Spears Business assistant professor Dinkel wins research awards for legal ethics papers
Tuesday, February 24, 2026
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Dr. Christopher Dinkel, an assistant professor of legal studies in Oklahoma State University’s Spears School of Business Department of Management, has received honors for his legal ethics research with findings relevant to both attorneys and business scholars.
Dinkel, who serves as an affiliated faculty member with the Spears Business Center for Legal Studies & Business Ethics, won the Excellence in Research Award on Feb. 14 at the regional 2026 Pacific Southwest Academy of Legal Studies in Business Annual Conference.
His paper, “Understanding the Role of Legal Compliance and Value-Based Reasoning in Scenarios Involving Employees: Empirical Evidence from a Conjoint Experiment,” is co-authored with Jeff Lingwall and Justin B. Ames of Boise State University.
The winning paper is a follow-up to “Legality and the Ethical Frameworks of U.S. Workers: Empirical Evidence from a Conjoint Experiment,” also co-authored with Lingwall. This prior research earned the Holmes-Cardozo Award in July at the prestigious international 2025 Academy of Legal Studies in Business Annual Conference.
“It is truly an honor to have received the top paper award at the annual conference of the leading international professional association in my discipline, the Academy of Legal Studies in Business,” Dinkel said. “I am very grateful to the Office of the Dean, the Department of Management and the Center for Legal Studies & Business Ethics for providing the financial support that made this research possible. The Spears School of Business equips faculty with the tools to conduct cutting-edge research.”
Dinkel’s research examines Model Rule of Professional Conduct 2.1, which allows lawyers to counsel clients about moral aspects of their legal decisions. In their latest award-winning paper, Dinkel and his co-authors present novel empirical evidence on value-based ethical reasoning in situations with legal repercussions, filling a research gap to explore how lawyers’ potential clients weigh ethical values paired with legal concerns.
Using a nationally representative study of nearly 1,000 workplace participants in the United States, the researchers examine how workers approach value-based ethical dilemmas when legal compliance is at issue. Their experiment assesses preferences for nine values often raised in business contexts in conjunction with the legality or illegality of potential responses to a dilemma. Dinkel’s findings have significant implications for attorneys counseling their clients under Rule 2.1.
In their previous paper, Dinkel and Lingwall present experimental evidence on ethical reasoning in situations with legal repercussions, examining preferences for four ethical frameworks often used in management training: utilitarianism, deontological universalizability, virtue/value-based ethics and ethical egoism.
“One of the most rewarding aspects of conducting this research is to talk about it with my students in class,” Dinkel said. “It makes our discussion of the intersection of ethics and law come alive. Students are excited to learn that the ethical frameworks that our textbook presents are not simply a theoretical matter — my research shows that U.S. workers actually do utilize them in their decision making.”
Dinkel obtained his Juris Doctor degree from Cornell Law School and his Ph.D. in political science from Northwestern University. Before joining Spears Business in 2022, he served as a legal fellow for the U.S. Senate and gained industry experience as an attorney.
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