MessageMany many years ago I was in the final year of my B.Com degree at UBC. One of the courses we had to take was a policy course given by the Dean of the Faculty of Commerce, E.D. McPhee, a very wise man. It consisted largely of a discussion of the values and ethics that one should take into the business world. At the time, I felt it was very useful. Whether it did any good or not I can't say. I tried to be ethical when I worked in government, in the Calgary oil patch, and as a consultant. How my fifty or so fellow graduates behaved is something I don't know. The very few that I maintained some contact with were essentially good, ethical people. But whatever any of us did, it's all over now. We're all in our late seventies.
Ed ----- Original Message ----- From: Michael Gurstein To: [email protected] Sent: Sunday, November 01, 2009 12:30 PM Subject: [Futurework] FW: [BETS-L] "challenge for business schools is todevelop a group of people who are self-governing and capableof critical thinking" -----Original Message----- From: Business Ethics Teaching Space [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Charles Wankel Sent: Sunday, November 01, 2009 5:21 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [BETS-L] "challenge for business schools is to develop a group of people who are self-governing and capable of critical thinking" From: The Financial Times http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f8039982-c362-11de-8eca-00144feab49a.html Is it possible to teach ethics to business school students? (October 28 2009) .[EXCERPTED]. Have business schools paid enough attention to ethical questions? Or are ethics a personal matter? THE ADVICE THE ACADEMIC: Rakesh Khurana (HBS) [EXCEPT] .ethical content of their syllabus. .. .being ethical is consequential - in other words, it pays off. The trouble is there is little empirical evidence to prove this is true. .focus on virtue, building an ethical framework based on personal character and values. But the context in business will always vary, and the temptation for students will be to rationalise their individual behaviour. .The "deontological" approach, which looks at abstract concepts such as justice and duty. But these are ideas more usually associated with dos and don'ts, and cannot easily deal with complexity and ambiguity. The real danger with business education ethics are the "hidden" ethics embedded in the curriculum, which too often lead to a narrow and mechanistic world view. Students often arrive with a broad view of business but leave thinking mainly about maximising shareholder value. They are socially intelligent and skilled. If you introduce ethics classes they often know the "right" answer. The challenge for business schools is to develop a group of people who are self-governing and capable of critical thinking. The only alternative may be a highly regulated environment. THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE: Kai Peters (Ashridge B-school) Can ethics be taught? Yes it can, and yes it should. The whole purpose of education is to help individuals develop their judgment. Judgment is about making decisions among choices and ethics, at the basis level, is about making choices. Some of these choices are easier than others but few choices are easy. Most are complex. Is one Aristotelian, and a judge of a person's inherent character, or does one favour Locke evoking absolute, natural rights? Is one an egoist to maximise individual good, a hedonist seeking to maximise general pleasure, or a utilitarian who calculates the greatest happiness for the greatest number? Managers make decisions that affect many others in their own organisations, and in many countries around the world. There is no simple basis on which these decisions are based, nor is there one specific set of rules on which everyone can agree. It is only through dialogue that business schools can help students think these issues through. A discussion of ethics will never make the seven sins disappear. What teaching ethics can do is to make as many people as possible make as thoughtful decisions as possible. [EXCERPTED] THE DEAN: Roger Martin (Rotman/Toronto) Anything we know can be taught, but nothing can be learned without desire. Therein lays the business school dilemma. The academic world knows plenty about ethics and it is eminently teachable in a business class or any other class - as teachable as finance or strategy. But the magnitude of habit change following any course will be a function of the desire to learn and to integrate that learning into subsequent actions. I believe that to enhance this desire relative to ethics, the greatest leverage for business schools lays in altering the fundamental premise underlying important MBA courses. As long as we teach that human beings are rational, profit-maximizing creatures, we will send students the message that personal profit-maximization is a perfectly legitimate life goal. And for some students pursuit of that goal will extend to crossing ethical boundaries if they can get away with it. Instead, the underlying premise of our courses must be that our world would be a very miserable place if we didn't have important socially-constructed laws, regulations and norms that constrain and guide our behaviour. And as a graduate, their job isn't personal profit-maximization but rather contribution to that indispensible civil foundation through their business career. [EXCERPTED] THE ETHICS PROFESSOR: James O'Toole (Denver U.) Ethics certainly can be taught - most business schools offer such courses - but the real question is: "Can ethical behaviour be learned in the classroom?" Alas, the track record of required ethics courses is abysmal: most students see such classes as routine obstacles they must overcome - or painful rites de passage they must endure - on the road to earning their MBA degrees; hence, they fail to engage seriously with the material. This is particularly true when courses are taught by professors who lack business experience. Yet, when discipline-based professors integrate ethical considerations into their courses, experience suggests students come to view ethical questions as necessary and integral components of effective decision-making. Thus, when ethics is taught in almost every course as part and parcel of good business practice, students may learn to become virtuous professionals. The problem is that too few business professors see examining the ethical implications of their disciplines as part of their job, or are comfortable dealing with the broader, long-term, and indirect consequences of applying the narrow techniques they teach. [EXCERPTED] !DSPAM:2676,4aed8da825621334614622! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
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