Dennis Wittmer

Ethical Sensitivity in Management Decisions: Developing and Testing a Perceptual Measure Among Management and Professional Student Groups

An emerging literature in behavioral ethicsconceptualizes ethical perception or sensitivity as acritical part of the decision making process. Thisstudy appears to be the first to empirically test thisconcept in organization and management decisionmaking. A measure of ethical sensitivity is developedand tested in a decision making exercise. Subjectsfor the study are 156 students from programs inbusiness management, public administration, andengineering. The relationship of ethical sensitivityto decision outcome is assessed.

Stage 2: Designing Team-Taught Transdisciplinary Courses—Where do we Begin?

This article discusses both how transdisciplinary teams were built and how the teams developed their courses at the University of Denver, Daniels College of Business. It explores recruitment and selection of team members; team size, discipline, representation, and the trade-offs involved; and the relationship between the personalities of team members and course pedagogy. The article also examines two different approaches (deductive and inductive) used by teams, discusses team process and management, and finally relates experiences involving the teaching materials themselves.

Developing a Learning Community Approach to Business Ethics Education

In this paper we discuss a project, still in progress, that moves away from a traditional lecture based educational pedagogy. We present a team taught approach to ethics teaching that embraces a progressive philosophy of education and is focused on the development of a discussion based learning community. We describe our primary pedagogical tools of case discussion and the development of student expert role assignments as a locus, and how they relate to the learning community, course content and course objectives. Finally, we provide our preliminary review of outcomes and emerging issues.

Technical roles and success of US federal laboratory-industry partnerships

Drawing from questionnaire-based data of 229 US federal laboratory-industry joint R&D projects, this research examines the composition of the technical interaction by character of the R&D performed to determine the impacts on effectiveness of the technical roles played by research partners. In addition to the particular technical roles, their number and diversity are examined, giving particular attention to the subset of projects in which the company played no technical role. Our findings show that increased technical range on the part of industry is associated with increased product development and net economic benefit. Relatively few companies are technically passive with respect to their partnerships with federal laboratories. Nevertheless, a passive role can have positive results in terms of product development and improvement. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

Ethics and Economics in International Business Education: A Comparison of Kuwaiti and U.S. Students Using an Ultimatum Game Scenario

In the past 20 years a body of research in behavioral and experimental economics has challenged classical economic theory. Yet, this body of research seems relatively unknown in business education. One behavioral test with implications for international business education has been the use of ultimatum games, which has more recently expanded to cross-cultural studies. Yet, virtually no cross-cultural studies have been conducted for subjects in Middle Eastern countries. One of the central findings from ultimatum game research and other variations is that individuals place a high value on fairness in transactions, a fundamentally ethical concept. This article reports a preliminary study of Kuwaiti and U.S. business students. Results are consistent with previous studies, showing Kuwaiti subjects to be in line with subjects from developed economies. Discussion includes the implications for management and business educators.

Behavioral Ethics in Practice: Integrating Service Learning Into a Graduate Business Ethics Course:

Adopting a broad definition that distinguishes behavioral ethics as science and behavioral ethics in practice, we describe how service learning can be a meaningful component of a four-credit, one-quarter graduate business ethics course by blending both normative/prescriptive and behavioral/descriptive ethics. We provide a conceptual and theoretical grounding for our integration of service learning and describe how service learning is used in the course. We explain how we frame the service-learning project, the challenges we have faced, and final student reflections on the experience. Finally, we describe the assessment process used in the course. Based on the assessment of 215 students’ service-learning reflection papers, the results indicated that over 90% of students were able to make direct connections between major themes of the course and their service-learning experience. This is an indication of the efficacy of the use of service learning in teaching behavioral ethics.