Teaching Ethics In The Business Schools: What Do You Think?
Comments: 42
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: 5
This past weekend I had a discussion with some of the business school
faculty either at or formerly with Wharton, Harvard, SMU, and UT Dallas
on the topic of teaching ethics in business schools.
To characterize my position, I would say that I am for ethical behavior by all means, but I feel that it is something that cannot be taught to people in their mid-20s to late 30s. It's just too late. And as a past business school student, I would not have wanted to pay for a class on ethics.
I suppose that if the subject were addressed as part of a corporate governance or business policy course - that is an area that I would find it most valuable as a customer of the b-school product. The corporate governance area was additionally something I was a little weak on until finally working with some boards, combing through infrastructure documents and working with lawyers, etc.
But I think in my discussions with the b-school professors, I think the position I hold (which is not so optimistic about teaching ethics in the business schools) is a minority position. The general consensus seemed to be that ethics should be taught more actively in business schools. That leaders need to have such skills. That some of the aspects of ethics can be taught in the negotiation classes and that there are real consequences of not dealing ethically, even real implications of not dealing ethically in mock negotiation settings. There was also a position that while ethical behavior could not be taught, the body of knowledge surrounding what business ethics is all about could be taught (e.g., Harvard has had ethics training as part of its core curriculum for some time).
Well maybe I have to see a good course on ethics to become a believer. While important material no doubt, the business ethics course I took as an undergraduate was of little value.
That said, I just got off a Skype call with a current Columbia MBA student - apparently Columbia has taken ethics out as a separate course and spread the material across all classes so that ethics is treated in "every" class. Columbia apparently has some real board members of Fortune 500 companies coming in to talk about ethics. It seems the Columbia MBA I chatted with is very impressed with how Columbia is treating the material.
So perhaps covering ethics in b-school is not so bleak after all. What do others think?
To characterize my position, I would say that I am for ethical behavior by all means, but I feel that it is something that cannot be taught to people in their mid-20s to late 30s. It's just too late. And as a past business school student, I would not have wanted to pay for a class on ethics.
I suppose that if the subject were addressed as part of a corporate governance or business policy course - that is an area that I would find it most valuable as a customer of the b-school product. The corporate governance area was additionally something I was a little weak on until finally working with some boards, combing through infrastructure documents and working with lawyers, etc.
But I think in my discussions with the b-school professors, I think the position I hold (which is not so optimistic about teaching ethics in the business schools) is a minority position. The general consensus seemed to be that ethics should be taught more actively in business schools. That leaders need to have such skills. That some of the aspects of ethics can be taught in the negotiation classes and that there are real consequences of not dealing ethically, even real implications of not dealing ethically in mock negotiation settings. There was also a position that while ethical behavior could not be taught, the body of knowledge surrounding what business ethics is all about could be taught (e.g., Harvard has had ethics training as part of its core curriculum for some time).
Well maybe I have to see a good course on ethics to become a believer. While important material no doubt, the business ethics course I took as an undergraduate was of little value.
That said, I just got off a Skype call with a current Columbia MBA student - apparently Columbia has taken ethics out as a separate course and spread the material across all classes so that ethics is treated in "every" class. Columbia apparently has some real board members of Fortune 500 companies coming in to talk about ethics. It seems the Columbia MBA I chatted with is very impressed with how Columbia is treating the material.
So perhaps covering ethics in b-school is not so bleak after all. What do others think?
Back to entries Comment on this entry
I'm with you. Ethis cannot be taught. It's like saying that you can teach people how to be honest in their 20's. I don't think so!
I think B-schools probably just feel like they need to address public concerns about this issue by squeezing in some sort of Ethics curriculum. Columbia required its students to take an Ethics class for a short while and that didn't work too well. Maybe their new approach will work better.
Steve Shu
(Homepage)
on September 9, 2005 at 7:25 AM
I was reading another b-school blog in my newsreader where a student indicated that ethics is covered in a course on business law. That's another area that I had also thought of awhile back as to where a topic on ethics coud be taught and be more palettable. That said, business law can already be quite a packed class ...
wulffen
on September 17, 2005 at 10:49 PM
As the before mentioned Columbia Student ;-) I just wanted to say that although I agree that essentially to be ethical or not is a personal decision based on values that are cemented in childhood, I believe strongly that the mechanics of ethics in business can be taught. It is not so much teaching people how to be ethical, but giving them the tools in every function of business to decide what is unethical. Studying what has been done wrong in the past in each seperate business function can create an awareness for ethics and in groupwork better solutions for the problems that lead to the unethical behavior can be found. So a student leaving a business school will have a set of tools that will alarm him/her of ethical misconduct and will give him/her alternative roots to follow. At the same time I am convinced that having a course on ethics is a lost cause - while weaving ethics through the whole curriculum, to me, is a solution that makes sense. 
2 Star(s) awarded
steveshu21pub
on September 17, 2005 at 11:25 PM
"... but giving them the tools in every function of business to decide what is unethical ..."This is an interesting comment. I don't know if I have any formal structures for breaking this down off the top of my head, but that does sound like an intriguing approach!
0 Star(s) awarded I don't think b-schools "teach" ethics. You are right in that this could not be taught. Like any other course, what they teach is a way that would help you make a decision if you come across an ethical issue. They teach you what are the implications of taking a decision which is around a topic which is controversial be it GM foods, global warming or cloning or be it around should you decide to shred documents or play with numbers.
Considering this, I think it is important we have course on ethics.
PR
Steve Shu
(Homepage)
on September 20, 2005 at 12:13 PM
PR,Good points. But then I often wonder why these issues are specific to MBAs. Why isn't ethics training just a work requirement in general then? Seems like if we want to teach people ways to tease through these issues, it could be part of a broader curricula (e.g., taught at the undergraduate level) and not just in the business schools. There are a lot of folks that were caught up in the "scandals" that were not MBAs too.
I suppose if we expect MBAs to be leaders and to lead people through tough issues surrounding ethics, that's a good argument.
Now that I'm thinking about it more, maybe it's a matter of learning style preference for me as to whether an ethics course is integrated or separate. Similar to the news going around today about how boys learn differently from girls (e.g., boys are more physical and learn how to count to 100 better by doing push ups than through visual or audible means), I find that it is easier to learn about topics in applied settings. E.g., if ethics is taught as part of corporate governance and running a board as opposed to ethics as a topic by itself on an island ... well I tend to learn better. Maybe the topic just needs some sweetening up (so to speak) to make it sound more attractive to me.
pedro123
on September 23, 2005 at 8:09 AM
Business Ethics is a must have in any MBA course that takes itself seriously. Giving dry runs and providing candidates with an opportunity to practice the principles they are tauaght in class. Hopefully all providing a reminder if and when they are called upon to deal with real ethical dilemmas that they will all surely meet in the real business world. Not doing ethics is a cop out and very irresponsible, and surely does not prepare students to adequately consider ALL stakeholders views, not just their owm. 0 Star(s) awarded
Steve Shu
(Homepage)
on September 23, 2005 at 9:37 AM
I remember back when I worked at companies like Bell Labs, there used to be some required courses on cultural diversity. As pedro123 points out, there is value to preparing people to "consider ALL stakeholder views". Cultural diversity is another area that has a bit of a pervasive implication on companies. I haven't been to BigCo company training in quite awhile, I wonder if ethics are being taught in companies as required training ...It would be interesting to know what companies have a required ethics course I think I had a short (required) module/class in the leadership course at Chicago. Is there an article that sums this up somewhere? Thanks for any input!
steveshu21pub
on September 23, 2005 at 9:41 AM
Clarification. I had 1-day or 1/2 day class on ethics at Chicago. Not an entire course. 0 Star(s) awarded Sure,
As Henry Ford once said 'integrity is crucial for business success - once you can fake that, you've got it made'.
But seriously, I don't understand why ethics should be irrelevant for students in their 20's and 30's. I understand several US Presidents learnt ethics lessons considerably later in life.
So if classes in ethics would work for the CEO's of the country, why not for common-or-garden potential business leaders?
0 Star(s) awarded
steveshu21pub
on September 29, 2005 at 11:00 AM
roody2,Thanks for the comment. I have this strange feeling that people are starting to think less of me because of this post and for taking what seems to be a minority opinion. Integrity is essential and relevant for business (and everything in life for that matter). No doubt. It's especially important for leaders too - there's a real impact when someone has a manager or leader that they are willing to walk though fire for, if only because of that person's ethical principles and abilities to address ethical issues. Maybe I need to go back for an education on this topic. Ethical issues clearly come up in day-to-day life. Crafty business cases on the subject can make a person twitch and tingle in their seat. But teasing apart some of this seems to be more common sense than something that I would want to pay for as a required separate course. Let's say for argumentation sake that one is shelling out $100K for an MBA. At Chicago, there's about 20 courses that one takes. $5K would be going to an ethics course. Maybe you'd spend that money, maybe you wouldn't. How many companies are shelling out $5K for ethics training? Business schools seem to be taking the brunt of the heat for the failure of corporations to make proper ethical choices. Should they be solely accountable? Dunno. Again, maybe I'd have to see and experience what a good course on this subject looked like. If people can share their thoughts on what they think a good ethics course looks like, please feel free to post.
0 Star(s) awarded My belief on ethics:
10% of the population will behave honestly regardless,
10% of the population will never behave ethically if they can get away with it,
80% respond to the tone of the environment.
That's why having an ethics class or curriculum matters, and even more important, that the leadership of an organization make it clear that ethical behavior must be followed. It keeps the 10% in line and the 80% reinforced.
Accepted
on October 3, 2005 at 5:22 PM
I have a very different take on the topic. I think that as adults we need to study ethics and reinforce the values we hopefully learned as children. Otherwise, they will be chipped away and eroded over time. 0 Star(s) awarded
steveshu21pub
on October 3, 2005 at 5:57 PM
Here's an interesting link (http://www.corpgov.net/inside/corporate-ethics-class.html)that contains the following:
"
After Enron's fall, one of the hotter items on e-Bay was a 64-page paperback, the Enron corporate code of ethics. "Never been opened," proclaimed one seller, a former employee. Do the problems on Wall Street stem from a few rogue executives or is the entire system flawed?"
Kind of goes against my position that ethics should be taught in the companies as an option, huh? It does support MCW's tipping-pointish notion that "80% respond to the tone of the environment."
0 Star(s) awarded Part of the reason I am at business school is to understand issues like this. I certainly had little or no opportunity to talk about ethics in the work I did before.
I feel strongly about this subject. But it is a top-down issue. If we train business leaders today, then hopefully those values will stick when they are running the corporations of the future.
2 Star(s) awarded
steveshu21pub
on October 12, 2005 at 4:43 PM
roody2,Thanks. I've never really had an ethical issue come up where I felt handicapped by using general, common sense skills. I'm warming up to the idea, however. I recently ran into a situation that made me think about competitive intelligence gathering. This pdf file contains good, concrete examples about managerial, cultural, and professional issues around competitive intelligence and ethics.
http://www.scip.org/Library/8(1)ethics.pdf
0 Star(s) awarded
60cents
on October 14, 2005 at 7:53 PM
There are a couple of simple ways to learn ethics. You can learn it in school where it can be taught painlessly.Or you can learn it in jail as in Kozlowski, Dennis, 25 years, Attica.
0 Star(s) awarded Interesting dialog. I 'teach' a course on values and ethics at a highly multicultural University in Europe. The course is spread over 3 out of the 5 terms that the students are in the program. We use a combination of assessment tools, speakers (C-O, Director General, VP level + Entrepreneurs), role playing, and reflective writing. We also have several debates and discussions. Finally...we have the students work on establishing what their own values are, and then in their assigned study teams, developing a team contract, which incorporates common values. And while I agree that Ethics needs to be spread out throughout the entire curriculum (which we also do)...in todays society, we need to place extra emphasis on this subject. Final comment - our goal (in addition to providing students with tools, and approaches on how to deal with ethical dilemmas) is to also have students think before they act....we want them to have an understanding of possible consequences of their actions - and realize that how they approach things today starts to establish a pattern that they will probably follow tomorrow - when their actions will directly - and indirectly influence other people - spouses, children, direct and indirect reports, and other stakeholders in their lives.
LJTate
on October 16, 2005 at 8:22 PM
Great topic. Do we really need a course to know that stealing from a company's retirement fund program is wrong - let alone illegal? No. What about grayer areas, such as job outsourcing and helthcare? There are plenty of example to draw upon there that would spark enough debate to fill as full semester and not resolve a thing.The practicality of ethics is when it is taught early on in a program and the same theme echoed throughout the subsequent courses. This has been my experience while atending DeVry's Keller Graduate School of Management.
The simple habit of asking if soething is the "right thing to do" is enforced throughout. We do not want to create decision bottlenecks at the expense of analysis, but we should be conciencious of the decisions we make and the orders we give as to how they will impact our selves, our organizations, our communities - local and global.
0 Star(s) awarded
steveshu21pub
on October 16, 2005 at 10:50 PM
Thanks for all of the comments everyone ... really! I feel like I'm getting my MBA all over again and refreshing things.
60cents,
Good point. For the benefit of others, I guess Koslowski did not have an MBA (not that one was essential). From a BW article, " But by 1977,
Kozlowski was so keen to advance at Tyco that he started taking night
classes at Rivier College, a Catholic college in Nashua. He completed
only three classes, though he claimed to have earned an MBA from Rivier
in a questionnaire submitted for the 1988-89 edition of Who's Who in America--an inconsequential but prophetic deception."
liam,
Great point on addressing values and ethics. The aspect of values is something that I failed to point out, but Jeff Nolan makes mention here. As an aside, one thing I struggle with in my mind is what values should be considered "universal" in the workplace. One thing I like about the competitive intelligence PDF I cited previously (note: PDF file), is that it takes a concrete business area, outlines some frameworks for deciding how to look at things, and then provides one a context for how one might match up against the views of other professionals.
LJTate,
I really resonate with your comment ... "The simple habit of asking if soething is the "right thing to do" is enforced throughout"... This is something that is addressed in the PDF file I cited above as well. I wonder though, does this type of formulaic habit of asking if something is right, well does it work for the average person though?
0 Star(s) awarded Ethics are a must in any business school curriculum. It is so because it is a very strong foundation for any organization. With recent incidents in the industry organizations guess, have no other choice and just cannot afford to overllook ethics.
Well, ethics is "somewhat" a personal issue and depends a lot on an individual but teaching ethics is not just about teaching those core values to but its more about the importance of ethics in running any organization. How this culture if rooted deep into an organization, can help them to avoid many more bigger issues.
There are some core values or principles on which any organization is built on which reflects their commitment to customers and their employees and one of the most important one of them is "Ethics".
60cents
on October 22, 2005 at 11:04 AM
LJTate has suggested above that we really don't need to teach things that are obvious and that we should focus on those things like outsourcing and healthcare with less obvious ethical implications.Dreaming Tree says that ethics are a must because it builds a strong organizational foundation and that ethics is a somewhat personal issue.
While both are correct, neither goes far enough.
We really shouldn't have to teach things that are obvious but clearly, ethical behavior is neither obvious nor clear cut. And while strong organizations have recognized the value of ethical business behavior, ethics is more that just personal issues.
When ethical mores are breached, more than one person suffers. Kozlowski's crimes affected many people not just him self.
The essence of teaching ethics is not about how ethical behavior will impact me, but how ethical behavior impacts a great many people. In that sense then, instruction in ethics at all levels is a lifetime requirement and should be a continuing education credit requirement for everyone.
Ethical misbehavior begins with the simplest, most innocuous of choices. I need a pen at home, I'll take this one from the office. No one will miss it or care. Yet it is that kind of reasoning that leads to greater compromises in our personal values of honesty and integrity and erodes the fabric of just societies.
1 Star(s) awarded
Lion
(Homepage)
on February 16, 2006 at 1:38 AM
I think that business ethics is very important. Cross-cultural communication may improve the result of your work a lot. And of course normal ethics should be tought at elementary school and at home. Where do we draw the line as far as ethical practise in business?
eg does taking a customer out for a lunch to try win over a tender amount to unethical behaviour as the lunch could be construed as a 'bribe'.
Is a company with an innovative idea behaving unethically if they are making huge profits while people in the world are starving?
(I'm looking at doing a research paper for my MBA on where to draw the line on ethical behaviour in business, but I'm not sure how to approach the subject)
Fiona Torrance
(Homepage)
on March 27, 2006 at 10:21 PM
Ethics Cases In Point:USC's Marshall School of Business, Center for Management Communication, offers an excellent special interest (previously BUAD 499) "Ethics, Independent Research, and Public Communications" class. Students (in their mid-20's to 30's) actually partake in actual ethics cases to learn how to recognize specific ethical dilemmas and to seek solutions to these real-life ethical problems.
My response to you, Steve, is that irrespective of age, it depends on what is important and of interest to you.
Although ethics is debatable in perspective, business students can and should learn strategies to identify and deal with ethical issues in the workplace.
If employees (post-undergraduate and post-graduate) face ethical dilemmas and cannot recognize them or identify strategies and solutions to resolve the issues through social responsible means, and if Enron and Worldcomm executives are sentenced for legal and ethical violations -- then there clearly is a need for ethics training on the undergraduate and graduate level.
Ethics is a foundation on which to build corporate goals that includes corporate policy/governance/responsibility. Students should learn and build on that foundation.
I posted my response to you on http://bizblogreview.blogspot.com
ChrisjMacDonald
on May 12, 2006 at 3:17 PM
Hi:I teach Business Ethics (though I teach it in a Philosophy Department, not a B-school).
As several people have already pointed out, while Steve is *probably* right that you can't teach people in their 20's & 30's how to be ethical (though that's an empirical question, really) that doesn't mean that nothing relevant can be taught.
My *hope* is that what an ethics course in a b-school *can* give students includes:
a) Some relevant concepts & frameworks. (You'd be surprised how many people find their thinking about ethical issues is enriched just by being exposed to the difference between Consequentialist and non-Consequentialist ethical frameworks. For comparison, imagine trying to think seriously about commerce without understanding what an "opportunity cost" is.)
b) Exposure to, and sensitivity to, a range of considerations that might not come up in other classes. Sure, we're all raised to know that "stealing is bad." But most of us won't have thought about either conflict of interest or moonlighting in a way that would let us see the connection between those concepts and stealing.
(FYI, I blog about these subtleties regularly, at businessethicsblog.com)
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HTownson
(Homepage)
on May 14, 2006 at 7:53 PM
Its fine taken with other core course - not as a major. Unless your going into the presthood! I am pursuing my MBA from Umass-Amherst (Isenberg) and was required to take an ethics class as part of the core curriculum. Honestly, I would rather pay for a class in Business Law, but I have to admit that I didn't find ethics class to be a waste of my time. It does provide students who aspire to be future leaders a perspective and exposes them to ethical implications of desicions - so that when they will be in decision-making capacity in future, they will have this background knowledge and will be more aware and hopefully make better decisions and/or manage their stakeholders better.
I am developing a curriculum for professionals to teach them how gifts and money influences their behavior. Research shows that this groups decisions are influenced by money, yet most of these same professionals deny any influence. Has anyone used any creative classroom exercises to break through students denial regarding this issue?
