Business Ethics Decision-Making: Examining Partial Reflective Awareness

Abstract

The aim of this research was to examine partial reflective awareness in ethical business choices in Croatia. The ethical decision-making is interlinked with sustainable practices, but it is also its prerequisite. Thus, better understanding of business ethics decision-making provides a basis for designing and implementing sustainability in a corporate setting. The research was done on student populations who will soon carry important roles and make important decisions for individuals, organizations, and society. The field research was conducted using Kohlberg’s scenarios. The results reveal that the process of decision-making goes through the lenses of respondents’ own preferred ethics. However, the reflective awareness of respondents’ preferred ethics is skewed and regularities in that deviations point out to the relevance of the context characteristics and arousal factors. In addition, the individuals do not use all available information in the assessment process. The revealed partial reflective awareness contributes to explanation of why people have problems with justifying their choices. As there are many examples of unethical behavior in the environment that remain unpunished, it is necessary to raise awareness of the issue. Improvement in reflective awareness would contribute to more sustainable ethical choices and reveal a possibility of an intervention design within the higher education framework.

Impact of Teaching Accounting Ethics on the Ethical Decision-Making of Future Managers

“…Unfortunately, the primary causes of accounting scandals such as Enron, Worldcom, Sunbeam, and Arthur Anderson rely on a lack of education on ethical sensitivity and ethical awareness in university undergraduate programs (Russell & Smith, 2003;Bampton & Cowton, 2013;Boni & Lazano, 2007). While accounting ethics topics are considerably examined in published manuscripts in many categories such as the methods of teaching ethics, the accounting ethics course curriculum, the impact on students' ethical decision-making, and the role of demographic factors on the perceptions of accounting ethics education (Gonan et al, 2021;Loeb, 2006), especially researches focusing on teaching ethics and its role on the future accounting professionals likelihood to react ethically is still unclear (Hanson and Moore, 2013). The integration method of teaching ethics as a part of an accounting course is the most common way (Vendemia and Kos, 2013; Chawla, S.K., et al 2015; Shawver and Miller, 2017).…”

Ethical Horizons: A Comprehensive Exploration of Contemporary Business Ethics Practices

“…Gonan et al (2021) underscore the need to raise awareness of unpunished unethical behavior and the potential of reflective awareness for sustainable ethical choices within HRM frameworks Wilandari (2021). emphasizes the importance of companies establishing ethical relationships with stakeholders and integrating business ethics into HRM practices, especially in the distribution of medical devices.…”