Analysing the inclusion of stand-alone courses on ethics and CSR

Abstract

Purpose This paper aims to examine how the Master of Business Administration (MBA) curricula of top-ranked business schools are offering stand-alone courses on ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR). To provide additional evidence, this study tests some hypotheses to contrast the effect of different variables on the inclusion of stand-alone courses on ethics and CSR. Also, the paper provides a comparative analysis in two ways: one comparison aims to analyse how the presence of ethics and CSR stand-alone courses in the MBA programmes over the past 10 years has evolved, and the other comparison seeks to explore whether there are differences between different rankings with regard to the inclusion of ethics and CSR stand-alone courses in the MBA curricula. Design/methodology/approach A Web content analysis was conducted on the curricula of 92 of the top 100 global MBA programmes ranked by the Financial Times in their 2013 ratings. Findings The findings show that there is a trend towards the inclusion of stand-alone courses on CSR and ethics as electives. Empirically, the findings suggest that the presence of ethics and CSR elective stand-alone subjects in the MBA programmes is explained by the following variables: public/private, business school’s accreditation and cultural influence. Comparatively, the findings suggest that requiring CSR and business ethics stand-alone courses in the MBA programmes ranked by the Financial Times have not increased over the past 10 years. In addition, when we have compared the results of this study with other rankings, we have appreciated that there are important differences between top MBA programmes in accordance with the aims and scope of rankings. Originality/value The findings of this study seem to suggest that business schools included in the Financial Times ranking have not changed their view based on a shareholder approach, which is focused on providing an economics-centred training.

Teaching sustainable development in business sciences degrees: evidence from Portugal

“…Authors such as Lozano (2010) and Jorge et al (2017) consider that the integration of TSD in academic curricula lacks, among other things, assessing the proportion of curricular units contributing to SD, given by the number of courses related to the topic, divided by the total number of courses. Attempting to fill in this gap, this study first characterized the sample, highlighting that none of the 196 Accounting and Taxation and Management and Business Administration degrees contained in its identification any of the defined terms; nevertheless, TSD was integrated into the academic curricula of 95 degrees (48.5%).…”

“…For each one of the degrees, the initial procedure was to verify whether subjects concerning SD were integrated into the academic curricula, that is to say, whether there is TSD. For this, curricular plans were analyzed to identify and gather keywords, a method also used by several authors (Wu et al, 2010;Watson et al, 2013;Botes et al, 2014;Byrne et al, 2015;Holm et al, 2015;Jorge et al, 2017;Stough et al, 2017;and Findler et al, 2019).…”

“…The number of credit units (Lozano and Young, 2013;Colombo and Alves, 2017); If the subject of SD is addressed in an autonomous CU or as a chapter in the syllabus or inserted only as a theme within a chapter (Jorge et al, 2017;Stough et al, 2017); consequently, it is classified as "autonomous CU," "CU with the chapter" and "CU with the theme" (Fisher and Bonn, 2011); If it is a compulsory or optional CU (Fisher and Bonn, 2011;Watson et al, 2013;Byrne et al, 2015;Jorge et al, 2017); and In which semester it is taught; and which specific SD-related topics are taught (Burritt and Schaltegger, 2010).…”

“…This study uses content analysis (Wu et al, 2010;Godemann et al, 2011;Botes et al, 2014;Disterheft et al, 2014;Jorge et al, 2017). The content analysis is divided into three phases: pre-analysis, this being the intuition phase, which aimed at operationalizing and systematizing the information; the exploration of the material, consisting of coding operations, break down or enumeration, according to previously formulated rules and finally, processing of the results obtained and their interpretation (Bardin, 2011).…”

Education for sustainable development at Chemnitz University of Technology

“…Their study found that students placed high importance on sustainability education, despite their lower knowledge level (the students’ knowledge level on sustainability was a little above basic/limited knowledge). Larrán Jorge et al (2017) examined with a Web content analysis how Master of Business Administration (MBA) curricula of 92 business schools are offering stand-alone courses on ethics and CSR. Their findings show that there is a trend towards the inclusion of stand-alone courses on CSR and ethics as electives, but that the requirement of CSR and business ethics stand-alone courses in the MBA programs (ranked by the Financial Times) has not increased over the past 10 years.…”