This book features sixteen chapters written by distinguished scholars who collectively point to a roadmap for advancing business ethics education at a critical juncture in the history of corporate America. The editors frame the book with an introductory chapter that details a gold standard for delivering ethics in the business school curriculum that signals to students that ethics matters, provides an adequate counterbalance to the amoral subtext that dominates much of business education, remedies assessment problems associated with current accrediting standards, and prepares students for newly minted and fast-growing careers in ethics compliance, risk management, and corporate social responsibility. The chapters that follow lay out some challenges and opportunities that administrators and educators need to address in order to improve business ethics education and business school reputations in a post-Enron climate. Both traditional and experimental perspectives on delivering ethics in the curriculum are covered in conjunction with research that substantiates the potential for improving student ethics competencies after exposure to ethics coursework. Methods for incorporating ethics in various subjects, including accounting, corporate governance, environmentalism, global business, managerial decision making, and human resource management are also given as part of the roadmap for advancing business ethics education.

Toward Assessing Business Ethics Education, edited by Diane L. Swanson and Dann G. Fisher of Kansas State University, is a sequel to their book Advancing Business Ethics Education in the Ethics in Practice IAP book series. The focus on assessment in this second book is a timely response to the urgent search among business schools for ways to teach and assess ethics at a time when the public’s faith in corporations and business schools has been undermined greatly by the failure of both to respond to widespread corruption and scandals in the business sector. Although no one expects business education alone to resolve these problems, the distinguished scholars represented in this book advocate that business schools should at least do their part by exposing their students to decision models that incorporate ethical dimensions on behalf of corporate stakeholders and society at large. As the book’s title conveys, it is then important to assess key learning objectives to insure that business students graduate knowing ethics fundamentals and armed with the ability to recognize ethical dilemmas and possible solutions during the course of their careers. This book will speak to all who are interested in accountability for business ethics education, especially business school deans, university administrators, faculty members, students, and prospective employers. This audience will find that the enterprise of assessing business ethics education is advanced in three ways. First, the book functions as a venue for distinguished scholars to share the innovative ways that they are assessing ethics coverage in courses and degree programs. Second, these authors identify what needs to be assessed and the means for doing so. Third, the book serves not only as a guide to assessment, but also as a platform for expanding and improving ethics coverage in business schools. Moreover, an important take away for readers is the provision of a simple formula, first advocated by Diane L. Swanson and William C. Frederick (University of Pittsburgh) in 2005, for delivering ethics education that minimizes assessment errors. By following this formula, business schools can provide assurances that ethics will not be assessed as being sufficient when it is woefully inadequate or even missing in the curriculum and that it cannot be distorted, diluted, or trivialized by uninformed coverage and still pass inspection. Avoiding these assessment errors is critical in an educational environment in which weak accrediting standards for ethics go hand in hand with spotty, uniformed coverage that would not be tolerated for other business disciplines.

This book is an extended argument for the critical importance which justice and ethical leadership should have in business ethics education. The book examines the history of ideas and purposes in education, the contemporary role of business schools, and the social foundations of moral education to conclude that the pragmatic pursuit of the good must be a central aim of business strategy. To meet the challenges of facing society today, the masters of business must be moral craftsmen in a just and democratic private property economy that serves the common good. The author grounds this vision for business leadership in the centrality of systems of exchange in human society, in generating prosperity and providing for the general welfare. Business ethics education has focused primarily on moral formation of individual leaders and managers in the context of ethical codes, organizational culture, and legal compliance. Important as this approach is, it fails to generate a sufficient level of business responsibility to satisfy legitimate social concerns regarding the use of natural resources, environmental sustainability, reasonable limitation of systemic risk in capital markets, and fair allocation of goods and services. If the social purpose of business is not intentionally embraced and diligently pursued, the economy may enrich a few but impoverish the society, its resources, and its democracy. Hence this book argues for a new vision of business ethics that is grounded in public accountability of business operations and outcomes for the common good, as a matter of justice.

Events on Wall Street and Main Street reveal that some business leaders make dramatically unethical self-serving decisions that ignore the public interest. How can business schools educate future business leaders to make ethical decisions? Unfortunately, most business schools fail in teaching ethical decision-making. They erroneously assume that such decision-making is primarily conscious and reason-based, reflecting the western cultural orientation toward science and logic. In this book, Thomas Culham cites neurological findings showing that unconscious processes and emotions play a much more significant role than reason in making ethical decisions. Culham urges business schools to teach a modified form of emotional intelligence, linked with research-supported contemplative practices from the great meditative traditions. This book details the author's ethics curriculum and explains its successful application at the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia. This fascinating, interdisciplinary, and highly practical curriculum integrates philosophy (virtue ethics), Daoist thinking, psychology, and neuroscience. This curriculum intends to transform the way business schools teach decision making. Such an effort might just transform the way we do business.

This concise and engaging Advanced Introduction provides the conceptual tools necessary to make ethical decisions in today’s business world. John Hooker provides an objective and closely-reasoned analysis of ethical issues based on a unified conceptual framework that distils the best of ethical thought into three clearly articulated principles: the generalization, utilitarian, and autonomy principles.

Explains how curricula should be streamlined and rejuvenated to ensure a high level of integrity in management education, providing numerous examples of new tools, teaching methods, integrity sensitization and development exercises and ethical management education assessment approaches.