Students’ Ethical Decision-Making: Are We Assessing What We Think We Are Assessing?

Paul F. Byrne

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Students’ Ethical Decision-Making: Are We Assessing What We Think We Are Assessing?

Paul F. Byrne

Washburn University School of Business, USA

Volume 21: 2024 pp. 5-16: ABSTRACT

The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business’ (AACSB) accreditation standards specify that all business programs must include learning experiences addressing ethical understanding and reasoning. However, assessing students’ propensity to engage in ethical decisionmaking is not as straight forward as assessing some other business competencies. This paper examines the shortcomings of two common assessments and proposes an alternative assessment tool using a vignette with three variants. Multivariate probit regressions show that minor changes to the presentation of an ethical dilemma, which should not change the ethical judgment of the protagonist’s behavior, significantly influences students’ ability to identify a business practice as ethical or unethical. The use of vignettes designed to capture the ambiguity business students may face in their careers, coupled with using variants to assess the reliability of their ethical judgement can help business schools evaluate the effectiveness of their ethics curriculum.
Keywords: assessing ethics, vignettes, business teaching, business ethics