Centres Of Excellence

To focus on new and emerging areas of research and education, Centres of Excellence have been established within the Institute. These ‘virtual' centres draw on resources from its stakeholders, and interact with them to enhance core competencies

Read More >>

Faculty

Faculty members at IIMB generate knowledge through cutting-edge research in all functional areas of management that would benefit public and private sector companies, and government and society in general.

Read More >>

IIMB Management Review

Journal of Indian Institute of Management Bangalore

IIM Bangalore offers Degree-Granting Programmes, a Diploma Programme, Certificate Programmes and Executive Education Programmes and specialised courses in areas such as entrepreneurship and public policy.

Read More >>

About IIMB

The Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB) believes in building leaders through holistic, transformative and innovative education

Read More >>

Exploring Ethical Dimensions Through Fiction

Volume 14, Number 4 Article by Abha Chatterjee December, 2002

Exploring Ethical Dimensions Through Fiction

Based on her experience with students of science and engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Prof Abha Chatterjee provides a case study for exploring the dimensions of ethics through fiction. While literature can be an instrument in raising a variety of ethical values and themes, its advantage lies in that it deals with the concrete and the particular and readers can learn from it without the intense emotional upheavals that accompany such dilemmas in everyday life. Muktadhara, a play by Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore was selected as a case study as it evokes problems which engineers would identify with, while presenting a worldview wider than that of an engineer working for a corporate system.

Briefly, the play is about the river Muktadhara which flows through the kingdoms of Uttrakut and Shivtarai and the efforts of the king of Uttrakut to dam the river in order to subjugate the Shivtarains. Bibhuti the royal engineer who carries out the task and Abhjit, the crown prince who turns his back on his father and comes out in support of the Shivtarains, were the main characters discussed in the class. To explore the play in a structured manner, students were exposed to the different ethical approaches and theories. The Normative Grid consisting of five representative normative theories, the Moral Development Approach building on Kohlberg’s schema for moral development modified by Gilligan’s ‘care’ gender perspective, a synthesis of the two approaches and the ‘dharma’ and ‘karma’ beliefs of Indian Philosophy were used to explore the actions of the main protagonists.

While the classroom discussions made students aware of ethical issues and ways of tackling them, they also revealed the gap between students’ ‘expressed behaviour and desired attitudes’ which makes training all the more important.

Reprint No 02406g