EL LIDERAZGO EDUCACIONAL: Concepto, tipos, características de cada tipo.

A valued practice of qualitative researchers is to go back to the literature, after the data are analyzed and the themes allowed to emerge, to seek simi-lar insights that can be weaved together. The findings of this study offered the ingredients that curriculum designers could use to build a more effective educational experience for future information leaders. The work of Razaki and Collier (2012), DesJardin, Ryan, Weber, and Wood (2006), Nicholson and DeMoss (2009), and Linberg and Modin (2013), all align with the findings of this study.

Razaki and Collier (2012) illustrate how a capstone course embedded within the business curriculum, especially for those focused on the analyti-cal facet of business can provide a decision framework for students. Razaki and Collier specifically address: influencing the student; acknowledging the influence of upbringing, culture, and experiences; promoting awareness and sensitivity; teaching strategies related to defining, reasoning, and decision making; reflecting the big picture and positioning situations within that scope, integrating cases from the banking and finance industries; integrat-ing specifics related to the degree focus; and expectintegrat-ing the student to be able to articulate the reason for making a decision.

Razaki and Collier’s model offers a viable solution to educators, which directly align with the findings from the study reported in this chapter. A primary philosophy is that the material and exercises teach students moral agency; moral agency builds upon the individual’s belief of what is right or wrong. It is the individual’s behaviors or actions and how the person consid-ers and accepts accountability related to these actions. Moral judgment

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precedes the action or behavior. Razaki and Collier establish the learning objectives to include:

1. “the business world and business education are multidisciplinary in nature and should be dealt with on a holistic basis”;

2. “unethical behavior on the part of various business professionals, especially managers, leads to long-term economic failures and fiascos”; and

3. “the proper functioning of capitalistic economies, specially the various securities markets, is dependent on the ethical and properly professional conduct of all parties participating in the national and global business enterprise.” (pp. 3 4)

Below is a paraphrased summary ofRazaki and Collier’s (2012)educational model, coupled with the insights of how each step aligns with the study results reported in this chapter.

1. Establish a simple decision framework that includes (a) determination of legal versus illegal;

(b) review of professional codes; and (c) introduction of thenewspapertest (would you want to read your decision in theNew York Times).DesJardin et al. (2006)also shared a viable decision framework: Determine factors, identify ethical issues, identify stakeholders, consider alterna-tives, consider how each decision affects stakeholders, seek guidance, and establish assessment of decision outcomes. These authors’ strategies align with the reported research insights that students should be taught reasoning and decision-making strategies.

2. Students must articulate core values, which they currently hold as true that relate to economic life in the United States. The students must also identify from where those values emerged (e.g., parents, ethnic culture). This teaching activity aligns with the insight that home and reli-gion are significant influences upon the student’s values.

3. Introduce the students to the dominate value systems within the US economic and political systems. This strategy aligns with the influences upon the student emerging from outside of the home.

4. Introduce the concepts of libertarianism; what it means to be human, what is the relationship between the individual and the community; and “what is the purpose of the economy in light of various concepts of the ‘good life’” (Razaki & Collier, 2012, p. 4). This step aligns with the range of experiences a student should be exposed to within an ethics course.

5. Students must reflect on their own values and determine how they are linked to the dominate values systems in the United States. This step aligns with the student’s development of sensitivity.

6. Integrate a community-based service learning experience that offers an “opportunity to person-ally interact with students, profit employees and those seeking services at the non-profit.…From an ethics perspective it provides them with unplanned, complex, real-world examples of different types of ethical decisions” (Razaki & Collier, 2012, pp. 4 5). This step aligns with insight that students be exposed to global and social responsibility expectations.

7. Establish a dedicated module focused on the banking and finance industries with the goal to teach both moral hazard and information asymmetry. Information asymmetry is the imbalance in a transaction when “two or more parties transact while possessing unequal amounts of infor-mation about the situation at hand” (Razaki & Collier, 2012, p. 8). This step further supports the insight that the ethics experience must provide industry experiences.

8. Establish a dedicated module focused on the accounting and auditing industries with the goal of making clear the role of these professions to our society. Accountants and auditors’ roles are, by their nature, ethics-based disciplines. A goal of this module is to shift the student’s 73 Educating Ethical Leaders

understanding of an accountant’s role from blindly applying rules, to serving as an “informa-tion guardian that ascertains and disseminates relevant informa“informa-tion that levels the unlevel informational playing field inherent in the presence of asymmetric information” (Razaki &

Collier, 2012, p. 10). This step aligns with the insight that students must learn to see the dilemma when it presents itself.

To sum up,Razaki and Collier’s (2012) model draws together the insights of the scholar, the demands of the industry, and the role of the future leader in creating a more ethical business environment.

A discussion of the stand-alone ethics course will further illuminate the results of the reported study; it is recommended that a stand-alone course exist, but it must be supported and reinforced by coursework throughout the curriculum. This insight is supported by scholars that include Brinkmann, Sims, and Nelson (2011), Cagle, Glasgo, and Holmes (2008), and Crane (2004), as cited by Linberg and Modin (2013). It is suggested that the foundational ethics course should be embedded in the general edu-cation program. Building upon this foundation, a stand-alone business ethics course should exist within the business curriculum; but, ethics should then be further supported and reinforced in the content-heavy business courses such as accounting and finance.

A literature search found alignment with this insight inNicholson and DeMoss’s (2009)research; they cautioned against including ethics in all con-tent courses. The master’s programs seeking to remain competitive have had to reduce the number of required courses, with the ethics courses becoming one of the casualties. The solution to spread the ethics content across all courses resulted in “the number of qualified faculty to teach the subject is inadequate.… the forecast is not particularly bright…without significant retraining of rank-and-file faculty members, who are underequipped to tackle ethics issues in their already-crowded courses.” They further stated that when the faculty was pressed to include ethics in their courses,

these faculty members provided minor inclusions but no real restructuring to include ethics and social responsibility topics. Furthermore, these faculty members may have resented being forced to change content or felt unqualified to instruct the material, and instead, they may have preferred that the material be covered in a course devoted to the topic.

Nicholson and DeMoss (2009, p. 214)

The effort to triangulate in this study was supported by Linberg and Modin’s (2013)research. They shared the successes of a program which inte-grated ethics concepts throughout the curriculum. The faculty within the School of Business & Technology at the College of St. Scholastica, Duluth, MN made the decision to come together for this common cause. Rather

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than continuing their model of “each discipline operating as a silo; the team promoted the idea that ethical dilemmas should be integrated throughout the discipline-specific courses using problem-based learning” (Linberg &

Modin, 2013, p. 2). This integration did not take place without dedicated effort and support. Initiative leaders conducted one-on-one interviews with faculty; they developed workshops to teach faculty how to embed ethics into coursework. The training included topics such as: integrating the ethics decision-making model directly into the syllabus, using ethical dilemma cases, introducing critical thinking skills, using role-playing, including guest speakers, and learning how to use library resources. A monthly Character Building Luncheon invited an alumna to present a moral dilemma that had been encountered in his or her workplace environment.

Students would seek to solve the dilemma using their newly learned critical thinking framework (Linberg & Modin, 2013, p. 3). Finally the faculty established an assessment system within the Policy and Strategy course where the students would answer an essay question: “Based on what you have learned in this course and throughout your management education, describe at least three ethical dilemmas you may face in your management career and how will you address each dilemma?” The faculty evaluated these essays using an ethics rubric; 90% of the 2012 Spring students demonstrated proficiency or distinguished ability (Linberg & Modin, 2013, p. 5).

Linberg and Modin (2013)andNicholson and DeMoss (2009)illustrate that the recommended strategy of spreading ethics teaching responsibility must be done with fore-thought, faculty acceptance, curriculum alignment, training, strategic design, and meaningful assessment.