ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces certain findings about the role of character virtues in business practices in the United Kingdom in general and in business-ethics education in particular. It draws on a report by the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, but it advances the discussion further and elicits some of its theoretical and practical implications. The chapter focuses on an aspect of the findings, which has to do with the uniquenes of the student group. The final-year students demonstrated almost zero growth in virtue-based reasoning by comparison with first-year students and greatly lagged behind experienced professionals in this respect. The chapter explores the implications of the findings, inquires into their possible reasons and offers some recommendations for progress. It focuses particular on final-year students of business and finance to explore their relative standing, with respect to other cohorts, their self-attributions of character strengths and virtues and their motives for entering this particular field of study.
