Author ORCID Identifier

Bass - https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9857-1551

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2016

Publication Title

Journal of Business Ethics Education

Volume

13

First Page

325

Last Page

348

Abstract

The ability to consider and analyze different stakeholder interests is a skill required of today’s business students. This paper describes a 35-minute experiential exercise using Tinkertoys® or Legos® to demonstrate and reinforce the concept of stakeholder management. The exercise, the Tower Building Challenge (TBC), is targeted toward classes in business ethics, strategy, or decision-making and requires students to work in groups to build a tower with the underpinning challenge that each group member has a different interest in how the tower should be built. Student feedback reflects on the difficulty of satisfying all stakeholders when making business decisions, the importance of making the interests of stakeholders transparent to enhance cooperation and the effectiveness of the decision-making process, and the need for stakeholder management when considering business decisions that impact stakeholders. Following this experiential exercise, students’ preliminary understanding presents an opportunity for a deeper discussion of stakeholder management. Specifically, students are prompted to consider stakeholder interests as joint, rather than opposed, when engaged in stakeholder management.

Comments

This is the accepted manuscript published in the Journal of Business Ethics Education and can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.5840/jbee20161315

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