The Application of Experiential Teaching Method in the Teaching of Business Ethics

Abstract

Experiential teaching method is a suitable teaching method for “business ethics” course. Its main effect is that it can effectively promote students to think positively about relevant issues, effectively improve students’ business ethics consciousness, and effectively improve their ability to analyze and solve ethical problems in business activities by using business ethics theory.This paper intends to discuss the experiential teaching method and its application in the teaching of “business ethics” in order to improve the teaching effect of “business ethics” course. 1. The Teaching Objectives of Business Ethics Course According to the developing history of business ethics education, most school put the teaching of “business ethics” in the philosophy or psychology department. But in recent decades, “Business Ethics” course is independent from those departments. “Business Ethics” reflect the core values of society, that is, emphasizing legal norms, moral ethics and social responsibility. The moral bottom line of business ethics is the relevant legal norms. It requires students to recognize the responsibility of operators in their business activities and the legal norms they should abide by through learning. They should rationally restrain their actions and perform their legal responsibilities according to law. It also requires teachers to guide students to pay attention to those immoral business practices that do not violate the relevant laws, i.e. the grey zone in law, so as to help students enhance their ethical awareness and raise their awareness of business ethics issues. The theory of morality and ethics is based on philosophy. Traditionally, there are four basic theories in business ethics theory, namely ethical egoism, ethical relativism, utilitarianism and Kant’s ethical philosophy. Each of these theories has its own advantages and disadvantages. The purpose of learning business ethics theory is to cultivate students' ability of logical analysis and rational thinking, and to provide basis for judging whether business behavior is reasonable or not, so as to correctly analyze and properly deal with business ethics problems that may be encountered in business activities. Social responsibility is another important aspect of business ethics. Social responsibility emphasizes that as a successful entrepreneur, he or she should not only assume economic, legal and moral responsibilities in his business activities, but also be responsible for those who have direct or indirect interests in his or her business activities. In this way, it requires operators to think from a higher angle, to deal with the problems encountered in the process of operation and management from the perspective of sustainable development, and even to care about human civilization and progress. Aim to test whether the teaching of business ethics can achieve the teaching objectives, some foreign scholars have done a lot of research. The main objectives of “business ethics” teaching are: to improve students' business ethics awareness and understanding and judgment ability of business ethics theory; to improve students’ ability to analyze business ethics problems; to enable students to learn to deal with moral conflicts and moral problems encountered in business activities; to learn to make appropriate business decisions; and to learn to improve their business behavior. Some scholars believe that the combination of theoretical research and practical application can achieve good results in the teaching of business ethics. Some scholars hold the opposite view. They believe that for those 4th International Conference on Humanities Science and Society Development (ICHSSD 2019) Copyright © 2019, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 328