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The purpose of this study is to develop the “ethical student scale” to understand the underlying factors that lead to the decisions of cheating and plagiarism and where business students are developmentally from a moral perspective and to help academic institutions assess how best to develop ethical education throughout the curriculum. This three-dimensional nine-item scale based on Kohlberg’s moral development model is proposed to serve as a valuable tool for educators who are struggling with identifying the best approach to help their students make ethical choices both within and outside of the walls of their educational institutions and once they join the workforce.

Four survey design studies were conducted to determine what factors had previously been identified to both negatively and positively impact the propensity of a university student to engage in cheating and/or plagiarizing (Study 1, N = 179), to preliminarily validate the three dimension nine item scale that emerged from Study 1 (Study 2, N = 87); to test the construct validity of the three-dimensional nine-item scale (Study 3, N = 235); and to test the nine-item scale for convergent, divergent and predictive validity (Study 4, N = 201). The four surveys were administered to undergraduate students at two universities in the Northeast in the USA.

To shed light on the underlying factors that lead to the decisions of cheating and plagiarism, the authors propose three factors that are engaged when students make these types of ethical decisions: rules and enforcement as an external control, personal morality as an internal control and social influences as a social control (Kohlberg, 1976). Through four studies, this paper presents a three-dimensional nine-item scale based on Kohlberg’s moral development model to determine the factors that influence the propensity of a university student to engage in cheating and/or plagiarizing. The proposed scale showed strong reliability across the three dimensions.

The limitations of the scale are that this research was restricted to an academic setting. The relationship between the academic environment, the resulting behaviors of students and the subsequent behavior of these students as managers also needs investigation to determine if business ethics education does have an impact on increasing ethical decision-making.

The ethical student scale attempts to measure the development stage of students in a university setting and has the potential utility to help higher education institutions better understand the moral development of their students and what drives their decisions to engage in an ethical manner. Being a short yet reliable tool, ethical student scale may help business schools develop programs beyond a single business ethics course to instill ethical decision-making in students.

One of the goals as business educators is to produce ethical managers. The ethical student scale can help us develop a more integrated approach to business ethics education. As the students become managers and leaders in organizations, the social implications for more ethical decision-makers and organizations are widespread and vital to the community and the economy.

Ethical student scale is an attempt to quantify what types of controls (external, social, or personal) help develop ethical students and ethical managers. Based on Kohlberg’s moral development model, this three-dimensional nine-item scale which shows strong reliability will serve as a valuable tool for educators who are struggling with identifying the best approach to the issue of unethical decisions and behaviors as they try to create strategies to help their students make ethical choices both within and outside of the walls of their educational institutions and once they join the workforce.

“Jessica’s dilemma: honesty or loyalty” is the true story of a Staff Accountant, Jessica, who discovered embezzlement by the controller, Michael. Jessica worked at a US subsidiary of a multinational organization. One of the company’s vendors contacted Jessica regarding unpaid invoices. Following up on the inquiry, Jessica found suspicious manual journal entries in the general ledger. When she questioned her boss, Michael, about her findings, he first denied the situation, then blamed another employee, and ultimately tried to intimidate Jessica so that she would not press the issue. Jessica’s investigation led to the discovery that Michael had been embezzling money from the company. To complicate matters, Jessica and her husband had a close relationship with Michael and his wife outside the office. Jessica had to make a choice between being loyal to a family friend and being honest and loyal toward her employer.

The authors obtained the information for this case from the staff accountant and her husband via a series of interviews. The information was verified via publicly available news articles on the presented case. Additionally, legal documents, which were publicly available, were also used for information. The name of the company and the names of the individuals in the case were changed to protect the identities and privacy of the involved parties.

An instructor can use this case in business ethics, introductory management, human resource law or accounting courses targeting undergraduate or introductory MBA students. This case is best used in the beginning of the suggested courses, as the instructor introduces ethical dilemmas, ethical frameworks, and stakeholder theory. The case is designed so that students do not need a background in business or business ethics to be able to successfully complete the case analysis. Additionally, the case provides a platform to discuss the differences in an ethical vs an unethical manager and how to respond to such a situation.

Many employees are afraid to report ethical wrongdoing to upper management, or to engage in ethical dissent. When upper management is receptive to reports of wrongdoing, ethical dissent within the organization to upper-level management has more organizational benefits than when the issue is shared with coworkers or external agencies. This is because upper management has the power to make a difference in the situation and may be able to keep the situation within the organization to eliminate possible reputation problems for the organization. The presented case can be utilized to discuss the importance of feeling safe in an organization as it pertains to reporting wrongdoing within the organization and how organizational culture and leadership can enhance or diminish that feeling.

Based on Behavioral Theory of Negotiations (Walton & McKersie, 1965), the purpose of this paper is to discuss the existing gap between negotiation theory and pedagogy and presents an experiential teaching tool that closes this gap. The tool is a ‘serious game’ (Abt, 1975) that reinforces all four core negotiation subprocesses while allowing students to practice their negotiation skills and several critical business competencies in a realistic and improvisational context.

After successfully using NegotioPoly for five years, qualitative and quantitative data were collected in three sections of negotiation classes to assess student learning and behaviors while playing NegotioPoly and to collect student feedback on the effectiveness of NegotioPoly in teaching and reinforcing key negotiation skills.

Findings support that NegotioPoly is highly effective in engaging students in a series of realistic negotiations, joint problem solving and strategic decision-making. Results show that, during the game, students demonstrate their negotiation skills and learnings, and they practice all four negotiation subprocesses of distributive, integrative and intraorganizational bargaining and attitudinal structuring.

NegotioPoly enables students to engage in distributive and integrative bargaining, multiple levels of negotiations and coalitions in quick succession. Students practice organizational politics and adjust their negotiations based on relationships and social realities, as they demonstrate advanced deal-making behaviors and core business competencies of problem solving, decision-making, analytical skills and ability to work with others.

NegotioPoly reinforces core business competencies such as negotiation, problem solving, analytical skills and the ability to work in teams that employers look for and, therefore, is a useful tool for preparing students for the business world.

NegotioPoly is an experiential learning tool that closes the gap between negotiation theory and pedagogy while providing deep learning and realistic practice opportunities for students where they can use their negotiation skills in a gaming environment that uses multi-party and multi-round negotiations.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how learning styles and learning spaces interact to stimulate deep learning. Specifically the paper investigated the interaction of learning styles with ethics education and the ethical climate to influence the likelihood of engaging in ethical behavior.

Data were collected from two groups of students – those who had completed a business ethics course and those who had not completed a business ethics course. The sample consisted of 180 undergraduate students at a private university in the USA. Data were analyzed using regression analysis to test the hypotheses. A scenario-based measure of the likelihood of engaging in ethical behavior was developed and implemented in the study.

Both ethics education and ethical climate had a direct impact on a student ' s likelihood of engaging in ethical behavior. The interaction between learning style and business ethics class significantly impacted experiential learners’ likelihood of engaging in ethical behaviors. Results for non-experiential learners as relates to ethical climate were non-significant, but ad hoc analysis indicates ethical climate significantly impacted likelihood to engage in ethical behaviors.

The findings have practical implications for how universities should utilize learning spaces both inside and outside the classroom to be stimulate deep learning and be more effective in sensitizing students to ethical behavior.

The results support using formal and informal learning spaces to stimulate deep learning as it relates to ethics education in universities.

Self-employment is often viewed as a more desirable work arrangement than working as an employee for a firm. Women are pushed into self-employment due to organizational factors, such as a shrinking workforce or limited job opportunities, while being attracted to self-employment by the many psychological and social benefits (e.g., independence, flexibility, work-life balance, job satisfaction). Despite more women moving into self-employment, this type of employment still has different financial consequences for men and women. This article investigates whether a pay gap exists for self-employed women after controlling for industry, occupation, and hours worked and seeks to quantify the gender wage gap for the self-employed. A sample of 467 self-employed independent contractors in the United States was examined from the 2008 National Study of the Changing Workforce. The results indicate a large financial disparity between self-employed women and men. On average men earned $54,959 as compared to women who earned on average $28,554. Regardless of the parity in education, work experience, number of hours worked, or occupations, women earn less than men in self-employment. Findings suggest the existence of the glass cage‐a phenomenon whereby self-employed women earn significantly less than self-employed men with limited abilities to narrow the economic inequality.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the effect of high-performance human resource practices on job satisfaction across four cultural regions – Asia, Europe, North America, and Latin America. High-performance human resource practices were used to predict job satisfaction for each region and then compared to determine significant differences. Hofstede's cultural dimensions were employed as a basis for structuring hypothesized differences across cultural regions.

Data were collected from a proprietary industry survey on employee work attitudes. The sample consisted of over 70,000 employees from four large multinational organizations with at least four offices in each of the four regions. Data were analyzed using regression analysis and comparison testing across models.

There are significant relationships between job characteristics and job satisfaction across all regions of the world, with a sense of achievement universally the most important driver. Although job characteristics impact job satisfaction across all regions, there are significant differences in the relative importance of job characteristics on job satisfaction, consistent with Hofstede's cultural dimensions.

The findings have implications for tailoring human resource management practices across locations within multinationals.

This research is believed to be the first cross-cultural study of human resource practices affecting job satisfaction using multiple organizations and industries.