This research looks at how yoga can contribute to business ethics education in MBA programmes. The effectiveness of yoga practice in breathwork, movement, and meditation was evaluated using a Randomised Controlled Trial on participants of Executive MBA programmes. Half the participants (n = 125) were assigned to the intervention group and the other half placed on the waiting list for the next programme and used as the control group. Mediation analysis was used for statistical analysis to measure the influence of yoga on the participants’ performance in business ethics related courses and to quantify the influence of mindfulness which is a mediating variable. Statistical analysis revealed that the increase in performance in business ethics related courses through mindfulness and as a direct increase through yoga were significant. Two thirds of the enhancement of performance came through mindfulness while the remaining one third came directly from yoga practice.

We build on the work of Moore and Gino (2015) and of Rest (1983, 1986) to develop the Ethical Guardrails Model (EGM). The EGM shows students how personal behaviors, relationships, and habits can help them to avoid ethical mistakes in the workplace. The EGM illustrates the components of ethical business behavior, incorporates a new deliberative component, specifies five ways in which ethical behavior may become derailed, and describes practices that can help a person to avoid derailment. We also describe our use of the EGM in the business ethics classroom, an experience that has changed our approach to teaching business ethics.

This classroom exercise uses the movie Jojo Rabbit to teach students Kohlberg’s three levels and six stages of moral development. This is a helpful way to teach the concept of moral development because it helps students to visualize the nature of each of the stages and how one might move through them. It is appropriate for both undergraduate and graduate classes in management principles, ethics, organizational behavior, and leadership. The exercise can be completed in a 60 or 90 minute class. Student feedback is very positive.

Can business ethics textbooks and modules prepare business students to manage ethical challenges if they bypass students’ personal ethics? This paper is an academic reflection by a Higher Education, business ethics tutor in the UK and Ireland. It charts a pedagogic journey of moving away from lecturing based on the contents of the standard, “impersonal”, business ethics textbook, to moving towards facilitating interaction among students about their ethics in all parts of life, and especially “at work” in their part-time employment. The rationale for this pedagogic shift is supported by excerpts from Journal of Business Ethics Education (JBEE) articles and by current, UK, Higher Education (HE), quality frameworks. Qualitative student feedback on their experience of this more personal design of a business ethics module is included. Ten exercise suggestions and resources are offered. Business ethics textbook authors and tutors are recommended to begin their content with exercises in personal ethics.

Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investing is increasingly popular (Giese, Lee, Melas, Nagy, & Nishikawa 2019), and is now percolating into sustainability textbooks and pedagogy. This is problematic because many faculty teaching sustainability do not have a background in finance, and thus find teaching ESG challenging. This paper develops pedagogical resources to teach the fundamentals of ESG investing, be that in a Foundations of Sustainable Management course or a Business Ethics course. We do this by developing four learning objectives: (1) Understand the ESG basics, including why ESG investing is important to investors and, for faculty, outlining where it might be appropriately placed in an ethics or introduction to sustainability class, (2) Define ESG Investing and discuss how ESG investing strategies differ from regular investment strategies, (3) Identify the primary methods to choose ESG investments, the related ESG rating systems, and the primary proprietary investment options based on these screening rules, and (4) Identify ESG options available to investors that meet their risk preferences.

For centuries, outside business organizations have sought to enter into business relationships with indigenous populations, often benefitting both parties. However, the power imbalance that foreign settlers had over indigenous peoples often led to exploitative relationships whereby the indigenous people were marginalized and at times treated inhumanely. While the nature of trade and relationships has changed over time, the special status that native tribes enjoy in U.S.A. continues to attract attention from business enterprises. In the past few years, various organizations have found it advantageous to their business interests to engage in transactions with Native American tribes. Three specific examples are described: Allergan transferred patent rights to a tribe to circumvent a U.S. patent review panel; Tesla opened a store and service center on native land in New Mexico to get around the state’s dealership laws; and Lume Cannabis Co. opened retail stores on native lands in Michigan near communities that had decided to not license recreational cannabis stores. All three examples raise questions over the ethics of buying access to native sovereignty. Students are asked to apply ethical theories to try and identify what distinguishes ethical and unethical transactions.

La Oroya, Peru, and Herculaneum, Missouri, USA, are two cities 4,000 miles apart but beset with common health and environmental risk: high levels of lead contamination. A key participant in this unfolding tale of environmental disaster has been The Renco Group, a privately held investment holding company based in New York. This case study sheds light on The Renco Group’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in a developing country (Peru) as distinct from CSR in a developed country (USA) by presenting the distinctive set of formal and informal forces that shape the ethical outcome. The question – one which animates much of this case – is what mechanisms exist that work either collectively or individually to encourage or even require a privately-owned firm to act in a socially responsible manner or, more modestly, to cease activities that are deemed to harm society or the general welfare in a multi-country context?

Over 200 lawsuits were filed against the Hertz rental car company by former customers who were arrested as a result of the company’s poor inventory control system and its implementation of two business practices which led to the filing of unsubstantiated stolen car reports with police. According to a whistleblower, these practices essentially meant Hertz was using police “as a repo company and the court system as a collection company” (News Nation 2022, 4:24). Consequences to the individuals who were falsely charged with theft included financial hardship, job loss, reputational damage, child custody problems, the trauma of arrest sometimes at gunpoint, and the traumatic experience of being jailed. This case study calls for students to analyze the company’s actions from the perspectives of ethical theories and decision making, as well as corporate social responsibility.

What might seem like a small ethical transgression by an individual can lead to a series of subsequent decisions, and result in serious fraud. This can not only impact the individuals involved and their organizations, but also erode public trust in firms and institutions. When Brian Sweet left a position with the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), an organization that oversees the inspection of audits, and went to work for KPMG, one of the large accounting firms whose audits he had inspected, he took with him confidential information that he thought could prove useful in his new position. Sweet subsequently shared confidential information with his new employer, and over the next two years acquired additional confidential information through contacts at PCAOB. Debra Kaufmann, a KPMG audit partner, was faced with a decision about how to react when Sweet shared confidential information that she believed neither she nor KPMG should have.

The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic created considerable challenges for the food supply chain. One of the industries hardest hit was the agricultural and agri-foods industry. This industry has long faced worker shortages and regularly relied on temporary foreign workers. In this case, Roosters, a chicken processing and production company in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, had just come off a very costly 12-day closure following a COVID-19 exposure risk in two of its processing plants. With the company back in operation a new safety policy has been implemented to limit future virus exposure and shutdown risks. The policy, however, targets a small group of temporary foreign workers, one of whom is challenging the lengths the company can go in the name of protecting employees from the virus and the company from losses due to closure.

This teaching case focuses on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) at a museum. At the beginning of 2021, the organization found itself in a crisis when more than 2,000 community members and 85 anonymous employees demanded the resignation of the museum’s President due to the language he defended in a job posting advocating for a job applicant to diversify audiences while “maintaining the traditional white core audience of the museum” (Salaz 2021). Students take on the role of an external consultant to assess DEI maturity at the museum. The case challenges students to propose implementation and impact metrics for a DEI action plan. The case facts provide a timely and relevant setting to discuss DEI challenges in not-for-profit organizations.

Ethics education remains in high demand in business schools. Meta-analyses published in the last two decades show that ethics instruction with certain characteristics produce more desirable moral outcomes than other characteristics do. Acknowledging the vast accumulated knowledge on this topic, we believe that the existing evidence base could be overwhelming for ethics educators designing and delivering their courses. Thus, we review the research evidence on the effectiveness of ethics instruction and translate the findings into evidence-led best practices. Adopting the meta-science approach and using a model of training evaluation, we synthesized 8 meta-analyses and 3 quantitative reviews that examine the extent to which ethics instruction types, course duration, instructional techniques and activities, and instructor and student characteristics affect the effectiveness of ethics education. We conclude by making specific recommendations to ethics educators who are interested in designing and delivering evidence-based ethics courses.

This paper investigates the alignment of business school curriculums with the Sustainable Development Goals, utilising a case study of Griffith Business School, Australia. The study utilises an audit of keywords to map content and concepts associated with the goals, targets and indicators of SDGs. The audit results revealed that although there was already considerable uptake of key SDGs concepts throughout the undergraduate programs, in particular Goal 16 (Peace, justice and strong institutions), there were some gaps. Feedback from teaching staff on the results was combined with existing literature and industry/government approaches to offer considerations for future curriculum development that seeks to better integrate SDGs and sustainability. This work contributes to ongoing discussions about sustainability curriculum development and links previous research with the emerging SDG agenda in business schools. The practical nature of this research lends to direct transfer of method to other business schools who are wishing to map and develop their curriculum in relation to the SDGs.

This study investigated accounting academics’ perceptions of teaching ethics to students. The evidence is grouped under six themes of teaching of ethics; environmental considerations; consequences for wrongdoing; impact of professional bodies in ethics curriculum; nature of students; and student learning. This study found that accounting academics’ teaching has a weak conceptualisation of the curriculum and that social learning is ignored. It is also unstructured and varies within the same subject, from subject to subject, and from institution to institution. Lastly, accounting academics’ teaching focuses on pass marks and awareness and understanding of ethics knowledge rather than improving students’ beliefs, values, and behaviour. This study suggests that positive changes to students’ beliefs, values, and behaviour can be realised by extending learning outcomes and teaching practices, evaluating student behaviour regularly, including real-life examples of consequences for wrongdoing, and adding environmental and social factors to academics’ teaching of ethics.

A one-day educational intervention with multiple activities was developed and operationalized with a sample of Chinese business students in Hong Kong, China. Its effectiveness in influencing students’ corporate social responsibility orientation (CSRO) was measured with a Chinese version of a forced choice scale using Economic, Legal, Ethical, and Discretionary (Philanthropy) dimensions by Carroll (1979, 1991). A repeated measures multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) showed significant differences in the Legal and Discretionary dimensions between the post-test Experimental (X) group (N=82) and Control (C) group (N=83); in the Legal, Ethical, and Discretionary dimensions within the pre-post X group. Such significant differences may be explained by the content of the activities, especially the service learning component. Overall, the intervention appeared effective in influencing students’ CSRO within a Chinese context. Since it was designed upon Western CSR literature, its applicability goes beyond the Chinese community.

The requirement of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business to include business ethics in the curriculum has prompted business programs to teach ethics either integrated across the curriculum or in standalone classes. The question addressed here is how to engage students in thinking deeply and empathetically about ethical issues impacting corporate social responsibility (CSR). This research focused on using a thought experiment developed by John Rawls in which students examined CSR issues from the perspective of six stakeholder groups. A pre-test/post-test design measured the effectiveness of an instruction module on CSR coupled with an active exercise using Rawls’ veil of ignorance and original position. Results indicate that students placed greater responsibility on the stockholders and board of directors after taking this module. The implication of the Rawlsian technique to use stakeholder empathy is discussed as a tool for engaging business ethics students.

The business ethics education literature provides many in-depth explorations looking at the impact of ethics education and occasionally the influence of gender. Yet, research exploring decision making is primarily focused at the individual level, often omitting important influences that might occur when decision making occurs within a group setting. This paper utilizes a classroom simulation, the Corporate Policy Simulation, in a Business, Government and Society course to assess student group decision-making. We rely on theoretical principles found in Social Role Theory and two philosophical ethics of moral reasoning to assess the impact of gender within a group decision-making environment. Specifically, we assess if males in our study are better able to process financial decisions more effectively than females in our study, and if females in our study tend to process socially responsible or ethical decisions more effectively than males in our study. Our results support the expectations that all-female groups generally are able to make better socially responsible or ethical decisions, whereas there is no significant gender difference among any of the groups when focusing on financially orientated decisions. Possible explanations and the implications of this research on workplace practice and business ethics education are discussed.

Digital media and technology are nearly ubiquitious in contemporary higher education, As such, researchers and educators are keen to identify best practices and understand impacts. Digital media and technology present opportunities to cultivate interactive, creative teaching-learning communities. However, inclusion of digital media and technology in a course does not necessarily cultivate creative engagement or deep reflection among students. This manuscript studies how a contemplative approach to teaching with digital media, specifically TV series, can lead to more effective and engaging in the process of teaching professional ethics. This research explores how the Contemplative Technopedagogy Framework can enrich the use of TV series for teaching professional ethics and positively influence the effective integration of ethical behavior into university students’ future professional lives.

In recent years, considerable discussion has taken place regarding how to ensure business students are acquiring effectively the appropriate competencies related to Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability (ECSRS). Instructors in business education are encouraged to explore new methods for teaching ECSRS to strengthen this vital part of the curriculum and technology could play an important role. In this paper, we discuss why Twitter could be an effective teaching method in ECSRS education. The study provides a conceptual framework for the use of Twitter taking into account its major characteristics, main benefits, drawbacks, and key factors designing strategies. Some practical activities are also provided to encourage instructors to take more initiatives using Twitter and contribute to improving ECSRS education.