Teaching Ethics to Future Managers: Encouraging and Discouraging Impulses

Abstract

Nowadays, management institutions are including an ethics course in their curriculum globally, which is focused upon inculcating the value set in an individual. Therefore, it makes an important point that the students must comprehend the worth of the course and they must take it as an opportunity to cultivate values, which should be a prospect not despondent. Thus, to improve the impact of ethical education, and to accelerate the quality of management education, this offers a deliberation of inferences of demands of the questions of quality instructors and pedagogy of ethical education. The study focuses upon the gap between the ideal and current status of ethics education following different pedagogy. In this study, a qualitative analysis has been used where students were interviewed in depth via a semi-structured interview to collect the data. The study will help to gain deeper insights into the factors that encourage or discourage students from learning ethics and value courses, particularly in the university system.

Keywords

Ethics ethics course higher education India teaching

Introduction

It has been two decades since business ethics and value-based management has become the most talked about in conferences, meetings and colloquiums. Researchers, academicians and strategists in the domain of education are trying to include values in different educational systems and the management domain is not untouched by this. Major corporate scams, in recent years, have worked as an antecedent for the introduction of these courses and concerns in higher education. It is the prime responsibility of the teacher in the management institution to help the student to develop as more socially accountable and ethically sensitive to the pertinent issues of ethics (Giacalone & Thompson, 2006).

Many vital industries accept the validity and prominence of ethics in business; various corporations understand the power and prominence of ethics in business and they also accept the fact that, in future, the ethical challenges will be more immense and threatening.

This case is mainly focused upon the perception of business students about the course of ethics in their management curriculum. The areas of inspiration and dissuasion about the course are being explored in this study.

The Disparity Between the Ideal and the Present State

For efficient assimilation of ethics at the basic level, B-schools must have ethics as a core discipline. Currently, business ethics is a part of the curriculum of major global professional institutes. Business is an essential part of our lives that must be done deliberately.

A conscious business leader brings awareness of truth, rightness, human nature and moral imperatives to the business and promotes mindfulness. An aware leadership takes along the virtues of truth, uprightness, morality to the individual and thus channelizes ethics into the system (Avolio & Gardner, 2005). Furthermore, Brown, Trevino, and Harrison (2005) quantified that self-awareness, openness, transparency and consistency are the central elements of authentic leadership. They also found that according to social learning, conscientiousness enhances the dependability and accountability of an individual.

Self-reflection is an essential remedy for leaders and one must ask himself/herself as to why he/she chose this particular role and the motive behind it, if the replies are power, prestige and money, then they are relying on the external gratification for fulfillment, which leads to losing their foundation (De George, 2011).

Apart from great self-awareness, the structural solutions force people to implement ethics rather than leaving them as a context. The practically applicable solution for ethics will help the students with their ethical lapses and sustain them as future business leaders (Fisman & Galinsky, 2012).

Ethical education must be more than just printed rules and regulations and further absorbed in living and being.

Thus, there is a requirement of an education system, which can develop a sense of awareness and self-reflection in the young minds, and there should be a scope that they can get specific advice if they face a dilemma.

In India, a few institutes have tried to accommodate at least one ethics-based course in the curriculum of every discipline. Nonetheless, there is a considerable gap between the understanding of students and the objective of the ethics course, which is emerging as a significant failure of the whole effort. It appears that students are going through the course only as a mandate from the institute. In this particular study, an effort has been made to comprehend the understanding of the management students towards the stimuli and deterrence of an ethics-based course in their syllabus.

The Different Pedagogies

Pedagogy seems to be one crucial determinant for the effectiveness of the ethics course. In Weber’s (1990) study and analysis of the effectiveness of the ethical courses running in the universities, his first suggestion was to raise sensitivity to the pedagogical approach. An insightful approach must be adapted to meet the benchmarks. Apart from lectures and talks, vignettes and case studies are the most common techniques for teaching ethics. According to a survey of medical students, the use of vignettes is one way to measure the aspects of ethical sensitivity, but more study is required to clarify what is being measured (Hebert, Meslin & Dunn, 1992). Furthermore, Husu (2003) claimed that the case study method is becoming more popular in ethics teaching, as it provides a vehicle for the teacher to find out how ethical judgment comes up in specific situations. Consequently, case reports can offer instructional forums to the teacher to learn moral reasoning and dialogue. Business ethics cases also facilitate the development of deductive, inductive and critical reasoning skills of students (Falkenberg & Woiceshyn, 2008). The student-centred approach, which facilitates group discussions, has been deemed successful in motivating the students to learn about ethics and to provoke their interest in developing ethical sensitivity (Clarkeburn, Downie, & Matthew, 2002). Apart from this, class discussions along with syllabi and course outlines that recognize academic uprightness are also suggested as an effective means of encouraging the student to learn about integrity and morals (Gynnild & Gotschalk, 2008). Finally, the most effective way of teaching ethics-related content to university students is an infusion of ethics content throughout curricula has been proposed. Although in a study by Sanders and Hoffman (2010), they found only ambiguous sustenance for this claim.

The ethics courses in the state universities are fundamentally focused upon Indian ancient values, lessons from the lives of eminent Indian personalities, theories of ethics and ethics in various management fields, etc. Pedagogy is generally limited to the lectures and talks, which, in a manner, act as a barrier for implementation and decision making. The teachers are trained in teaching management courses, but not particularly in the integration of ethics with management. Additionally, the methods of evaluation are a tradition involving direct questing, which cannot analyze the decision-making ability of students.

Perception of MBA Students Towards Ethics Course in the Syllabus

In this specific study, the author has tried to find out the positive and negative factors, which generate awareness and indifference in the management students about the course of ethics and values.

The Aim of the Study

This study aims to identify the perception of management students about the course on values and ethics in management in the university system. Factors such as the content of the course, attraction intent, value of the course, usefulness, etc., were explored during the study.

Methodology

In this study, qualitative methodology, that is, interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) was used with an aim to investigate deeply the personally lived-in experience of the participants (Pringle, Drummond, McLafferty, & Hendry, 2011; Smith, 1996, 2004, 2011; Smith & Eatough, 2007). IPA helps the researcher/investigator to dive deep and understand the participant’s perception or his sense-making mechanism and describing it rather than drawing generalized conclusions based on pre-existing theories and concepts (Dipboye & Foster, 2002). The researchers who used IPA have provided deeper interpretative insights based on focused and exclusive views and experiences of the participants along with the descriptive analysis (Smith & Osborn, 2008). Smith (1996) specifically suggested IPA in studies wherever ‘typical quantitative studies in the discipline could be usefully supplemented by projects employing qualitative methods which attempt to examine a smaller sample of respondents in greater detail using, for example, semi-structured interviews’.

As a qualitative methodology, IPA is largely employed on a small sample of respondents with an aim to gain in-depth or deeper insights from participants’ responses and it acts as a complement to quantitative studies to get a better understanding of the underlying phenomenon (Smith, 1996). The sample size determination is crucial while selecting participants for the study to gain meaningful data. The studies based on IPA have been published with a sample size ranging from 1 to 15 or more (Smith & Osborn, 2008). According to Fetters, Curry, and Creswell (2013) in a phenomenological research tradition, ‘the size of the participants can be between 2 and 25’. The respondents for the study were selected from management courses of state universities of Uttar Pradesh to gain a better understanding about the course of ethics, which have been included in the management course so as to make students understand values and ethics. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to source primary data with regards to the perception of the course of ethics in business management.

Sampling

Purposive sampling was utilized to select the sample for the study from the universities operating in north Uttar Pradesh in India. The participants involved in the study were eligible to be a part of the study. In total, 18 respondents, with age ranging from 18 to 25 years (12 women and 6 men), showed their willingness and volunteered to be a part of a study.

Data Collection

The qualitative research method was employed in this study, which involved in-depth interviews via semi-structured interviews for the collection of data. An open-ended field guide was developed initially for conducting in-depth interviews and sourcing unprompted reactions of the participants on the subject of perception of ethics-based courses. An open-ended guide was used by the researcher at the time of conducting interviews, which were verified for its reliability and validity by five experts in the field and due modifications were incorporated according to the given suggestions. The revised draft with suggested changes was given to three faculties related to the subject of ethics who were not a part of the study to further test the construct validity. In the initial stage, followed by demographic details, two trigger questions were asked to the participants, which were ‘How do you feel about the course based on ethics in your MBA curriculum?’ and ‘Do you think that this course has any significance in professional education like MBA?’ Investigative and clarifying questions were utilized as deemed necessary during the interview. To meet the time schedule, all the interviews were carried out at the participants’ college. The mean time duration of the interview was 35 minutes, with overall timings of the interviews fluctuating between 30 and 50 minutes. According to the views of Flick (2013), ‘One factor is frequently undervalued in the development of research design. The available resources like time, personnel, technical support, competencies, experience, and so on are very important factors’. The interviews were recorded digitally using audiotapes and transcribed word for word.

Analysis of Data

This study trailed the steps told by Smith and Osborn (2008) and Moustakas (1994) for analyzing the IPA data. Initially, all verbatim transcripts were closely studied for identifying vital themes, issues and expressions, which provided meaningful insights into each participant’s outlook on courses based on ethics. In the next step, recognized themes were noted separately to the transcription and list of themes emerged were investigated for associations-checking for similarities and differences between them and forming clusters of the theme. Identical themes were put together and nomenclature was given, which defined higher-order themes (Cassidy, 2011). A table comprising themes and superordinate themes was produced, and this process was followed for all the interviews conducted for the study (Smith & Osborn, 2008).

The analysis for each discussion started from within the transcript notes, to themes within the transcript and to theme groups leading to higher order themes. To maintain rigor and transparency of the analysis process, the ‘cutting and sorting’ technique suggested by Ryan and Bernard (2003) was used as an additional method for extracting a description of reasons for engagement in academic research into two major themes and subsequent categories. The results were then further deliberated until an agreement on the themes was mutual.

Results

In this section, findings from the analysis of the 18 interviews using IPA are reported. The findings have been grouped together under two larger units known as ‘meaning units’ or ‘themes’, that is (a) ‘affirmative opinions for ethics education’ and (b) ‘negative opinions for ethics education’ which prevents them from imbibing the unethical values.

Theme 1: Encouraging Elements of an Ethics Course in the Master of Business Administration Curriculum

The various factors that motivate the students to get involved in ethics education in their curriculum as identified by the researchers are knowledge expansion, especially towards their religion and history, and a sense of unwinding.

Knowledge About Traditions/Scriptures

The majority of the students are interested in this course due to a different approach, which differentiates it from the other subjects in the syllabi. The students feel that inclusion of the Varna and caste systems, ashrama, life goals, purushartha and sanskaras, astaang yoga, etc., are providing them a deeper knowledge about their religion and tradition, which are enriched with virtues, and the knowledge of their own roots and heritage is considered a positive attribute by the students.

Majorly we came to know about the difference between right and wrong. Also, the subject helps in character building according to Indian society, as it gives an insightful view of Indian values and culture.

The best part of the subject was that it provides deep knowledge about our traditions.

It provides knowledge about our holy scriptures of which we don’t know much apart from the normal stuff like who wrote and all. It is important because it is our traditional knowledge which we should pass generation to generation.

Sense of Unwinding

Some of the students found this course to be their stress buster due to the inclusion of several non-management related topics in this particular course, for example, the values of Indian scholars such as Mahatma Gandhi, Aurobindo Ghosh and Swami Vivekanand. The students found a little relief in this subject compared to the other subjects’ part of the curriculum. Additionally, they felt good to learn and know about different topics, which also maintain their sense of curiosity when attending classes.

It was an interesting subject and most importantly it was quite relieving for us after the monotonous schedule.

Certain parts of it (course) obviously containing interesting elements and facts which enlightened the mind and led us towards a better state. It made us think and search for the things we didn’t know.

Process of Arriving at Theme 1

In this section, the stepwise process of arriving at a theme has been explained with the help of four frames.

Frame 1: Interview questions for the study on the ethics courses in higher education. The researcher’s goal was to examine the encouraging or discouraging factors impacting ethics education in the state university system in northern India.

1. Can you tell me about the subject which is related to ethics and values in management in your curriculum? Prompts: What was the major focus of the subject? Do you think the subject was interesting? What according to you is the most interesting part of that subject?

Frame 2: An excerpt from an interview with a student about ethics course, with the researcher’s notes.

Original Transcript Exploratory Comments 1. Can you tell me about the subject which is related to ethics and values in management in your curriculum?
“Yes, we had a subject based on ethics and values in business in our first semester. It was actually focused upon Indian ancient wisdom and the ancient living like ‘dharma,’ purushartha, ‘karma,’ etc.” More focused on the aspects of Indian value system.

Did other parts of the course not capture the attention of the respondent? 2. Do you think the subject was interesting?
“Yes, the subject was interesting and involvement of Indian ancient mythology made it more fascinating.” Are the Indian traditional values highlighted? 3. What according to you is the best aspect of that subject?
“Majorly, we came to know about the difference between right and wrong. Also, the subject helps in character building according to Indian society, as it gives an insightful view of Indian values and culture.”
“The best part of the subject was that it provides deep knowledge about our traditions.” Urge to understand their own culture?
Right and wrong (ethics) according to traditional Indian knowledge.

Inclined to faith?

Frame 3: Developing an emergent theme.

Original Transcript Emerging Themes 1. Can you tell me about the subject which is related to ethics and values in management in your curriculum?
“Yes, we had a subject based on ethics and values in business in our first semester. It was actually focused upon Indian ancient wisdom and the ancient living like ‘dharma’, purushartha, ‘karma’ etc.” Association of the subject with Indian ancient wisdom.
Remembrance of ‘dharma,’ ‘purushartha,’ ‘sanskaram,’ etc. 2. Do you think the subject was interesting?
“Yes, the subject was interesting and the involvement of Indian ancient mythology made it more fascinating.” Inclined towards the Indian value system. 3. What according to you is the best aspect of that subject?
“Majorly we came to know about the difference between right and wrong. Also, the subject helps in character building according to Indian society, as it gives an insightful view of Indian values and culture.”
“The best part of the subject was that it provides deep knowledge about our traditions.”
“Certain parts of it (course) obviously containing interesting elements and facts which enlightened the mind and led us towards a better state. It made us think and search for the things we didn’t know.” Knowing your own traditions, culture and beliefs.
Moderation in focus.

Relaxing. Emerging Themes Emerged Themes ∑ Knowing your own traditions, culture and beliefs.
∑ Inclination towards Indian value system.
∑ Association of the subject with Indian ancient wisdom.
∑ Remembrance of dharma, purushartha, sanskaram, etc.
∑ Moderation in focus.
∑ Relaxing. Knowledge about traditions/scriptures.
The sense of unwinding.

Theme 2: Discouraging Elements of an Ethics Course in the Master of Business Administration Curriculum

Apart from the initiating elements, research has brought to light the discouraging elements of these courses, which led to disinterest and prevented the course from fulfilling its objectives. There are a few aspects, which emerged as the most significant elements in discouraging the candidates for not instilling and imbibing the ethical elements.

Insignificance

Students do not find the connection in the content of the course and, additionally, some of them do not find the traditional knowledge of Hindu civilization to be relevant with respect to management ethics. They had their own concerns regarding the topics covered.

Though I found it interesting I don’t find it significant. The course is based on the concepts of religious books (Gita, Mahabharata, and Ramayana) and certain values from freedom fighters (Gandhi) which I didn’t find suitable.

The course is too much depending on Indian values and ethics which somehow lost its spirit as a manager should have a sense of ethics which can be accepted globally not only in India or understood by everybody including Indians. So the approach of ethics should be according to work in the multinationals as they are providing most jobs to Indians.

I don’t find certain things in this course related to management, for example, sanskaras, ashrams, four purushartha, and eight limbs of Patanjali. In understanding ethics, one should not need to understand these concepts. Apart from these, one should be focused upon workplace ethics, communicative ethics and diversity antiquate, etc.

Not Accommodating in Real-life Situations

The second most discouraging reason was that the knowledge attained was not helpful in real-life situations. There is a significant gap between the theory and its implementation, and because of the vast syllabus, we remain deprived of a deep understanding of the concepts, which somehow creates a barrier.

Though it is better for self-development it has nothing to do with real-life situations as it doesn’t correlate or impact on our decision-making process.

We all are having some knowledge about Indian values and ethics contained in our scriptures. We again have this in our syllabus but it is still difficult to understand its prominence in real life.

Apart from the application of business ethics in various areas of business I don’t really find anything more useful in the practical aspect of life.

The Absence of Cases, Vignettes, and Practical Implications

Students found a major gap in the syllabus due to the absence of the provision of practical implications of the theory. They said that real-life cases and vignettes can provide a more profound understanding of the theme’s prominence and relevance.

Our whole course is focused upon the Indian values and concepts, ethical theories, and ethical issues related to various walks of management but it seriously lacks the real cases especially in Indian scenario, which can help us understand the ethical dilemma.

The course should have some modern practices and procedures related to ethics rather than the old traditional principles and the methodologies which can help the individuals in decision-making.

We actually mugged up everything and answered the questions because the focus was completely on theories if the subject would have been a little practical approach then I think we should have taken it seriously and brainstorm accordingly.

Lack of Good Educators

The absence of good teachers is a big barrier in meeting the objective of the course. Statements of students clearly demonstrated that their teachers were unable to properly relate to the course and they agreed that there could be a possibility that teachers who can relate with the subject better can increase their understanding of the subject.

She just came in, gave us notes and left. It is difficult to understand such sensitive issues and topics with that approach. No knowledge is given about the latest exploration in the field.

Teachers themselves are not able to relate to the course as deeper down the course has the basis of Indian mythology and spiritual principles and sometimes we are not able to find the answers we ask for.

Teaching methodology should be changed as in its current form it is not able to justify the objective. The ability of the teacher can fulfill the gaps in meeting the objectives of the course.

Discussion

A summary of the qualitative study presented indicates that certain areas such as knowledge about Indian mythology, religion insights and a sense of unwinding are the major contributors that work as an encouragement for the ethics course in management. However, the impact of these elements may be of a different level for different individuals, which means one factor can work for somebody and remain idle for another. For example, some students gave preferences to the sense of unwinding for this particular subject, whereas for others, it was dreary and repetitive. The major issue with the topic is that being a compulsory subject, the students do not have the option of leaving or choosing the subject according to their choice. Significantly, the students who found the topic irrelevant were the ones who had a lack of or no interest in the subject.

In modern management research, there is a steep inclination in exploring philosophy, transpersonal psychology, meditation, Yoga, Vedanta, Buddhism, Taoism and many other philosophical schools of thought in the expansion of quality and effectiveness of work (Muniapan & Satpathy, 2010).

From the wealthy traditional culture, scholars explored Vedanta, Ramayana, Upanishads, the Bhagavad-Gita and Arthashastra of Kautilya, which further compiled in various studies (Chakraborty, 1993, 1995; Chakraborty & Chakraborty, 2008; Krishnan, 2001, 2003; Muniapan, 2006, 2007, 2009; Muniapan & Dass, 2008, 2009; Sharma, 1996, 1998, 2002, 2003).

However, these studies correlated the knowledge of the scriptures with managerial effectiveness and leadership areas in a very appropriate way, which is one of the reasons for the inclusion of Indian wisdom in syllabi. The analysis in this paper found that students preferred to know about their scriptures, civilization and religion, and this acted as an antecedent, which somehow slips the objective of the course. They are being taught these topics as a part of history and social sciences, but this is not the objective of putting these topics in the syllabi. The knowledge of self, self-reflection, realization and consciousness is completely ignored, which should be the main theme behind teaching such Indian ancient wisdom. This missing link has contributed to discouraging the students from learning the subject. Furthermore, the students also find it out of context and repetitive because they do not find any clear linkage of the topics with the managerial practices.

Conclusions

This particular study discovered a few themes, which acted as encouraging and discouraging elements for the course on ethics. One conclusion drawn from this study is that most discouraging factors for ethics course are related to the missing link or gap between the theory and the implication of argument, which further augmented because of inadequate teaching methodologies and lack of expertise in the field. Therefore, it would be interesting to see whether the presence of these factors (the absence of which caused a lack of interest) lead to motivation for learning. According to the analysis of this research, specific changes in the teaching pedagogy, as well as the inclusion of experts in the subject along with a well-designed course rather than a jumbled one, can lead towards engagement. Besides this, severe steps need to be taken to create an environment in which values and ethics can be acknowledged and students can understand their importance in real-life situations. The performance parameters should be redesigned keeping individual differences, likings and capabilities in mind. The collaborative efforts of academia and experts should be promoted to facilitate this area, which can help in bridging the gap and certainly imbibe values in individuals.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this case.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this case.

References

Avolio

B. J.

, & Gardner

W. L.

(2005). Authentic leadership development: Getting to the root of positive forms of leadership. The Leadership Quarterly, 16(3), 315–338.

Brown

M. E.

, Trevino

L. K.

, & Harrison

D. A.

(2005). Ethical leadership: A social learning perspective for construct development and testing. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 97(2), 117–134.

Cassidy

(2011). Self-regulated learning in higher education: Identifying key component processes. Studies in Higher Education, 36(8), 989–1000.

Chakraborty

S. K.

(1993). Managerial transformation by values: A corporate pilgrimage. New Delhi: SAGE Publications.

Chakraborty

S. K.

(1995). Wisdom leadership: Leading self by the SELF. Journal of Human Values, 1(2), 205–220.

Chakraborty

S. K.

, & Chakraborty

(2008). Spirituality in management: Means or end? Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Clarkeburn

, Downie

J. R.

, & Matthew

(2002). Impact of an ethics programme in a life sciences curriculum. Teaching in Higher Education, 7(1), 65–79.

De George

R. T.

(2011). Business ethics. Retrieved from http://books.google.co.in/books?id=jwQB_XWs0TkC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Dipboye

R. L.

, & Foster

J. B.

(2002). Multi-level theorizing about perceptions of organizational politics. In Dansereau

& Yammarino

F. J.

(Eds.), The many faces of multi-level issues (pp. 255–270). Bingley, England: Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

10.

Falkenberg

, & Woiceshyn

(2008). Enhancing business ethics: Using cases to teach moral reasoning. Journal of Business Ethics, 79(3), 213–217.

11.

Fetters

M. D.

, Curry

L. A.

, & Creswell

J. W.

(2013). Achieving integration in mixed methods designs—Principles and practices. Health Services Research, 48(6pt2), 2134–2156.

12.

Fisman

, & Galinsky

(2012). We need a new way to teach ethics to business school students. Retrieved from http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/2012/09/business_school_and_ethics_can_we_train_mbas_to_do_the_right_thing_html

13.

Flick

(Ed.). (2013). The Sage handbook of qualitative data analysis. London, UK: SAGE Publications.

14.

Giacalone

R. A.

, & Thompson

K. R.

(2006). From the guest co-editors: Special issue on ethics and social responsibility. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 5(3), 261–265.

15.

Gynnild

, & Gotschalk

(2008). Promoting academic integrity at a Midwestern University: Critical review and current challenges. International Journal for Educational Integrity, 4(2).

16.

Hebert

P. C.

, Meslin

E. M.

, & Dunn

E. V.

(1992). Measuring the ethical sensitivity of medical students: a study at the University of Toronto. Journal of medical ethics, 18(3), 142–147.

17.

Husu

(2003). Constructing ethical representations from the teacher’s pedagogical practice: A case of prolonged reflection. Interchange, 34(1), 1–21.

18.

Krishnan

V. R.

(2001). Can the Indian worldview facilitate the emergence of transformational leaders? Management and Labour Studies, 26(4), 237–244.

19.

Krishnan

V. R.

(2003). Modernization without demolishing cultural roots: The role of transformational leadership. In Gifford

& Zezulka-Mailloux

(Eds.), Culture and the state, Volume IV (Alternative interventions) (pp. 164–173). Edmonton, Alberta: Canada Research Chairs Humanities Studio, University of Alberta.

20.

Moustakas

(1994). Phenomenological research methods. London, UK: SAGE Publications.

21.

Muniapan

(2006). Can the Bhagavad-Gita be used as a manual for management development of indian managers worldwide? Fifth Asia Academy of Management Conference, Asian Management: Convergence and Divergence, Tokyo, Japan, 19–21 December 2006.

22.

Muniapan

(2007). Transformational leadership style demonstrated by Sri Rama in Valmiki Ramayana. International Journal of Indian Culture and Business Management, 1(1), 104–115.

23.

Muniapan

(2009). The Bhagavad-Gita on leadership for good governance and sustainable development. 15th Annual International Sustainable Development Research Conference, Taking up the Global Challenge: Analyzing the Implementation of Innovations and Governance for Sustainable Development. University of Utrecht, Utrecht, 5–8 July 2009.

24.

Muniapan

, & Dass

(2008). Corporate social responsibility: A philosophical approach from an ancient Indian perspective. International Journal of Indian Culture and Business Management, 1(4), 408–420.

25.

Muniapan

, & Dass

(2009). An Indian leadership perspective from literary works of poet Kannadasan. International Journal of Indian Culture and Business Management, 2(4), 326–340.

26.

Muniapan

, & Satpathy

(2010). Ancient Indian wisdom for managers: the relevance of Valmiki Ramayana in developing managerial effectiveness. International Journal of Indian Culture and Business Management, 3(6), 645–668.

27.

Pringle

, Drummond

, McLafferty

, & Hendry

(2011). Interpretative phenomenological analysis: A discussion and critique. Nurse Researcher, 18(3), 20–24.

28.

Ryan

G. W.

, & Bernard

H. R.

(2003). Techniques to identify themes. Field Methods, 15(1), 85–109.

29.

Sanders

, & Hoffman

(2010). Ethics education in social work: Comparing outcomes of graduate social work students. Journal of Social Work Education, 46(1), 7–22.

30.

Sharma

(1996). Management in New Age: Western Windows Eastern Doors. New Delhi: New Age International Publishers.

31.

Sharma

(1998). Enlightened leadership in Indian ethos: The way of the theory K. Management and Change, 2(1), 93–104.

32.

Sharma

(2002). Corporate leadership model: An Indian model for corporate development and ethical leadership. In Pareek

, Osman-Gani

A. M.

, & Rao

T. V.

(Eds.), Human resource development in Asia: Trends and challenges (pp. 291–296). New Delhi, India: Oxford and IBH.

33.

Sharma

(2003). Towards corporate VEDA: Indian ethos and corporate development. Journal of Human Values, 9(2), 163–172.

34.

Smith

J. A.

(1996). Beyond the divide between cognition and discourse: Using interpretative phenomenological analysis in health psychology. Psychology and Health, 11(2), 261–271.

35.

Smith

J. A.

(2011). Evaluating the contribution of interpretative phenomenological analysis: A reply to the commentaries and further development of criteria. Health Psychology Review, 5(1), 55–61.

36.

Smith

J. A.

(2004). Reflecting on the development of interpretative phenomenological analysis and its contribution to qualitative research in psychology. Qualitative research in psychology, 1(1), 39–54.

37.

Smith

J. A.

, & Eatough

(2007). Interpretative phenomenological analysis. In Lyons

and Cole

(Eds.), Analysing qualitative data in psychology pp. 35–50.

38.

Smith

J. A.

, & Osborn

(2008). Interpretative phenomenological analysis. In Smith

J. A.

(Ed.). Qualitative psychology: A practical guide to research methods (2nd edn., pp. 51–80). London, UK: SAGE Publications.

39.

Weber

(1990). Measuring the impact of teaching ethics to future managers: A review, assessment, and recommendations. Journal of Business Ethics, 9(3), 183–190.