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B u s i n e s s, Ma n ag e M e n t a n d e d u c at i o n
ISSN 2029-7491 / eISSN 2029-6169

2014, 12(2): 303–317
doi:10.3846/bme.2014.238

ETHICAL-ECONOMIC DILEMMAS IN BUSINESS EDUCATION

 Anna REMIŠOVÁ1, Anna LAŠÁKOVÁ2, Zuzana BÚCIOVÁ3 

Comenius University in Bratislava, Odbojárov 10, 820 05 Bratislava 25, Slovakia 
E-mails: 1anna.remisova@fm.uniba.sk; 2anna.lasakova@fm.uniba.sk;  

3zuzana.buciova@fm.uniba.sk (corresponding author)
Received 20 October 2014; accepted 6 November 2014

Abstract. The main purpose of the article is to support the idea of institutional-
izing business ethics education at all business schools. Further, the article stresses 
the importance of using ethical-economic dilemmas in business ethics education. 
It argues that business students should learn that managerial work is too com-
plex to make do with expertise and experience and help them to acquire the skill 
of ethical reflection of economic activity. Solving ethical-economic dilemmas in 
business ethics courses helps to develop cognitive skills in considering economic 
or managerial problems on the basis of ethical and economic interaction. In order 
to support the main purpose stated above, we aimed at getting a picture of how 
respondents assess and solve an ethical-economic dilemma. Hence, this article pre-
sents results of an empirical investigation of the ethical decision-making (EDM) 
process on a sample of Slovak students of Management. 

Keywords: business ethics, ethical-economic dilemma, ethical decision-making 
(EDM), ethical rationality, economic rationality, business education.

JEL Classification: A13, A22, A23.

1. Introduction 

People have been constantly confronted with consequences of unethical business prac-
tises. It is not unusual to witness how ethical misconduct in business gives rise to 
negative outcomes of enormous proportions. As unethical decisions of business leaders 
was identified as one of the key factors leading to many disasters (Donaldson 2012; 
Friedman, H., Friedman, L. 2010), with increasing number of such cases urgency arises 
to pay more attention to ethical education of future managers. In recent years, world 
leading business schools have been aiming attention at integrating business ethics in 
their curriculum, as some of them became embarrassed by the role played by their 
alumni in corporate scandals.

According to Ghoshal (2003), business school teachers have been careless in their 
responsibilities, ill preparing students for the reality of corporate life by treating busi-
ness disciplines “as if it were a kind of physics, in which individual intentions and 
choices either do not play a role or, if they do, can safely be taken as being determined 



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by economic, social and psychological laws” (Ghoshal 2003). He is just one of those 
calling for change in business education, suggesting that “coursework-as-usual is in-
sufficient, or at least irresponsible, because they cover material independent of eth-
ics” (Cant, Kulik 2009). Though some argue that ethics cannot be taught (e.g. Cragg 
1997) and that it is difficult to change personal values and principles in business eth-
ics courses (McCabe et al. 1991), the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of 
Business (AACSB) obviously assuming that ethical decision-making (EDM) strategies 
and ethical values can be trained (Sims, Felton 2006) has included ethics instruction as 
an accreditation requirement and recommended it to be high priority in the curriculum 
(Falkenberg, Woiceshyn 2007). 

2. The role of ethics in business education

Business is “a social activity with moral prerequisites” (De George 1989) and with “the 
potential for a myriad of moral dilemmas” (Falkenberg, Woiceshyn 2007). Business 
students should realize that ethics is an integral part of business and is present in every 
decision-making. “A business decision may be labelled or categorized as a financial, 
manufacturing or marketing decision, but ethical dimensions are intertwined in the deci-
sion, regardless of its description” (Sims, Felton 2006). 

Students should learn that in the course of professional activity, the manager com-
monly gets into situations when his moral beliefs conflict with his economic intent; 
when there is a conflict between the desire to succeed and the desire to act honestly; a 
conflict between career and conscience, or moral values of his associates and his/her 
values. The purpose of teaching business ethics is to achieve students’ realization that 
ethics is not a luxury or additional cost in the manager’s work, but an integral part of his 
everyday work (Remišová 2004). As “all management decisions have possible second 
and third generation consequences of an ethical nature” (Sims, Felton 2006), students 
should be aware that “what may appear to be an ethically responsible decision when 
viewed from a short-term perspective often has long-term negative and unintended 
consequences that are ethically irresponsible” (Sims, Felton 2006). Previous research 
showed that perceived importance of an ethical issue is a predictor of moral intent 
(Haines et al. 2008), which supports the significance of discussing ethical issues regard-
ing all business activities to better understand their impact. Students should understand 
that every decision has an ethical dimension, be able to find and assess it, as well as, 
reason ethical primacy in their decisions. 

 However intense the debate might be on integrating ethics into business education, 
it should primarily focus not on whether ethics can be taught, but on how to teach 
ethics more effectively. What can educators do to achieve the best possible education 
results? Many authors agree that apart from familiarizing students with business ethics 
as a subject matter, a good business ethics course should (1) raise awareness of ethical 
issues, (2) help students to identify and understand their core values and give them the 



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possibility to question and challenge them, (3) broaden students’ understanding of ethics 
and its complexities, and (4) strengthen their analytical skills, moral reasoning and judg-
ing abilities (see e.g. Sims 2002; Lowry 2003; Sims, Felton 2006; Cant, Kulik 2009; 
Kolb, A. Y., Kolb, D. A. 2005). Moreover, business ethics course should be intended 
to “strengthen students’ adaptation” to meet their future managerial social obligations 
(Sims 2002), increase capacity “to critically respond to changing environments that 
contain competing interests and complex obligations to numerous stakeholders” (Cant, 
Kulik 2009), and get them into the “habit” of applying EDM strategies in a school 
setting (Oddo 1997). There are also suggestions that developing certain competencies 
may help individuals to effectively include ethics in decision-making process (Morales-
Sánchez, Cabello-Medina 2013). Last not least, it is important to help students under-
stand that “being an ethical manager is a process – a process that needs to be nurtured 
throughout one’s management career” (Sims, Felton 2006). 

3. Ethical-economic dilemmas

To accomplish the exacting objectives, a wide range of pedagogical approaches to teach-
ing business ethics has been discussed over the literature, ranging from structured lec-
tures, discussions, role-plays, case-studies, presenting ethical issues within the context 
of films and novels to “interaction with convicted white-collar criminals to learn from 
their mistakes” (Sims, Felton 2006). We agree that in order to make business ethics 
courses effective, the learning must be experience based and emphasize personal ex-
perience application (Sims, Felton 2006) as more experienced students appear to be 
more ethically oriented (Eweje, Brunton 2010). In accordance with the finding that 
studying ethics scandals positively impacted student perceptions of the ethics of busi-
ness people (Cagle, Baucus 2006), we believe students should be given an opportunity 
to see business situation from someone else’s point of view in simulations, role plays, 
ethical-economic dilemmas, or by sharing their own experience. By engaging in such 
activities, they experience how it feels to be “on the other side” of their decision, and/
or experience consequences of their decisions in model situation. 

At Faculty of Management, Comenius University in Bratislava, where all authors 
of this article teach courses in business and managerial ethics, the instruction is based 
on three main pillars: 

1. Primacy of ethical rationality over economic one. Based on Ulrich’s (1997, 2010) 
integrative approach to business ethics, emphasized in all Remišová’s works 
on business ethics (e.g. Remišová 1997, 2004, 2011, 2012; Remišová, Búciová 
2012), students are taught to understand the difference in ethical and economic 
rationality in everyday business situations and learn to integrate them. Moreover, 
they are taught to understand, that in case those rationalities are in conflict, the 
ethical one should be given priority (i.e. the universal interests should be preferred 
over individual ones). The main goal of the courses is to teach students distinguish 



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between ethical and economic aspects of everyday business situations, and to help 
them acquire skills to solve them in favour of ethics.

2. Managerial ethics is a professional ethics, and therefore cannot be withdrawn 
from business education. Just as medical or law students cannot graduate without 
encountering ethics instruction during their studies, all business students should 
complete courses in business or/and managerial ethics to have the opportunity to 
encounter and discuss ethical issues of their future profession, improve their moral 
sensitivity, thinking, reasoning, etc.

3. Solving ethical-economic dilemmas helps developing students’ thinking and moral 
judgment. This idea derives from Kohlberg’s model of moral development, which 
was analyzed by Remišová (1996). According to Kohlberg’s theory of moral de-
velopment (1981), moral judgment develops over time together with the develo-
pment of one’s thinking. In teaching ethics, it is more important that students have 
to engage in the process of solving ethical dilemmas, than the actual solutions 
they are able to come up with. By facing ethical dilemmas in school environment, 
students are forced to think about how to solve such situations, and thus they cre-
ate mental schemes for solving such problems. This is one of the most important 
outcomes business ethics courses can provide. 

Ethical-economic dilemmas present everyday business situations in which economic 
dimensions of a managerial problem are confronted with ethical ones. Solving such 
situations becomes not merely a matter of business knowledge, economic parameters 
and legislation, but is strongly influenced by ethical moments. Individual action is in-
fluenced by one’s moral principles, values, character qualities, moral development, 
ability to respect human rights of other people, and ability to consider concerns of all 
the individuals and groups involved (Remišová 2004). Ethical-economic dilemmas are 
not simply about choosing between “the right” and “the wrong”. According to Brady 
(1990) such dichotomy is misleading and may cause frustration. They present a complex 
decision-making process, in which decisions between profit and social harm take place, 
complicated multilateral alternatives are assessed, and expected consequences, uncertain 
possibilities and career implications are taken into consideration (Remišová 2004). 

According to Remišová (2004) in order to find a solution of an ethical-economic 
dilemma, three types of analysis may help: economic (considering impersonal market 
principles), legislative (considering impersonal social rules) and ethical one (trusting 
individual moral values). Students are taught to analyze various situations from ethical 
viewpoint (as it is assumed that they have already been taught to analyze problems from 
economic viewpoint on many other subjects in the curriculum). Discussing such dilem-
mas enhances their moral awareness, ethical thinking and improves moral reasoning 
(Remišová et al. 2014). As already mentioned, the most significant outcome of solving 
ethical-economic dilemmas is in the process itself. No matter what the decision made 
is, by facing and solving the dilemmas and weighing possible solutions students are 
creating an important habit for their future profession.



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4. Research methodology

The main purpose of our research was to gain a clearer picture of how respondents assess 
and solve an ethical-economic dilemma, this being measured in regard to certain elements 
of EDM. In order to gain valid and reliable data we decided to first perform a pilot study, 
in which the designed research methodology (e.g. content of the given ethical-economic 
dilemma, the way the variables were coded, etc.) would be investigated. After evaluation 
of the pilot study results, the coding scheme for variables included in the research had to 
be précised and refined. The partial results of our pilot study were published in our previ-
ous article (Remišová et al. 2014). After integrating minor changes to the questionnaire 
body, we proceeded with the research. In order to achieve the research purpose stated 
above, we had to follow these consecutive methodological steps:

1. Respondents were given an ethical-economic dilemma by Anna Remišová (2011) 
in a written form. It was presented to respondents as a short case study that intro-
duced a situation, in which respondents represented owners of a company dealing 
with waste disposal. The company cared about its environmental reputation, and 
therefore, it invested in a device for intercepting emissions from burning waste. 
The company was in the stage of growth but big investments had exhausted it, and 
so it was essentially looking for lucrative orders. One of the managers came with 
a proposal he had received from an unknown foreign food company to dispose 
spoiled goods. Burning such goods produced emissions and the foreign company 
would have to pay a high fine for disposing such waste in its home country. The 
cost for disposing the goods in the food company’s home country was stated to 
be 20-times higher than in country, in which our company operated, as the en-
vironmental legislation in our country was more benevolent. As owners of the 
waste disposing company the participants were informed their newly bought de-
vice could not intercept those emissions. They also knew there was no monitoring 
device for emissions in the region where their company operated. The company 
was to receive 600.000 € for the waste disposal, which would solve its current 
economic problems as well as strengthen its market position. The manager, who 
received this offer, was asking what to say to the food company. 

2. After reading the dilemma the participants were asked to think about it and then 
fill in a questionnaire that was at the end of the dilemma. It consisted of six open-
ended questions tied to the wording of the dilemma. Questions comprised issues 
of how would respondents decide in such a situation, what would be the economic 
point of view, what would be the ethical dimension of this dilemma, what would 
be the consequences of the selected solution, whether respondents would be wil-
ling to bear responsibility for their decision, and finally, whether they thought it 
was ethically correct that economically more developed countries disposed waste 
in the weaker ones. The closing demographic question page asked about respon-
dents’ gender, age, work experience and whether they had taken any courses in 
ethics prior to the testing.



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3. After receiving the filled in questionnaires, all responses were transcribed into one 
document ordering them according to the six consecutive open-ended questions. 
Next a pre-developed coding scheme, that was refined after the pilot study, was 
applied in order to catch the most important elements of each answer. Hence, ans-
wers on six open-ended questions were differentiated into 17 quantitatively coded 
variables. Moreover, 16 demographic variables were involved in the analysis, too. 
The data had been transcribed into an Excel file, which was subsequently scored 
in the Version 21 of SPSS program. For the sake of the research goals we assessed 
the data by the means of various methods of descriptive statistics, like frequen-
cies and cross-tabulations. Further we used the Chi-square test for independence, 
calculated Cramer’s V, and Contingency coefficient for calculating the strength of 
the association between measured variables.

Our two main research questions were:
I. How did our respondents solve the respective ethical-economic dilemma? Because 

the issue of EDM is multifaceted, we had to fine down this complex question into the 
particular processes of EDM. More specifically, we investigated here three processes 
of EDM (Rest et al. 1986): 

− What was respondent’s dominant decision (intended action)? 
− What was the nature of moral awareness of respondents?
− What was the nature of respondent’s moral judgment? Where they able to deter-

mine, which course of action is morally correct? 
II. Is there any statistically significant relationship between previous education in 

ethics and the way respondents solved the moral dilemma? More specifically, is there 
any relationship between education in ethics and: 

− decision, in the sense of giving priority to ethically right decision over ethically 
incorrect decision;

− moral awareness, which was inspected on the basis of: 
a) the awareness of ethical stakes inherent in the given moral dilemma, 
b) sensitivity to various stakeholders, to which the dilemma was supposed to relate,
c) consequences of intended action awareness, and 
d) long-term/short-term consequences of intended action awareness; 

− moral judgment that was in our research represented by the attitude of respondents 
toward whether to exploit (economically) weaker countries is ethically correct or 
incorrect;

− respondent’s willingness to bear responsibility for their intended action; and 
− the scope of economic rationality that was perceived by respondents in relation to 

the selected solution of the dilemma. 
The next section of this paper will refer to the above stated research questions. 



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5. Results

Sample. Our sample consisted of both undergraduate and graduate students studying at 
the Faculty of Management, Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia. No grade was 
assigned for the task of filling in the questionnaire and students were told to express 
their opinion freely and anonymously. 

After assembling the data, questionnaires filled in incompletely were excluded from 
the assessment, leaving 189 respondents in the final sample. As for the character of our 
sample, 67% of the sample consisted of women, 93% was populated by people being up 
to 26 years old, while 74% of them didn’t have a full-time work experience, however 
up to 67% of the sample did have work-related experiences on a managerial position. 
The majority of the sample population worked on a part-time platform: HRM positions 
(48%), admin-related positions (30%), finance/accounting positions (23%), followed by 
sales (20%), marketing (19%), and production (5%) positions. As for having education in 
ethics, 45% reported having attended a course related to ethics. As for the overall sample, 
23% of them took a course in Business ethics, 10% in Ethics, 7% in Managerial ethics, 
3% in CSR, and approximately 2% of them took differently specialized courses in ethics. 

On the solution of ethical-economic dilemma. Table 1 illustrates the overall research 
outcomes regarding the basic variables measured within the EDM process. We assessed 
17 sub-elements of EDM. As for the intended action to take, according to the results 
majority of our respondents (64%) would accept the offer to burn the toxic waste in or-
der to solve current economic problems of their company. Moral awareness was differ-
entiated according to various stakeholders and other aspects that respondents would take 
into account, according to being able to identify that the respective dilemma includes 
the contrast between ethical and economic rationality, further according to being able 
to specify ethical stakes, and awareness of consequences of intended actions together 
with recognizing their long-term and short-term dimension.

Results show that more than 87% of respondents were aware of ethical stakes that 
were inherent in the dilemma. This means that respondents were able to identify ethi-
cal side of chosen solution (the course of action) they wanted to undertake. Further 
results show that 58% of respondents took stakeholder “environment” into account, 25% 
considered region/people, 7% of respondents indicated economic weaker countries as 
important, only 4% considered future generations, and only 5% of the sample took into 
consideration employees of the company. Almost 43% of respondents considered the 
aspect of company image as being important to think about, 19% recognized owner and 
his conscience, and 7% of respondents indicated violation of laws as being important 
to take into the decision-making. Moreover, 25% of the sample was able to identify 
that there might be contrast between ethical and economic rationality in the respective 
dilemma.



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Table 1. EDM related process research outcomes (Source: created by the authors)

EDM-related 
processes

EDM elements Variables N
Education in 
ethics Yes/No

Intended 
action

Decision Accepted unethical offer 121 49.6% 50.4%

Not accepted unethical offer 46 37.0% 63.0%

Moral 
awareness

Stakeholder environment Not involved in reasoning 80 42.5% 57.5%

Involved in reasoning 109 46.8% 53.2%

Stakeholder region/people Not involved in reasoning 141 39.0% 61.0%

Involved in reasoning 48 62.5% 37.5%

Stakeholder future generations Not involved in reasoning 181 43.6% 56.4%

Involved in reasoning 8 75.0% 25.0%

Stakeholder economic weaker 
countries

Not involved in reasoning 176 44.3% 55.7%

Involved in reasoning 13 53.8% 46.2%

Stakeholder employees of the 
company

Not involved in reasoning 178 44.4% 55.6%

Involved in reasoning 10 50.0% 50.0%

Aspect of company image Not involved in reasoning 107 43.0% 57.0%

Involved in reasoning 82 47.6% 52.4%

Aspect of owner/conscience Not involved in reasoning 154 41.6% 58.4%

Involved in reasoning 35 60.0% 40.0%

Aspect of violation of laws Not involved in reasoning 175 45.7% 54.3%

Involved in reasoning 14 35.7% 64.3%

Ethical rationality in contrast 
with economic rationality

Not involved in reasoning 142 41.5% 58.5%

Involved in reasoning 47 55.3% 44.7%

Awareness of ethical stakes Ethical stakes specified 165 47.3% 52.7%

Ethical stakes not specified 24 29.2% 70.8%

Awareness of ethical stakes 
specified

Various stakeholders are at stake 78 48.7% 51.3%

Personal values/conscience are 
at stake

87 46.0% 54.0%

Law violation is at stake 12 33.3% 66.7%

Awareness of consequences Aware 100 40.0% 60.0%

Not aware 89 50.6% 49.4%

Awareness of long/short term 
consequences

Long-term 33 51.5% 48.5%

Short-term 67 34.3% 65.7%

Moral 
judgment

Moral judgment on acceptance 
of exploitation of the weaker 
countries

It is correct 19 42.1% 57.9%

It is incorrect 170 45.3% 54.7%

Responsibility To bear responsibility for 
intended action

Is willing 160 43.8% 56.3%

Is not willing 29 51.7% 48.3%

Economic 
rationality

Scope of economic rationality Pure economic calculus 141 45.4% 54.6%

Involving stakeholders into account 48 43.8% 56.3%



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Ethical stakes that were identified by respondents were mostly tied to the values 
and conscience of the owner of the waste disposing company (46%), to the various 
stakeholders (41%), and to possible violation of laws (6%). Up to 6% of the sample 
was not able to recognize neither any ethical stakes nor any stakeholders. Only 18% 
were aware of long-term consequences of their action, and 47% of the sample popu-
lation was not at all aware of any consequences of their intended action. Up to 35% 
were aware only of short-term consequences tied to their course of action in solution 
of the dilemma. 

Moral judgment proved to be the easiest to recognize by our respondents. More 
than 89% of the sample population was able to determine, which course of moral ac-
tion would be ethically correct. Up to 85% of respondents would be willing to bear 
responsibility for their action. Further, when asked, what is the economic viewpoint 
of the problem depicted in the dilemma, circa 75% of respondents relied solely on 
economic calculations of income and expenses, which means that only 25% of the 
sample was able to involve also some stakeholders and their stakes into the economic 
perspective. 

On the relationship between education in ethics and the way respondents assess the 
moral dilemma. The 17 elements of EDM were tested also from the perspective of their 
relation to ethical education of respondents. When testing the relations between those 
who had and didn’t have ethical education, no significant relations were proved but two. 
These two statistically significant relations were confirmed (see Table 2 and Table 3).

Table 2. Relation between previous ethical education and involvement of stakeholder region/
people into consideration when solving the dilemma (Source: created by the authors)

Stakeholder region/people
Education in ethics

Yes No
Not involved in reasoning 55 86
Involved in reasoning 30 18

Pearson Chi-Square .005* Contingency Coefficient .201**

*Asymp. sig. (2-sided). ** Approx. sig.

Table 3. Relation between previous ethical education and involvement of owner/his conscience 
into consideration when solving the dilemma (Source: created by the authors)

Aspect of owner/conscience
Education in ethics

Yes No
Not involved in reasoning 64 90
Involved in reasoning 21 14

Pearson Chi-Square .048* Contingency  Coefficient .143**

*Asymp. sig. (2-sided). ** Approx. sig.



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Our results as depicted in Table 2 and 3 indicate that in our sample of Slovak 
managerial students the strongest, although still rather moderate to weak relationship 
between ethical educational background and various parts of EDM lie in involvement 
of the stakeholder region/people and the aspect of the owner´s conscience into account 
in the process of dilemma solution. No other statistically significant relations between 
measured variables of EDM and ethical educational background were identified. In 
order to gain a clearer picture of the relevance and implications of research results, the 
discussion part of this paper will interpret our results in a broader context of business 
and business ethics education realities. 

6. Discussion

The results of our survey indicate that having education in ethics did not have any sig-
nificant relation to respondents’ intended course of action, moral awareness, or moral 
judgment. However, a relationship was proved between ethical educational background 
and involvement of the stakeholder region/people and owner’s conscience into account 
in the process of dilemma solution. Students with education in ethics were more likely 
to consider negative impact of waste disposal on people living in the close area – rang-
ing from long-term and short-terms health risks, to decrease in living comfort and drop 
in real-estate value due to pollution. They also more often reasoned that accepting the 
unethical offer might be in conflict with the owner’s conscience, or might be in utter 
contradiction with the core values and beliefs upon which the company was built (i.e. 
they referred to company’s conscience). 

Interesting results occur when comparing willingness to bear responsibility for a 
chosen solution and the awareness of consequences. Up to 85% of respondents would 
be willing to bear responsibility for their action, but only 18% were aware of long-term 
consequences, 35% were aware only of short-term consequences and 47% were not 
at all aware of any consequences of their intended action. These results may indicate 
either that a shallow or no knowledge of consequences and their complexity might lead 
to greater willingness to accept responsibility for a decision, or that respondents do not 
fully understand what “accepting responsibility” means. Respondents might think they 
would be willing to accept responsibility for their decision (even if it means accepting 
the unethical offer), because they are not able to portray the consequences adequately, 
or they cannot portray responsibility for such a decision in terms of triple relationship of 
responsibility, i.e. who is responsible for what towards whom (Remišová 2004). In both 
cases, what teachers can do is to emphasise ethics of responsibility as one of the basic 
frameworks for EDM, discuss the complexity of every-day business decisions with 
accent on their consequences towards different stakeholders, and by using experiential 
learning methods to help students find the answers themselves.

Another interpretation of the results may be that respondents deliberately picked 
the risk of accepting the unethical offer as they believed the economical rationality had 



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to go first (i.e. to maximize profit, support the company financially in order to sustain 
or stay competitive, etc.). When asked, what the economic viewpoint of the problem 
depicted in the dilemma is, 75% of respondents relied solely on economic calculations 
of income and expenses, which means that only 25% of the sample was able to involve 
also some stakeholders and their stakes into the economic perspective. We suggest that 
students either did not see the different impact of consequences for different stakehold-
ers or did frame the dilemma as a managerial problem without any ethical component 
and thus solved it based on the economic rationality only. If we work on the assump-
tion that respondents believed economic rationality should have preference in the di-
lemma, than an important shift should be made in their entire business education – to 
let them understand that doing business cannot be limited to economic rationality only. 
We strongly agree with Sims that in order to be successful, implementation of business 
ethics in the curriculum requires involvement and commitment of the entire business 
faculty to an overall set of ethical principles to be expressed to students (Sims 2002), 
otherwise ethical values and principles trained in business ethics courses may collide 
with economic principles favoured in other business subjects. 

Our results to certain extend correspond with Marnburg’s (2003) suggestion that 
business ethics course might increase awareness of moral issues. We neither prove nor 
disapprove Ritter’s assumption, that “while efforts to integrate ethics into curriculum 
may increase the possibility that individuals with a prior ethical schema will activate 
it in business situations, there may be little or no effect on individuals who have not 
yet created an ethical schema” (Ritter 2006). We are of the opinion that business ethics 
should be mandatory part of business and economic education, regardless of what the 
students’ level of individual ethical thinking is, prior to the university studies (Remišová 
et al. 2014). In accordance with Oddo, we believe that “if students get into the “habit” 
of applying EDM strategies in a school setting, they will be more likely to use them in 
business situations” (Oddo 1997). 

It is important to note that in the educational process, ethical-economic dilemmas are 
usually used to provoke and stimulate discussion. Each student is asked to participate in 
the discussion, give reasons for his solution and confront it with the solutions of others. 
This way, students learn to identify ethical aspects of economic problems, and to reflect 
their own decisions. Self-reflexion and self-evaluation are essential in the process of 
becoming responsible managers. 

7. Conclusions

One of the things students are familiarized with in business ethics courses, are tools for 
institutionalizing business ethics in organizational environment. Unfortunately, teach-
ers usually do not have such tools to institutionalize ethics in business education. Thus, 
they can only influence a limited number of students, who have decided to enroll in 
business ethics course, which is often elective only. This article should serve as one of 



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the impulses for starting a discussion about integrating business ethics instruction into 
curriculum in all European business schools. We believe that business ethics should 
be treated at least as other business disciplines to prepare all students for the complex 
reality they will face in their future careers. Courses in business and managerial ethics 
should not be withdrawn from business education. Moreover, it is not enough to inte-
grate them into business curriculum as elective courses only. As managerial ethics is 
a professional ethics, all managers should be prepared to handle business situations in 
favor of ethical rationality. 

These premises were reflected also in our research approach and design. We are 
aware of certain limitations of our approach to the research methodology, this influenc-
ing the character of research results. First, the variables included in our research might 
not wholly cover the entire EDM process. Although the literature dealing with the EDM 
process and EDM models is of a quite large scope, further theoretical clarification of 
particular elements of EDM has to proceed in order to overcome certain vagueness and 
inconsistencies in the current theory. 

Cross-field cooperation between managerial decision-making and various applied 
ethical disciplines, especially Business ethics and Managerial ethics should be sup-
ported in order to build models easily utilizable in managerial decision-making. Hence 
managerial-oriented empirical studies with leadership decision-making studies as the 
key element of the former should be carried on to have enough comparable sets of data 
for meta-analyses. Moreover, because of the qualitative nature of our approach and con-
sequent quantification of the qualitative data in the process of respondents answer cod-
ing, there is, despite of previous pilot study, still a risk of incorrect coding. The content 
of our research instrument is rather single-sided, offering us to gain at first hand only 
qualitative data. Therefore we are aware of the need to widen the scope of respondents, 
especially from managerial praxis, in order to confirm or reject some of our results in 
a larger managerial personnel-oriented study. 

Another limitation of our study lies in certain negligence of situational variables 
and their impact on the EDM, this being a result of focusing solely on the ethical 
educational background and its effect on the EDM of the student population. This is-
sue might be also one of the further challenges in the EDM studies; to investigate the 
interconnections and correlations between leadership and culture contingencies and the 
EDM process. Further, for the utilization of theoretical models of EDM into manage-
rial praxis, it would be helpful to investigate the impact of moral intention, awareness, 
and judgment on the actual behaviour in longitudinal studies. We are aware that these 
challenges were not met in our article, but despite this fact we still believe that our 
study delivered new insights into the complex realm of EDM and might be useful for 
practitioners in ethical education. 



315

Business, Management and Education, 2014, 12(2): 303–317

Funding 

This article is part of a research project VEGA 1/0333/13 – Critical analysis of the 
impact of cultural and ethical factors on leadership in current Slovak business environ-
ment and was supported by Scientific Grant Agency of Ministry of Education SR and 
Slovak Academy of Sciences.

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Anna REMIŠOVÁ. PhD, is Professor of Philosophy at the Faculty of Management at Comenius 
University in Bratislava, Slovakia. Her research interests include business ethics and its institution-
alization, managerial ethics, corporate codes of ethics, and metaethics. She is the author of a num-
ber of monographs, for example Vademecum of Business Ethics (2012), Etika a morálka (Ethics and 
Morale, 2012), Etika a ekonomika (Ethics and Economics, 2011), Etika v médiách (Ethics in Media, 
2011), Manažérska etika (Managerial Ethics, 1999), and Dejiny etického myslenia v Európe a USA 
(The History of Ethical Thinking in Europe and the USA, 2008). She is a member of Ethics Council 
of MOL Group in Hungary and she leads the first ethical consultancy in Slovakia. She was teaching at 
the Technische Universität in Chemnitz, Germany, and at the University Fribourg in Switzerland. Since 
1997 she has been a member of EBEN (European Business Ethics Network).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00383799
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10551-005-3562-1


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Anna LAŠÁKOVÁ. PhD, is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Management at Comenius University 
in Bratislava, Slovakia. She gives lectures on Organizational Behavior, Leadership, Expatriate 
Management, and Business Ethics. Her research background lies in cross-cultural management, ethical 
leadership, and HR in relation to business ethics. A special field of her research interests regards the 
intercultural differences in ethical leadership, and in CSR-related managerial decision-making. Anna 
Lašáková is author and co-author of more than forty scientific papers published in Slovak as well 
as in foreign scientific research journals and anthologies. She has worked in several research proj-
ects, including the international GLOBE Student (Global Leadership and Organizational Behaviour 
Effectiveness) research.

Zuzana BÚCIOVÁ. PhD, is Lecturer at the Faculty of Management, Comenius University in 
Bratislava. She teaches Human Resource Management, Compensation Systems, Conflict Resolution, 
and Business Ethics. In her dissertation (2010), she dealt with measuring corporate social responsibility. 
She researches at the theoretical as well as at empirical basis issues regarding corporate social responsi-
bility, business ethics, ethical decision-making, and human resource management. She is the author of 
several professional articles in Slovakia as well as abroad.