There are questions about how ethics is best taught to undergraduate business students. There has been a proliferation in the number of stand-alone ethics courses for undergraduate students but research on the effectiveness of integrated versus stand-alone mode of delivery is inconclusive. Christensen et al. :347–368, 2007), in a comprehensive review of ethics, corporate social responsibility and sustainability education, investigated how ethics education has changed over the last 20 years, including the issue of integration of these topics into the core (...) course offerings. We use Brenner and Molander’s :57–71, 1977) situational ethics survey instrument to examine the effect of the mode of delivery of business ethics education on undergraduate student responses. We found a significant difference on mode of delivery. Studies have also found interesting results in respect of the effect of cultural differences and gender on the effectiveness of business ethics instruction. While not the primary focus of this study, we also looked at the influence of gender and culture on students’ responses. Our results indicate significant differences in respect of mode of delivery and culture. In contrast to other studies, we found that gender was not significant. We did test for any interactive effects of gender, culture and mode of delivery. However, no significant differences were found. (shrink)

This work addresses corruption in politics and the public services, arguing that corrupt public officials should be exposed, prosecuted and gaoled, just like their colleagues in the private sector. It covers ethical standards in the public service, both state and federal; the practice of government; the relationships between officials; their advisors and the public; the interplay between politics and personal behaviour, and offering explanations as to what can be done about corruption in public service through asking questions like; how does (...) corruption gain a foothold in public affairs?; how can public trust be rebuilt between bureaucrats, the politicians and the people who vote for them?; and how can we improve accoutability over the cover-ups? (shrink)

Good corporate governance requires that managers promote shareholder interests but it cannot be assumed they will act in this manner. Though this is an observation most managers would acknowledge, many argue they should be free of external regulatory intervention because regulations designed to protect shareholders are necessarily a form of paternalism that take from shareholders decisions that are rightly theirs to make. We question this perspective by showing that regulations founded on paternalist principles are compatible with a liberal economy and (...) social relations. We identify when a paternal approach to decision making is justified and add substance to our argument by responding to claims that the Principles of Good Governance1 promulgated by the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) are an unacceptable infringement on managers’ right to govern their enterprises because they are supposedly paternalist. We reject this argument and suggest that while the current ASX principles are not paternalistic there is a case for ensuring shareholder protection is informed by paternalist principles. (shrink)