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When Philosophy and Business Professors Talk: Assessment of Ethical Reasoning in a Cross Disciplinary Business Ethics Course

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Teaching Business Ethics

Abstract

Can instructors with apparently divergent approaches to the goals and methods of teaching business ethics agree upon a core set of course objectives? Can they agree upon a common method of assessment for measuring student performance against shared standards? This paper reports the results of a project intended to address these questions. The goals of the project were threefold: (1) to identify a shared set of core competencies for all students in business ethics; (2) to adopt a common assessment of ethical reasoning (neutral to disciplinary bias) for measuring student performance in core competencies; (3) to determine whether students show improvement in core competencies over the course of a semester. Our findings suggest that it is possible to find common ground in measurable objectives and to expect instructors to interpret, apply, and teach to these objectives effectively without infringing upon their disciplinary differences.

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Holt, D., Heischmidt, K., Hill, H.H. et al. When Philosophy and Business Professors Talk: Assessment of Ethical Reasoning in a Cross Disciplinary Business Ethics Course. Teaching Business Ethics 1, 253–268 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1009757031900

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1009757031900

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