Softening the Hearts of Business Students: The Role of Emotions in Ethical Decision Making

Abstract

Business schools face a dilemma of promoting prosocial values while maintaining the principles of self-interest and profit maximization. In response to recent research suggesting that emotions may be the key to ethical decision making, we ask two basic questions: Do emotions make business students more ethical? Is business school education inhibiting ethical decision making? Drawing on theories on moral emotions and ethical decision making, we hypothesize that moral emotions will enhance ethical decision making, whereas hedonic emotions will diminish ethical decision making. Furthermore, we predict that a higher level of business school education will strengthen the negative relationship between hedonic emotions and ethical decision making while weakening the positive relationship between moral emotions and ethical decision making. Using a scenario-based repeated-measure design, we tested our hypotheses with 217 students from secondary schools, undergraduate business majors, and MBA programs in Hong Kong. Multilevel modeling results supported our hypotheses, suggesting that business school students may benefit from education on the unique roles of moral and hedonic emotions in the ethical decision-making process. We conclude with a summary of the theoretical and practical implications of our findings.

Higher, Faster, Further: Occupational Ethical Decision-Making under Time Pressure in Type A versus Type B Personalities

“…Our results stress the notion that unethical behavior is rather common and needs to be prevented. A number of studies show that trainings regarding ethical and emotional education can lead to higher frequency of ethical reasoning and behavior (Chan & Leung, 2006;Jeong et al, 2020). Furthermore, several studies support this notion by proving associations between education and factors like recognition of moral issues or ethical reasoning (O'Fallon & Butterfield, 2005;Sweeney & Costello, 2009).…”

“…Factors like empathy (Brown et al, 2010) and moral emotions (Baker, 2017;Jeong et al, 2020) showed positive associations with ethical decision-making. On the other hand, factors like hedonic emotions (Jeong et al, 2020), machiavellianism (Verbeke et al, 1996) and high ego-strength (Haines & Leonard, 2007) were negatively associated.…”

“…Factors like empathy (Brown et al, 2010) and moral emotions (Baker, 2017;Jeong et al, 2020) showed positive associations with ethical decision-making. On the other hand, factors like hedonic emotions (Jeong et al, 2020), machiavellianism (Verbeke et al, 1996) and high ego-strength (Haines & Leonard, 2007) were negatively associated. Observing underlying mental processes, especially implicit attitudes significantly predicted important components of ethical decision-making, as well as the weighting of decision criteria (Marquardt, 2010;Marquardt & Hoeger, 2009).…”