Emotion and cognition in business ethics teaching

This paper focuses specifically on taught courses in business ethics for post-experience students. The theme of this paper is that values have a dual nature, involving both emotional and cognitive elements. This dual nature is not always clearly acknowledged by participants in business ethics courses. This leads to a range of different ways in which misunderstanding can arise, and which is often not well handled in ethics classes. Two particular examples are considered: the separation of personal and professional ethics, and the tendency for people to manage risk in probabilistic terms rather than in human. The Kohlberg model is critiqued briefly, and preference is given to Forsyth's model of ethical decision ideologies. The paper concludes with some suggestions of positive approaches to business ethics teaching, involving virtue ethics and the critical theory of Jurgen Habermas. This involves abandoning classroom based tutition for a more personal development oriented approach.