Document Type

Article

Journal/Book Title/Conference

Conference By Faculty, Center for the Study of Ethics (2007)

Publisher

Center for the Study of Ethics

Publication Date

1-25-2007

First Page

90

Last Page

100

Abstract

With recent highly publicized breaches of ethics among members of the business community (e.g., Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia, Global Crossing, and Tyco), there is a need to re-examine specific strategies employed in colleges and universities to influence business students toward increased ethics and honesty. The purpose of this study was to examine whether perceptions and attitudes toward ethics and honesty could be influenced during a semester-long college business course. A survey was administered to students in six human resource management classes taught by four different faculty members. The Likert scale questionnaire utilized the 20-item Ethics Position Questionnaire (Forsyth, 1980) as well as cight original honesty items created by Madsen (2006). In addition, it included two short cases written by Denisi and Griffin (2001) which asked for qualitative student responses. The questionnaire examined four aspects of ethics in two categories: 1) honesty (i.e., plagiarism and cheating) and 2) ethics (c.g. idealism and relativism.) To measure student changes in perceptions and attitudes, the survey was administered both at the beginning and end of the semester. During the semester instructors placed particular emphasis on integrating the study of ethics into the teaching of human resource management.

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