Look on the Bright Side: A Comparison of Positive and Negative Role Models in Business Ethics Education

This study explores how positive and negative role models (PRMs and NRMs) of business affect students' attitudes, expectations, and behavioral intentions relating to their future business behavior. A thematic analysis of student reflections (N = 96) based on their experience of material presented in their Business Ethics/Corporate Social Responsibility modules, interpreted through the framework of Ajzen's theory of planned behavior, revealed that while negative role models led to intentions to avoid unethical behavior and engage in ethical practices such as ethical purchasing, they also increased cynicism and undermined students' self-efficacy in the ethical business domain. Exposure to positive role models offset the negative consequences arising from negative role models, protecting against reduced self-efficacy by showing that unethical behavior is neither necessary nor inevitable in business, thus undermining the common justification for unethical behavior that “everybody does it.” PRMs increased awareness that business can be both ethical and profitable and provided inspirational role models that led to increased intentions to engage in ethical business practices. With reference to social–psychological literature, these results suggest that positive role models are necessary to counter the impression created by negative role models that ethical business is unachievable or unlikely, as such beliefs can become self-fulfilling.