Developing ethical awareness among MBA students

The teaching and learning of business ethics is challenging for postgraduate management students, who often lean towards a pragmatic worldview which does not relate easily to idealistic concepts. However the Masters of Business Administration (MBA) classroom can provide an invaluable location for enquiry, for social learning activity, and for critical reflection. Contemporary business ethics texts largely rely on classical ethical theories to frame and explore moral aspects of business, despite the strangeness of these theories to management - a discipline grounded in social sciences. We find at The University of West London (UWL) that MBA students are often able to engage more readily with an ethical conversation which is grounded in psychological perspectives on moral reasoning, rather than on philosophical concepts. This paper summarizes the results of students’ feedback upon completion of a core Business Ethics module, which was delivered from a range of differing conceptual start points. The findings indicate that an adapted model derived from Kohlberg's concept of stages of moral development provides an accessible conceptual map for personal learning and ethical discourse, which allows students to test and appraise different ways to frame questions concerning ethics at work