Going public: a brief note on civilising accounting ethics education

摘要

It was a pleasant surprise to discover that Samantha, Craig, Paul, Kirsti and John had won the Institute of Business Ethics (IBE) undergraduate student essay competition and I could tell from the tone of their voices, when I passed on the good news, that they were also taken aback. Winning the prize did generate quite a bit of interest among the students' employers and it also engendered considerable interest at the university here in Glasgow, particularly among the new cohort of business ethics students. The IBE and EBEN-UK, co-sponsors of the competition, are therefore to be congratulated for organising the competition and for their attempts to promote business ethics education and raise the profile of business ethics issues more generally. It seems to be working! While it is not normal practice for BEER to publish a comment piece along with the prize-winning submission, this year things are different. It is different because the essay emanated from an experiment with a novel approach to ethics education. The contention is not, of course, that this new approach explains the students' level of critical engagement with the ethical complexities of the pharmaceuticals industry. Rather, their hard work and insight have provided an opportunity to raise some issues, particularly in relation to the potential of public engagement, that have not been fully explored within the accounting and business ethics literature to date.