Developing Efficacy Beliefs for Ethics and Diversity Management

Business schools are increasingly expected to prepare students to deal with ethics and diversity issues in organizational life. To do so, students need both the requisite skills and the belief that they can manage ethics and diversity issues effectively. Accordingly, we describe an approach for developing students' ethics and diversity efficacy beliefs in an introductory organizational behavior course. Results suggest that a required writing assignment increased efficacy beliefs on the chosen topic (diversity or ethics management) beyond that accounted for by course content. Implications for business education are discussed.