Applying Character Strengths in Business Ethics Exercises

Business education is one of the growing phenomena both in the developed and developing world. Global argument in many contexts from the areas that are more connected to profit and loss (that is marketing, accounting, finance and management) activities of business have been heavily given emphasis recently. As a result, motivation of academics in teaching and students’ motivation in learning the course has recently maintained a low profile. However, a well established argument is that without adopting updated business ethics course as a fundamental of business education, neither long term business goal can be achieved nor a decent national development can be ensured. After the invention of ICT, most of the courses are trying to have a maximum benefit through the usage of IT. It is thus important to have a greater role of ICT in business ethics course. Based on the experience of courses taught by the author, this paper argues that an adequate use of ICT in the teaching of a business ethics (BE) course depends on clarifying the assumptions about ethics and the place of the course within a programme. For this purpose, it explains how ICT can be used to strengthen a view of business ethics based on dialogue and mutual learning and it encourages the combination between virtual and face-to-face teaching. Data used for this paper are the teaching and observation experiences in two universities in Bangladesh. One of them is public, while the other is included from a private counterpart. Finally, the paper examines the relationship between the use of ICT, individual learning processes and communities of practice. Key words: Business education, business ethics, corporate citizenship, ICT, learning processes.

The Islamic Business Ethics course applied in higher education aims to provide knowledge about ethics in business in accordance with sharia so that students have the ability to run a business in accordance with what is ordered in Islam, so that when students have graduated from their college have the provisions to open a business in sharia. Interest in becoming an entrepreneur includes a person's interest in creating a business by looking at the opportunities that are around and daring to take risks that may occur in running a business. This study aims to answer, describe and analyze the research problem formulation which consists of: 1. How is the Islamic Business Ethics Course in the Sunan Drajat Islamic Boarding School College? How are students interested in becoming entrepreneurs? and Is there any influence between Islamic Business Ethics Course on students' interest in becoming Entrepreneurs? The research method used in this study is a quantitative research method with the type of field research. The population in this study were all students of the 2019 Islamic Economics study program who had taken the Islamic Business Ethics course. The research instruments used were: questionnaires or questionnaires and interviews. The results of this study concluded that: (1) Islamic Business Ethics Course had a significant effect on the interest in becoming an entrepreneur. The influence of Islamic Business Ethics Course is 34.8% and the remaining 65.2% is influenced by other variables. (2) Interest in becoming an entrepreneur based on the correlation results stated that the value of interest in being an entrepreneur in students was 0.348 or 34, 8%. (3) There is a significant effect on the variable of Islamic Business Ethics Course (X) on the interest in becoming an Entrepreneur (Y) based on the calculation results obtained a correlation coefficient value of 0.348 indicating the correlation value ranges from -1 to +1 (-1≤ r 1) means the level of correlation shows moderate. So, according to the test criteria, Ha is accepted and Ho is rejected, which means that the hypothesis shows that there is a significant relationship between the Islamic Business Ethics Course and the interest in becoming an Entrepreneur of the 2019 Islamic Economics Study Program students at the Sunan Drajad Islamic Boarding School.

While business ethics (BE) courses have increasingly formed part of business school curricula, we still do not know much about how these courses can change students’ capacity to deal with ethical issues. Drawing on a sensemaking perspective, we conducted an action research study with 66 business professionals enrolled in an executive training program at a French university. The aim was to investigate the processes underlying ethical judgment (EJ) change through a BE course. Participants were invited to pick a significant ethical issue they had personally experienced at work. They were then asked to make sense of it, in writing, at the beginning and at the end of the course, 3 months later. In comparing pre-course and post-course judgments, we concluded that the structure and contents of the respondents’ initial judgment had indeed been modified. This change could be accounted for as the outcome of four ‘sense-remaking’ mechanisms, which we theorize as complexifying, reprioritizing, conceptualizing and contextualizing. Our study contributes to the literature on BE education by demonstrating the benefits of a sensemaking approach. It also offers an original process-based model of EJ, specifying the mechanisms at play in EJ change. Finally, it contributes to the field of sensemaking studies by introducing the concept of sense-remaking, shedding new light on the evolutive dimension of sensemaking.

This study contributes to the growing literature examining the role that business ethics courses play in business schools' curricula. We assess internal as well as external factors that may influence whether AACSB-accredited business schools choose to require a business ethics course in their undergraduate core curricula. Using data from 382 universities, we find evidence of a relationship between the characteristics of a business school's leadership and the college's decision to require an ethics course. Specifically, colleges of business whose deans are female or have a background in management are more likely to require their undergraduates to take a business ethics course. In addition, we find that a school's affiliation has a direct influence on this decision. Private schools, as well as universities with religious affiliations, are more likely to require a business ethics course. Also of interest, we find a negative relationship between the resources schools possess and the presence of a required ethics course. These findings suggest that the values of a school and its leadership are the main factors influencing the role of business ethics in a school's curriculum.

Purpose– The purpose of this study is to examine the attitudes toward business ethics of Vietnamese business students based on gender and the experience of having taken a business ethics course.Design/methodology/approach– A quantitative self-administered survey was conducted with a convenience sample of Vietnamese business students at a banking university in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. This study used the 30-item Attitudes Toward Business Ethics Questionnaire (ATBEQ) constructed by Neumann and Reichel (1987) based on the work of Stevens (1979). The Vietnamese version questionnaire was distributed, and 282 surveys were used for analysis. An item-by-item analysis was conducted based on gender and the experience of having taken a business ethics course.Findings– Significant differences were found on seven items based on gender and four items based on the experience of having taken a business ethics course. However, respondents appeared to have similar attitudes on the majority of the items.Research limitations/implications– Perhaps the greatest limitation of this study is the relatively uneven distribution of the respondents in the sample. The sample is skewed slightly toward women who are a bit older, fourth year or post-graduate and those who have not taken a business ethics course. In addition convenience sampling technique reduced its generalizability. This study is important because it supports the idea of ethics education to improve ethical decision-making of future business leaders and that education has an effect in Vietnam.Practical implications– As business students are the main subjects of this research, it can be useful for those involved in development of management and business education in Vietnam to have an overview on how gender impacts business students’ ethics perception. For the executives of multinational corporations, this study provides important information and adds support to a decision to do business in Vietnam.Social implications– Although there may be a perception of a less than ethical climate in Vietnam based on its Corruption Perception Index scores, it appears that Vietnamese business students in general express an ethical viewpoint. This study emphasizes the importance of ethics education that is culture-specific to build a strong ethical business environment that can help Vietnam prevent bribery and corruption and achieve sustainable growth and prosperity.Originality/value– This study contributes to the attitudes toward business ethics research and sheds light on the impact of gender and education (business ethics course) on Vietnamese business students’ ethical attitudes. There has been little research on business ethics in Vietnam. Academicians, managers, practitioners, policymakers, government leaders and the like can benefit from the findings of this paper.

International business ethics courses imply four basic epistemological and pedagogical challenges: (a) understanding various perceptions of ethics and values/virtues; (b) identifying ethical maxims among religious/spiritual traditions; (c) designing international business ethics courses as dialogical experiences; and (d) deepening our personal contribution to others’ learning process. This article argues that those epistemological and pedagogical challenges could determine the design and the contents of international business ethics courses: facing up to compatible/incompatible ethical theories (philosophical questioning), identifying ethical maxims among religious/spiritual traditions (religious and spiritual questioning), and reading our actions/decisions as quasi-texts (literature-bound questioning). Business ethics teachers could take those challenges upon themselves and design their business ethics courses accordingly. For each of the four challenges, a specific ethical issue is described; advice for teachers as well as ethical questions for debate and personal development are provided.

This research aims to identify and measure the effectiveness of business ethics courses on student Moral Reasoning. In-depth interview and a pilot test were conducted to examine the understandability of the experimental instrument. Quasi-experimental methods were conducted on students who join a business ethics course. One hundred twenty-two participants were valid from the manipulation check of pre-test and post-test. Paired T-Test was used to test the score between pre-test and post-test. Moral reasoning was measured using a defining issue test (DIT) to categorise High and Low Moral Reasoning on Participants. The result shows no difference in moral reasoning score between pre-test and post-test on a student who joins the business ethics course. This study finds that student moral reasoning does not improve by joining a business ethics course at university. These results imply that we should evaluate and re-examine the business ethics course syllabus for future research.

Based on the experience of a course taught by the authors, this paper seeks to show that an adequate use of IT in the teaching of a Business Ethics (BE) course depends on clarifying the assumptions about ethics and the place of the course within a programme. For this purpose it explains how IT can be used to strengthen a view of BE based on dialogue and mutual learning and it encourages the combination between virtual and face-to-face teaching. Finally, the paper examines the relationship between the use of IT, individual learning processes and communities of practice.

In this article on the background of business ethics and business ethics education, the following important questions, discussions and issues will be addressed: Firstly, a brief overview on the development of philosophy will be provided since business ethics can be viewed as a subdivision of philosophy. An exposition of how business ethics links with philosophy will (among others) be provided. Due to the fact that this article largely concentrates on the accountancy and auditing professions, referral will also briefly be made to how the so-called “professional ethics” of the concerned professions fit into the comprehensive discipline of philosophy. The second aspect to be addressed will be regarding one of the main challenges in presenting business ethics courses, namely to keep the subject pragmatic and practically applicable – which may be difficult, possibly due to the discipline’s development from philosophy. If the pragmatic and practical focus is not maintained, business ethics may result in a mere philosophical and theoretical course that has little to do with ethical challenges encountered in the real accountancy profession and business world. Reasons are mentioned that may result in business ethics courses being irrelevant and impractical and therefore possible solutions to this problem are also suggested. Other challenges that may prevent lecturers from presenting business ethics courses in an optimal manner are also briefly discussed in this section.

Teaching & Learning Guide for Business Ethics: An Overview

This study examines the influence of ethics instruction, religiosity, and intelligence on cheating behavior. A sample of 230 upper level, undergraduate business students had the opportunity to increase their chances of winning money in an experimental situation by falsely reporting their task performance. In general, the results indicate that students who attended worship services more frequently were less likely to cheat than those who attended worship services less frequently, but that students who had taken a course in business ethics were no less likely to cheat than students who had not taken such a course. However, the results do indicate that the extent to which taking a business ethics course influenced cheating behavior was moderated by the religiosity and intelligence of the individual student. In particular, while students who were highly religious were unlikely to cheat whether or not they had taken a business ethics course, students who were not highly religious demonstrated less cheating if they had taken a business ethics course. In addition, the extent of cheating among highly intelligent students was significantly reduced if such students had taken a course in business ethics. Likewise, individuals who were highly intelligent displayed significantly less cheating if they were also highly religious. The implications of these findings are discussed.

This study examined whether undergraduate students’ perceptions regarding the acceptability of cheating were influenced by the amount of ethics instruction the students had received and/or by their personality. The results, from a sample of 230 upper-level undergraduate students, indicated that simply taking a business ethics course did not have a significant influence on students’ views regarding cheating. On the other hand, Machiavellianism was positively related to perceiving that two forms of cheating were acceptable. Moreover, in testing for moderating relationships, the results indicated that the extent to which taking a business ethics course influenced attitudes varied substantially across individuals. Specifically, taking a course in business ethics did result in students who scored lower on Machiavellianism holding even more negative views regarding certain forms of cheating. In addition, individuals with higher grade point averages (GPAs) who had taken a course in business ethics were also less accepting of certain forms of cheating than individuals with similar GPAs who had not taken the business ethics course. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Business Ethics & Other Paradoxes by Jimmy Winfield, George Hull and Greg Fried is an attempt to demonstrate how careful philosophical analysis can help us resolve a number of deep ethical questions revolving around business - and specifically business in a South African context. This book is explicitly intended to serve as a textbook for business ethics courses in South African universities. And this is no bad intention: almost all South African universities are required to teach business ethics in some shape or form these days, and good business ethics textbooks are hard to come by. This book aims to fill this particular niche. In some ways this is a little unfortunate. This book has many strengths - it is uniformly excellently written, and it contains a great deal of lively, novel, worthwhile and penetrating philosophical discussion. It is a book that anybody who teaches a business ethics course in a South African university ought to look at. But I suspect that it would work better as a piece of popular philosophy aimed at intellectually under-stimulated and curious business executives than it does as a textbook around which to structure an undergraduate course on business ethics. While many of the individual chapters are highly valuable and interesting, as a whole the book tries to cover too much material, too quickly for it to serve as a pedagogically strong foundation for a business ethics course.

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.

Although business ethics courses are flourishing on the undergraduate level, they have not made a significant inroad on the MBA level. Some argue that not only is no special course in ethics needed in MBA programs, but also that if a separate course on business ethics is given, it creates the impression that ethics is separate from business. The correct approach, they argue, is to integrate ethics in all business courses. The difficulty is that ethics is not usually integrated into MBA courses and so is not taught at all. Others maintain that philosophers, who typically teach business ethics courses, really know so little about business that they should not teach MBA level courses ? including business ethics courses. But management professors frequently are neither competent to teach ethics nor interested in doing so. Hence once again business ethics is not taught on the MBA level.