The Effect of Ethics Education on Students' Ethical Decisions: A Preliminary Laboratory Experiment

Chaoping Li^1,

¹Management and Business Department, Skidmore College, 815 North Broadway, Saratoga Springs, NY 12866

Cite this paper:
Chaoping Li. The Effect of Ethics Education on Students' Ethical Decisions: A Preliminary Laboratory Experiment. Journal of Finance and Accounting. 2023; 11(1):14-18. doi: 10.12691/jfa-11-1-2

Abstract

In the wake of the Enron scandal, ethical fraud continues to be a major concern for organizations. Both professionals and academics advocate for an increased emphasis on ethics in business education. A significant portion of the current literature relies on self-reporting surveys to evaluate the effectiveness of business ethics education in shaping students' understanding of ethical issues. However, this research approach fails to provide conclusive evidence about students' actual behavior in response to ethics education. In a controlled laboratory experiment, I found that students who underwent ethics education demonstrated less ethical behavior compared to their counterparts who did not receive such education. The implications of this unexpected discovery are further examined in this study.

Keywords:
ethics education students' ethical decisions experiment

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