Innovative Methods of Teaching Integrity and Ethics in Management Education

The key role of values and norms in organizational culture are closely related to integrity, moral and ethical concerns and should be taught using innovative case studies, video-conferences, role-playing dilemmas, video-interviews, collaborative blog-based methodology, integrity project participation and intensive social media use in management education.

Mainstreaming Corporate Social Responsibility at the Core of the Business School Curriculum

This book chapter will make the case that corporate social responsibility (CSR) mainstreaming is an imperative to promote integrity and alleviate the strong entrenchment of utilitarian perspectives permeating management education (Ghoshal, 2005). The chapter argues that CSR mainstreaming should be anchored in the context of a vision for responsibility at the level of the School and that, starting with visioning and strategizing, business schools have to assume a more proactive role in shaping a new generation of leaders, capable of managing the complex challenges that lie at the interface of business and society. The chapter highlights challenges and opportunities in this respect and the critical role of the UN Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME) in helping in this reorientation. The book chapter tackles these two interrelated themes systematically, and illustrate with the case of the Olayan School of Business, a leading business school in the Middle East.

Academic Dishonesty and Cheating

This chapter provides a comprehensive review of the literature on academic dishonesty and cheating, by defining the different kinds of cheating behaviors, and then illustrating the different factors that have an impact on cheating behaviors. The authors then offer suggestions derived from their synthesis of these studies, as to how to better react to this phenomenon and take corrective as well as proactive action, so as to be able to control and perhaps reduce instances and occurrences of academic dishonesty and cheating.

Building a Culture of Integrity

Although business students can learn about ethics through case studies and examples, this learning may not lead to future ethical behavior in ambiguous situations or unsupportive cultures. Business schools can incorporate an experiential component to ethics education by giving students the opportunity to work in an organization with integrity: the business school itself. As students begin to develop their professional identities, the business school can establish students’ expectations about how ethical people and organizations function. This supports students in developing professional identities that incorporate integrity. The authors recommend that business schools utilize the cognitive triangle of thoughts, feelings, and actions in developing a culture of integrity. Addressing all three of these components can help students avoid cognitive distortions that make them unable to recognize ethical dilemmas or render them unaware of the consequences of decisions and behaviors. The authors suggest using a portfolio of tactics to create a culture of integrity, including integrity codes and honor codes, policies and procedures, reporting mechanisms, consequences, symbols and ceremonies, top management support, faculty-student relationships, and open, truthful exchange. Unethical actions are more likely to occur in organizations with individualistic, egoistic climates, thus the challenge is to create a more collectivist, community orientation.

Rethinking Ethics Education in Business Schools in the Post-Financial Crisis Epoch

This chapter deals with a multitude of perspectives on ethics education in business schools and provides a compelling example of Iceland, where unethical behavior of its business elite and the total disregard for commonly accepted ethical rules of conducting business led to unsustainable expansion of the financial industry and its subsequent collapse in the fall of 2008. The authors examine whether ethics education or more precisely, the lack thereof, played any role in this financial collapse, and whether business schools should contribute to molding moral characters of their students, who will ultimately become the next generation of business leaders. Here are a few important highlights of what has been found. First, a consensus seems to have been reached that business schools have an important role in developing the moral character of their students, something they haven’t practiced sufficiently according to managers. Second, business schools ought to take a more direct part in a society’s discourse on business ethics and perhaps be in the forefront of these discussions. Third, there is a clear need for not only asking business schools to contribute to molding the moral character of students but to reshaping that of practicing managers through re-training and continuous education.

A “Novel” Approach to the Moral Dimension of Leadership

In recent times ethics and leadership have become dominant concerns in business. The foundations of the business establishment have been shaken by the examples of insider trading, manipulative accounting, and blatant fraud. The cause of ethical compromise can often be traced to the failure on the part of the leadership to actively promote ethical ideals and practices. In the current scenario, it is therefore, essential to give training on ethical leadership. This chapter adopts a three dimensional approach integrating the novel The Devil and Miss Prym into the study of ethics by exploring various related leadership theories. It harnesses the multifaceted nature of literature, which presents the interaction of a variety of characters with radically different beliefs, desires, and behaviours, thus increasing the complexity of an ethical dilemma. Charismatic and Servant leadership have been mapped to virtue ethics. Transactional leadership adopts ethical egoism as an ethical perspective. The transformational leader adopts the utilitarianism approach. Authentic leadership is based on altruistic principles. Deontological ethics is explained with Value Centered leadership. A thematic analysis of the novel has been done to exemplify the components of the leadership theories with an ethical perspective.

Raising Ethics and Integrity Awareness by Incentivizing Professionalism

Far more than in the fields of business, research scholarship in the medical and legal fields has considered the integrity of students and graduates. Within the broader concept of professionalism, integrity is manifest in these fields as behavioral qualities such as bedside manner, client relationships, and dedication to quality. Yet in business scholarship, research into professionalism extends little beyond exploration of it antonyms as evidenced in the moral conduct of certain notorious executives. Conspicuously absent from business literature is much consideration of the positive behavioral qualities desirable in our institutions’ students, neither with respect to scholastic progress during college, to employability and career progression following graduation, nor to the foundations of conduct that characterize pro-social business practitioners. In this chapter, the author offers an exploration of professionalism as a concept within which integrity is implicit and critical, and around which business schools can structure programs to raise awareness and standards among their students and graduates. The chapter begins by fleshing-out the concept of professionalism, including brief review of the word’s etymology and history. Next, an argument is developed as to the relevance of professionalism to students and, therefore, to faculty and administrators of business schools. Finally, the intentions and experiences at the college of business at a mid-tier state university, where colleagues and the author have developed and launched what is called the Professionalism Recognition Program, are presented in the spirit of positive organizational scholarship to provide other business faculty and administrators with a potential idea for addressing professionalism at their institutions. The author concludes with discussion of additional research related to the concept of professionalism and it’s applicability in business schools’ planning.

Is It Ethical? A Multidimensional Approach to Facilitating Ethical Decision Making in Students

The need for ethical leadership continues to become increasingly important as the environment grows more interconnected and complex. Educators are being called upon to assist in the development of ethical leaders; however, ethical decision-making, because of its complex nature, is not something that can be taught in a simple, straight forward fashion. This chapter provides an overview of a variety of strategies regarding when, what, and how to teach ethics and presents an instructional module in ethical decision-making, grounded in scholarly literature. The module can be used to provide depth and richness for undergraduate and graduate university students by creating an opportunity for them to ponder ethical situations, mull over and debate alternatives based on philosophical lenses, and arrive at decisions, which are probably not identical, but personally defensible. The educational unit focuses on developing awareness of one’s own ethical stance as well as teaching the utility of a system for ethical analysis which allows for contextual difference, nuance and complexity rather than imposing one set of moral standards. In addition, several keys to effective ethics instruction are suggested.

The Social Responsibility of Business Schools

Business schools teach stockholder and stakeholder perspectives for ethical decision-making, but what are the implications of those perspectives for the management of business schools themselves? From the stockholder perspective, faculty are agents in an organization financed by two types of principals—private donors and governments—with goals based on education’s social and economic benefits. The essay addresses the stockholder perspective’s issues of open and free competition, deception and fraud, and the role of required or desirable objectives. Some business school competition is open and free yet some is not. Deception and fraud do not appear significant. Objectives not specified by the principal may be required or desirable in pursuing educational objectives. Next, the stakeholder perspective suggests further parallels between business and academia. Three market failures—externalities, moral hazards, and monopoly power—are readily found in academia. Decisions do not incorporate all costs, there are numerous moral hazards, and monopoly power may arise.