University Professors and Teaching Ethics - SAGE Journals

JOURNAL 10.1177/1052562905280839 Lund Dean,OF Beggs MAN / PROFESSORS AGEMENT EDUCA ANDTION ETHICS / February 2006

UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS AND TEACHING ETHICS: CONCEPTUALIZATIONS AND EXPECTATIONS

Kathy Lund Dean Idaho State University Jeri Mullins Beggs Illinois State University After the spectacular ethical breaches in corporate America emerged, business school professors were singled out as having been negligent in teaching ethical standards. This exploratory study asked business school faculty about teaching ethics, including conceptualizations of ethics in a teaching context and opinions of the extent to which teaching ethics could positively affect student behavior. This research also identified respondents’ various pedagogical approaches to teaching ethics. Major results indicate that faculty generally do not believe they can change students’ethical behaviors and that faculty’s conceptualizations of ethics do not match their classroom approaches. Discussion and possible explanations are offered. Keywords: ethics; pedagogy; moral behavior; student behavior

In the weeks that followed Enron’s and WorldCom’s spectacular falls, much was made in popular press and newspaper headlines of the business school backgrounds earned by those fallen leaders. Business school professors were singled out as having been negligent in teaching these corporate Authors’ Note: This research was supported by an Idaho State University FRC grant #918. We would also like to thank Susan Hooks for her invaluable research assistance and the anonymous reviewers for their developmental comments. A version of this article was presented at the 2004 national meeting of the Institute of Behavioral and Applied Management, Providence, RI. JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT EDUCATION, Vol. 30 No. 1, February 2006 15-44 DOI: 10.1177/1052562905280839 © 2006 Organizational Behavior Teaching Society

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JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT EDUCATION / February 2006

actors ethical standards. MBA professors were especially targeted as having failed at their duties. Ghoshal (2003) represented the harsh critics, writing: Faculty members need to own up to their own role in creating Enrons. It is their ideas that have done much to strengthen the practices they are all now so loudly condemning . . . Much of the problem has arisen from the excesses of business school academics in pretending that business is a science. Not only economists but also those in areas such as marketing and organisational behaviour increasingly treat business as if it were a kind of physics, in which individual intentions and choices either do not play a role or, if they do, can safely be taken as being determined by economic, social and psychological laws. (p. 21)

Since the scandals came to light, corporate America and academe have displayed differing opinions as to how to address and ultimately fix unethical behavior. Merritt (2003) asserted that cleaning up corporate America will require significant reform effort “where careers begin—with management education” (p. 105). Wipperfurth (2002) reported on the dramatic increase of corporate and executive ethics training opportunities available since Enron’s fall. Critics of such programs, though, say they miss the mark of helping students become more ethical because their focus is policy and legality, not morality and ethics. Such a compliance orientation, based in the fear of getting caught, usually has little effect on students’ ethical reasoning skills. Paine (1994) concurred: Even in the best cases, legal compliance is unlikely to unleash much moral imagination or commitment. The law does not generally seek to inspire human excellence or distinction. It is no guide to exemplary behavior—or even good practice. Those managers who define ethics as legal compliance are implicitly endorsing a code of moral mediocrity for their organizations. (p. 111)

Carolyn Woo (2003), dean of the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame and chair-elect of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) International’s Board of Directors, described the corporate ethics failures as “embedded in the system” (p. 23) but admitted to being more disturbed by individual cases of unethical behaviors she observed with students. She believed it is small, day-to-day unethical decisions that students make,1 such as reneging on a job offer, that create Correspondence concerning this article should be directed to Kathy Lund Dean, Ph.D., Idaho State University, College of Business, Management Department, 741 S. 7th Street, Box 8020, Pocatello, ID 83209; e-mail: [email protected].

Lund Dean, Beggs / PROFESSORS AND ETHICS

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the slippery slope of justifying wrong corporate behaviors once in the work world (p. 23). In recognition of the scandals, the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University will implement a new MBA course that entering students must take—before regular classes even start. Lasting 10 days, students discuss subjects such as values, corporate social responsibility (CSR), and business ethics (Sachdev, 2003). The Mendoza College at Notre Dame integrates ethics into the entire business curriculum using various techniques such as service learning, required ethics courses, and a values selfassessment module in the Executive MBA program (Woo, 2003, p. 26). There are exhortations, then, from many business stakeholders indicating that business school faculty have an invested role in ethics education. Some business schools, such as the Kellogg School and the Mendoza College, appear to accept the idea that business schools are appropriate places for ethics education. Since 1979, the AACSB has required that accredited schools show evidence of overall curricular coverage of ethical issues. It does not, though, mandate how ethics is to be taught or how much coverage should be included. In April 2003, the AACSB strongly considered a curricular ethics requirement—the first time any curricular requirement would have been handed down. Ultimately, it decided not to change the historical standard of requiring evidence of coverage but not a structural component itself. New standards do require enhanced treatment of ethics coverage and include a section about the behavioral expectations of people in business schools (Blood, 2003; also see www.aacsb.edu/accreditation/business/standards0101-04.pdf). The examples above indicate how different people and organizations view an appropriate response to business ethics instruction. They also reveal significant gaps in how varied stakeholders view the role higher education plays in teaching ethics. In this article, we report findings of an exploratory study in which business school faculty were asked a lengthy set of questions related to teaching ethics. Because it is primarily business school faculty who operationalize postsecondary ethics education,2 our sample included only faculty. Using purposeful stratified sampling (to gain a cross section of demographics) and in-depth, semistructured interviews (Gall, Borg, & Gall, 2003), we investigated faculty’s conceptualizations of ethics in a teaching context and their opinions of the extent to which teaching ethics could affect student behavior. Using a content analysis software tool, we found that themes emerged about how faculty conceptualize ethics in teaching and how faculty identify their various pedagogical approaches to teaching ethics. From the data, we created a taxonomy that describes the extent to which faculty believe they can teach ethics, described by our respondents as the extent

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to which they believe they may affect students’ ethical behaviors with ethics education. The basis for our current study began in 1997 at a Catholic university in the Midwest, well before the current spate of corporate scandals. To better serve the faculty in teaching and researching business ethics, the director of the business school’s ethics center asked us to interview faculty to ascertain their interests and needs. This research had several objectives: (a) to assess the attitudes of faculty about ethics education, (b) to support ethics education and ethics across the curriculum effort as part of the university’s mission, and (c) to identify pedagogical needs for those who wanted to include ethics coverage in their courses. Sixteen members of the business faculty (about one third of faculty) were interviewed, and at least one member from each of the seven departments was included. We attempted to cover as many demographic and organizational identifiers (i.e., rank, time on the job, sex, etc.) as possible. We used a semistructured interview instrument designed to get responses to the three objectives identified above. After relatively few interviews, recurring themes emerged. The three most salient themes were 1. Many of the faculty members did not feel that they had the proper training to teach ethics. A few indicated that they had never had a formal course in ethics or that they had had a course in ethics, but it had been too long ago to be of current use. 2. Most faculty members indicated that there is only so much time in a semester, and it is difficult to cover all of the technical material, much less ethics. One faculty member in the finance department put it like this: “If I only have time to cover [financial] derivatives or ethics, which one do you think I should teach?” 3. Contrary to expectations, we did not find an enunciated interest in teaching ethics or an agreement among the majority of faculty that ethics was an important topic to cover in each functional area. Most faculty felt that because the business school required a course in business ethics in the undergraduate and graduate degrees, the topic was being covered sufficiently elsewhere.

Based on this initial experience with the topic and the current interest in ethics education in a post-Enron business culture, we decided to revisit and expand the 1997 pilot study. We modified the original interview instrument based on issues that arose; for example, the wording of some of the questions needed to be changed and clarified. We also added questions at the end of the instrument directly related to the ethics scandals of late to assess faculty’s opinions about what is currently happening in corporate America.


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Literature Review For the current study, we wanted to review literature that examined the extent to which ethics education effects behavioral change. We found this was not an easy literature to pinpoint and that there was much variation in several key research constructs, including “ethics” itself. We also found expected differences in and difficulties with measuring our constructs of interest, especially in terms of measuring how decision making related to actual behaviors and measuring changed behaviors as a result of ethics education. To have an understanding of this relationship between education and effecting behavioral change, we must go back to seminal literature spanning several disciplines including education, ethics, and psychology. We found studies examining the ethics education–behavior link, and many more that examined the moral reasoning–behavior link. Summarizing, we looked at literature of three primary kinds that emerged to be germane to the current study: · research about how ethics education affects decision making and behavior, · research that examines what kind of ethics education has been shown to affect behaviors (if any), and · research that showed evidence that students who learn to reason or critically think their way through issues would “transfer” that reasoned conclusion to subsequent behaviors.

There was little congruence in studies that examined how education affects moral reasoning and, subsequently, ethical behaviors. It is reasonable to attribute some of the discrepancies to the wide variation in the definition of ethics and the existence of varied paradigms used to describe ethics. Studies about ethics use construct definitions including morals, values, standards of behavior, religious injunctions, and personal codes among others. Defining ethics has been equated with “nailing Jell-O to the wall” (Lewis, 1985) and has certainly had an impact on the body of ethics education research. This issue is discussed later in greater detail and formed a key step in our own research findings for the second research question’s analysis of the extent to which we can affect students with ethics education at a postsecondary level. Another potential issue is the pedagogy of ethics education, or, the “how” of it. Even academics who believe that ethics education is important are critical of current teaching techniques in the area. Duska (1991) stated “the futility of ethics courses is not due to ethics being either 1) already known, 2) unteachable, or 3) unknowable, but rather due to the way ethics is taught” (p. 336). Trevino and McCabe (1994) described their belief that students

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may, indeed, be taught to behave ethically and enumerated two assumptions about teaching ethics they think are false: that people are ethical or unethical independent of the situation, and that people’s ethics are “fully formed and unchangeable” by the time they are old enough to matriculate into business programs (pp. 405-406). Based on our review of the literature and our own study findings, these are common and persistent assumptions whose “truth” is still being debated. A critical distinction we found throughout the literature, including seminal work by Kohlberg and Rest (discussed below), is the distinction between moral or ethical reasoning, and moral or ethical behavior. The great majority of work examines reasoning; the ability to empirically link such reasoning with subsequent behaviors and thus gain predictive power between reasoning and action appears to have eluded most researchers. Wright (1995) did a comprehensive literature review for work that attempted to answer questions about adult ethics, educational efficacy, and pedagogy. He traced the roots of ethics education from Kant to Piaget to Kohlberg and asserted that Lawrence Kohlberg’s work is the theoretical underpinning of the bulk of subsequent moral development research. Weber and Wasieleski (2001) examined moral reasoning using managers as the respondents and found significant differences in moral reasoning based on situational elements of the dilemma, type of managerial work, and type of industry. Of most interest here, Weber and Wasieleski adapted Kohlberg’s inquiry method and detailed a discussion of Kohlberg’s contributions and issues. With its devotees and detractors, the continuing impact of Kohlberg’s work cannot be overestimated. The theory of cognitive moral development (CMD), with its six levels, developmental progression, and perhaps, most important, its offering of empirical tools, is ubiquitous in any ethics or moral development literature. For purposes of this article, the critical outcomes from Kohlberg-related studies are that education is considered one of many possible contributing variables to enhancing moral reasoning; however, its efficacy and suggested methodologies are still unidentified. In 1979, James Rest and his fellow researchers at the University of Minnesota published the Defining Issues Test (DIT) based on Kohlberg’s six stages of moral development (Rest, 1979). However, the DIT, and Rest’s subsequent four-component model, differed from the Moral Judgment Interview (MJI) and Kohlberg’s six stages in theoretical and pragmatic ways. First, the multiple choice DIT is more user friendly than the labor-intensive, interviewbased MJI. Although both methods used moral dilemmas, some of them identical, the DIT asked participants to first rate 12 items per dilemma on a 5point importance scale and then rank the items in order of importance. The


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MJI requires in-depth interviewing, data transcription, and researcher theme analysis and coding. Second, whereas the MJI placed participants into “hard” stages, the DIT provides a continuous index score of 0 to 90 derived from the ranking data, previously called the P score and now the N2 score. The Minnesota approach rejects Kohlberg’s hard-stage model in favor of a soft-stage model that acknowledges that response patterns may differ depending on the situation and assessment procedure. In pragmatic terms, the DIT appears to be popular, at least in part, because it is easy to administer and score, thanks to a scoring service open to all interested researchers. Evidence of its popularity can be seen in the more than 400 published and hundreds of unpublished studies that have been conducted using the DIT (Rest, Narvaez, Thoma, & Bebeau, 1999b), and the fact that more than 500,000 participants have completed the DIT (Rest, Narvaez, Thoma, & Bebeau, 1999a). The theoretical differences are also substantial. Mainly, the Minnesota approach focuses on the macro-morality implications of Kohlberg’s theory, which Kohlberg himself deemphasized. Macro-morality focuses on the formal structures of society, and micro-morality focuses on individuals (Rest et al., 1999b). Rest’s four-component model, introduced in 1983, is evidence of another substantial difference between the Minnesota approach and Kohlberg. The four-component model was an attempt to broaden the conception of moral functioning in general and of relevance to this literature review, to add moral behavior. One of the assumptions of the four-component model is that moral behavior results from relationships among the four component processes. The relationship between moral judgment and behavior, though, has been very problematic to define. Rest’s view was that “moral judgment is an important factor in real-life decision making, but that the interaction with other factors complicates the relationship so that simple, linear correlations cannot be expected” (Rest, 1979, p. 260). Rest believed that actual behavior must be considered and that, in fact, moral action is the “acid test” for morality. Kohlberg’s work, as previously discussed, makes clear that his work focused on reasoning rather than behavior. The four components of a moral reasoning process include · moral sensitivity: an awareness of the moral content in a situation; · moral judgment: the selection of a standard of judgment or framework of analysis, and its application to a situation to identify morally appropriate action; · moral will: the resolve to act in conformity with the moral judgment; and · moral action: the implementation of the moral judgment.

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The DIT and DIT-2 are measures of Component 2; although hundreds of studies have been conducted using the DIT, the current version DIT-2, and the MJI, few focus on ethics education. Recent work by the Minnesota group has focused on measuring Components 1, 3, and 4. Although research using the DIT is not conclusive in providing consistent links between stronger moral judgment and a battery of demographics and psychographics, the beneficial effect of a college education on moral judgment has received consistent support. The moral judgment of college students as measured by the DIT increases throughout their college years beyond any development attributable to age alone (Cummings, Dyas, & Maddox, 2001; Paradice & Dejoie, 1991; Rest & Thoma, 1985). Studies that utilized the DIT as a research tool (e.g., Armstrong, 1987; Trevino & Youngblood, 1990) for measuring ethical or moral reasoning and subsequent decision making, then, are inconclusive in how education fits within the mix of such development. Krathwohl, Bloom, and Masia (1984) updated Bloom’s (1956) classic educational taxonomy of the cognitive domain with the addition of the affective domain. As affective implies, Krathwohl and his colleagues enumerated a hierarchical continuum of educational objectives that fall outside of a traditional cognitive model of development. These objectives include learning that deals with “interests, attitudes, values, appreciation, and adjustment” (p. 24). Of interest to the current study is the idea that when more internalized learning occurs for the student because of a values imprint or change, we may expect behaviors to be affected. Their categories move from least internalized learning development to most: · 1.0 Receiving (Attending): The learner is sensitized into existence of phenomena. This includes subcategories of awareness and selected attention to certain phenomena. · 2.0 Responding: The learner is actively engaged in learning from some phenomenon. The authors indicate this is a relatively low level of engagement; however, there is some spark of interest in the phenomenon by the learner. · 3.0 Valuing: The learner believes that engaging with the phenomenon has worth. Behavior toward engaging with the phenomenon becomes, in certain situations, stable and consistent enough to be perceived as the learner holding a value. The learner exhibits a preference for certain values more than others. · 4.0 Organization: The learner internalizes more and more values based on interaction with phenomena; thus, there becomes a need for the learner to organize a values system. It is a two-step process, including conceptualization of the value in an organizable form, and then organization of a values system itself. · 5.0 Characterization by a value or value complex: The learner has internalized a consistent, self-created values system that guides her behavior. This values system helps form a worldview or total philosophy that undergirds the learner’s entire system of behavior.


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Unlike Kohlberg and like Rest, Krathwohl et al.’s (1984) work moved specifically toward describing and predicting behaviors as a result of stronger internalization of affective domain learning objectives. Level 5.0 distinguishes itself from Level 4.0 because of the integration of predictive behaviors based on an internalized values system. Situational elements in workplace ethical dilemmas are important. Weber and Wasieleski (2001) asserted “ethical decision making in the workplace is likely to be situation-specific. . . . This means that predicting managerial ethical compliance or violation may be quite difficult because reasoning appears to be significantly influenced by how the decision maker frames the situation” (p. 99). Trevino’s (1986) seminal work identified several workplace factors that matter when employees evaluate potential responses to ethical dilemmas: · immediate job context including reinforcement and other pressures, · organizational culture including normative structure, referent others, obedience to authority, and responsibility for consequences, and · characteristics of the work including role taking and resolution of moral conflict.

Understanding the connection between, for example, an organizational culture that celebrates winning at any cost and the impact that culture will have on employees’ decision-making options is important for understanding how decisions really get made in organizational ethical dilemmas. Conroy and Emerson (2004) found that an enunciated religiosity in students correlated significantly with perceptions of ethical actions but found no evidence of such a correlation with completion of an ethics course. Furthermore, they question the effectiveness of ethics courses with generalized scopes, in lieu of ethics courses that have discipline-specific codes of conduct embedded in their instruction. The researchers assert that the latter “may well be effective in changing perceptions and behavior” (p. 391) but, that generalized approaches to ethics education have not been shown to effect similar changes. Advocates of ethics education are optimistic about the positive impact of ethics education and adamant about the necessity of ethics education in the college setting. In responding to critics who believe ethics cannot be taught (meaning, positively affect students’ behaviors), Swanson (2004) likened teaching ethics to teaching other behavioral subjects that have been an entrenched, unquestioned part of business curricula for decades, such as organizational behavior and human resource management. She ultimately wondered why it is still a debate as to whether business ethics can, in fact, be

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taught. Gioia (2002) asserted that the idea that faculty cannot influence students’ ethics is absurd: Many of us seem to hold the assumption that we have little effect on our students’ ethics—that their ethics are essentially incorrigible by the time they show up on our doorsteps. . . . Why on earth would we assume that, when we assume that we can influence so many other educational values and orientations? (p. 142)

Parks (1993) described the importance of ethics education at the university level and stated, “There is no time in the human life cycle more strategic for shaping the norms and potential of the moral vision that will ground the ethical choices embedded in the daily decisions and actions of a professional manager” (p. 13). Ferris (1996) concluded that the use of moral philosophy and personal ethics codes in the classroom “had a beneficial effect on the students. . . . These effects seem to extend to a time at least nine months after completion of the course and to involve actual improved ethical behavior if self-reports and survey information are to be believed” (p. 355). Ferris’s conclusions are based on several measures including course-related activities observation, postcourse activities observation, and student evaluations. In a self-reported measure, 75% of students felt that their ethical system had been refined or changed. Based on our review of the body of literature in ethics, moral reasoning, and behavior, we see that evidence of ethics education and its impact on behaviors is mixed, employs a variety of research methodologies, and proffers a variety of reasons and conclusions. The debate remains as to whether “teaching ethics” is a feasible endeavor. The lack of evidence, however, seems not to stop calls for more and more effective ethics education at the postsecondary level as solutions to corporate ethics breaches continue to be sought.

Research Design and Research Questions In our review of the research work relevant to the current study, we found no study that used professors as respondents to investigate overall orientations toward teaching ethics at a postsecondary level. We did find several taxonomies, progressions, and other models created from work that examined moral and ethical reasoning. We found empirical work using students as respondents in a variety of ethics investigations. Thus, based on the outcomes


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of our 1997 pilot study, the attention of the popular press, and the fact that faculty are the point of delivery for ethics education, we decided to use faculty as our respondents. We chose semistructured interviews to allow finely tuned exploration of difficult and complex constructs such as ethics and student learning outcomes, while allowing for data comparison across respondents. From the literature, we found that the research design had to be exploratory because of a lack of consensus or accepted working definition of ethics in education; we asked respondents for their conceptualization as one of the first questions in the interview. We then asked if respondents believed that there was, in fact, a link between ethics education and subsequent changes in behaviors because there was a significant body of work that existed about moral reasoning but little on behavioral change as a result of teaching ethics. The debate that continually surfaced within the literature was the question of whether we can, in fact, teach students ethics. We were also interested in behaviors that could be affected by ethics education given the corporate misdeeds for which ethics educators are being held at least partially accountable. The overall research design centered on the phenomenographical approach, used in qualitative research to ascertain “how reality appears to people, rather than the objective nature of reality . . . phenomenography is a specialized method for describing the different ways in which people conceptualize the world around them” (Gall et al., 2003, p. 483). Phenomenography is especially appropriate for use with exploratory research that attempts to describe phenomena that have many different operationalizations and perceptions in practice. Given the popular press responses to the ethics crisis and the varied conceptualizations of ethics in the literature, this approach appeared appropriate. The data were analyzed using content analysis in an inductive fashion, rather than a deductive fashion, to allow us to describe patterns that emerged from the data in systematic ways (Gall et al., 2003; Patton, 2002). In this way, we described how faculty defined the ethics construct and how faculty described potential student impact from ethics pedagogy. Because we were not hypothesis testing but rather exploring research questions, induction was the appropriate methodology. Research Question 1: How do business school professors conceptualize ethics in the context of teaching? Research Question 2: To what extent do business school professors believe that they can teach ethics?

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The data for Research Question 2 were synthesized from several of the interview questions, and we left the idea of “teaching ethics” deliberately unstructured so respondents had much latitude in describing their opinions. During the interviews, teaching ethics and impacting students with ethics education came to be used in an essentially synonymous way, so we also use those terms interchangeably throughout the rest of the article.

Method SAMPLE

The current study’s sample was taken from all college of business faculty members at two midsized, public U.S. universities. One university is located in the Midwest, the other in the West. We included all tenured, tenure-track, and full-time instructors in the populations; the sample was stratified around six characteristics: rank, time employed at the university, tenure status, gender, discipline, and administrative status (chairperson, etc.). There were 90 population members at the midwestern school and 34 members at the western school. Based on the six population characteristics named above, the samples from both institutions were representative of the populations. In the midwestern school, women represent 28% of the population but make up 35% of the sample, representing the only potentially overrepresented voice in the sample as a whole. The sample characteristics and descriptive statistics are shown in Table 1. METHOD

We introduced the project with a letter distributed to every eligible (tenured, tenure-track, and full-time instructor) faculty member’s internal mailbox. The letter described the project and its goals and told faculty we may be contacting them to see if they would participate in an hour-long, face-to-face recorded interview about teaching ethics. The letter also indicated the dean’s support for the project. We sought participation by phoning all eligible faculty members from alphabetical phone lists (starting with A) and included in our sample those who responded until we had representation along the six stratification characteristics mentioned above. Calculating from the number of population members, the percentage of participation was about 22%. Interviews generally lasted between 45 minutes and 1 hour. Using a semistructured interviewing technique, we followed a fixed set of questions that allowed also us to explore certain questions more deeply when respondents

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

Respondent Assistant Assistant Associate Full Assistant Full Associate Associate Assistant Full Instructor Assistant Assistant Associate Full Full Instructor Full Full, chair Full, chair Instructor Assistant

Rank

TABLE 1

TT TT Tenured Tenured TT Tenured Tenured Tenured TT Tenured NTT TT TT Tenured Tenured Tenured NTT Tenured Tenured Tenured NTT TT

Tenure Status M M M F M M M M F F M M M F F F M M M M F M

Sex

Respondent Characteristics

1 1 6 14 1 19 7 16 2 17 6 0.5 0.5 7 13 27 3 15 27 4 10 2

Years at University

(continued)

Finance Management Management Finance Management Management Management Law Insurance Marketing Marketing Finance Accounting Accounting Marketing Accounting Quantitative methods Marketing Marketing Computer information systems Quantitative methods Computer information systems

Discipline

28 Full = 10 (37%); associate = 5 (19%); assistant = 9 (33%); instructor = 3 (11%); department chair = 4 (14%)

Assistant Full, chair Assistant Associate, chair Full

Rank 1 8 3 18 20

Years at University

Maximum = 27; Female = 8 minimum = .5; (30%); male average = 9.22 = 19 (70%)

M M M F M

Sex

(Continued)

Tenured = 15 (56%); tenuretrack = 9 (33%); nontenure-track = 3 (11%)

TT Tenured TT Tenured Tenured

Tenure Status

NOTE: TT = tenure-track; NTT = non-tenure-track; M = male; F = female.

N = 27

Summary statistics

23 24 25 26 27

Respondent

TABLE 1

Accounting = 4 (15%); computer information systems = 2 (7%); finance = 5 (19%); insurance = 1 (4%); law = 1 (4%); management = 7 (26%); marketing = 5 (19%); quantitative methods = 2 (7%)

Finance Accounting Management Finance Management

Discipline


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desired because of open-ended questions. This technique also allowed us to provide fairly standard data across respondents (Gall et al., 2003). One major change from the pilot study was that we originally only took detailed notes. For the current study, we audiotaped the interviews. Audiotapes were transcribed and randomly spot-checked for accuracy. Accuracy spot-checking was every third tape, at every 7 or 8 minutes of the interview and checking about 1 minute of the interview at a time. Errors in the transcriptions were of an editorial nature (spelling or punctuation) and numbered approximately 15. No content-based errors such as missing words or misrepresented information were found. Per Institutional Review Board guidelines, audiotapes will be kept locked up until the end of the research project, then destroyed. All respondents at the midwestern school agreed to be audiotaped; one respondent at the western institution did not agree to be audiotaped. For that interview, one of the authors took verbatim notes, and the interview took just over 2 hours. We began with demographic and teaching background information, then asked questions about teaching ethics under four major categories: · Assessment, which asked what ethics means and if and how it is integrated into respondents’ curricula; · Adequacy, which asked what, if any, training respondents have had in ethics and what access to resources they have; · Attitudes, which asked whether they believed ethics is an important topic to cover, in their own classrooms as well as at a college of business level; and · Opinions about current business practices, which asked whether they have changed any ethics instruction or coverage because of the recent corporate scandals.

The pilot study included 20 questions and covered only the first three categories. The current study included 27 questions covering the four categories. Research Question 1 was part of the Assessment section, whereas Research Question 2 was part of the Attitudes section. There was some discussion overlap with Research Question 2 with the Current Business Practices section. DATA ANALYSIS

Descriptive statistics were run for the sample and are included in Table 1. We used the N6 software system for content analysis of the transcribed interview notes. The data analysis technique is analogous to a quantitative factor

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analysis but uses text data to code responses into themes or “factors.” The main difference is that text units can be coded into more than one factor. We found that themes clearly emerged from the data. We did not hypothesize what conceptualizations of ethics would emerge (Research Question 1), nor could we hypothesize from the literature the extent to which professors believed they could affect student behaviors with ethics education (Research Question 2). We did run a matched-pair sample that examined whether there was a relationship between Research Question 1 responses and Research Question 2 responses and found no evidence to support such a relationship. In other words, respondents’ conceptualizations of ethics did not seem to affect the level of potential impact they thought they could have on students by teaching ethics nor did their conceptualizations of ethics appear to inform pedagogical methods used to teach ethics. We discuss this more later in the article. Verbatim notes were imported into the software and coded into similar ideas. N6 allows the researcher to choose the unit of analysis, termed a text unit. It can be each sentence in a respondent’s answer, each paragraph, each word, or the entire response to an interview question. For the current study, each respondent’s full transcribed answer to a particular question was the unit of analysis. We chose this unit of analysis after examining responses and determining that anything less than the full response was conceptually fragmented and did not represent the response with integrity. When coding qualitative data, Patton (2002) pointed out what he termed, “the challenge of convergence—figuring out what things fit together” (p. 465). Creating conceptual categories into which to code the data text units should conform to two criteria: internal homogeneity and external heterogeneity (p. 465). The former term refers to the extent to which data fall into meaningful groupings—enough so to create distinct identifiable categories. The latter term refers to the extent to which emergent categories are “bold[ly]” conceptually different (p. 465). When coding the data set, we found evidence for both criteria. The data were clearly differentiable and remained conceptually distinct enough for interrater reliabilities to be acceptable. Each question analyzed contained 27 text units, which is one full response from each respondent. We verbally discussed general themes that we saw emerge from our respective data sets and put together a set of relationships between text units that is a graphical tree representation in N6. Independently, we coded text units for each question. In the software program, the coding process requires examining every respondent’s answer, then placing a coding suite of numbers to that text unit that identifies where that particular response fits in the tree diagram. The tree diagram itself is shown in Figure 1.

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Figure 1:

(1 1 1) Exposure techniques (1 1 3) Ethical reasoning techniques

(1 1 4) Action commitment

(1 1 5 1) Make small differences

(1 1 5) Internalization

(1 2 1 1) "Preformed"

(1 2 1) Too late

(1 2 2) Exposure

Conceptual Tree Diagram for Coding Research Question 2

(1 1 2) Models & process

(1 1) Yes, we can

(1) Can we teach ethics?

(1 2 3) Models & process

(1 2 4) Ethical reasoning

(1 2) No, we can't

(1 2 5) Commitment to action

(1 2 6) Internalization

(1 3 1) Must try

(1 3 2) Larger society issue

(1 3) In question

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Level of student impact

Exposure (descriptive)

Beginning ethical analysis (descriptive)

Ethical reasoning & ranking (both descriptive & normative)

Behavioral change-Situational (normative)

Behavioral change– Consistent (normative)

Examples & teaching techniques

Students are sensitized to ethical issues, emphasizing consequences & penal outcomes for unethical acts. Teaching techniques include sharing professional codes of conduct, newspaper articles, stories, & realworld scenarios.

Students learn enduring models or systems by which they may evaluate scenarios & stories on an ethical basis. The emphasis is on generating alternatives of ethical reasoning and action. Teaching techniques include sharing frameworks such as Kant’s Categorical Imperative, Aristotle’s Virtues model, stakeholder analysis models, etc.

Students accept responsibility for generating viable courses of action, and gain the ability to rank order them preferentially. Students realize that some alternatives are better than others; hence, there begins a normative component in this taxonomy. Teaching techniques include critical reflection exercises & case analysis, with recommended courses of action and the ability to explain why some alternatives are better than others.

Students personalize ethical analysis by taking the actions they deem best for a particular dilemma. Action is taken on a case-by-case basis and depends on situational variables. Examples include not cheating on a particular test or on that year’s tax return.

Students accept ownership of ethical norms & standards; values are changed. Outside imposed sanction no longer needed to effect ethical actions. Ethical behavior is consistent, not caseby-case. Examples include never cheating on exams regardless of ease or surety of getting away with it, or “blowing the whistle” regardless of potential backlash.

Figure 2:

Potential Student Impact Taxonomy

An example of the coding suite of numbers is also shown with the following text unit: I think that given my view of what ethics are all about, students come with a moral underpinning because of the family that they were born into, the religion that they practice, and those base-level value systems. We can have very little impact on them. We can make students aware that there are certain activities that are questionable ethically and to think about the process a little bit but to have a dramatic impact on students’ basic value structure in the short period of time that we have them, I don’t think it’s possible. I think you can talk about ethics, but to try and have an impact on someone’s value system at this late a stage in their growth as a human being is practically impossible.

For this particular text unit, the coding is [1 2 1], which corresponds to the conceptual tree grouping, “Can we teach ethics?” [1], then “No, we can’t” [1 2], then “Too late” [1 2 1]. Each text unit was coded by moving along the conceptual tree-diagram groupings of Figure 2. For Research Question 1, we agreed initially on 25 of the 27 text units’ coding. Thus, initial interrater reliability was 85%. An issue we identified with the other two units was more closely defining two key terms, standards and norms that affect behavior as distinct from values that affect behavior. The former, we concluded, is an “external” construct that varies between firm, geography, social group, and so on. The latter is an “internal” construct and represents a more personalized, normative idea.


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TABLE 2

Responses to Research Questions Categorized by Potential Student Impact Taxonomy

Potential Student Impact Research Question 1: Conceptualizations of ethics? Research Question 2: In what ways can we affect students?

Ethical Reasoning and Beginning Ranking Ethical (Descriptive Exposure Analysis and (Descriptive) (Descriptive) Normative)

Behavioral Behavioral Change— Change— Situational Consistent (Normative) (Normative)

9

2

9

5

16

15

6

2

0

1

For Research Question 2, we agreed on every text units’ coding. Interrater reliability was 100%. We discussed any differences we had conceptually after the initial coding effort for Research Question 1 and, thus, had more closely defined constructs for the final coding tree. Results are discussed below for each question along with representative quotes where illustrative.

Results Hosmer (2003) noted that it is “obvious” (p. 88) that ethics means different things to different people, especially when it comes to opinions about teaching. Based on results for Research Question 1, “How do business school professors conceptualize ethics in the context of teaching?” we found support for the varied ethics paradigms that exist among the sample’s faculty. Response counts for both research questions are organized in Table 2. The number represents the number of text units coded into that category. We also organized the data findings for Research Questions 1 and 2 into a taxonomy model into which respondent themes fell, shown in Figure 2. For Research Question 1, the data represent the five categories along the top of the model. Research Question 2 data represent the information in each column and are discussed in the next section.

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RESEARCH QUESTION 1

Nine data text units described ethics appropriate for the first part of the taxonomy, Exposure. We included text units that discussed general standards of acceptable behavior and specific references to society’s or an organization’s standards. Respondents made a clear distinction between ethics and other concepts such as morals, values, or other internalized notions. Standards that are set upon us by an entity, rather than something that is internal. Ethics would be behavior. I think morals would be internal, and I think of ethics as being something that is external with ethical standards that have been given to us. I have gone back and forth about whether or not at this level there is much we can do with a 20-year-old or even in the MBA program older people yet; how much you can teach ethics at this level. I think we can sensitize them to ethical issues, point out different examples and cases, but I think their values are probably pretty well set at that point in time.

Two text units described ethics as Beginning Ethical Analysis, Part 2 in the taxonomy. We coded responses that included ways to help students generate alternatives about actions and decisions. For this part of the taxonomy, models and frameworks are important as ways to analyze ethical dilemmas. To me, it means doing the right thing, primarily from an accounting standpoint but also a business standpoint. That although there are gray areas, there are some areas that are clearly appropriate or inappropriate behavior might be a way to describe it.

Nine text units could be coded into Part 3 of the taxonomy, Ethical Reasoning and Ranking, that we described as students being able to rank-order alternatives and to understand preferences of action. It means having a decision-making process that includes varied stakeholders, and I am talking about this from a personal standpoint for my definition of stakeholder, and thinking about how my actions will impact them. Well, on two levels: on an emotional level, ethics means doing the right thing and on a very logical level ethics is that framework that you would teach or have taught to you in order to be able to make the decisions that are ethical.

Five text units could be coded into the fourth part of the taxonomy, Behavioral Change—Situational, and indicated an inclusion of action based on situational factors.


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Ethics involves the ability to 1) do the right thing, somewhat internally, and 2) to be able to analyze situations to determine what the right thing to do is.

Responses coded into Part 5 of the taxonomy, Behavioral Change— Consistent, were most frequent; 16 text units were coded here. We coded responses to Part 5 when they spoke to internalization, or ownership, of ethical norms. Any discussion of values systems and moral systems were included. To me, ethics is behaving consistently with one’s values; the values that one has adopted. I mean it’s kind of meaningless without behavior. You can talk about ethics as purely philosophical, but I think it’s empty so it’s behavior [that’s important]. RESEARCH QUESTION 2

Using the taxonomy created from Research Question 1 results, we coded responses for Research Question 2. Research Question 2 responses represented the type of impact respondents felt they could effect with teaching ethics. Respondents’ conceptualizations of ethics were operationalized with Research Question 2 in that faculty discussed methods they used in the classroom. As with Research Question 1, text units could fit into more than one category. Fifteen text units indicated that instructors teach ethics using techniques appropriate to Part 1 of the taxonomy, Exposure. Respondents believed they could sensitize students to ethical issues and describe consequences for acting badly, mainly through exposure to professional codes of conduct and legal restrictions on behavior. Six text units described helping students with learning appropriate to Part 2, using models or systems of analysis. A few respondents mentioned models by name, such as Kant’s categorical imperative. Just two text units fit within Part 3 of the taxonomy, in that instructors believed they could teach students how to reason and rank-order potential courses of action. No data units could be coded into Part 4 of the taxonomy, and one text unit was coded into Part 5 of the taxonomy, wherein a respondent described affecting students’ internal moral system, instilling in them a longterm ownership of acting ethically. I think people are uneasy with putting what they feel to be their own moral judgment on things. People are afraid of making a judgment. As educators, we need to. We need to make judgments. We need to share our opinions because our opinions are not gathered arbitrarily. They are gathered from experience and education. They show the values we have, and we shouldn’t be afraid to

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TABLE 3

Limits of Ethics Education Responses (Research Question 2)

Inability to Affect Students Research Question 2: In what ways can we affect students?

It’s Too Late

Cannot Change Morals or Values Systems

Not Sure of Potential Impact

Society's Cultural Values Deter Teaching Ethics

4

12

4

1

give those values to our students. . . . I would go a step further and say ideally that we do and can change somewhat of the moral structure of a 20-year-old. LIMITS OF ETHICS EDUCATION

Another macrotheme that emerged but was not specifically part of the research questions in the interview were comments about where respondents believed the limits of ethics education lay. These data emerged from comments to Research Question 2; rather than discussing only what they thought they could do, faculty specifically discussed what they believed they could not do in terms of teaching ethics. These comments became conceptually distinct and consistent enough to warrant their own coding. Table 3 summarizes the responses for the themes we found that emerged from our interviews. Four text units indicated that ethics education is ineffective because it was “too late” to have any impact on students’ethics and students come to college “preformed,” which eliminates our ability to affect them at all with ethics education. I think that given my view of what ethics are all about, students come with a moral underpinning because of the family that they were born into, the religion that they practice and those base-level value systems. We can have very little impact on them. We can make students aware that there are certain activities that are questionable ethically and to think about the process a little bit but to have a dramatic impact on students’ basic value structure in the short period of time that we have them, I don’t think it’s possible. I think you can talk about ethics but to try and have an impact on someone’s value system at this late a stage in their growth as a human being is practically impossible.

Twelve text units indicated that ethics education could not teach students normative actions and get them to believe that these were the “best” ethical choices. Teaching ethics could not effect any changes in students’ moral or values systems and affect students’ ethics in a lasting, personalized way.


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So far as we’re able to tell there’s been no major shift in the way business people act because they have this ethics course, because the ethics course was taken as one more requirement that they filled up the tube in their head full of ethics stuff, at the end of the semester took the test, flushed all that knowledge out, and there was no effect on later behavior because there was no way to connect it. . . . I don’t think you can make people better people. So, if I can’t get my students not to cheat on tests and not to copy work that’s not theirs and turn it in, then how in the hell can I keep them from cheating on their income taxes or cheating at work or stealing the people who work for them’s ideas and turning them in, too, as their own without credit?

Four text units indicated uncertainty with ethics education but also indicated that faculty have an obligation to include ethics in the classroom. Can we even [teach ethics]? I don’t even know. That’s a good question. Because what you have is a preformed individual with already-set standards . . . we have a real problem. [I think you have to] at least give it the good old college try. Right? Because if you ignore the issue I think you’re doing them a disservice.

One text unit discussed teaching ethics in the context of a larger societal issue that complicates any approach to teaching ethics. I can keep coming up with example after example of different professions and trades and so forth where there are unethical people and they do unethical things, so I guess on one hand, although I don’t fully accept responsibility for something that an executive has done, I think we should at least try to be part of a solution. I think some of the solution though is, in fact, a larger societal one, in this whole greediness thing. We exist within a society that values money and consumerism and all that stuff, and as long as that’s the case, there’s going to be [unethical behavior].

Respondents commented on a time orientation, as well, with Part 1 techniques having short-term impact and moving to long-term, lasting impact at Part 5.

Discussion Examining the data, we found that the concepts of internal ethics and external ethics became relevant. We found that responses generally fell into five categories that represented different levels of personalization or internationalization of ethical norms. We found Krathwohl et al.’s (1984) work is relevant to the current study, as our data indicated varying degrees of internalization of ethical norms and a bias toward behavior. Faculty made a point dur-

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ing the interviews to talk about changing and affecting behaviors of students when they were discussing their conceptualization of ethics in the context of teaching. Generally speaking, most respondents believed we have an obligation to discuss ethics with students, and the most prevalent way to do this was through Parts 1 and 2 teaching techniques, such as sharing newspaper articles about ethics or helping students understand a stakeholder analysis model. A key aspect of the exposure techniques faculty mentioned was the legal aspect of acting ethically—legal rules and sanctions as guides for how to act. Part 1 of the taxonomy evidences that kind of learning that Krathwohl et al. (1984) identified in their 1.0 Level—Receiving (Attending). This is students’ learning of the existence of an issue and being made aware of why it exists. It is necessarily low-level learning, and although it is the most prevalent type of ethics instruction our faculty sample utilized, it is one of the least likely kinds of learning that would be cited as effective ethics education (e.g., Rynes, Quinn Trank, Lawson, & Ilies, 2003; Trevino & McCabe, 1994). In Part 2, students learn how to systematize evaluation of ethical issues. The focus is on understanding a process, rather than just getting to an outcome. Students are generally told “There is not one right answer,” which appears to be the first time they encounter the ambiguity of multiple possible courses of action in the taxonomy we identified. The type of learning described in Parts 1 and 2 limits the potential lasting effects of ethics education, according to educational theorists such as John Dewey (Dewey, 1938), David Kolb (Baker, Jensen, & Kolb, 2002; Kolb, 1984), and Seymour Epstein (Epstein, 1994). They argued for active and experiential educational paradigms and pointed to the constraints of “student as passive receptor” educational effectiveness. With passive pedagogical styles, such as lecture, there is no direct connection between the material and the student’s self, in large part, because there is no reflection component of learning. Thus, students cannot be expected to change behaviors or even recall with any regularity lessons from the classroom. We found in Part 3 descriptive and normative impacts and behaviors. Faculty wanted students to be able to reason through viable alternatives to addressing ethical dilemmas, rank them preferentially, and discuss the “why” of their ranking. The focus is on actionable behaviors, but still is not necessarily linked to students’ own behavior. Students are able to discern a “best” course of action but do not necessarily perceive a personal impetus or motivation to behave that way. Respondents are describing, though, a more sophisticated reasoning skill than in Part 2 because of students’ ability to explain an underlying rationale behind their rankings. A conceptual bridge between Parts 3 and 4 may be found in the intent literature. Part 3 lacks a consistent and expected link between students’ deeming


39

something as a “best” course of action and their own internalized impulse to take that course of action. For example, Weber and Gillespie (1998) asserted that intention is often confused with behavior, and predicting behavioral choice in hypothetical situations is often substituted for predicting actual behavioral choice in real situations (p. 449). They found that higher levels (using Kohlberg’s model) of reasoning supported ethical behavioral intent that, in turn, positively affected real behavioral choice (Weber & Gillespie, 1998, pp. 458-460). Thus, the more sophisticated reasoning exhibited in Part 3 and its beginning steps toward personalized action in Part 4 could mean students’ intentions toward actions were affected with ethics education, although in the context of the current study and lack of appropriate data, that suggestion remains theoretical. Part 4 responses included those that referenced some kind of personal standard of behavior in a particular situation and a belief that ethics was acting in accordance with this standard after analyzing the situation. It appeared to be action taken on a “case-by-case” basis, that is, each new dilemma needed to be analyzed for right action. Students recognize that there is a “best” course of action, making Part 4 normative; however, they moved beyond Part 3 in that they, in fact, took that course of action. They studied harder, rather than cheated, on their chemistry exam. They decided to declare all of their cash earnings, rather than only a fraction of them, on their tax return. In Part 5, people do the right thing, in every situation, consistently. It is reflexive action and does not take into account some external sanction or risk of being caught. Situational variables that have been tested in the literature such as intensity of the moral dilemma (Weber & Wasieleski, 2001) and ethnicity of the decision maker (Locke & Tucker, 1988) do not come into play in the type of impact professors describe in Part 5. It is, perhaps, the ideal view of how deeply ethics education could affect a student and represents the most lasting changes as students leave the academic environment. In contrast to Part 4, students would simply not cheat, on any exam, in any situation, and would eliminate the calculus that accompanies each particular situation where right and wrong action must be ascertained. We clearly see a connection to Krathwohl et al.’s (1984) Level 5.0 with Part 5 learning and behaviors. Learning associated with changing values means that the values “are organized into some kind of internally consistent system, have controlled the behavior of the individual for a sufficient time that he has adapted to behaving this way” (p. 165). Part 5 learning is consistent, values-based behavioral change.

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Implications and Future Research Our findings can be summarized in three major points: · Business school faculty believe they can have little or no impact on students’ ethical behaviors. · Most faculty believe ethics is a values-driven and internal construct but teach using compliance-driven and external methods. · Our data correspond closely with moral reasoning theory and affective learning and education theory.

The majority of our respondents (21 of the 27 in our sample) conceptualized ethics in a teaching context as effecting prosocial, values-driven behavioral change, yet only one respondent believed he could, in fact, have that kind of impact on students by teaching ethics. Why might this be? Are we selling our students short because we do not believe we have positive influence and access to their values systems and thus “revert” to Parts 1 and 2 pedagogy? Are we not willing to share our own values systems, as suggested by one of our respondents, for fear of judgment or charges of moral proselytizing? Perhaps we have not reflected on our own values systems enough to feel comfortable enunciating them to our students. Or, perhaps we believe that wanting to affect a student’s values is inappropriate and that teaching ethics is simply not important. We need to recognize the potential for social desirability bias in our responses—in today’s climate, might a professor admit her or his ambivalence toward ethics education? A related finding from the current study indicates that although the majority of faculty believed ethics was an internal, values-driven construct, the bulk of them utilized external, short-term kinds of approaches such as teaching codes of conduct, familiarizing students with professional norms, and exposing students to penalties and consequences of unethical actions. We were surprised by this. We had believed that one’s conceptualization of ethics would, indeed, inform the subsequent classroom approach to teaching ethics. As mentioned in the Data Analysis section, we ran a matched-pair sample analysis and found in only three cases could we reasonably match respondents’ conceptualization to their pedagogical technique. There is a gap between conceptualization and subsequent classroom coverage that would be worth exploring in a follow-up study. In examining Figure 2, we note that respondents identified teaching techniques relevant only for the first three parts of the taxonomy. Given the mixed literature results from studies that looked at what kind of ethics education affects behavior, this is not surprising. The “how” continues to elude many


41

interested stakeholders. However, current work about how to teach ethics for maximum potential impact (e.g., Rynes et al., 2003; Swanson, 2004; Trevino & Brown, 2004) agrees that ethics education must expose students to theory and follow up with practice, a model that echoes Dewey and Kolb from decades ago. Different conceptualizations of ethics will affect what solutions are offered and ultimately institutionalized. In a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) study and article (Alsop, 2003), some of the conceptual differences highlighted in the taxonomy data are evident in three examples given in the article. A WSJ poll of corporate recruiters found that about 60% of respondents believed business schools “can provide guidance on making ethical choices” (Alsop, 2003, p. R9). One respondent was quoted, saying “I’m not sure you can teach ethics, but you certainly can teach the severe ramifications that come from doing something unethical in business” (Alsop, 2003, p. R9). This opinion appears consistent with conceptualizations and teaching techniques that underlie Part 1, Exposure. In a second example, a Harvard developmental psychologist determined that “M.B.A. students in their mid- to late 20s are particularly ripe for discussions about such issues as conflicting responsibilities” (Alsop, 2003, p. R9). This opinion would correspond to conceptualizations and teaching techniques that underlie Part 2, Beginning Ethical Analysis. In a third example, the same WSJ poll indicated that almost 25% of respondents believed business schools can have no impact on students’ethics because “integrity is inherent in an individual’s character” and thus cannot be accessed by external entities. This opinion would mirror conceptualizations that underlie Part 5, Behavioral Change—Consistent, and concurs with our findings that instructors do not believe that they can positively affect and effect values-based behaviors. Thus, differences in how ethics are defined complicates the call to address unethical behaviors through teaching. Whose conceptualization should be addressed? There is a disconnect between instructors’ own approaches to teaching ethics and what the business world thinks or, more important, hopes is happening in our classrooms. College professors are teaching using Parts 1 and 2 techniques, whereas the business world seems to hope ethics education is changing students’ core values and making students virtuous (Parts 4 and 5). Part of that disconnect seems to be because of perceptions of a double corporate standard. Rynes et al. (2003) found a “puzzling” discrepancy between students’ and business recruiters’ perceived value of “behavioral” business courses, including ethics courses. Recruiters say they want students with enhanced behavioral skills; however, students will bypass ethics courses to

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take more “hard-skills” courses they deem more relevant to landing a job. Students, then, perceive discrepancies between what employers say they value, and how they actually behave in crucial decision-making situations. . . . Students view employer statements about the importance of people, values, behavioral skills, and ethics as “lip service” that contradicts their own (and their parents’) prior experiences at work. (p. 270)

The mixed message that Rynes and her colleagues identified needs to be acknowledged and managed; one of our respondents quoted in this article pointed to the problematic corporate culture issues we face with expecting ethical behaviors in the workplace. Helping corporate actors understand pedagogical challenges and helping students get real-world exposure to corporate personnel and how their decisions are made would benefit all stakeholders. Corporate advisory boards for colleges of business, guest speakers, panel discussions, and Executive-in-Residence programs all could contribute to increased communication. Ours is a limited sample from which drawing inferential conclusions is inappropriate. These exploratory data do point to some next steps, however. Obviously a larger sample would better serve research interests; the method is very time-consuming but worthwhile to pursue. Adding research questions that explore professors’ expectations of pedagogical impact, in general, and those in teaching ethics could help understand whether we, in fact, agree with Krathwohl et al.’s (1984) assessment of values-based teaching: Rarely, if ever, are the sights of educational objectives set to this level [Level 5.0] of the Affective Taxonomy. Realistically, formal education generally cannot reach this level, at least in our society. In all open and pluralistic societies, such as our own, the maturity and personal integration required at this level are not attained until at least some years after the individual has completed his formal education. Time and experience must interact with affective and cognitive learnings before the individual can answer the crucial questions, “Who am I?” and “What do I stand for?” (p. 165)

In discussing the outcomes of the current study, we wondered, too, if the lack of feedback faculty get from students when they leave our campus has anything to do with our low expectations of potential ethics educational impact. We rarely get updates from former students as to where they are and what they are doing in the years after we have them in our classes, and the continued corporate bad behavior we witness in the headlines might be very discouraging for faculty who want to believe they can change students’ lives. How long can faculty emotionally sustain the expectation of being able to


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positively affect such an important aspect of student learning, when most of the available and salient data are hostile to this idea?

Notes 1. Woo’s example of students’questionable behavior is when they accept a job with one firm, receive a better offer from a different one at a later date, and then renege on the first offer to which they already committed. 2. Certainly, students may experience other forms of ethics education during their college careers such as joining student business fraternities or other student groups that have ethics codes for the way they operate or representing a constituency as a student government representative. College experiences outside the classroom may entail ethics education on many different levels. Based on our original conceptualization and pilot study as well as the widespread popular press blaming of business school faculty for bad corporate behaviors, we focused this study on faculty themselves.

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