Learning Business Ethics Through Making: Integrating a Makerspace Approach in Business Ethics Instruction

Abstract

Teaching business ethics is challenging: students struggle with the abstract nature of the theories, the uncertainty of practical outcomes, and the certainty that they are “good” people who already know right from wrong. Further difficulty emerges as teachers seek to integrate both normative and behavioral approaches. This paper presents the integration of makerspace to a business ethics course as a means of addressing all of the articulated challenges. This course design offers students learning of ethical principles and a business-like project-based setting where ethical dilemmas emerge spontaneously providing opportunities to identify, consider, and make decisions from the ethical theories studied.