Teaching business ethics in Michigan community colleges: A survey of instructors

The purpose of this study is to investigate what Michigan community colleges are currently doing to prepare their students in business ethics. This study explored faculty member preparedness for teaching business ethics, teaching business ethics motivations, preferred methods for teaching business ethics, time devotion to teaching business ethics, and perceptions of responsibility, importance, and business ethics teaching effectiveness. Personal and professional demographic factors were collected. These factors include age, gender, degrees earned and teaching experience. These were useful in creating a profile of business faculty members in the 28 Michigan community colleges. An online survey was designed by Carol Cole, Ph.D., at East Tennessee State University in 2003, to gather information that addresses the research questions contained in this study. The survey instrument has 14 questions having areas for comments from faculty members. Conclusions drawn were based on the findings of this study. All 28 of the community colleges were contacted and asked for permission to contact all fulltime business faculty members at each of those colleges to receive surveys to be completed and returned to the researcher. Fourteen of those colleges gave permission to contact; five other colleges had no fulltime faculty during the summer; and, nine other colleges declined to grant permission to contact their faculty members. This study was done independently, using different subjects, as a replication of the dissertation study done by Carol Cole on 13 Tennessee community colleges. Replication studies, when done independently, are a way to make previous findings more secure (Robson, 2003). Robson (2003) also states that replication studies are too rare in the fields of applied social science.