Abstract:

As Alvira Dominguez says (2012), research in the university helps us not only to expand our knowledge but also to improve attitudes at work. However, currently, in topics belonging to Spanish Universities such as: “business organization”, “finance” and “economics”, technical aspects are underlined instead of teaching of ethics in the classroom.

It is true that teaching ethics is certainly the most difficult part to teach in term of accounting, international finance or strategy (Argandoña, 1999, p. 4) at the vast majority of cases because teachers are not specialists in these areas of knowledge (Oddo, 1997). And sometimes they are using ineffective methods motivated by their lack of qualifications (Thornberg, 2008).

The aim of this paper is to propose a methodology of teaching ethics through cases drawn from court judgments, to study corrupt behaviors and its consequences on: coworkers, business and society. The study covers the 42 subjects taught in 2013-2014 in the areas mentioned before. So through a sample of 486 students, the results explain that the students of the University of Extremadura are unable to detect the types of unethical behavior studied previously by teachers. This is due to the lack of ethical knowledge received in the classroom by teachers. However, the students give enormous importance to the potential damage that unethical behavior can cause not only to the company (94%), but also to co-workers (88%), and society (74%).

Keywords:

Teaching ethics, Model, Business organization, Unethical behavior, Court judgments.