Chapter 1: Embedding Ethics in Teaching Management
In this introductory chapter, a brief, comprehensive review of the rest of the book is provided. It gives a breakdown of each module and its constituent chapters. The author concludes by accepting that the recognition of ethics as a business competence is growing, as organizations of today are beginning to embrace and expect their employees to have high standards of integrity and knowledge of ethical behavior, besides the necessary technical skills. It goes on to anticipate that, in the future, more organizations would incorporate rewards for ethical employees into their compensations and rewards systems.
Chapter 2: Building Ethics as a Foundational Principle Across an Integrated Undergraduate Curriculum
This chapter describes an integration of ethics across an undergraduate curriculum, using examples from a case study of a small, liberal arts college, Walsh University, which redesigned its curriculum. It paints a vivid image of what an integrated curriculum should be, indicating its features, the three major ways integration can be carried out as well as the themes that the subjects are organized around. The chapter then focuses on a final theme—ethical, social, and moral responsibility, highlighting the different courses integrated into the curriculum and organized around the ethical theme. The teaching strategy suggested for ethics is described as being grounded in experiential learning. Advising ethics educators, the authors emphasize the need to treat ethical development of students on an individual basis in order to serve their educational needs more thoroughly. At the same time, from the perspective of how the macro environment affects the teaching of ethics in an integrated curriculum, the chapter also speaks of the methods through which an ethics educator can effectively communicate with students from diverse cultures.
Chapter 3: Teaching Ethics to Grown-Ups: Coherent Narratives
This chapter highlights the rationale behind teaching grown-ups ethics, revealing how grown-up participants in an ethics classroom can strengthen their capacity to apply values to their professions. Throwing some light on how ethics education influences the decision-making pattern of a business person, this author suggests that the students in an ethics classroom can be classified into three types—enthusiasts, skeptics, and ditherers; and describes how each type is influenced by the ethics educator. It goes on to state the benefits of teaching ethics to adults, both at the individual level and for the society. Suggestions of effective teaching methods follow, for inculcating values into adults in the classroom. Making reference to the self-narrative approach, the chapter shows how a better understanding of mixed narratives and crossed narratives could influence the ethical decision-making process of a business person.
Chapter 4: Enabling and Embedding the Oath Project into Student Learning and Ethical Career Pathways
This chapter has outlined Nottingham Trent University (NTU)’s adaptation of the Global OATH Project, which has been developed with a view to facilitating more socially and environmentally aware and responsible future business leaders. Building on the Principles of Responsible Management Education and the United Nations’ Global Compact, this project is representative of a growing concern with the dominant model of business practices that are largely unsustainable and tend toward increasing socioeconomic inequalities. While facilitated by staff, a key dynamic of the project is that it should be student-led. After some initial reticence, due to previous experience of being more directed in their learning, students appreciated the relative freedom of working through the challenges and opportunities of which project presented to them.
Importantly this project is ongoing and self-perpetuating as a number of alumni are committed to returning to NTU to enthuse current students and discuss their experiences of the project. It is also planned that those students who have participated in the NTU OATH Project will be a part of a longitudinal study, which will lead to creating a database of socially and environmentally responsible business leaders. International networks are also being strengthened between higher education institutions offering their own OATH Projects.
Chapter 5: Ethics Educators in Generation Y Classrooms
This chapter begins by recalling the reasons for the strong interest in the study of ethics in today’s world. It then identifies the need to address the particular learning needs of millennials or generation Y learners and advises educators with regard to how to adapt techniques of teaching ethics to suit them. For example, methods that are more conversational and interactive, group activities and audio-visual aids such as video clips have been found to be effective in engaging today’s learners. Other tools include digitalization; presentations and position papers; guest appearances; reflection; and the overall use of teaching materials that establish clarity and consistency in values with standards to communicate knowledge.
The chapter concludes by encouraging educators to be innovative and proactive in teaching ethics in a technologically advanced and advancing world. Technology is a coin with two sides—for example, facilitating ethical behavior by affording greater transparency while simultaneously increasing vulnerability to unethical behavior such as hacking. This accentuates the need for business schools and other tertiary institutions to promote sustainable ethical cultures, by contributing to the establishment of responsible organizations, and to thereby bring justice and development to the larger society.
Chapter 6: Socially Responsible Human Resource Policies
Throughout the chapter the important role played by social responsibility in a key organizational area such as human resource management has been made evident. Socially responsible management policies and practices have now become a need. A responsible employment policy; investment in continuous training; responsibly managing relationships with employees, not only in economic terms, but also by integrating the benefits of diversity; providing a health and safety program at work; and reconciling work and family life can all be distinct advantages for a company nowadays. The analysis of corporate social responsibility reports and standards must provide a professional and general view of what kind of socially responsible human resource policies and practices are implemented by companies.
Chapter 7: Team Building
Team building is a very difficult and demanding process. Many of the choices involved in team building, from member selection to the ways in which team members engage with each other to evaluation of outcomes, can have powerful ethical implications. It is important for teachers to help students engage with the potential ethical implications in both formative and summative processes for teams, including how the benefits of diversity can introduce new ethical and performance considerations. Of particular benefit to students is the opportunity to role-play and actively work in groups with some stakes attached to outcomes. By immersing students in a variety of team settings as well as creating a framework for working through case studies that draw out ethical challenges in team building, the concepts they read about and discuss can be made much more practical. This serves to highlight how pressures of time and performance can impact on how ethical factors are considered in team settings. Similarly, while most people agree that diversity has the potential to be very positive for organizations and teams, working together effectively and ethically in diverse environments is even more difficult, as team members must engage with the challenge of allowing different voices to be heard, respected, and brought together for the good of both the team and the larger organization.
Chapter 8: An Ethical Approach to Teaching Organizational Change Management
This chapter recognizes certain ethical challenges in change management and focuses on four key strategies to address them: authentic engagement, stakeholder sensitivity, rich and respectful communication, and appreciative inquiry. Kotter’s1 approach to leading and managing change is employed and critiqued. The relative benefits of “stand-alone” and “embedded” ethical approaches to teaching ethical change management are considered, and, when required, an argument is made for both approaches. It is further noted that there is a continuing need for ethical change in developing and developed countries alike. The key to an ethical and effective approach to organizational change management is fostering trust, and respectful engagement with stakeholders, not expert arrogance or manipulation. The chapter offers some proven strategies for teaching ethical change management. Three approaches in particular are highlighted: conversations, diagnostics, and teaching stories.
Chapter 9: Using Safety to Introduce Ethics into Operations Management Courses
This chapter suggests that operations management (OM) instructors can use occupational, process, and product safety issues to introduce ethics into their courses. Safety is especially appropriate for raising ethical issues in OM courses. Safety is an easily appreciated value and of great interest to employees, customers, and the general public. Safety is directly tied to many operating decisions, and many familiar business processes raise safety issues. And because of safety’s connection to risk, safety issues often arise naturally when presenting OM decision-making methods and models.
We show that ethical issues can be introduced into OM courses using safety (a) without crowding out any existing OM material, (b) without compromising a focus on production outcomes, while (c) nonetheless avoiding a hasty and superficial approach that implicitly devalues ethics.
We argue that these three goals can be accomplished if instructors adopt modest expectations and employ an experiential approach for introducing ethics into their courses. Their aim should be to raise students’ awareness of the ethical aspects of operating decisions, not to give students the concepts and tools to actually weigh ethical considerations and make good ethical judgments. Moreover, instructors can do this by taking advantage of the experiential exercises that are already a part of many OM courses. Simulations, in particular, are a very common component of OM syllabi. We describe a concrete example of an operationally oriented simulation and explain how instructors can utilize their existing OM teaching simulations to raise ethical issues.
Chapter 10: Ethics in Marketing Communications— Emerging Issues in Digital Media
This chapter looks at the ethical dimensions in the teaching of marketing communications, specifically regarding emerging issues in the digital media, with a substantial number of digital marketing concepts covered. Marketing communications deals primarily with the communication (promotion) elements of marketing. The chapter suggests how to encourage discussions about the appropriateness of corporate actions regarding engagement on social media or use of consumer information, taking culture, environmental, and regulatory context into consideration.
By drawing on various emerging themes in digital media communication, the chapter suggests how ethical themes may be identified, brought to the fore, and then delivered to an audience, which may not ordinarily have considered them important using case studies, assignments, and brainstorming sessions. The chapter concludes that success in marketing communication in the digital era goes far beyond increase in business metrics, brands must act ethically and create value for customers. Therefore, in teaching ethics in business communications, creation of real long-term value that is transparent, beneficial, and rewarding to customers and stakeholders, must be emphasized.
Chapter 11: Teaching Ethics in Business Law Courses
This chapter addresses strategies for integrating ethics into business law courses. This chapter begins by laying out several legal topics that are intimately related to ethics including: legal theory, anti-bribery laws, good faith contractual requirements, anti-discrimination legislation, human rights treaties, the law governing corporations, and other laws involving cultural and societal morality. While laying out these topics, this chapter presents parallels between ethical theory and legal doctrine, and suggests how to teach these parallels in a classroom setting. The legal topics are then complemented by a multipronged strategy for integrating ethics into business law courses. The author suggests that ethics should be addressed as a thematic topic and incorporated into every major aspect of business law courses through assignments and in-class activities. Examples of such assignments and activities as well as advice and tips for instructor implementation of these assignments and activities are provided in this chapter. The chapter also provides advice relevant to both developing and developed countries, and presents pertinent concerns from both vantage points. An understanding of the distinction between law and ethics and how they interrelate will better equip students to face difficult business decisions by asking not only the legal question, “Can we legally do this?” but also the ethics question, “Is this the right thing to do?” On both domestic and international levels, questions of ethics permeate law and business transactions. This chapter suggests that by understanding and acknowledging cultural, ethical, and legal differences within and among countries, students will gain awareness and an understanding of the broader transactional landscape.
1 Kotter, J. 1995. “Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail.” Harvard Business Review, March–April, pp. 59–67.