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The Role of Gender and Age in Business Students’ Values, CSR Attitudes, and Responsible Management Education: Learnings from the PRME International Survey

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Abstract

As demand grows from various stakeholders for responsible management education (RME) in business schools, it is essential to understand how corporate social responsibility (CSR) and RME are perceived by various subgroups of business students. Following the principles of theories on moral orientation and moral development, we examined the role of gender and age in determining four indicators of business students’ moral approach (i.e., values, CSR attitudes, corporate responsibility priorities, and suggestions toward RME) in the context of business schools committed to RME and CSR. Based on nearly 1300 responses to a survey, conducted with the United Nations-supported principles for responsible management education, we show that overall, female students placed a higher value on ethical responsibilities than male students. Female students were also more welcoming than male students regarding curriculum changes that were focused on CSR-related studies (or RME). In addition, older age groups ranked transcendent values and positive CSR attitudes higher than younger age groups. We also found that the subgroups of the age variable could better discriminate the differences in choices made by the respondents between the four indicators of students’ moral approach. The implications of our findings to RME, business schools, and other stakeholders are discussed.

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Abbreviations

ANOVA:

Analysis of variance

AVE:

Average variance extracted

CR:

Composite reliability

CSR:

Corporate social responsibility

LSD:

Least squares differences

MANOVA:

Multivariate analysis of variance

PRME:

Principles for responsible management education

RME:

Responsible management education

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Jonas Haertle and the PRME Secretariat at the United Nations Global Compact office for their support on this project; the survey advisory committee (Jonas Haertle, Carole Parkes, Anthony Buono, Lydia Price, Jean- Christophe Carteron, Alberto Willi); and the signatory business schools who participated in the study and their students who responded to the survey. The authors would also like to thank Dr. Andrew Kach and Prof. John Mathews for their valuable comments on the manuscript. Finally, the authors would also like to express their gratitude toward the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions that helped to further improve the manuscript.

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  1. Macquarie Graduate School of Management, Macquarie University, North Ryde, NSW, 2109, Australia

    Debbie Haski-Leventhal, Mehrdokht Pournader & Andrew McKinnon

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  1. Debbie Haski-Leventhal
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Haski-Leventhal, D., Pournader, M. & McKinnon, A. The Role of Gender and Age in Business Students’ Values, CSR Attitudes, and Responsible Management Education: Learnings from the PRME International Survey. J Bus Ethics 146, 219–239 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-015-2936-2

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