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Are Corporate Social Responsibility Courses Effective? A Longitudinal and Gender-Based Analysis in Undergraduate Students

“…This finding usefully counters previous literature suggesting that such courses may only be effective for males [29]. Indeed, while males may have more to gain from CSR courses than women in terms of learning to adopt and apply ethical values such as compassion or empathy [66,67], both genders still benefit from these courses. Interestingly, this observation also arose in a relatively unexplored cultural context like Spain, where the interest in CSR has grown considerably in recent decades [39,49,50,68,69], but individuals' short-term orientation [51] can still negatively influence ethical decision-making and the effectiveness of CSR courses.…”

“…In addition, this study only examined the effect of a CSR course in a group of students that had enrolled in this course voluntarily but did not compare them to a control group (i.e., students who did not participate in the CSR course). Likewise, the fact that the CSR course was elective could have attracted students who already hold positive attitudes towards the course [67], which could have affected our findings. In order to address these shortcomings, future research designs could investigate the influential role of compulsory CSR subjects on undergraduate students' ethical decision-making.…”

A Novel Approach to Business Ethics Training: Improving Moral Reasoning in Just a Few Weeks

“…Results showed that the training significantly increased students' principled moral reasoning, relative to students in the control group. Although previous studies have shown significant increases in moral reasoning among business students who completed a course focusing on ethics (Abolmohammadi and Reeves, 2000;Boyd, 1981Boyd, -1982Dellaportas, 2006;Fraedrich et al, 2005), what is particularly notable about the present study is that meaningful effects were observed after a relatively short training period. This study contributes to the literature in several ways.…”

“…In this design, the dependent variable is measured in training and control groups at the same times, before and after the training occurs. Several prior studies on business ethics training have not included a control group (e.g., Abolmohammadi and Reeves, 2000;Bodkin and Stevenson, 2007;Carlson and Burke, 1998;Dellaportas, 2006;Desplaces et al, 2007;Fraedrich et al, 2005;Weber and Glyptis, 2000;Wynd and Mager, 1989). Moreover, in some of the studies in which a control group was included, preand post-training measures were not obtained at the same times in both groups (e.g., Glenn, 1992;Zinkhan et al, 1989).…”

“…This difference in the length of the training is an important one given that ethics training programs less than 3 weeks long are typically ineffective in improving moral reasoning (Schlaefli et al, 1985), a point to which I later return. Like Boyd (1981Boyd ( -1982, Abolmohammadi and Reeves (2000) examined the effects of a semester-long course in business ethics and corporate social responsibility. Results showed that scores on the DIT among 113 undergraduate business students increased from the beginning to the end of the semester.…”