RT Article
T1 The ethical challenges of teaching business ethics: ethical sensemaking through the Goffmanian lens
JF Journal of business ethics
VO 190
IS 1
SP 23
OP 40
A1 Patel, Taran
A1 Bote, Rose
A1 Stanisljevic, Jovana
A2 Bote, Rose
A2 Stanisljevic, Jovana
LA English
YR 2024
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1880759063
AB 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.
K1 Dramaturgical performances
K1 ethical challenges
K1 Ethical sensemaking
K1 Goffman
K1 Teaching Business Ethics
K1 Aufsatz in Zeitschrift
DO 10.1007/s10551-023-05418-9