Phronesis (Practical Wisdom) as a Measure of Moral Excellence: A Comparative Study of Business and Non-Business Students at a Joint-Venture University in China

The present study compares mastery of phronesis (i.e., practical wisdom) between business school students and students in other schools at a joint-venture university in China. We inquired whether business students’ practical wisdom was more evident or less evident compared with the non-business students. Our question was motivated by the existing research in the business ethics literature that does not provide a ‘happy reading’ about business students, whose qualities are often associated with dishonesty, greed, corruption, and selfishness, more so than those of non-business students. We utilised the Short Phronesis Measure (SPM), which was recently developed and validated; it assesses moral functioning holistically, different from most conventional measures that focus only on individual traits or virtue/vice constructs. We collected data from 653 participants (business students, n=289; non-business students, n=364). Our Bayesian analysis of the data showed that business students’ phronesis mastery was not significantly different from that of non-business students in all domains. The finding suggests that business students are not inferior in phronetic moral functioning in general. This serves as an important reminder for business school educators that business students have the same potential as other students to achieve moral excellence.