Ethics and the Ivory Tower: The Case of Academic Departments of Finance

This study reports the results from a survey of 1,000 finance faculty members within schools of business across the U.S. concerning their knowledge of ethical transgressions as well as their attitudes towards ethics training in the curriculum. Ethical breaches appear most frequently with the unauthorized duplication of licensed software and the misuse of university resources for private consulting activity. Yet knowledge of ethical misconduct is highly segmented, with significant differences in reporting frequency between groups based upon citizenship, academic rank and school size. Contrary to the implications of Hawley (1991), we find there is a widely held belief by finance educators that business ethics has a legitimate role in business curriculums and should be included in finance course work. Further, our respondents strongly reject the notions that ethical practices are inconsistent with the principle of shareholder wealth maximization or that finance is more susceptible to ethical transgressions than other functional areas of business. We conclude that finance faculty are able to serve as legitimate ethical mentors for students and by implication may positively influence future corporate ethical behavior.