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

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 m...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of management education Vol. 44; no. 3; pp. 278 - 312
Main Authors Jeong, Sophia S., Sun, Cong (Timothy), Fu, Ping Ping
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.06.2020
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
Subjects
Business Administration Education
Business Schools
College students
Decision Making
Education
Emotions
Ethics
Foreign Countries
Graduate Students
Hypotheses
MBA programs & graduates
Prosocial Behavior
Psychological Patterns
Secondary School Students
Students
Undergraduate Students
Hong Kong
hedonic emotions
business education
moral emotions
ethical decision making
business school
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Summary: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.
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ISSN:1052-5629
1552-6658
DOI:10.1177/1052562919895039