Teaching Ethics In The Business Schools: What Do You Think?

Ethics should be treated in the broader context of value systems. One of the nonprofits we support is KIPP, they are a public school within the public school system focused on disadvantaged young people in the middle school years. A big emphasis they make is respecting yourself by respecting others through living up to your commitments, valuing honesty, being responsible for your own actions, and learning how to choose right from wrong in the normal course of life. You just can't talk about ethics without also getting into values.

Link: Steve Shu's BusinessWeek Online Blog: Teaching Ethics In The Business Schools: What Do You Think?.

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.

Comments

[Ben Casnocha]

Jeff - I've thought a lot about this. In aggressively secular private schools like hte one i attend talking about ethics/values is quite difficult. The best a school can do is teach a moral reasoning process which naturally leads into ethics/values. Folks like Lawrence Kohlberg have been leaders in this area. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kohlberg's_stages_of_moral_development

[Chris Selland]

"respecting yourself by respecting others through living up to your commitments, valuing honesty, being responsible for your own actions, and learning how to choose right from wrong in the normal course of life"

When did this stop being a parental responsibility?

[jeff]

it can't be one or the other, kids should be put into an environment, whether it be school, family or social where they are expected to be honest and responsible.

[Daniel Nerezov]

Good topic area.

At the University of Technology, Sydney - they don't teach ethics to law students (!!!) and they have two hours of lecturing set aside for the subject in the beginning of a three year, full time program for business students.

Is this a problem?

The short answer, from first hand experience is yes. Without a values based system, universities risk to unleash morally irresponsible graduates into the wider community. This is a problem not just for some anonymous public, but also individual workplaces.

Other than the graduates them selves being morally unfulfilled and unable to make correct decisions for the lack of a values based conceptual framework, the community should not be exposed to morally defunct people in position of power.

I won't hype the community danger risk too much because I can't measure it, but I would imagine that lives barren of moral compass sail for misery.

[matt]

This is an important topic, I've posted my thoughts at http://www.techiesalumni.com/weblog/articles/2005/10/17/re-ethics-in-an-mba-program. Two additional thoughts, more opposing what I've written above would include, the danger of teaching a 'values' system in an education system. Also, I don't think ethics should consume so much time in coursework whereby you are missing out on conversations/learning regarding topics that will help the student make a competitive difference in their company. Ethics is a foundation of a business, not a competitive differentiator.