To share knowledge of business ethics more widely, Georgetown University McDonough School of Business has launched an open-access website to enable faculty and students at any university to resource coursework, teaching materials, and other engagement opportunities on related topics.

The website, businessethicsinabox.com, draws on expertise from scholars at the Georgetown Institute for the Study of Markets and Ethics and contains teaching materials from the Ethics Project, a semester-long project at McDonough.

Once a niche area of study, interest in business ethics has grown rapidly in recent years, said Jason Brennan, PhD, the Robert J. and Elizabeth Flanagan Family Professor of Strategy, Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy, in a university press release. Consequently, more academics plan to incorporate the subject into their syllabuses and coursework.

An example of a project from the toolkit involves student groups creating a mock company for which they make strategic decisions. They are then faced with a dilemma or crisis at the end of the semester based on previous decisions the team made.

“This exercise helps show our students that ‘Hey, you can stumble into an ethical dilemma without even realizing it or knowing it’s about to happen,’” says Brennan.

Students also learn about topics such as politics, philosophy, and economics as well as effective altruism and moral psychology.

The Business Ethics in a Box is funded through a grant from the John Templeton Foundation.●