ, Johar JS, Gao T. Toward a code of ethics for marketing educators. Journal of Business Ethics 2006; 63(1): 1-20] measure of marketing faculty's perceptions of unethical behavior and tests its predictive validity. We surveyed members of the Academy of Marketing Science regarding their perceptions of acceptability of 142 behaviors that marketing faculty may encounter in their roles as teacher, researcher, administrator, consultant, professional colleague, and college professor. We used exploratory factor analyses to reveal the factor structures of the items grouped by four faculty roles: teaching, research, administrative service, and professional service. We then tested the measure's predictive validity by testing for demographic differences (gender, age, rank, tenure, and level of education) with respect to the 23 types of unethical faculty behaviors. The final measure can be used by marketing-related associations to gauge the norms of faculty conduct, which in turn can help them develop their own academic code of ethics.     

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.     

Using Live Cases to Teach Ethics

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.Dr. Victoria McWilliams is Professor of Finance in the College of Commerce and Finance at Villanova University. Her areas of interest include pedagogical issues, as well as corporate governance and control. She has distinguished herself for her ability to provide high quality, innovative business education, and for her outstanding leadership achievements at various academic institutions.Dr. Afsaneh Nahavandi is a management faculty at the School of Global management and Leadership at Arizona State University’s West campus. Her areas of interest include leadership, teams, and culture. She has been director of the MBA program at the West campus of ASU, director of the University College, and associate dean of the ASU University College since July 2006.     

How Standard is Standardized MNC Global Environmental Communication?

In this paper, we develop an argument to show why we expect that multinational companies will ensure that they communicate credibly about their environmental responsibility, across all their subsidiaries. Credible environmental communication helps to increase the firm’s legitimacy and reduce its liability of foreignness on an issue that is globally relevant. We develop a measure to test if there is a standardized level of environmental communication credibility on the country-specific web sites of MNC subsidiaries around the world and find, in fact, that there is considerable variation across countries, among subsidiaries of different firms and among subsidiaries of the same multinational. We discuss the reasons for this and the implications for firm legitimacy. Trevor Hunter is an assistant professor of business and coordinator of the Management and Organizational Studies program at King’s University College. He received his Ph.D. from the Richard Ivey School of Business. His research interests include the environmental management practices of MNCs and corporate governance. Pratima Bansal is an associate professor and the Shurniak Professor in International Business at the Richard Ivey School of Business. She received her doctorate from the University of Oxford. Her research interests are primarily in the areas of sustainable development and international business.     

Ethical Leadership for the Professions: Fostering a Moral Community

This paper examines the professions as examples of “moral community” and explores how professional leaders possessed of moral intelligence can make a contribution to enhance the ethical fabric of their communities. The paper offers a model of ethical leadership in the professional business sector that will improve our understanding of how ethical behavior in the professions confers legitimacy and sustainability necessary to achieving the professions’ goals, and how a leadership approach to ethics can serve as an effective tool for the dissemination of moral values in the organization. Dr. Linda M. Sama is Director of the Center for International Business Development and Associate Professor of Management at Pace University’s Lubin School of Business. She earned her Ph.D. in Strategic management from the City University of New York and her MBA in International Finance from McGill University. She was awarded the 1999 Lasdon Dissertation Award for her doctoral dissertation on corporate social response strategies and the Abraham Briloff Award of Best Paper in Business Ethics at the City University of New York in 1998. Dr. Sama made a transition to academe after a lengthy career in industry, where she acted as Director of Market Planning and Logistics for a major international subsidiary of Transamerica Corporation. She teaches primarily in the areas of International Business, Strategic Managements and Business Ethics, and has taught at Baruch College and the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) prior to coming to Pace in the fall of 2001. At UTEP, she was designated as the Skno International Business Ethics Scholar from 1999–2001. She has published numerous articles and book chapters that address issues of corporate social responsibility, business and the natural environment, integrative social contracts theory, and business ethics dilemmas in the new economy. Her research appears in journals such as The Journal of Business Ethics, Business Ethics Quarterly, Business and Society Review, The Journal of Cross-Cultural Management, and the International Journal of Value-Based Management. She has also published research for the U.S. Department of Transportation related to the effects of NAFTA on U.S. – Mexico border logistics and has consulted to business clients on Strategic Planning, Global Leadership and Business Ethics. Dr. Victoria Shoaf is an Associate Professor and Assistant Chair of the Department of Accounting and Taxation at St. John’s University. She received her Ph.D. in Business, with a specialization in Accounting, from Baruch College of the City University of New York in 1997; she was awarded the 1997 Lasdon Dissertation Award. Prior to joining St. John’s University on a full-time basis, Dr.Shoaf worked for over fifteen years in the retail industry with merchandising firms. Her expertise is in establishing effective accounting systems and controls, including operational functions such as order entry and fulfillment, inventory control, point-of-sale data transfers and sales audit, as well as financial accounting functions. She has held controllership positions at Laura Ashley, Inc., Greeff Fabrics, Inc., and Tie Rack, Inc. While working in industry and while completing her doctoral degree, Dr. Shoaf taught accounting courses as an adjunct instructor at Pace University and at Baruch College. She received a commendation from the dean at Pace University for teaching excellence, and she was awarded a Graduate Teaching Fellowship at Baruch College. She currently serves on several professional committees, and she has provided consulting services in accounting education and training programs for several large employers.     

Impact of Leader Racial Attitude on Ratings of Causes and Solutions for an Employee of Color Shortage

Diversity scholars have emphasized the critical role of corporate leaders for ensuring the success of diversity strategic initiatives in organizations. This study reports on business school leaders’ attributions regarding the causes for and solutions to the low representation of U.S. faculty of color in business schools. Results indicatethat leaders with greater awareness of racial issues rated an inhospitable organizational culture as a more important cause and cultural change and recruitment as more important solutions to faculty of color under-representation than did less racially aware respondents. Aware leaders also rated individual minority-group member responsibility for performance a less important solution than did less racially aware respondents. Implications are discussed. E. Holly Buttner is Professor of Business Administration at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in Greensboro, NC, USA. Her research interests include diversity in organizations, leadership assessment and entrepreneurship. She co-authored  Women Entrepreneurs: Moving Beyond the Glass Ceiling. She teaches courses in Diversity in Organizations, Organizational Behavior, and in Leadership Assessment and Development at the undergraduate and MBA levels. She earned her Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Kevin B. Lowe is an Associate Professor of Business Administration at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in Greensboro, NC, USA. His research interests include leadership, international human resource management and cross cultural management. He received his Ph.D. at Florida International University.     

Applying the principles of Gestalt theory to teaching ethics

Teaching ethics poses a dilemma for professors of business. First, they have little or no formal training in ethics. Second, they have established ethical values that they may not want to impose upon their students. What is needed is a well-recognized, yet non-sectarian model to facilitate the clarification of ethical questions. Gestalt theory offers such a framework. Four Gestalt principles facilitate ethical clarification and another four Gestalt principles anesthetize ethical clarification. This article examines each principle, illustrates that principle through current business examples, and offers exercises for developing each principle. Eugene H. Hunt is professor of management in the School of Business at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond. He has done advanced studies in organization development at the National Training Laboratories (NTL) and has studied Gestalt theory at the Gestalt Institute in Cleveland. He currently teaches a course in the history of management thought for doctoral students, in principles of management for masters students, and in organizational behavior for undergraduate students. For a number of years he wrote a column in Management World titled, Expanding Your Repertoire of Managerial Behavior.Ronald K. Bullis is Acting Head of Staff at a Presbyterian Church in Richmond, Virginia. He has done advanced graduate work in clinical social work at Virginia Commonwealth University and is an adjunct faculty teaching law and religion at Virginia Union University, Richmond. He also teaches law and religion at the Institute of Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. He conducts individual, group and family counseling and is a certified sex educator.     

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.     

The Global Citizenship MBA orientation Program: Action learning at the University of Michigan Business School

The University of Michigan Business School's Global Citizenship Program is a two day action learning model conducted during orientation week. During these two days, teams of students, faculty and staff, along with corporate managers, work side-by-side on community projects. These projects are intended to help students understand the difficult issues and frustrations faced by community organizations. The students have opportunities throughout the year to continue to volunteer their business skills and time.Graham Mercer is director of the Michigan Business School's Global Citizenship program, an action learning program designed to develop graduate students with an awareness and appreciation of the inter-relationship between business-and-society. Prior to joining the Business School, Graham had considerable experience in action learning programming both as a corporate consultant and director of Outward Bound.     

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.