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Applying social psychology to the teaching of ethics: Are we ‘norming’ unethical behaviour?

Applying social psychology to the teaching of ethics: Are we ‘norming’ unethical behaviour?
Applying social psychology to the teaching of ethics: Are we ‘norming’ unethical behaviour?
Typical means of teaching business ethics involve cautionary takes of ethics scandals. However studies have found that descriptive social norms are one of the most powerful predictors of behaviour (Cialdini, 2003; Nolan et al. 2008). Hence, while the lecturer’s aim may be to use case studies of unethical behaviour to highlight ethical issues, the message that may linger is that this is the kind of thing that business people do. Studies indicate that when a descriptive norm ‘people do this’ is pitted against an injunctive norm ‘people shouldn’t do this’ the descriptive norm tends to win (e.g. (Oceja and Berenguer 2009), therefore business ethics education risks inadvertently ‘norming’ unethical behaviour. This paper presents the results of a study comparing the efficacy of teaching case studies of ethics scandals with using case studies of pro-social business behaviour in terms of students’ ethical intentions, in the context of an undergraduate module on Business Ethics.
Baden, Denise
daad83b9-c537-4d3c-bab6-548b841f23b5
Baden, Denise
daad83b9-c537-4d3c-bab6-548b841f23b5

Baden, Denise (2011) Applying social psychology to the teaching of ethics: Are we ‘norming’ unethical behaviour? 16th General Meeting of the European Association of Social Psychology, Stockholm, Sweden. 11 - 15 Jul 2011.

Record type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)

Abstract

Typical means of teaching business ethics involve cautionary takes of ethics scandals. However studies have found that descriptive social norms are one of the most powerful predictors of behaviour (Cialdini, 2003; Nolan et al. 2008). Hence, while the lecturer’s aim may be to use case studies of unethical behaviour to highlight ethical issues, the message that may linger is that this is the kind of thing that business people do. Studies indicate that when a descriptive norm ‘people do this’ is pitted against an injunctive norm ‘people shouldn’t do this’ the descriptive norm tends to win (e.g. (Oceja and Berenguer 2009), therefore business ethics education risks inadvertently ‘norming’ unethical behaviour. This paper presents the results of a study comparing the efficacy of teaching case studies of ethics scandals with using case studies of pro-social business behaviour in terms of students’ ethical intentions, in the context of an undergraduate module on Business Ethics.

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More information

Published date: July 2011
Venue - Dates: 16th General Meeting of the European Association of Social Psychology, Stockholm, Sweden, 2011-07-11 - 2011-07-15
Organisations: HRM and Organisational Behaviour

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 196399
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/196399
PURE UUID: 764b0b1c-6d43-4619-9faf-816fa7e7abfd
ORCID for Denise Baden: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-2736-4483

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 07 Sep 2011 08:10
Last modified: 11 Dec 2021 03:20

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