Pursuing Purposeful Organizations: Business Ethics Education in Saudi Arabia and the Islamic World

Abstract

Integral to the process of imbuing organizations with meaning is educating future managers to lead with a sense of morality and purpose. Fundamentally, this is the role of ethical management education. While this field has developed substantially in the US and other developed economies, little scholarly attention has addressed the status and development of business ethics education in the Islamic world; our paper attempts to fill this gap. To this end, we analyze the state of ethics education in Saudi Arabia by measuring business students’ inclination toward corporate social responsibility. We conduct a two-part content analysis to evaluate the presence and quality of ethics education at the graduate/undergraduate levels. And finally, we propose a curriculum framework that integrates Islamic and Western moral philosophy to cultivate managers, in the Islamic world, with a global mindset focused on creating meaningful organizations. Ultimately, this paper demonstrates that business ethics education in Saudi...