Teaching business ethics effectively may prepare future leaders and managers to better deal with delicate situations that they might face in the workplace. However, such an aim is one of the biggest challenges that educators at universities are called on to solve. An increasing number of scholars are invoking the role of prudence in the virtue ethics context as a viable approach to teach students how to manage ethical dilemmas. In this regard, this paper discusses the “St. Albans Family Enterprises” case study that can serve as an instrument to help students and practitioners develop their ethical decision-making ability and to foster a disposition towards applying sound judgment or what can be called in classical terms, prudence. The teaching note that accompanies the case study offers guidance to educators about how the case can be used for teaching purposes, and explains the implications of exercising practical wisdom (prudence) within a virtue ethics framework.

Sustainability education entails transforming values and habits as well as developing skills. Much progress has been made in developing the appropriate teaching and learning strategies which not only impart knowledge but shape attitudes and behaviour. However little attention has been given to the education of the educators who often are teaching and learning at the same time. A particularly important but also challenging competency to teach is systems thinking. This paper is based on the teaching and learning experience of two of the authors who teach the same sustainability paper in different semesters in a business faculty. A two-tier reflection presents their learning journey. The reflection of the first author focuses on the challenges experienced with teaching systems thinking in the first semester. The reflection of the second author is based on the next iteration of the course modified in light of the first author’s learnings including the incorporation of student-faculty partnerships. The paper outlines practices and learning associated with this intervention.

The constant growth of online learning and of online tools for teaching over the past two decades comes with opportunities and risks, with an oversupply of contents, but also with easily accessible enrichment of learning and teaching. Departing from an own learning by doing pilot project, the paper reviews studies of online tools and web-based learning environments in business ethics, using Bloom’s taxonomy as a primary reference. As an open ending, we formulate suggestions for future work and action research, with a focus on implementation, fruitful topics, and methodological issues.

Ethics have taken a center stage in business curriculum development over the past 5 years. Sustainable business practices are an important issue when it comes to adequately educating the next generation of marketing professionals. A variety of approaches in how to achieve such goals have been proposed as ideal methodologies. This paper presents a case study on curriculum development for a study abroad trip in Cambodia for marketing students. Furthermore, this article represents one method to incorporate the role of NGOs in international business into business ethics courses. Results show that values-based curriculum serve as an appropriate learning pedagogy for the advancement of ethics in business educational scenarios. Through the use of values-based format, results demonstrate that when students are presented in constructive ethical situations it induces critical self-reflection necessary for more effective ethics education. Furthermore, with the additional cross-cultural component of the research design, students were also exposed to ethics as a component of culture. The current study extends both the pedagogy and ontological development and application of ethics education, specifically, the values-based curriculum providing a pragmatic approach to ethics teachings, and also presents an empirical study of how to integrate NGOs into international business educational platforms.

A student considering a career as a financial advisor is confronted by a common industry practice that some consider misleading and unethical. The case fosters financial literacy by allowing students to connect theory to practice through the analysis of a highly realistic brokerage statement using Microsoft Excel. It permits an instructor to seamlessly inject an ethical component into an accounting or finance course while simultaneously sharpening students' understanding of key financial concepts such as bond valuation and yield to maturity.

This case study can serve as an instrument to help students and practitioners develop their ethical decision-making ability, in particular practical wisdom (prudence) within a virtue ethics framework. St. Albans Family Enterprises is a group of companies with three business lines: petrol stations, flower exportation and women´s fashion retail establishments, with around 300 employees and 20 stores in London, Liverpool, Manchester, Edinburgh and Bristol. Apparently, an alleged leakage of sensitive information took place at the Head Office, involving several employees who found themselves in a delicate professional situation and who happened to be relatives. Senior management are facing ethical dilemmas with respect to these employees but also with respect to themselves who feel partly responsible for having generated such compromising situation for some employees.

This case recounts the founding of HealthSouth Rehabilitation, its rapid growth, financial mishandlings and the struggle former CFO Aaron Beam had in dealing with a conscience that kept him awake at night. Beam had met HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy when applying for a job with Lifemark Hospital Corporation in Texas in 1980. After Lifemark was bought by AMI in 1983, Scrushy invited Beam to join him in the launching of his new company in Birmingham, Alabama. The uniqueness of the hospital was that it would provide inpatient surgery for those who had suffered an injury, but it would also provide outpatient services such as rehabilitation, nutrition guidance and psychological counseling. This type of structure was appealing to insurance companies because it would move the patient out of the hospital much quicker and save the cost of extended hospitalization. The company experienced rapid growth and went public within three years of launch. By 1996, the top executives of the company realized that they would not be able to meet Wall Street analysts’ forecasts which would affect the price of their stock and reduce their holdings. They decided to “cook the books” temporarily to meet quarterly expectations. However, once the financial mishandling had begun, the executives found it difficult to reverse their actions and report accurate numbers to the public. Beam decided to retire from the company in 1996; and after this action, he continued to find it difficult to sleep at night because of his involvement in the fraud. The issue in the case is whether Beam should consider coming forward and revealing to the Securities and Exchange Commission how the books had been doctored so that he could salvage his damaged conscience.

Drug use in the workplace can pose legal and ethical challenges for employers and their employees. In this case, Fred is a long-term employee of the James Bay Logging (JBL) Company who recently returned to the workplace after extensive cancer treatment. Back on the job, he experienced debilitating joint pain, a side effect of his treatments. Fred’s decision to self-medicate with marijuana for pain management poses risks for people and property in his position as a logging truck operator and a moral dilemma for his employer with their zero-tolerance drug policy. The purpose of this case is for students to examine the competing interests a company faces in trying to fairly enforce their drug policy in the context of medical marijuana in the workplace and showing care and compassion to a long-term employee who violated this policy.

The Community FoodBank of NJ (CFBNJ) was a $100 million charitable organization that distributed over 44 million pounds of food each year through its partner organizations like food pantries, soup kitchens and the like. Its mission was to “fight hunger and poverty in New Jersey [USA] by assisting those in need and seeking long term solutions.” In a time of governmental cutbacks and shrinking private donations, the nonprofit sought new sources of revenue. One idea was to leverage perishable bakery donations and an in-house commercial kitchen, by creating and marketing an up-scale bagel crisp. After product development and market testing, the resulting business plan won a “Break the Gala Addiction” cash prize from the Prudential Foundation to further the social entrepreneurship effort. Now the organization needs to decide if it should use its scarce resources to scale the business internally—to maximize job creation, leverage existing facilities and capture all the revenue, or if it should outsource production and distribution for a percentage of sales so that it can focus on other efforts more tightly aligned to its mission. Students are encouraged to use ethical frameworks to think through the nonprofit’s dilemma.