Examining effectiveness of teaching business ethics: An experimental assessment

Abstract

The authors examine impact of ethics education on decision making of students who had successfully credited a recently instituted course on business ethics in their Bachelor of Commerce program. Designing an experiment that provides both the opportunity and incentive to act unfairly, they assess effectiveness of the ethics education and examine the extent to which ethical values are actually internalized. The authors test ethical conduct of the students using a novel adaption of the unscrambled-anagram exercise. They further compare unethical behavior of the students with academic grades and religiosity. Regardless of the grades earned, misreporting rates are nearly the same. The authors find that sociocultural religious values do impact the ethical behavior.