Surface and deep approaches to business ethics

Despite the attention being paid to business ethics, it seems the behaviour of business leaders and employees has not improved. This paper takes a different approach to understanding why this is the case. A distinction made in the higher education literature between surface and deep approaches to learning is adapted to provide an insight into the reason for the difference between the rhetoric concerning ethics and actual business practice. It is argued that a surface approach to ethics, which is associated with self‐interest, will not promote ethical behaviour, while a deep approach, motivated by the desire to do the right thing, does have the potential to do so. The difference between the rhetoric and business practice suggests that most businesses either intentionally or unintentionally adopt a surface approach to ethics.