Abstract
Interest in teaching business ethics classes on college campuses has increased dramatically during the past decade. In the United States, virtually all graduate and undergraduate business programs teach business ethics in some form. While current pedagogy relies primarily on factual recounting of actual workplace incidents and actual and hypothetical case studies, calls for multidisciplinary approaches to teaching business ethics have not yet produced significant pedagogical change. We propose the use of fiction (novels, dramas, and short stories) to enrich current teaching materials. This paper illustrates the tremendous power of stories which deal with ethical dilemmas in business to illuminate moral issues in ways that lead to a clearer understanding of ethical theory. The fiction cited in this paper is all drawn from American literature. It seems likely that similar sources could be found in the literature of other countries.
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Ellen J. Kennedy is Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of St. Thomas. She has published articles inThe Journal of Marketing Education, Psychology & Marketing, andIndustrial Marketing Management.
Leigh Lawton is Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of St. Thomas. His articles have appeared in such publications asThe Journal of Marketing, Business Horizons, Psychology & Marketing, Industrial Marketing Management andSimulation & Games.
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Kennedy, E.J., Lawton, L. Business ethics in fiction. J Bus Ethics 11, 187–195 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00871966
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00871966