The ethical challenges of teaching business ethics: ethical sensemaking through the Goffmanian lens.

Content Provider	Europe PMC
Author	Patel, Taran Bote, Rose Stanisljevic, Jovana
Abstract	Business ethics (BE) professors play a crucial role in sensitizing business students toward their future ethical responsibilities. Yet, there are few papers exploring the ethical challenges these professors themselves face while teaching BE. In this qualitative paper, we rely on the lenses of ethical sensemaking and dramaturgical performance, and draw from 29 semi-structured interview conducted with BE professors from various countries and field notes from 17 h of observation of BE classes. We identify four kinds of rationalities that professors rely on for making sense of in-class ethical challenges, eventually leading them to engage in one of four corresponding types of performances. By juxtaposing high and low scores of two underlying dimensions (degree of expressivity and degree of imposition), we offer a framework of four emerging performances. Additionally, we show that professors can shift from one performance to another during the course of their interactions. We contribute to performance literature by demonstrating the plurality of performances and explaining their emergence. We also contribute to sensemaking literature by offering support to its recent turn from an episodic (crises or disruption-based) to a relational, interactional, and present-oriented understanding. Since professors’ performances have an impact not only on their own teaching experiences but also on students’ learning experiences, undermining these would result in compromising the efforts that business schools have been making toward sensitizing future managers to their ethical responsibilities.
Related Links	https://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC10113979&blobtype=pdf
ISSN	01674544
Journal	Journal of Business Ethics [J Bus Ethics]
DOI	10.1007/s10551-023-05418-9
PubMed Central reference number	PMC10113979
PubMed reference number	37359790
e-ISSN	15730697
Language	English
Publisher	Springer Netherlands
Publisher Date	2023-04-19
Publisher Place	Dordrecht
Access Restriction	Open
Rights License	This article is made available via the PMC Open Access Subset for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2023, Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
Subject Keyword	Teaching business ethics Ethical sensemaking Dramaturgical performances Ethical challenges Goffman
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Business and International Management Arts and Humanities Law Economics and Econometrics Business, Management and Accounting