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Jain, Rajni; Pratap, Rakhi Wahee

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Purpose: There is increased public awareness about the ethical issues in the recent past. More and more consumers are demanding products and services which are ethically produced. Therefore, the area of ethics has received increased attention from the businesses world over in the past decade. Academic institutes need to prepare students to tackle the challenges of real-world problems faced by businesses. Understanding the importance for ethics in businesses, universities world over has added ethics in their curriculum. The question which guided this research: How much awareness do fashion design students have about ethical issues related to fashion industry? Thus, the current study is carried out to develop a reliable scale to measure awareness about fashion ethics among fashion design students. Also to know the areas of ethics where design students lack understanding. Design/methodology/approach: A self-developed questionnaire is used to measure the construct of fashion ethics and its dimensions- social ethics, sustainability ethics, environmental ethics and creative ethics. These dimensions of fashion ethics are measured using multiple items and these items were modified and/or developed from the review of literature. Originality/value: The research will have value for the fashion institutes seeking to measure the awareness of fashion ethics among its students. The scale of measurement of ethics developed in this study can be used to measure students’ awareness about fashion ethics. Based on the information about the areas of fashion ethics in which students are lacking the knowledge, institutions can modify their curriculum and pedagogy to inculcate those values.

Keywords:

Design ethics, fashion education, exploratory study