Personal Values and Mission Statement: A Reflective Activity to Aid Moral Development

Personal values guide ethical decision-making behaviors. Business professors have traditionally addressed undergraduate ethics-based learning through a learn ethics approach using case studies, simulations, presentations, and other activities. Few offer a live ethics orientation requiring completion of a personal values self-assessment and creation of a personal values and mission statement through a reflective paper. Utilizing content analysis, the authors' findings suggest that undergraduates' narratives can serve as a cognitive developmental tool to actively engage ethical reasoning awareness and encourage moral formation and development within the learning environment.