Reflexive ethical positionality

Dr Sneha Chrispal, 2025

Traditional business ethics courses often emphasize normative theories and corporate governance. However, to truly prepare students to make ethical decisions and foster more inclusive, ethical organizations, these approaches are no longer sufficient. In the context of responsible management, especially when addressing grand challenges and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), students must go beyond external frameworks and engage in deep self-reflection. They need to consider questions like “Who am I?” and “Who am I in relation to others?” This personal and relational awareness is essential for making ethical and just decisions in the business world.

The solution was rooted in embedding relationality throughout the subject, with a strong emphasis on encouraging students to reflect on their social identities and their positions within society—recognising both privileges and marginalizations. To facilitate this, students engaged in reflective exercises during tutorials, focusing on key aspects of their social identities such as gender, race, ethnicity, and disability. They completed worksheets designed to map their social identities, trace how these identities were reinforced or challenged over their lives and examine how these dynamics influenced their ethical decision-making in daily life.

Additionally, a “Snakes and Ladders” game was developed to illustrate how certain identities can confer privileges while others present challenges, providing a visual and interactive understanding of social privilege and marginalization. This tutorial served as a scaffold for students to undertake a “Reflexive Ethical Positionality” assessment. In this activity, students narrated their life stories, emphasizing how their multiple social identities shaped their experiences of privilege and challenge, and how these experiences affected their ethical choices.

Students had the opportunity to present their stories through a more relational, and multimodal format, including writing, creating and singing songs, slam poetry, artwork, or video. This approach fostered a deep, personal exploration of social identity and ethical development, strengthening their understanding of relationality and positionality within society, but also allowing them to express their stories creatively and in formats they were comfortable with.

The outcome was positive, with students providing feedback like, “the reflexive assessment was really helpful because it gives me a chance to sit down and calmly review my past, understanding my current status is based on my input in the past, also the external factors that supported it”. Another student added, “I loved the reflexive positionality essay. I have used parts of this in job interviews and other reflective units. I feel like it overall helped my mental health! Amazing learning.” And, “This course teaches us how to utilize the privileges we possess to assist employees who are subjected to unfair treatment, so that people of all races and backgrounds can enjoy well-being in the workplace.”