Virtue Ethics as a Framework for Teaching and Evaluating Business Ethics

Tom Culham

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Virtue Ethics as a Framework for Teaching and Evaluating Business Ethics

Tom Culham

University of British Columbia, Canada

Volume 12: 2015, pp. 77-100: ABSTRACT

This article provides a rationale based on recent psychology and neuroscience research that virtue ethics is a conceptual framework suitable for teaching and assessing the effectiveness of business ethics education. Virtue ethics consists of two broad kinds of virtues: intellectual virtues (the ability to reason one’s way through an ethical problem) and virtues of character, both of which require different pedagogy and measurement. It is argued that character virtues are the foundation for effective intellectual virtues; that is, no amount of reasoning will suffice if one is not honest, courageous, or lacks empathy for others. It is proposed that education institutions are experienced at educating the intellect but have not developed effective pedagogy and measures for evaluating virtues of character education. The emphasis in this article is on pedagogy and a means of assessing business ethics education with a focus on character virtue education.