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Ethics Resources

Starting from Semester B, 2003-2004, CB has launched a novel ethics education program for integrating core human values into the Year 1 BBA curriculum. CB's Ethics Committee has adopted the 5 core values of Integrity, Responsibility, Fairness, Respect and Compassion. CB's vision of education is not confined merely to delivering knowledge in the classroom but involves the transformation of the student's whole personality. There is a growing consensus that the traditional human values that have held communities and nations together for millennia are now in danger of extinction, and nowhere is this problem more conspicuous than in the corporate world. The numerous accounting and financial scandals that have occurred in recent years are testimony to this decline in the practice of human values. The objective of CB's ethics program is to reverse this decline by cultivating universal human values in our students that cut across culture and time. We hope that this program will also contribute to CityU's goal of nurturing "Ideal Graduates".

1. Rather than having a separate course for ethics, examples related to the core values are embedded into the teaching material itself in all the core Year 1 FB Courses. The advantage of this approach is that students are able to see how the same core values are relevant to different business disciplines. The values are also reinforced because they are common to all Year 1 courses.
2. Year 1 classes in most universities tend to be large and class-discipline often tends to be poor. Thus, there are several opportunities for instructors to illustrate the importance of these values in students' everyday university life. This will helps create a better classroom environment in which learning can take place more effectively.
3. To the best of our knowledge, this program is the only one that incorporates ethics into its undergraduate curriculum in Hong Kong. The first year of university is arguably the best time to incorporate ethics education so that by the time students reach Years 2 and 3, their sensitivity towards ethical issues is enhanced and classroom discipline is also strengthened.

In order to facilitate the implementation of the ethics program, the CB Ethics Committee has organized several workshops and briefs for Year 1 instructors as well as program leaders. These workshops provided an overview of the ethics program and also illustrated how the values can be integrated into the curriculum through various examples.