Teaching ethics and leadership with cases: A bottom-up approach

Abstract

The issue of ethics in leadership has taken greater importance in the today's business world due to globalization and rapid advancement in information technology which has significantly transformed current business practices. Most universities in the United States (US) now have at least one course that includes ethics or related topics in their undergraduate engineering curricula. However, due to qualitative and abstract nature of the topic, the ethics course does not draw the same level of attention from students compared to other courses like physics and math. In this paper, we propose an innovative way of teaching ethics and leadership topics at the undergraduate level. In particular, the paper presents a case study of a senior level course in ethics and leadership development for an Industrial Distribution program at a major university in the Southwestern US. The course focuses on learning about personal leadership skills within the context of an organization. It examines the role and purpose of ethics in business and presents methods of moral reasoning in order to resolve ethical dilemmas. The paper describes how teaching based on "case study" approach has improved students understanding of the concepts and generated interest in the topic. We also discuss a sample case and overall course planning and execution framework, just in case any other instructor is considering teaching the similar course. Finally, student feedbacks are presented to demonstrate the successful implementation of the proposed teaching method. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2013.