Ethical Reasoning

The issue of ethical and moral responsibility has been a topic of conversation for decades. The growing corporate scandals led researchers to delve into the issue with an effort to find solutions. Researches have been conducted with an aim to the analyze the college curricula as well as the capability of individuals to effectively execute moral judgment and ethical reasoning in their decision-making process. Ethics and morals are learned behavior which is influenced by multiple factors and which should be sustained through long-term personal and professional development. A thorough understanding and acceptance of ethics and moral practices is necessary to enable graduates to make better moral decisions in the workplace to increase confidence

After reviewing finding in the literatures on “Teaching Ethics to Future Managers” and “Are we teaching Ethics in Marketing”, colleges and universities should offer a more rigorous syllabus for ethics courses that will allow students to live ethical rather than just to learn ethics. Weber (1990) highlighted that Arlow’s and Ulrich’s study found that students moral and ethical reasoning ability significantly improved after introduction to Business and Society course. However, after a four years review there was a regression in the students’ ethical awareness. Shannon et al (n.d) pointed out the researchers have concluded that ethics cannot be taught based on the premise that ethics are learned early in life and are already established before the student enters college. However, Shannon et al (n.d) argued that ethical awareness will be heightened through exposure and ongoing discussion of ethical issues. Another researcher, Tenbrmunsel (2014) stated that providing theoretical information about ethics cannot make an individual ethical. Therefore, to maintain and improve ethical awareness, ethics and moral development should be considered an ongoing process. A number of college graduates entered the work force

Korn (2013) deliberated whether an “A” in ethics is valuable in the workplace based on the fact that numerous white-collar scandals have emerged in past years. Whilst this thesis argues that ethics are learned behavior and exposure to the course content in college is valuable to the workplace, employees do not have absolute control over the established moral and ethical values of the organization. Even as ethic classes and positive childhood upbringing create ethical awareness that shape the prepares the individual to be stellar citizens, maintaining the learned ethical standards is dependent on an individual own perspective of ethics. The pressure at accounting, sales and consulting creates many ethical issues as employees engage in creative bookkeeping to reach their goals (hbr.org). Case in point, the recent uncovered unethical sales practice which became a part of the Wells Fargo culture and which resulted in the company compensating customer billions, installing new leadership and the withholding of executive compensations (Egan 2017). In this regard, it is imperative that business schools take the necessary action to instill ethics in students as a mean to eliminate a re-occurrence of the Enron or even the Housing Bubble