engleski

To teach or not to teach business ethics - that is the question

Educators have the responsibility to assist the development of ethical managers and leaders in the conditions of increasingly interconnected and complex business environment. Many authors have studied the impact of education on ethics on student behavior with various results. In this paper, the focus was on the question if and to what extent education on ethics influences moral judgment of business and administration students with regard to borderline situations when compared to students who were not exposed to any education on ethics. Edutainment or educational entertainment was used by which the target student group was exposed to a real situation and asked to provide feedback regarding their opinion. From the deontological perspective, the behavior in question was unethical but, as it was not evident that it caused immediate harm to any stakeholders, it could be considered ethical from the consequentialist perspective. To gather data, the questionnaire was submitted electronically by posting it on the Croatian education platform Merlin. All students enrolled into the first and second year of their studies at the Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Rijeka, Croatia, were asked to participate in the research. The results are presented regarding both the quantitative and qualitative research. The effect of the education on ethics regarding the questions asked was tested with a series of Welch’s t-tests. According to the results, the research did not show that education on ethics influenced the students’ attitude toward the situation they were presented with. Work experience was also not found to have influenced student preferences with regard to ethical behavior. Further responses indicated that those who did not have any education on ethics showed a more ethical approach, although the difference was not statistically significant. In general, when asked about their personal preferences, the students were adamant that they value ethics strongly in their behavior. However, when the inverse question was asked, which brought into relation accomplishment of their goals and ethical principles, the results regarding their high ethical preferences were less convincing. The finding that the education on ethics does not facilitate the students’ development of moral judgement is consistent with some previous findings. The reason could lie in the way ethics was taught, as in this case the integrated approach to teaching ethics was adopted. This finding could also be explained by the fact that the students were exposed to the postulates of the neoclassical theory, which advocates profit maximization. However, the results should be considered with some caution. They are based on self-report data so the problem of social bias is always a possibility. It should also be noted that not all students that responded to the survey were in class when ethics was taught. Although data was collected at the University of Rijeka, Croatia, there is no reason to suggest the lack of 528 transferability of the results and their implications to other European countries. However, replication of the study in other countries would be beneficial.

Ethics, business ethics, ethical managers, education, Croatia

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