Monthly Archives: May 2016

I googled the phrase “business ethics” and this was one of the many images that popped up.

https://lewisassociates.wordpress.com/2013/05/15/does-your-workplace-have-an-ethical-code-of-conduct/

The idea of business ethics is very complex, and I’m not sure how to incorporate all those ideas into a visual presentation. “Responsibility, contributions, citizens,” are just a few of the words that caught my attention. I feel that business ethics is such an abstract concept that will be difficult to pin down.

As I was sketching ideas on what my visual could be like, I starting tracing the border of my credit card. Through this, I thought of Facebook and Amazon’s company logos. I starting drawing pimples on the logos to represent that these companies to represent their fair share of ethical issues. This idea was inspired by my final project for my business ethics class. We had to analyze a scandal within a company in recent years, and it just so happens that I was evaluating Facebook’s latest controversy with the “biased algorithm” in that Facebook was filtering out right-winged news articles.

However, I’m unsure on how to incorporate the element of gender inequality into my visual. I’m thinking of having the silhouettes of men applying bandages to the pimples on the corporate logos and having only one woman in the whole scene to depict the fact that not as many women are involved in business compared to men and that men are usually more receptive to business ethics classes. It seems like this could be a stretch but it’s a start! 

My peer, Taylor Martin, conducted  research about gender inequality on college campuses. In her most recent post, she discusses the results of her survey. The results she shared with me were that she found that men generally did not feel limited within their major because of their gender. She then asked questions about the relationships between gender and major. For instance, one question asked if people associated engineering with a certain gender, and the response was that 64% of people associated engineering with males. To be quite honest, the results aren’t that shocking.

Gender roles and gender norms are a common part of our society’s everyday lives. Not everyone may be able to acknowledge or notice them but they do, in fact, exist. However, what I did find interesting about Taylor’s research was the fact that men view women to have a superior social experience in that they can go to any party they wanted. I found this fact to be shocking and disturbing because it suggested that men just wanted to hook up with women while partying. This also, as Taylor suggested, contributes to the idea that men see each other as possible competition and “by allowing more men into parties, the less likely a hookup would occur.” Women are hypersexualized by media, affecting and contributing to the gender norm that women should be beautiful to the standards of men.

Women are not treated equally to men which effects the way both men and women see themselves, which connects to my own research paper about business ethics and that gender can effect the effectiveness of the class. I hope to possibly use Taylor’s research and incorporate it into my own about gender inequality that affects classroom participation and major views.

The most challenging part of this research will be to clear any assumptions that I make about the reader’s knowledge. I am very passionate about feminism and promoting solidarity, and not everyone is familiar with those terms so I have to be careful that my language is not only neutral, but also clearly defined.

Image Credits

Photo 1

Photo 2

Here’s the moment you’ve been waiting for… My survey results!

After gathering the results from the surveys, I found some interesting responses. One thing to note is that majority of those surveyed had the same professor and the same class structure of lectures, class discussions, and video documentaries. Also, most of the respondents were male, reflecting the majority male business school at my university. However, all the students that took the survey are from Santa Clara University, which won’t give an accurate representation of business ethics class as a whole but rather a more detailed look at perspectives of SCU students.

I gathered research on the comfort level of both male and female students and how often they talked/thought about the concepts taught in class.

The Table 1 below shows the comfort level.

Table 1: “I am comfortable enough to participate in class.” (1=strongly agree, 4=strongly disagree)

According to Table 1, men are typically more comfortable participating in class compared to women, and women although are comfortable participating, have more varied responses. One possible factor for this could be that since there are more men in the classroom, women may feel intimidated to participate. Similarly for men, they may feel more comfortable being with people of the same gender. However, both men and women tended to agree that they felt comfortable participating in class.

Knowing that males tended to feel more comfortable participating in class, I was not surprised by the results found in both Chart 1 and 2. Chart 1 displays the responses of how often male and females thought about the concepts discussed in class while Chart 2 shows the frequency of male and female students talking to their peers about the concepts taught in class.

Chart 1: “How often did you think about the concepts taught in class outside of class?”

Chart 2: “How often did you discuss with a peer outside the class about the things you learned in class?”

Based on the two charts, the data suggests that women are less likely to think and talk about the concepts taught in class compared to men. This suggestion connects with the level of comfort experienced by women which seems to have an effect on the way women perceive the class.

In Table 2 the average ratings from both male and female students at SCU are displayed below.

Table 2: Average Rating on the Effectiveness of Business Ethics Classes on a Scale from 1 to 5

(1 = not effective, 5 = very effective)

Table 2 reveals that men view business ethics classes as more effective to their moral development compared to women. Looking at Chart 1 and 2, since men tended to think and talk more about the topics in class, it could be for those reasons that men tended to agree that business ethics classes are more effective than women thought. However, both men and women at SCU agree that business ethics are neutral in its effectiveness.

Based on the data, I can conclude that gender has an effect on the effectiveness of business ethics. Despite both men and women rating business ethics classes having a neutral effect on their moral development, men tended to be more responsive to business ethics classes and think and talk more about the concepts compared to women. 

I find this information shocking because when writing about this topic, I found two conflicting sources. One claimed that women were more responsive to business ethics courses to men while the other claimed the opposite. I initially thought that women would definitely be more responsive to business ethics class and I was shocked to discover that, according to my own data, men were more responsive. However, based off my data, I can also see the trends as to why men would be more responsive. For one thing, they are more comfortable in class and therefore engage more with the class inside and outside the classroom.

I am curious to see if having an all female class and all male for business ethics would drastically alter my data.

In my previous post, I talked about  my survey, the creation of it, distribution, and selection bias. My research goal was to determine how effective business ethics classes are and to see if there is a correlation between effectiveness and gender. However, I figured out a way to address the issue. Because my survey was specifically targeted towards students that have taken/are taking business ethics classes, I decided to take my survey directly to students that are in the class.

Initially I wanted to ask them to take it online, but I realized that not many would do that and there would be self-selection bias. So to fix the problem with that, I printed my surveys and asked people in my class and the class after if they could take my survey. I was unable to pass out my survey during class, but I used the time before both classes started to gather my random sample. Although I only had a sample size of 25, I believe that I was able to acquire valuable data that could sufficiently represent the target population.

However, after collecting the surveys back, I found it interesting when my business ethics professor blatantly told me that the results were going to show that business ethics classes are ineffective. 

His response made me wonder why he didn’t attempt to better improve the structure of the class. I could possibly research business ethics class professors’ incentive to teach and see if there may be a correlation? Another explanation could be that my professor is simply does not want to change the original structure of his class.

My sample size consisted of 18 males and only 7 females. This is a result of the business school and most business classes having a majority males than females since the business school is predominately. This connects to some of the other research papers about gender inequality on college campuses.

I will disclose the survey results in a later post! I’m excited to uncover the trends that relate with gender and ethics.

Today, my English class finished class presentations of our topics for our final research papers.

One topic that struck me was Graham’s topic of alcohol on college campus. It’s striking to think of having alcohol on campus because to me it makes me think of carrying a knife at school in the sense that it is culturally normal for there to be no alcohol allowed on campus.

He described the different types of alcohol policies within different institutions. Universities have “dry, damp,” or “wet” campuses. “Dry” campuses do not allow any alcohol on campus; “damp” campuses allow for alcohol if students are above the legal drinking age, and “wet” campuses allow on campus drinking and selling of alcohol. However, on damp campuses, if a minor was caught drinking, he/she would be required to take an educational course.

Graham explained that the reason for these policies revolve around the problems of binge drinking and alcohol abuse. These problems are very serious and make it understandable why strict drinking policies exist on college campuses.  The photo below explains why college students drink in the first place:

The largest reason for drinking is “social activity.” I’m not surprised by this fact. On Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday nights, any student can have easy access to alcohol by simply stepping off campus and into a frat house. Frat houses are portrayed negatively in the media as being the hub of binge drinking and rape culture. 

My personal opinion on this issue is mixed and reminds me of the the drug wars debate. I do think that the rules of alcohol on campus should be more lenient so that students do not go off campus and into an unsafe environment to drink. However I don’t think that the rules should be too lenient like in a “wet” campus because it seems like it’d be difficult to monitor. The issue is controversial and doesn’t have a clear solution. But it is undeniable that drinking in college is a huge issue especially because it’s so closely tied with rape culture – another topic for discussion in a future blog post.

Image Credits

Photo 1

Photo 2