Fargo, N.D. – Margaret Andersen, professor of accounting at NDSU; Jill Zuber, assistant professor of accounting; and Brent Hill, assistant professor in the School of Education had their paper accepted for publication in the Journal of Business Ethics. The title of the paper is “Moral Foundations Theory: An Exploratory Study with Accounting and Other Business Students. 

The researchers investigated the use of Haidt's Moral Foundation Theory, known as MFT, by students in the College of Business. The theory posits that people use five foundations – fairness/cheating, care/harm, loyalty/betrayal, respect/authority and purity/degradation – when deciding whether something is right or wrong. Furthermore, these decisions are based more on intuition than reasoning. Using Structural Equation Modeling the researchers found empirical support for the MFT using a sample of accounting and business students.

The Journal of Business Ethics publishes original articles from a variety of methodological and disciplinary perspectives concerning ethical issues related to business.

NDSU is recognized as one of the nation's top 108 public and private universities by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education.