Can Business Ethics be Taught?

One University's Experience

Beheruz N. Sethna, Ph.D.,

Professor of Business Administration, and
President of the University of West Georgia

“Can Business Ethics be taught?” That’s a question that many sound thinkers have raised over the past
several years, and increasingly so over the past several months with all the corporate scandals in the news.

In the interest of taking an ethical approach to answering this question, I must state that, at least on the
face of it, I have a “vested interest” in a “Yes” answer. After all, I am and have been a Professor of
Business in three AASCB-accredited schools in three different U.S. States; I have been first, a Director of
Graduate Programs and later a Business School Dean who pursued and achieved the objective of AACSB
re-accreditation; I have helped design Business Ethics curricula; I have taught Business Ethics modules;
and have written an Business Ethics case study. Talk about being a product of the system!

On the other hand, I have worked in two multinational corporations – both in the U.S. and overseas, and
have some corporate perspective as well. Having stated my bias, I will do my best to overcome it for this
article.

We do know that the better Business schools all over America have been teaching Business Ethics for
decades. AACSB-I, the national accrediting body for Business, expects to see coverage of Business Ethics
in the curriculum. That fact does seem to answer the question in its most basic sense: Business Ethics is
being taught. However, it does not, in and of itself, answer the real question whether it should be taught or
whether it can make a difference.

Detractors of current practice of teaching Business Ethics in colleges and schools of business would
probably say that Business Ethics cannot be taught; period. Certainly, they would say, it cannot be taught
in adult life, and certainly not in a Business School environment – if you haven’t learned ethical behavior at
the age of two, five, or ten, in the context of a family or religious environment, you’re out of luck!

It appears to me that, if we are able to answer the question of whether Business Ethics can be taught, we
must first deconstruct that question. What do we really mean by that question? In other words, what is the
objective of the Business Ethics course or module? If we mean that the objective of a good course or
module or set of modules is to create value systems that will enable the manager to act ethically, then, on
balance, I would vote with the detractors. I do think that, if we have any chance at all of creating or
developing value systems and inherent morality, we are about twenty years too late by the time the typical
student is in a Business Ethics course.

However, if the objective of the course or module is to provide the student with a set of tools that could
help hem (my own, more efficient, word for “him or her”) analyze difficult ethical situations, or provide
theories, models, or approaches that might be useful in handling ethical dilemmas, or make hem more
sensitive to the ethical implications of some actions, or provide examples or case studies that might ring
some bells later on in corporate life, then I certainly believe that such objectives can be met.

Will such a course prove useful in later corporate experience? To answer that question, we need to be
realistic.

Some managers have learned so well, good and moral lessons when they were children that they will
behave responsibly and ethically in the corporate world regardless of any Business Ethics course. They
always behave ethically and morally. We hope that the percentage of this type of manager is high, but
realistically, it may not be so. Take a guess at the percentage of these “straight arrows” in managerial roles
in corporate America. Would it be two percent of the managerial population? Would it be 10 percent?
Perhaps somewhere in between?

Some other managers learned early in life that the only thing that really matters is themselves, their own
bank balance, and their rise to the top. If a rule can be bent, they bend it; if it can be broken without their
being found out, they break it. To them, a Business Ethics course is merely a curricular hurdle or perhaps a
source of great amusement to them (to paraphrase Shakespeare in a Midsummer Night’s Dream, they might
whisper to themselves, “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”). We hope that this percentage of managers is
a small one, but realistically, it may not be so. What percentage of corporate managers might fall under this
category? Would it be two percent of the managerial population? Would it be 10 percent? Perhaps
somewhere in between? Might it be greater? Could it be 25 percent - 30 percent?

I do not pretend to know these answers, and have no research evidence to cite that would determine these
percentages. However, I do believe that the sum of the above two percentages is less than 100 percent – if
the upper limits mentioned above were accurate, then that would account for about 35 percent - 40 percent
of the managerial population, leaving 60 percent - 65 percent unaccounted for. If the 10 percent estimates
were accurate, that would leave 80 percent of the population unaccounted for. If the good and bad die-
hards are in the two percent range, then we have 96 percent of the population who can be influenced.

These are the swing votes – those managers we can influence with appropriate education, theories,
rationales, cases, and vignettes. So, I would claim that a good Business Ethics course or set of modules can
and does make a positive difference in ethical behavior for the majority of those who take it – it might be
60 percent, 80 percent, or 96 percent of the managerial population. I do believe that the percentage that can
be influenced is 80 percent or greater, but even if it is 60 percent (or even slightly less), it is worth the
effort, in my opinion.

If you are with me so far, let us address the question of how we might provide MBA or BBA students
with the tools and methods which might encourage ethical behavior in the corporate world. If you disagree
with the preceding points, the following discussion might yet serve to convince you otherwise!

Either way, read on …

How might Business Ethics be taught? First of all, based on the preceding discussion, let us be clear that
we are referring, not to the teaching of value systems, but to providing the student with a set of tools to
analyze difficult ethical situations, providing theories, models, or approaches that might be useful in
handling ethical dilemmas, sensitizing them to the ethical implications of some actions, or providing
examples or case studies that might prove useful in future managerial decisions.

While there might be a variety of methods to teach Business Ethics, I will mention only three: One is to
have a separate course on this topic distinct from the Legal Environment in Business course; another is to
try to fit in Business Ethics and the Legal Environment in Business into one course; and a third is to
incorporate business ethics concepts and methods into several required business core courses. I confess to
a bias in favor of the third method. The first method will probably work, but has two drawbacks: (a) since
it adds a course to the curriculum, it will either increase the length of the curriculum or will use up an
elective; and electives are in very short supply (if not well-nigh impossible in the typical Business School
curriculum); and (b) if it is a stand-alone course, it might be regarded as one hurdle to be jumped and then
forgotten. Since the business law and legal components are an important part of a Legal Environment in
Business course, the second method would be difficult to pass muster because it essentially attempts to
combine two courses into one. Now, I do support the active incorporation of Business Ethics into the
Business Law and Legal Environment courses, as part of a curriculum-wide effort to infuse concepts of
ethics. Please see Appendix 1 for an example of the way this is done by Professor Mary Kathryn Zachary
of the Richards College of Business at the University of West Georgia. The third method does not have the
disadvantage of the previous ones, and I believe is actually pedagogically more sound, because the student
uses concepts of Business Ethics in a variety of fields and scenarios – in Accounting,
Computer/Information Systems, Finance, Law, Management, Marketing, Strategic Management, and
others. Please see Appendix 2 for an example of how ethics concepts and tools are infused throughout the
Business curriculum.

In my Marketing Challenges course, I typically have a module on Business Ethics. In this course, which
is largely a Marketing-based one, we analyze real business situations that posed an ethical dilemma. I
provide some conceptual underpinnings such as the Theory of Rights and the Theory of Justice, and we use
these to help analyze the problem at hand. As is true for other courses taught by other colleagues, the
underlying concepts of Business Ethics coverage are the same:

If the first time that the manager is faced with an ethical dilemma is in a real corporate situation, we are
sending hem into battle unarmed. How much better prepared, then, is a manager who has wrestled with
similar problems 50 or 60 times in the course of a curriculum, has used theories and concepts that can help
frame ethical problems, and has seen the pros and cons of various actions, albeit second hand?

Many ethical issues can be better handled by taking a long-term perspective. Often, in business the
expedient decision looks better in the immediate term, but has serious long-term repercussions. If nothing
else, constant reinforcement of this concept through case study after case study, in courses in Accounting,
Computer/Information Systems, Finance, Law, Management, Marketing, and Strategic Management,
through two years of an MBA or upper-division BBA/BS curriculum, will sink in, and serve the manager in
good stead when he or she faces an ethical dilemma in a corporate or business environment.

Can Business Ethics be taught? If the question means: Is it possible to provide the tools and methods that
will increase the probability of positive ethical behavior in a significant proportion of students through a
well-designed curriculum, the answer is Yes.

Appendix 1: Summary of Legal and Ethical Issues Coverage in Two Courses

Appendix 2: Overall Business Ethics Coverage

Dr. Sethna is a member of the Board of Directors of The Southern Institute for Business and
Professional Ethics, and a participant in the Institute's Consortium on Business Ethics Education.

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Appendix 1

Summary of Legal and Ethical Issues Coverage in Two Courses

(Professor Mary Kathryn Zachary)

BUSA 2106 -- Legal Environment of Business, and MGMT 3602 -- Business

Law

Coverage includes a discussion of the:

  relationship between law and ethics (related but not the same and
discussion of reasons why - for example, people generally believe it is ethical to
obey the law; many laws are based on societal ethics; people differ in their ethical
beliefs; sometimes laws ethical in principle have an unjust application — for
example, laws protecting minors in contracts); there are unethical people
sometimes found in the justice system; sometimes our ethics are higher than what
the law requires, as in withdrawing an offer in a contract)
 lawyers and ethics - illlustrations: public perceptions of lawyers, as
evidenced by lawyer jokes; what our legal system demands of lawyers; temptation
to cross the line from representing client to best of ability to winning

 difference, if any, between business and personal ethics

 conflicting duties in the business world - ex., shareholders, employees,

government, friends at work, consumers, interest groups (illustrations: national
parks such as Yosemite and North Cascade National Park trying to satisfy all
interest groups; Ford/Firestone tire issues); whistleblowing situations

 relationship between public opinion and business ethics - (illustration:

Nike and its handling of journalists investigating foreign sweatshops and how it
backfired; executive change from "no comment" reactions to disasters to public
statements)

 approaches to ethical reasoning (ex., duty-based ethics founded on religion

and/or philosophy v. outcome-based ethics founded on utilitarianism)
(illustration: Ford's use of cost-benefit analysis in releasing the Pinto despite
knowledge of explosion problem)

 business practices that can result in unethical behavior (ex.: piece/rate pay
system) (illustrations: heart valve fiasco where employees covered up defects,
Sears auto repair investigation where mechanics were "finding" many things
supposedly wrong)

 "gray" (or not!) areas - (ex., expense accounts that give a daily allowance
but do not require receipts, business frequent flier miles for personal use, office
supplies for home use, "time theft" (adding on to lunch hour)

 no-win situations in which there is no one "ethical" answer (ex.,

Exxon policy excluding individuals with a history of drug and alcohol abuse from
safety-sensitive positions as response to Justice Department charges over Valdez
with subsequent lawsuit by EEOC based on ADA; Atlanta case involving new
hire who would not train women because of religious reasons leading to no-win
position under Title VII)

 factors leading employees to unethical behavior (examples of higher-ups,

pressure to achieve a result, feeling abused by the employer, financial pressures
 such as father with ill son who needed medical coverage, opportunity, faceless
victims as with computer)

 legal arguments that raise ethical issues (illustrations: company use of

"equal opportunity harasser" defense in sexual harassment cases; frivolous cases
(restaurant owner who cross-claimed against a food poisoning victim to
recover payment for her resulting weight loss)

 advertising and ethics (illustrations: pants manufacturer promotion in

which consumers would break glass case to get product; Barbie that says "math is
hard"; Abercrombie and Fitch catalog and Bob Jones University response; Calvin
Klein underwear ads and youth; beer ads in which everyone is always having fun)

 jury decisions involving application of ethical issues (switch in outcome of

tobacco litigation due to outrage over tobacco companies' marketing to kids and
alleged perjured testimony to Congress)

 inefficacy and efficacy of company ethical codes and corporate

compliance programs--what makes the difference?

 maximum versus optimum profits debate

 international differences with ethical implications - examples, bribery of

public officials, shipping products banned in U. S. to other countries for sale
(children's pajamas, tampons), paying low wages to foreign workers.

One false assumption guides the view that business ethics can’t be taught: the belief that
one’s ethics are fully formed and immutable by the time one enters college or begins a
job. Research in moral psychology has found that this is definitely not the case. Moral
judgement develops throughout childhood and young adulthood in a complex process of
social interaction with peers, parents and other significant persons, and this development
continues at least through young adulthood. Research, then, supports the argument that
ethics can be taught. Given that most people enter professional education programs and
corporations during young adulthood, the opportunity to influence their moral reasoning
clearly exists. In fact, young adults in their twenties and thirties enrolled in moral
development educational programs have been found to advance in moral reasoning even
more than younger individuals.

Ethical behavior relies on more than good character. Although good upbringing may
provide a kind of moral compass that can help the individual determine the right direction
and then follow through on a decision to do the right thing, it’s not the only factor
determining ethical conduct. Educational programs in business ethics can and do shape
the development of a young person’s ethical values and behavior.

In the complexity of today’s society, individuals need additional guidance. They can be
helped to recognize the ethical dilemmas that are likely to arise in their jobs, as well as
the rules, laws, and norms that apply in that context. They also can learn reasoning
strategies that can be used to arrive at the best decision. And they also can grasp an
understanding of the complexities of organizational life that can conflict with one’s desire
to do the right thing.

With the increasing globalization of business through travel and the use of the worldwide
web, more managers are finding themselves in an international environment full of
ethical challenges. If managing business activities with ethical conduct is a challenge in
one’s own culture, imagine how the difficulties multiply when the culture and language
are foreign, and the manager is under increased stress. Individuals need to be taught about
the conduct of business in different cultures as well as about the broader organizational
issues concerning whether and how to conduct business in foreign nations, and how to
guide employees working in a global business environment. To a great extent, ethical
conduct is influenced and controlled by our environment in work settings, by leaders,
managers, and the entire cultural context. As a result, we believe that educational
institutions and work organizations can and do have an opportunity to teach people about
ethics and to guide them in an ethical direction

Can Ethics Be Taught? Sta. Clara University

Developed by Manuel Velasquez, Claire Andre, Thomas Shanks, S.J., and Michael J. Meyer

In a recent editorial, the Wall Street Journal announced that ethics courses are useless
because ethics can't be taught. Although few people would turn to the Wall Street Journal
as a learned expert on the teaching of ethics, the issue raised by the newspaper is a
serious one: Can ethics be taught?

The issue is an old one. Almost 2500 years ago, the philosopher Socrates debated the
question with his fellow Athenians. Socrates' position was clear: Ethics consists of
knowing what we ought to do, and such knowledge can be taught.

Most psychologists today would agree with Socrates. In an overview of contemporary

research in the field of moral development, psychologist James Rest summarized the
major findings as follows:

 Dramatic changes occur in young adults in their 20s and 30s in terms of the basic
problem-solving strategies they use to deal with ethical issues.
 These changes are linked to fundamental changes in how a person perceives
society and his or her role in society.

 The extent to which change occurs is associated with the number of years of
formal educaton (college or professional school).
  Deliberate educational attempts (formal curriculum) to influence awareness of
moral problems and to influence the reasoning or judgement process have been
demonstrated to be effective.

 Studies indicate that a person's behavior is influenced by his or her moral

perception and moral judgements.

Much of the research that Rest alludes to was carried on by the late Harvard psychologist,
Lawrence Kohlberg. Kohlberg was one of the first people to look seriously at whether a
person's ability to deal with ethical issues can develop in later life and whether education
can affect that development.

Kohlberg found that a person's ability to deal with moral issues is not formed all at once.
Just as there are stages of growth in physical development, the ability to think morally
also develops in stages.

The earliest level of moral development is that of the child, which Kohlberg called the
preconventional level. The person at the preconventional level defines right and wrong in
terms of what authority figures say is right or wrong or in terms of what results in
rewards and punishments. Any parent can verify this. Ask the four or five year old why
stealing is wrong, and chances are that they'll respond: "Because daddy or mommy says
it's wrong" or "Because you get spanked if you steal." Some people stay at this level all
of their lives, continuing to define right and wrong in terms of what authorities say or in
terms of reaping rewards or avoiding unpleasant consequences.

The second level of moral development is the level most adolescents reach. Kohlberg
called this the conventional level. The adolescent at the conventional level has
internalized the norms of those groups among whom he or she lives. For the adolescent,
right and wrong are based on group loyalties: loyalties to one's family, loyalties to one's
friends, or loyalty to one's nation. If you ask adolescents at this level why something is
wrong or why it is right, they will tend to answer in terms of what their families have
taught her, what their friends think, or what Americans believe. Many people remain at
this level, continuing to define right and wrong in terms of what society believes or what
laws require.

But if a person continues to develop morally, he or she will reach what Kohlberg labeled
the postconventional level. The person at the postconventional level stops defining right
and wrong in terms of group loyalties or norms. Instead, the adult at this level develops
moral principles that define right and wrong from a universal point of view. The moral
principles of the postconventional person are principles that would appeal to any
reasonable person because they take everyone's interest into account. If you ask a person
at the postconventional level why something is right or wrong, she will appeal to what
promotes or doesn't promote the universal ideals of justice or human rights or human
welfare.
Many factors can stimulate a person's growth through the three levels of moral
development. One of the most crucial factors, Kohlberg found, is education. Kohlberg
discovered that when his subjects took courses in ethics and these courses challenged
them to look at issues from a universal point of view, they tended to move upward
through the levels. This finding, as Rest points out, has been repeatedly supported by
other researchers.

Can ethics be taught? If you look at the hard evidence psychologists have amassed, the
answer is yes. If you read the Wall Street Journal, you wouldn't have thought so.

This article appeared originally in Issues in Ethics V1 N1 (Fall 1987

Can Ethics Be Taught?

Is ethics an appropriate subject for classes? This isn't a question on whether ethics is
something that can be taught about - that's done all the time. No, this is a question on
whether ethics can be taught - that is to say, can people be taught in classes how to be
more ethical?

Gordon Marino, professor of philosophy and director of the Hong Kierkegaard Library at
Saint Olaf College, writes in the Chronicle:

Over the past couple of decades, the ethics industry has kicked into high gear. We now
have a growing number of professional ethicists who are prepared to act as superegos for
hire to the various professions. Indeed, take any given profession and there is another
profession called the ethics of that profession. (Think bioethics, medical ethics, legal
ethics, computer ethics, and so forth.)
I have often wondered what qualifies someone as an expert on matters moral. Randy
Cohen, who writes "The Ethicist" column for The New York Times Magazine, was a
comedy writer for the David Letterman show before he assumed his present post as
director of right and wrong for the Times. I will not deny my skepticism about this new
class of expert or about the very notion that ethics is an area of expertise like, say,
geology. And while some people are crying out for required ethics courses for graduate
students and beginning professors, I am of the Aristotelian persuasion that it is not more
theory that we need but more mettle, and that this will not come from memorizing meta-
ethical paradigms and analyzing case histories.

I am sympathetic to Marino's ideas here - and in particular, his argument that people in
general already know how to be ethical, but also know just as well how to avoid being
ethical and then later rationalize their decisions. Still, I think that he may be a bit harsh to
the "ethics" industry here. "Experts" in ethics in a field can fulfill an important role -
perhaps not in teaching people "how to be ethical" in a given profession but, instead, in
leading discussions about what the ethical course of action would be. An "expert" in this
case would be someone with more experience with looking at problems from different
perspectives and different ethical principles, thus allowing them to ask important
questions of the people in a given field.
I do like what Marino has to say about teaching an ethics workshop:

I would begin by having participants think about impediments to the righteous life.
Though most ethics maestros seem to repress the fact, both world and individual history
attests that self-deception is one of the greatest of those impediments. To help us explore
how we reason ourselves out of what we know, ethics professors ought to consider
assigning Augustine, Kierkegaard, Montaigne, Dostoyevsky, Freud, Nietzsche, and other
masters of the vicissitudes of the instinct toward self-obscurification. ... People who
presume to teach ethics should help their students be honest with themselves about their
own interests. Such candor is, of course, part of the Socratic curriculum of coming to
know yourself.

This, I think, is a practical implementation of what I describe above: instead of teaching

people "how to be ethical," a class should look first at teaching people how to reason
about ethical dilemmas - helping them, for example, recognize those factors which inhibit
ethical behavior, exactly what principles they use for making ethical decisions, etc.

Read More:

 Guide to Ethics and Morality

 Bioethics

Can Ethics Be Taught?

In a recent editorial, the Wall Street Journal announced that ethics courses are
useless because ethics can't be taught. Although few people would turn to the
Wall Street Journal as a learned expert on the teaching of ethics, the issue raised
by the news paper is a serious one: Can ethics be taught?

The issue is an old one. Almost 2500 years ago, the philosopher Socrates
debated the question with his fellow Athenians. Socrates' position was clear:
Ethics consists of knowing what we ought to do, and such knowledge can be
taught.

Most psychologists today would agree with Socrates. In an overview of

contemporary research in the field of moral development, psychologist James
Rest summarized the major findings as follows:

 Dramatic changes occur in young adults in their 20s and 30s in terms of
the basic problem-solving strategies they use to deal with ethical issues.
 These changes are linked to fundamental changes in how a person
perceives society and his or her role in society.
 The extent to which change occurs is associated with the number of
years of formal educaton (college or professional school).
  Deliberate educational attempts (formal curriculum) to influence
awareness of moral problems and to influence the reasoning or
judgement process have been demonstrated to be effective.
 Studies indicate that a person's behavior is influenced by his or her moral
perception and moral judgements.

Much of the research that Rest alludes to was carried on by the late Harvard
psychologist, Lawrence Kohlberg. Kohlberg was one of the first people to look
seriously at whether a person's ability to deal with ethical issues can develop in
later life and whether education can affect that development.

Kohlberg found that a person's ability to deal with moral issues is not formed
all at once. Just as there are stages of growth in physical development, the
ability to think morally also develops in stages.

The earliest level of moral development is that of the child, which Kohlberg
called the preconventional level. The person at the preconventional level
defines right and wrong in terms of what authority figures say is right or wrong
or in terms of what results in rewards and punishments. Any parent can verify
this. Ask the four or five year old why stealing is wrong, and chances are that
they'll respond: "Because daddy or mommy says it's wrong" or "Because you
get spanked if you steal." Some people stay at this level all of their lives,
continuing to define right and wrong in terms of what authorities say or in
terms of reaping rewards or avoiding unpleasant consequences.

The second level of moral development is the level most adolescents reach.
Kohlberg called this the conventional level. The adolescent at the conventional
level has internalized the norms of those groups among whom he or she lives.
For the adolescent, right and wrong are based on group loyalties: loyalties to
one's family, loyalties to one's friends, or loyalty to one's nation. If you ask
adolescents at this level why something is wrong or why it is right, they will
tend to answer in terms of what their families have taught them, what their
friends think, or what Americans believe. Many people remain at this level,
continuing to define right and wrong in terms of what society believes or what
laws require.

But if a person continues to develop morally, he or she will reach what

Kohlberg labeled the postconventional level. The person at the
postconventional level stops defining right and wrong in terms of group
loyalties or norms. Instead, the adult at this level develops moral principles that
define right and wrong from a universal point of view. The moral principles of
the postconventional person are principles that would appeal to any reasonable
person because they take everyone's interest into account. If you ask a person at
the postconventional level why something is right or wrong, she will appeal to
what promotes or doesn't promote the universal ideals of justice or human
rights or human welfare.

Many factors can stimulate a person's growth through the three levels of moral
development. One of the most crucial factors, Kohlberg found, is education.
Kohlberg discovered that when his subjects took courses in ethics and these
courses challenged them to look at issues from a universal point of view, they
tended to move upward through the levels. This finding, as Rest points out, has
been repeatedly supported by other researchers.

Can ethics be taught? If you look at the hard evidence psychologists have
amassed, the answer is yes. If you read the Wall Street Journal, you wouldn't
have thought so.

Copyright (C) 1995 - 1998 by Santa Clara Universit

Can Business Ethics Be Taught?

David L. Perry, Ph.D.

Recent surveys indicate that most Fortune 500 corporations have developed written codes
of ethical business conduct and training programs to communicate those standards to
their employees. But many American executives, managers and employees still question
the justification of spending valuable company time and resources on ethics training.
"Can ethics really be taught to mature adults," they ask, "or is it something that you
absorb as a child from your family or religious upbringing?" Fair questions. If ethics
cannot truly be "learned" in significant ways by adults, then the value of corporate ethics
training programs would indeed be suspect (except, say, as a cynical form of public
relations, or as window dressing for an government regulatory agency).

I'm convinced, though, that corporate ethics programs are worthwhile, to the extent that
their creators understand what can and cannot be taught and design their programs
accordingly. The key is to distinguish between basic moral capacities, which cannot be
altered in adults to any great extent, and ethical reasoning and imagination, which can be
sharpened and enhanced.

Moral Capacities

Almost every human being is born with capacities for sympathy, fellow-feeling, concern
about the well-being of others. The proper development of these capacities is not
automatic, but the vast majority of us have developed them because we've been raised in
loving families and made stable friendships at an early age. Every so often, of course, we
get a jarring glimpse of someone who never had the requisite nurturing, an adult who is
relatively intelligent but who somehow never learned how to be compassionate. Serial
murderer Ted Bundy was a chilling example. Converting a mean-spirited person or a
psychopath to a more ethical disposition late in the game is usually out of the question.

Not even the most sophisticated corporate ethics program will be able to create moral
capacities out of nothing. It would be silly to try. In that sense, ethics cannot be taught.
Fortunately, 99.99% of businesspeople already have a conscience, and don't need to have
one implanted (as if that were possible).

Ethical Reasoning and Imagination

But applying basic ethical principles like fairness in the workplace isn't always easy. Our
consciences can have all of the standard equipment, and yet collectively we may not
intuit identical resolutions to specific ethical questions:

- Where should you draw the line between a legitimate business courtesy and a bribe?

- How do you hold to exemplary ethical standards when your competitor fights dirty?

- How do you conduct a layoff in the fairest possible manner?

Reaching consensus on these and many other ethical questions in business is not a
straightforward task, but it's vital in forming an ethical corporate culture. Ethics training,
in turn, can provide a very useful forum for achieving that needed consensus. Rightly
structured, it can increase employees' awareness of ethical issues, expand the scope of
their ethical vision, and spur their imagination of the consequences of their business
decisions for various stakeholders of the firm: customers, suppliers, stockholders et al. In
that sense, ethics is akin to an attitude of continuous quality improvement.

Deliberation and Discussion

Perhaps most importantly, a corporate ethics program can simply make ethics an
acceptable subject of discussion on the job. Most employees want to work for a company
where they don't feel they're being asked to abandon their core values in order to succeed
in their jobs. Yet unless they're given formal opportunities and encouragement from
management to discuss ethics, they're likely to be silenced by the few cynics among them
who think that ethics is for "wimps" or is irrelevant to the bottom line narrowly
conceived. Employees need to hear from management that the company depends on their
individual integrity to maintain its good name, and is willing to hear their ethical
concerns on an ongoing basis.

However, the sort of internal ethics forum I'm advocating shouldn't be implemented in a
"fire hose" or "sheep dip" manner characteristic of so many corporate training workshops.
Maybe it shouldn't even be called ethics "training," since what is imparted is not really a
set of technical skills that can be readily measured. Ethical discernment in business
resembles more of an art than a science, though like science it sometimes requires critical
reflection on assumptions and beliefs that we've come to take for granted.

Managing to Reinforce Ethical Conduct

Finally, corporate ethics initiatives must go well beyond written codes and employee
workshops. The ethics that are taught in formal settings can be easily undermined in other
ways. Employees pay very close attention to the subtle (and not-so-subtle) cues given off
by their supervisors in day-to-day interactions. Why should employees believe that
management is serious about ethical risks if their bosses either don't listen to their
concerns or shoot the messengers of unpleasant news? What sense will it make to preach
fairness if promotions and compensation are in fact based on who you know rather than
individual merit and performance? What message is sent when management allows a
salesman to pad his expense account because he's a top performer?

In other words, managers and employees must regularly make the effort to examine the
goals, incentives, pressures, and styles of communication that drive behavior in the
organization, and ask themselves, Are these factors reinforcing or undermining the ethical
standards we want to uphold?

(A slightly modified version of this article was originally published in Washington CEO
Magazine, March 1994.)

Go to Dr. Perry’s CV.

he Challenge of Reforming Business Ethics Education

By John C. Knapp
President
The Southern Institute for Business and Professional Ethics

The national discussion of corporate scandals turning increasingly to the question, “What led to this?”
Or, as a news headline about executive criminals asked, “How did they learn to think that way?”

Not surprisingly, the search for answers is turning to the nation’s business schools, where ethics
instruction has rarely had a substantive or meaningful place in the curriculum. Some would say that little
has changed in the 35 or so years since Harvard Business School introduced what was likely the nation’s
first course in business ethics. Entitled “Business, Society and the Individual,” it was not long before
students dubbed it “BS and I.” In recent months, this sentiment was echoed by headlines in Forbes
(“Oxymoron 101”)1 and The Washington Post (“When It Comes to Ethics, B-Schools Get an F”)2.

To be sure, some business schools are making real progress in infusing the curriculum with a greater
emphasis on ethics, as the accompanying articles in this issue of GoodBusiness attest. But even those will
readily admit that there is still much room for growth and improvement. This sincere desire to strengthen
ethics instruction is evident in the discussions of the Consortium on Business Ethics Education, a group of
business deans and other administrators from a dozen Southeastern universities convened by The Southern
Institute for Business and Professional Ethics.
 Since there appears to be a general consensus that ethics is not taught effectively by business schools, it is
worth considering at least three reasons why this may be so:

Faculty Reticence

University faculty are highly specialized in their respective disciplines – accounting, marketing, finance
and so on. Because ethics tends to be viewed as a separate discipline, and sometimes not even a business
discipline, a faculty member might be inclined to take the stance, “Certainly ethics is important, but you
should find an ethicist or moral philosopher to teach it. After all, my field is accounting.”

The result is that business ethics is most often offered as a stand-alone course that may or may not be
required, depending on the school. It is not uncommon for such a course to be taught by someone from
outside the business school (frequently a philosopher) who is perceived by students as being more
conversant with the ideas of Aristotle than those of Warren Buffett or Jack Welch. But regardless of the
qualifications of the instructor, and many are quite good, the treatment of ethics as a discrete and separate
subject sends a powerful and unhealthy message: That ethics is somehow a category unto itself in business
life, rather than a dimension of everything we do. How much more effective would it be for students to
encounter ethical questions in context, as when issues facing accountants are actually dealt with in an
accounting class?

This should by no means suggest that an ethics course is an unimportant component of the curriculum.
To the contrary, it can be very useful in equipping students with a framework for recognizing and thinking
critically about issues. But its effectiveness is blunted if the topic is not also a natural and regular part of
instruction across the curriculum. (See Dan Wueste’s article in this issue for a perspective on training
faculty to deliver ethics across the curriculum.)

George Washington University’s Amitai Etzioni points out another reason for faculty reticence. “Many
business school professors choose to steer clear of teaching morality, pointing out with some justification,
that while it is relatively clear what economics dictate and even what the law dictates, what is ‘ethical’ is far
from obvious. What appears ethical to one person is not to another, they say, and what is ethical under
some conditions is not under others.”3

Etzioni’s observation underscores a second reason ethics often has a shaky place in the business
curriculum. The idea of “teaching morality” is off-putting to some and abhorrent to others. “The sleazeball
population is far less malleable than is assumed [by those who would teach morality]," declares Dan
Seligman in a Forbes article.4 Or, in the words of one CEO, “You can’t teach ethics to a grownup. If they
haven’t got it by then, it’s too late.”

Such observations reflect a common misunderstanding of ethics instruction. In fact, the primary purpose
of ethics education – whether in the university classroom or the corporate training center – is not to reshape
the moral character of “sleazeballs” (who should be rooted out of both places). Rather, it is concerned less
with teaching the difference between right and wrong, or good and evil, than with helping students learn to
resolve the conflict that frequently arises between competing “goods” (e.g., the good of making a sales goal
versus the good of dealing fairly with the customer). It also helps sensitize students to how easily things
can go wrong in business, even unintentionally. Perhaps most important, it conveys the message that there
are legitimate business considerations that go beyond that which is immediately measurable in dollars and
cents – considerations that often align with the personal values and aspirations shared by most business
people.

Professor Tom Donaldson at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania agrees that ethics
instruction cannot be a simple morality lesson. “Your mother didn’t teach you about of-balance-sheet
entities and how to grapple with them,” he notes.5
 Another common misperception – especially in business schools – is that ethics best taught by analyzing
dramatic case studies of business crises. Within months of Enron’s collapse, Harvard Business School
published a 61-page case study on the rise and fall of the company. The piece takes its place alongside
such cases as Johnson & Johnson’s Tylenol poisonings, Union Carbide’s Bhopal disaster, Ford Motor
Company’s exploding Pinto gas tanks, and Morton Thiocol’s leaky O-rings.

As entertaining and instructive as these studies may be, they offer few practical lessons for everyday
business life. Each is the story of an aberration, a spectacular problem unlike anything most students will
ever face on the job. Contrast this method with the ethics education provided by many corporations as they
school their employees in proper business practices and show them how to recognize and avoid pitfalls.
Such training tends to focus on down-to-earth concerns – more mundane perhaps than big case studies, but
eminently more valuable in building skills and the potential for future leadership.

Furthermore, we can only learn so much from the consequences of colossal failures anyway. Business
students need to see as many good examples as possible, success stories of what happens when people
make the right decisions and operate with the right values and priorities. The truth is that successes are far
more prevalent than failures, but by focusing so much on failures we run the risk of breeding cynicism and
a false belief that unethical activity is the norm in business.

Insufficient Market Demand

A third reason ethics gets short shrift in the curriculum may be that the employment market has not
demanded it. As one business dean recently remarked, “We focus on teaching quantitative skills, often to
the exclusion of everything else, because that is what companies say they are looking for, and we want our
graduates to be competitive in the marketplace.”

A BusinessWeek editorial called on businesses to do more to encourage ethics education: “Corporations

already wield tremendous influence at some B-schools, making big donations, sending managers to non-
degree classes, and sponsoring research. So how about funding a professorship in ethics? Companies
should also open their doors to faculty who want to study everyday corporate ethics.”6

At the Spring 2003 meeting of The Southern Institute’s Consortium on Business Ethics Education, three
business leaders (all of whom run multi-billion-dollar companies) spoke with university educators about the
need for a stronger emphasis on ethics in the curriculum. It was a first step in encouraging more
collaboration between business and the academy.

Another important constituency is also beginning to ask for more ethics education. A recent survey of
MBA students at a dozen top-tier universities found that one in five did not think they were receiving any
ethics training at all. The annual study by the Aspen institute also found that while most of these students
see a growing emphasis on ethics and values in the workplace, fewer than one-fourth said “a lot" was being
done to prepare them to deal with such challenges as mismanagement or fraud. One in five respondents did
not believe they were receiving any ethics training (similar to the findings of a new study by Duke
University). And roughly half of the MBA students surveyed by Aspen thought the teaching of MBA
programs – including the way ethics is taught – might actually have contributed to the recent corporate
scandals.7

Fortunately, there is strong evidence that all three of the barriers described above are beginning to break
down. There is pressure from within and without to reform ethics education. And there is much progress
being made by university faculty who are pioneering new approaches to driving ethics deep into the
business curriculum. The articles by Beheruz Sethna, William Sauser and Dan Wueste in this issue of
GoodBusiness demonstrate how this is happening in the Southeastern U.S.

Sources
1
Dan Seligman, "Oxymoron 101." Forbes, 28 October 2002, 160-64.
2
Amatai Etzioni, "When It Comes to Ethics, B-Schools Get an F." The Washington Post, 4 August 2002,
B4.
3
Ibid
4
Seligman, 160.
5
Jennifer Merrit, "For MBAs, Soul-Searching 101." BusinessWeek, 16 September 2002, 64-66.
6
"Ethics is Also B-School Business." BusinessWeek Online, 17 January 2003.
7 "Where Will They Lead: MBA Student Attitudes about Business and Society." Aspen Institute, May 2003

Return to Top of Article

Return to GoodBusiness Main Page

et’s Ask How, Not Whether Business Ethics Can Be Taught

By Daniel E. Wueste, Ph.D.

Director
The Robert J. Rutland Center for Ethics
Clemson University

Introduction

I take it that when we speak of “business ethics” what we have in mind is ethics in business, that is,
ethics in the context of business activity. What else could one be thinking of, you might ask. (An aside:
That most readers would ask this question is, to my mind, very encouraging.) Well, one might have in
mind a “special ethics.” That’s what Albert Z. Carr has in mind in writing about the “ethical standards of
the business game” which, he says, “are a far cry from those of private life.” Business people, he says,
need to sharply distinguish “between the ethics of the home and the ethics of the office.” After all, he
writes, “the golden rule, for all its value as an ideal for society, is simply not feasible as a guide for
business.” Like poker, Carr holds that business operates “with a special code of ethics.”

Poker’s own brand of ethics is different from the ethical ideals of civilized human relationships….No one
thinks any worse of poker on that account. And no one should think any worse of the game of business
because its standards of right and wrong differ from the prevailing traditions of morality in our society.

There is much to criticize in Carr’s thinking about business ethics. But the point I want to make here is
simple: his idea of business ethics is not what I have in mind now as I write nor when I teach a course
called business ethics. (This last may be regarded as full disclosure; I am not an entirely disinterested
contributor to the discussion.)

Can Business Ethics be Taught?

It is worth noting, I think, that most folks I have met who think the answer to this question is probably no
are in the academy rather than business. One reason for this, perhaps, is that practitioners—whose work is
in business rather than about it—know from experience that handling ethical challenges in business
requires knowledge and skill. In any case, at one level, we all know that ethics can be taught. After all,
although some people are not ethical, some are and the knowledge these people have about right and wrong
is not, as it were, factory equipment. Most faculty members who express doubt about the value of (or
likelihood of success in) teaching business ethics grant this point. In fact, it is the prompt for their next
claim: by the time students reach college they are completely formed ethically; there is no more ethics
teaching to do, all that can be done has been done. I always find this puzzling. We don’t think this is the
case in the areas of writing or oral communication, for example, and students have been doing these things
for quite some time when they arrive on campus. These teachers seem to think that, so far as ethics is
concerned, a student is like a cake; after so many minutes in the oven (years at mother’s knee) the cake is
done (the young person has learned all that he/she can or will about ethics). Any more time spent in the
oven is pointless—because the cake is done—or worse, it will ruin the cake. (I will return to the second
possibility in a moment.)

Pursuing the first idea, I am often told, usually quite firmly and often with an air of condescension, “You
can’t make them ethical.” My response is, “fair enough, but that’s not my task. My task is to teach them
how to be ethical; that is, how to handle ethically complex situations and make ethical decisions in a
systematic, reflective and responsible way.” Whether they do this is out of my hands. In this respect, I am
no different than, say, the engineering professor who teaches her students how to build good, solid bridges.
She does not and cannot guarantee that they will do this (i.e., make them builders of good, solid bridges);
whether they do build good, solid bridges is out of her hands. Moreover, if they should fail to build good,
solid bridges, not only her colleagues in engineering but faculty generally would not conclude that
engineering can’t be taught. (One might conclude that engineering could be taught better than it has been,
of course. But that is a different matter; it presupposes that engineering can be taught.)

Another analogy may be helpful. Many people were taught how to play the piano or some other musical
instrument during their schooling but do not play the instrument now. In most cases this is easily
explained: they have made a choice. They have chosen not to use what they know. They were taught how
to do something rather than programmed to do it. The difference between teaching and programming
entails the possibility that the learner will choose not to use what has been learned. Of course, there is
another possibility as well. On might choose to use one’s knowledge and thus become, for example, a
pianist. Analogously, one may choose to use what one knows about business ethics thereby making oneself
an ethical businessperson. So, again, it’s not the teacher’s task to make students ethical. The job of a
teacher of ethics—parent, member of the clergy, or faculty member, for example—is to equip students for
the lifelong project of achieving and maintaining ethical integrity. The rest is up to them. (There is another
point worth noting in this connection. Teaching, unlike programming, involves respect for an essential
element of humanity, namely, our capacity to choose, which is the basis of the responsibility we bear for
our choices and actions.)

I promised to return to the second point made earlier in relation to the idea that when they arrive on
campus college students are either ethically complete or they have been taught as much ethics as they can
be taught. The first point, discussed above, was that ethics teaching in college is pointless, because “the
cake is done” and anyway, you can’t make them ethical. The second point was that teaching ethics in
college is like additional time “in the oven” which is likely to “ruin the cake.” How so? Well, someone
like Albert Carr would say that unless we’re teaching the “special ethics” of the business game, we won’t
be preparing them for successful careers in business. Rather, we’ll be erecting roadblocks to their success,
perhaps even setting them up for lives of misery as we encourage them to feel guilty about doing things
that, for example, violate the golden rule but are perfectly okay according to “the ethical standards of the
business game.” This idea is pernicious. A commitment to ethical conduct in business isn’t a roadblock to
success. I’d wager, and I’m not a betting man, that drawing on their own experience, most readers can
identify many cases that confirm the point. But we don’t have to rest content with anecdotal evidence.
Recent work shows clearly that good ethics is good business. Collins and Porass’s 1994 book, Built to Last
comes quickly to mind. And a recent book by Grossman and Jennings, Building a Business Through Good
Times and Bad: Lessons from 15 Companies, Each with a Century of Dividends (2002) makes the point
nicely by directing attention to the strong commitment to values at each of these companies.

Good Ethics is Good Business, . . . No, Really

This is good news and it should be spread far and wide, for as long as the pernicious idea that the
opposite is true holds sway, teaching business ethics will be more difficult than it should be and less likely
to bear the fruit of ethical conduct. Why? Largely because it so easily gives rise to the manipulative
duplicity of a man like Jeffery Skilling, former president of Enron, who in a CD-ROM case study used at
the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business prior to the scandals that brought him and the
company down, said that people have no reason to worry when Enron is involved with a project: “[t]hey
know that it’s clean, absolutely clean, because Enron’s involved. That’s the way we do business.” You can
almost hear the groans from students who watch this post scandal. “Right,” they say under their breath,
“and I’m a monkey’s uncle.” The danger, of course, is that they will take it that the Skillings of business
have, as it were, given them the skinny on ethics in business; it’s just a smoke screen, part of a grand
deception in a game the main aim of which is twofold: make lots of money and don’t get caught doing your
mischief.

Teachers of applied ethics confront some challenges, for example, “the-who’s- to-say problem,” which is
manifest in the idea that there are no right answers in ethics or that every answer is as good as any other.
(The problem, a.k.a. relativism, rears its ugly head in other ways too). There are ways to effectively deal
with these challenges. However, these victories will come to nothing if the relationship between ethics and
genuine success in business remains more or less a secret. That is especially true if as Professor of
Management Richard R. Ellsworth suggests, the

idea that the most important goal of business is to maximize shareholder wealth has permeated the entire
curriculum of many business schools….That notion establishes a foundation that builds upon greed. It can
prompt people to put their own financial interests ahead of the general good.

What is called for in this connection, I believe, is action by people outside of the academy. Those whose
work is about business rather than in business need to hear that good ethics is good business from people
who know this is so from experience. They need to hear it from the people whose companies will be
recruiting their students to work for them. (I guarantee that this will be more effective than anything their
colleagues who teach business ethics say to them.) It is important that business faculty get this message,
because they are the ones best positioned to convey it (or its opposite) to students. The effectiveness of any
approach to teaching business ethics will be impaired if business students don’t get this message, or worse,
not having heard it, they infer that its opposite is true.

Teaching Applied Ethics

Professor Ellsworth is not alone in thinking there is a problem with what some call the “the bottom-line-
first ethos of b-schools.” In a letter to the business school accrediting agency, the Association to Advance
Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB International), for example, the Fellows of the Ethics Resource
Center in Washington D.C. worry that “financial performance is the ethos of required courses” for students
of business and opine that “for far too long a wide-ranging neglect of business ethics has been condoned in
schools of business.” They recommend a two part remedy: the AACSB should require business schools to
(i) include a separate course in business ethics in the curriculum of both undergraduate and MBA students
and (ii) provide evidence that that “positive attention” is given to ethics “in standard business courses.”
(As it happens, the AACSB did not make a separate course in business ethics a requirement in the
curriculum.)

As I noted earlier, I regularly teach a course in business ethics. It will come as no surprise, then, that I
think offering such a course and encouraging students to take it is a very good idea. What may be
surprising is that I do not share the belief of the ERC Fellows that business students should be required to
take a course in business ethics. Why not? Because, among other things, the problem that needs to be
addressed is not peculiar to business. Moreover, even supposing what is manifestly not the case, that taking
a course in business ethics is like being inoculated against wrongdoing, it’s far from clear that “inoculating”
all business majors is the most effective way to decrease the amount of ethical wrongdoing in business.
After all, a substantial number of the men and women in business today did not major in a business
discipline while in college. The weightier point, however, is the first one.

To be sure, scandals and ethical lapses occur in business. But they also occur in government, science,
and the church, for example. More important, given our concern with teaching, in the form of academic
dishonesty ethical lapses are widespread on college campuses. According to a 1999 survey conducted by
the founder of the Center for Academic Integrity, Professor Donald McCabe, more than 75 percent of
college students admit to some form of cheating. About one third of the 2,100 students surveyed admitted
to serious cheating on tests, and half admitted to one or more instances of serious cheating on written
assignments.

The problem isn’t isolated in one area of human endeavor. It is found across the board. Surely the
response to it at colleges and universities ought to be fashioned with this in mind. (Of course, the same can
be said of K-12 education.)

Ethics Across the Curriculum

Ethical issues arise across the curriculum—for example, in forestry, engineering, biology, history,
physics, nursing, chemistry, architecture, and, of course, business. Moreover, ethics is key in every
student’s academic work regardless of his or her major and it will be key in whatever career he or she
pursues after graduation as well. Thus, it is critical that students are taught how to make ethical decisions.
There are several reasons to believe that the best way of doing this is by teaching ethics across the
curriculum. First, at large universities it would be difficult, if not impossible, to staff an ethics course that
is required of all students. (Such a course would have to be small to allow for the sort of interaction and
discussion critical to effective ethics teaching.) Second, and more important, ethics in practice is not
compartmentalized and integrating ethics in regular courses throughout the curriculum effectively conveys
this point. Third, if ethics were truly integrated across the curriculum, the impact would be dramatic.
Members of the university community would see faculty in all disciplines modeling a systematic,
reflective, and responsible approach to serious and often controversial ethical problems. They would both
appreciate that there is an ethical dimension to every aspect of their lives and develop the critical skills
necessary to make informed ethical decisions. Fourth, students would be better positioned to understand
that integrity isn’t an achievement in the ordinary sense; that it’s not earned in a specific field, on a specific
date, and held from that point on, like a trophy or a diploma. Rather, integrity is both an achievement and
an ongoing project; it’s the project that cuts across all aspects of one’s life and lasts for as long as one lives.

Conclusion

Although faculty without formal training in ethics regularly encounter ethical issues in their teaching and
professional work, they are often unsure of exactly how to introduce ethical discussions into their classes
systematically and with real content. This presents an obvious challenge for an ethics across the curriculum
program because faculty members are called upon to integrate ethics into their regular classes by engaging
their students in discussion. I am happy to report that this challenge can be met. At Clemson University,
for example, the Rutland Center for Ethics offers annual Ethics Across the Curriculum seminars for faculty
in order to meet it. We have worked with faculty at other schools as well, for instance, Kennesaw State
University (Georgia) and four colleges in Spartanburg County, South Carolina: Wofford College, Converse
College, Spartanburg Methodist College, and the University of South Carolina—Spartanburg. (We have
also done summer institutes on ethics and service-learning for high school teachers, in 2002, and teacher
educators, in 2003.) Teaching teachers is very enjoyable. It’s also a very efficient means of dissemination.
So, while the challenge is quite real it is certainly not insurmountable. Provided, of course, that the will to
do it is present. Given the undeniable link between the will that is needed and the potential payoff, I think
the prospects for EAC are very good indeed.
Source Notes

Albert Carr presents his view about the “special ethics” of business in “Is Business Bluffing Ethical?”
published in the Harvard Business Review, vol. 46, January/February 1968. Reader response was heavy.
HBR published a report on reader reactions by Associate Editor Timothy Blodgett: “Showdown on
Business Bluffing,” May-June 1968. The quotation from Jeffrey Skilling (from his remarks in the CR-
ROM case study used at the Darden School) comes from an article by Katherine Mangan, “The Ethics of
Business Schools,” published in The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 20, 2002. The quotation
from Professor Ellsworth is taken from this article as well. Dr. John Knapp provided a copy of the letter of
the Fellows of the Ethics Resource Center to the AACSB to the members of the Southern Institute’s
Consortium on Business Ethics Education prior to its meeting on April 30, 2003. I am a member of this
group. Data and Information from Professor McCabe’s study on academic integrity were made available to
members of the Center for Academic Integrity. Clemson University is a member of CAI and I am one of
Clemson’s three representatives. A press account of the findings is available online:
DailyPennsylvanian.com. “Download. Steal. Copy. Cheating at the University.” By Mary Clarke-Pearson
November 27, 2001. http://www.dailypennsylvanian.com.

Dr. Wueste is a member of The Southern Institute for Business and Professional Ethics and a
participant in the Institute's Consortium on Business Ethics Education. The Rutland Center, which he
directs, serves as The Southern Institute's South Carolina office and implements programming
throughout the state on behalf of the Institute.