Entrepreneurship, Religion, and Business Ethics

Interest in entrepreneurship has heightened in recent years, especially in business schools. Much of this interest is driven by student demand for courses in entrepreneurship, either because of genuine interest in the subject, or because students see entrepreneurship education as a useful hedge given uncertain corporate careers This paper reports a study of the importance of religious faith to entrepreneurs and the relationship of that faith to their ethical judgments. The importance of religious faith to entrepreneurs was similar to the importance of religious faith to other business respondents. Literature offers numerous definitions of ethics.Crane and Matten (2004, p.8) define business ethics as ‘‘the study of business situations, activities, and ecisions where issues of right and wrong are dressed’’. Based on Jones‘s definition of ethical decisions (Jones, 1991, cited in Chau and Siu, 2000) ,Entrepreneurs who identified religious interests as being of high importance, and also entrepreneurs who were highly orthodox in their faith, expressed more sensitive ethical judgments on at least five of sixteen ethical issues than did entrepreneurs who indicated that religious interests were of low or no importance.