Abstract

A business ethics course can be viewed by students as primarily a topics course in which students discuss current events and voice their opinions about what the right course of action is for a company to take. A review of recent business ethics texts supports this perception as most texts expose students to many different normative theories and ethical issues, and provide tools to encourage a discussion of what conduct is right or wrong for a business to undertake. In these texts, it is often hard to find a comprehensive framework for holding the course together in a meaningful, lasting way. This paper offers a semester long class project to complement existing texts by charging the class to establish criteria for determining the Most Ethical Company in My Town, thereby challenging students to develop their own framework. This article provides the steps of the project, tasks sheets, and summary of the resulting proposal that was presented to the Dean of the Business College for consideration for an annual college award. The resulting program is a learning tool for future classes as they play a role in annually nominating and evaluating submissions of ethical businesses for future awards.