Self-selection and socialisation effects of business and legal studies

Abstract

To explore the effect of business and legal studies on the resolution of trade-offs between efficiency considerations and fairness concerns, we distributed a survey with three decision cases to freshman and senior business and law students. Our results show that business students, in direct comparison with subjects who study law, make decisions more in accordance with economic theory. Studying business administration leads to decisions that are based more on efficiency criteria, while legal education appears to lead individuals making decisions that are more based on social criteria. Our findings reveal the impact of self-selection and socialization effects on decision making. For business ethics education, this result matters because moral decision making can be influenced during studies.

Students’ values, professional socialization and the mental gap of corporate social responsibility perceptions

“…The social circumstances include the influence of students’ socialization within the socio-cultural context of the business schools, which has been extensively discussed in the academic literature [ 2 , 4 , 43 – 45 ]. Educational institutions influence the development of different social competencies, including ethical ones.…”

“…However, Haski-Leventhal, Pournader, and Leigh [ 44 ] have noticed that these results imply driving business students away from the prosocial values of traditional education. Rosengart, Hirsch, and Nitzl [ 45 ] confirm the students’ self-selection into their academic studies based on personal values and show that professional socialization, as a contextual factor, influences students’ decision-making as they progress through their academic programs.…”

“…The potential generalization of these studies [ 2 , 43 – 45 ] seems to hint at a limited influence of business schools on students, who tend to self-select, based on the perceived compatibility with the value profile of the profession and, eventually, the attended school. However, it is still open for discussion, if there is, and how significant the potential to change business students’ values is.…”

Are economic majors “indoctrinated” by their education? Public good game quasi-experiment

“…However, there are scholars who found confirmation for both self-selection and teaching effects (cf. Faravelli, 2007;Cipriani et al, 2009;Haucap & Just, 2010;Goossens & Méon, 2014;Kaiser et al, 2018;Rosengart et al, 2020).…”

“…Numerous scholars have returned to surveys and questionnaires. Some studies asked about preferable allocation mechanisms (Ng, 1988;Frey et al, 1993;Whaples, 1995;Faravelli, 2007;Cipriani et al, 2009;Haucap & Just, 2010;Marcis et al, 2014;Goossens & Méon, 2015Rosengart et al, 2020 and other economic issues, such as labour market regulations (Haferkamp et al, 2009) and trade and immigration policies (Jacob et al, 2011). However, there were also researches directly dedicated to ethical attitudes (Tse & Au, 1997;Gandal et al, 2005;Neubaum et al 2009;Lopes et al 2015;Hammock et al, 2016;Krick et al 2016;Dzionek-Kozlowska & Rehman, 2017a;2017b;Delgado et al, 2019) and moral dilemmas in both economic (Rubinstein, 2006;O'Clock & Okleshen, 1993;Frank & Schulze, 2000;Cipriani et al, 2009;Brosig et al, 2010;Rosengart et al, 2020) and general contexts (Krick et al, 2016;Hummel et al, 2018;Dzionek-Kozlowska & Rehman, 2019).…”