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This study examines the perceptions of accounting faculties toward ethics education, the extent of ethics coverage and reasons why ethics should (or should not) be taught in Japanese tertiary schools. Data for this research was collected from faculties that primarily teach accounting in Japanese tertiary schools in 2009. The results indicate that over 90% of accounting faculties believe that ethics should be taught within the accounting curriculum. In terms of how ethics should be delivered survey participants believed in a more holistic approach, which would encompass the benefits of teaching it as both a stand-alone course and integrating it with other relevant courses. This outcome is in direct contrast to the results obtained from previous studies undertaken outside of Japan. Of particular interest was the fact that the current survey revealed that only 55.2% of respondents actually intend to incorporate ethics into their accounting courses in the foreseeable future. This research successfully adds value to the shortage of literature existing on the perceptions of ethics education among Japanese accounting faculties.

The early twenty-first century saw a rise in corporate scandals with Enron and WorldCom grabbing the newspaper headlines. The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools in Business realized the significance of imparting education in ethics mainly to the students studying business management and thus a task force was established to examine and report on the current status of ethics education in business schools (Waples, Antes, Murphy, Connelly, & Mumford, 2009). The task force published a report that strongly advocated a course in business ethics that will help business management students cope with ethical dilemmas in their decision-making process. In Eastern Africa, Business Ethics as a subject of teaching and research has expanded at a significant level mainly in Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania. This chapter presents an evaluation and critical discussion of current business ethics education in St Lawrence University in Uganda. The chapter will discuss issues related to teaching business ethics in an African context and the relevance of the subject to the current students enrolled in business courses and how it can contribute to promoting social responsibility through higher education.

Teaching ethical decision making can be distinguished from teaching decision making in other settings by its juxtaposition of students’ affect with their intellect (Gaudine & Thorne, 2001); as Griseri (2002, p. 374) aptly points out, “effective business ethics teaching should involve a combination of…two aspects of ethical situations – their emotional and intellectual elements.” To engage students’ affect, research suggests the use of multiple teaching modalities (e.g., films, case studies, journals, and role-play) (McPhail, 2001). To develop students’ ethical intellect, research recommends using appropriate, individual-specific cognitive stimulation (Massey & Thorne, 2006). Yet, in designing courses, faculty typically preselect course teaching methods independently of the particular students who enroll in the course, often teaching their courses using methods that are consistent with their own personal learning styles (Thompson, 1997) even though those methods may not be effective for (m)any students in their classes. Nonetheless, investigating each student’s preferred learning style and tailoring the course accordingly is impractical (cf., Montgomery & Groat, 1988). Thus, as highlighted in the ethics literature (McPhail, 2001) and suggested in the education literature (Nilson, 2010a), faculty should utilize a variety of approaches to effectively teach ethics to their accounting students. To facilitate these efforts, this paper presents and evaluates various strategies accounting faculty can use to teach accounting ethics in ways that correspond to students’ varying learning preferences. As such, the strategies this paper provides can be used to create an accounting ethics course that affectively impacts and cognitively stimulates a diverse student body that, in turn, can lead to improved ethical reasoning skills.

In the early 1990s while working on my PhD in ethical green marketing, I was approached by my then Deputy Head of Department to write a module with a similar title. His argument was that current research should feed into current teaching. I was delighted with this request and prepared the module called ‘Marketing Ethics’. It was offered to the final-year students of under-graduate courses and proved to be a popular option especially amongst the law cohorts. At the time we had a flourishing business and law school that attracted large numbers of students locally, nationally as well as internationally. The module was later taught by me and a colleague with a keen interest in philosophy and as such the syllabus was modified to include philosophical as well as marketing aspects of ethics. However, the balance was maintained whenever possible. While on that particular subject, Schlegelmilch and Oberseder (2000) refer to almost 50 years of research into marketing ethics in their paper. With reference to the 1990s which coincides with the teaching of the above mentioned subject, they discovered 239 marketing ethics articles in 58 journals. That decade interestingly witnessed a move away from general marketing ethics topics to a focus on perhaps more specialist areas such as marketing education (e.g. Lane, 1995; Shannon & Berl, 1997), promotion (e.g. La Tour & Henthoren, 1994) and so forth. This at a glance highlights the growing importance of ethics in different shapes, forms and guises.

This chapter highlights the perspectives, examples, and applications on the current trend in teaching and learning counseling ethics education in a more effective way. The trend utilizes inquiry-based learning concept and educational activities to foster counselor education training programs fast-forward in meeting the social demands and global challenges. The discussion is based on the theme emerged from an interpretive case study research conducted by the authors, in addition to the insightful literature authored by the profound educators and counseling researchers, globally. Teaching and learning counseling ethics education is an integrative effort and is more than just content acquisition from textbooks. In addition, the inquiry-based teaching and learning approach can be a tool in finding solutions for authentic problems through in-depth investigations while learning counseling ethics education. This chapter hopefully will improve counselor educators’ ability, strengthen counselor education training programs’ capability, and expand counseling students ethical competency; for creating innovations and adaptations in teaching and learning counseling ethics education, utilizing inquiry-based learning toward enhanced professional ethical practice in counseling realm.

This paper is a brief reflection on teaching bioethics to students and practitioners in science and other applied disciplines. After identifying relevant key questions and acknowledging that a variety of approaches to the teaching of applied ethics can be successful, the authors outline why interdisciplinary collaboration between philosophers and discipline experts is our preferred way to teach (and practice) bioethics (and applied ethics). The authors suggest that the reason for the effectiveness of sensible collaborations can be explained by reference to a virtue ethics ‘philosophy of place’ influenced ‘distinct ethics’ approach to understanding the nuanced nature of applied ethics and its relationship to moral philosophy.

Despite the accounting profession having a long history of promoting ethical behaviour globally, with a robust Code of Ethics and formal International Education Standards which include training in professional values, ethics, and attitudes, the accounting profession still regularly features as the lead villain in many corporate failures. Training in ethics has been a core topic in Australian accounting undergraduate degrees now for many years, but the responsibility for teaching ethics still largely falls on faculty from within the business and accounting schools. Although these academics have a strong moral compass and know right from wrong, most do not have ethics-related research experience or professional ethics training. When ethics is taught by academics with little or no formal philosophical ethics training, our students will continue to have limited opportunities to cultivate and deeply internalise the professional values, ethics, and attitudes required of professional accountants in a multicultural world before embarking on their careers.

The chapter presents the implementation of ethics education via challenge-based learning (CBL) in three European settings. At TU Eindhoven (the Netherlands), a mandatory first-year User, Society, and Enterprise course on the ethics and history of technology offers a CBL alternative on ethics and data analytics in collaboration with internal student and research teams. The University of Lübeck (Germany) initiated the project CREATE – Challenge-based Learning for Robotics Students by Engaging Start-Ups in Technology Ethics, which enables 60 students in Robotics and Autonomous Systems to integrate ethical and societal considerations into technological development processes, in cooperation with start-ups from a local accelerator. In Spain, CBI-Fusion Point brings together 40 students from business and law (ESADE), engineering and technology (Polytechnic University of Catalonia), and design (IED Barcelona Design University) for an innovation course focused on the application of CERN-developed technologies to real-world problems. The chapter documents the process of setting up three CBL courses that engage students with grand societal topics which require the integration of ethical concerns from the design stage of technological development. The authors also reflect on the challenges of teaching ethics via CBL and the lessons they learned by delivering experiential learning activities rooted in real-life challenges and contexts marked by high epistemic uncertainty. The contribution reflects the transition to remote teaching and presents strategies employed to enhance online communication and collaboration. The chapter thus provides guidance for instructors interested in teaching ethics via CBL and recommends further lines for action and research.

It has been suggested that the introduction of a universal code of ethics for business, similar to that of the Hippocratic Oath, would encourage business leaders to engage in ethical decisions. The aim of this study is to empirically investigate what future business leaders learn in business school ethics class and to critically examine if there is any correlation between the education that the Hippocratic Oath refers to and modern business ethics education. This quantitative study surveyed 128 academics that teach ethics to business students in 29 Australian universities in order to find out what business students learn when they study ethics in business schools.

The study found such an overall inconsistency in business ethics education that no specific conclusions can be made apart from concluding that there is no uniform and universal standard into the discipline of ethics and what it teaches. The experts are mainly split between the view that ethics education is about teaching critical thinking or that it is about learning academic and theoretical aspects of the discipline of ethics. A third of the experts also thought the purpose of ethics education was to teach ethical conduct.

This paper also argues that the laissez-faire approach about ethics education from Association for Advancement of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) has marginalised business ethics education as business schools overwhelmingly tend to scattering ethics topics superficially and incoherently across the curriculum. The study argues that it is critical to establish a universal standard in business ethics education in order to ensure future ethical business leaders and that the first step is to determine a universal definition of ethics.