Teaching Business Ethics Through Popular Feature Films: An Experiential Approach

Journal of Business Ethics · 2014 · Volume 121 · Issue 3

Abstract

Based on our experience in teaching ethics, we have developed, tested, and presented in this article a program of instruction that rests on four pillars: popular feature films, a six-stage ethical decision-making process, the principles necessary to address ethical situations, and the classroom instructor. Taken separately, there is nothing new or unique in these pillars. Taken together, however, and to our knowledge, these four pillars, including the requirement that each student is expected to prepare a written abstract of the filmpriorto the classroom discussion of that film in which the student is expected to demonstrate apracticalapplication of ethical principles to actual and concrete moral situations, constitute a new, unique, and tested way to teach ethics to undergraduate students of management and economics.

Keywords

Deontology, consequentialism, and virtue ethics, Popular feature films, Principles to address moral situations, Six-stage decision-making process, Teaching business ethics

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