Suchergebnisse

Student-written cases are powerful pedagogical tools that can lead to improved understanding of business situations, more informed analysis, emphasis on reflection, and clearer expository writing, all of which are critical skills for business students. Cases provide an opportunity for students to enjoy an active learning experience and derive the experiential payback that such activities offer. In this article, the author describes an innovative method for combining teaching cases and research cases that gives relatively inexperienced undergraduate students practice in applying theory to practice. The project was designed for a small business management class for which the learning objectives go beyond content and theory application; students gain the additional benefits of development of interpersonal skills, an enhanced ability to deal with ambiguity, and the extension of insight and originality. The article provides a design for the implementation of the case-writing process, sample assignments and student work, and theoretical supports that focus on qualitative methodologies. Although the disciplinary focus is small business and entrepreneurship, the process of student case writing can be readily transferred among and beyond business disciplines.

The urgent messages of good business include the importance of ethical management behaviors, focus on corporate citizenship, recognition of principled leadership, moral awareness, and participation in social change. This article describes the Service Learning Metaproject (a nested set of projects required of all students) and shows what students can accomplish to promote a better world. It addresses four measurable learning objectives: providing contact with divergent populations, making conscious moral decisions and committing to ethical action, deriving meaning from everyday activities, and developing adaptability and flexibility. It documents the achievement of these with undergraduate business students performing metaprojects that begin with service, lead to learning, and are followed by the development of a direct application. The conclusion is the implementation of that application. All the service learning projects this article describes required a Service Folio for student reflection on service experiences, relationships to readings, and concrete team project deliverables.

When pressures in the workplace threaten to compromise personal values and principles, moral courage is necessary to do what is right. Moral Courage in Organizations: Doing the Right Thing at Work, edited by Debra Comer and Gina Vega, underscores the ethical pitfalls that can be encountered at work and provides guidelines for doing the right thing, despite organizational pressures. This book highlights the effects of organizational factors on ethical behavior; illustrates exemplary moral courage and lapses of moral courage; and considers how to foster change in organizations to promote moral courage, as well as how to exercise the moral courage to change organizations.

This article presents a role-play exercise to make the topic of whistle-blowing personally salient to undergraduates. Students identify with the prospective whistle-blower, whose decision affects several stakeholders. The protagonist merely suspects her manager of stealing, until she hears concrete evidence of his thefts from her assistant manager, who does not want to take action. The exercise helps prepare students to decide how to act if they observe workplace wrongdoing, demonstrates that different ethical frameworks may point to different decisions, promotes examination of possible consequences of whistle-blowing, and highlights how organizational factors affect employees' ethical behavior and the outcomes of their behavior.