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The One Necessary Condition for a Successful Business Ethics Course: The Teacher Must be a Philosopher

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

E. R. Klein
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Abstract:

The responses to the questions of why? when?, how?, where?, and in what ways? business ethics should be taught in the Business Ethics classroom inundate the scholarly literature. Yet, to date, despite some very interesting ideas, with respect to the answers given to the above question, not only has nothing even close to consensus been reached, but this particular area of pedagogy is in stagnation—authors still challenge both the very idea of teaching business ethics as well as the practical value of such courses for our students once they graduate to the corporate world.

In this paper I will suggest that the reason for this lack of pedagogical progress is that there has been a serious oversight regarding the most important teaching question of all: Who? I will show that the pedagogical issue of whom should be teaching Business Ethics has been largely ignored, skirted or answered incorrectly. I will then boldly argue that the only necessary condition for successful courses in Business Ethics is that they be taught by experts in ethics, i.e., Ph.D.s in philosophy.

Type
Articles
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , July 1998 , pp. 561 - 574
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 1998

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References

Notes

1 Not only is there not consensus there is actual contradiction. I found it very interesting, for example, that in two different articles in the same volume of this journal, one gives the hackneyed caricature of business ethics being too theoretical, that is, spending too much time discussing “issues such as legitimacy, agency, capitalism vs. socialism, etc.” and not enough on “the practice of business decision making.” (George L. Pamental, “The Course in Business Ethics: Why Don’t Philosophers Give Students What They Need?,” Business Ethics Quarterly, Vol.1:4, pp. 385–393, p.390), while another argued that what a course in business ethics should be focused on is theory—the “collection of beliefs and values that underlie the capitalist paradigm today,” (Art Wolf, “Reflections on Business Ethics: What it is? What Causes it? And, What Should a Course in Business Ethics Include?,” Business Ethics Quarterly, Vol.1:4, pp. 409–439.)

2 Plato, The Republic (471c-474b).

3 ”King” is being used here as a sex/gender neutral term.

4 Some specialties are in normative ethical theories themselves, some in metaethical assumptions and theories, but many philosophy Ph.D.s are now specializing in different areas of practical ethics, e.g., environmental ethics, medical ethics, and business ethics.

5 The statistics for the number of institutions that offer courses in business ethics ranges between 46.8% and 48.9% depending on the investigation. (Pamental, p. 384.)

6 See my, “Should Faculty Salaries Reflect Market Factors? No!,” NEA Bulletin, November, 1994, p. 5.

7 Nor is there any reason to believe that in the obscenely glutted market of professional philosophy (where there are nearly 200 applicants for every one-year position) that business schools could not find a qualified philosopher.

8 L.F. Schoenfeldt, D.M. McDonald and S.A. Youngblood, “The Teaching of Business Ethics: A Survey of AACSB Member Schools,” Journal of Business Ethics 10(3), pp. 237–241, p. 238.

9 Schoenfeldt, McDonald and Youngblood, p. 238.

10 If there is any connection between pedagogy and scholarship (especially with respect to pedagogical scholarship), then Barry Castro’s discovery that “Philosophic training seems to matter. Business affiliation seems to help. Exclusively business training and affiliation seems to hurt,” (Barry Castro, “Business Ethics: Some Observations on the Relationship Between Training, Affiliation, and Disciplinary Drift,” Journal of Business Ethics 14, 1995, pp. 781–786, p. 784), should be taken seriously.)

11 Michael Slote, “Moral Judgments,” in Ted Honderich, ed., The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, New York: Oxford University Press, 1995, p. 591.

12 Richard T. De George, “There is Ethics in Business Ethics; But There’s More As Well,” Journal of Business Ethics 8, pp. 337- 339, 1989.

13 De George, p. 337.

14 Dietrich L. Schaupp and Michael S. Lane, “Teaching Business Ethics: Bringing Reality to the Classroom,” Journal of Business Ethics, 11, pp. 225–229, 1992, p. 225.

15 De George, p. 338.

16 De George, p. 338.

17 De George, p. 339.

18 It has been claimed that “business ethics professors should have three qualities. The first is that as thinking, humane individuals they should feel the rumble underneath the facade created by business professionals that our capitalist society is the greatest....A second quality that would be desirable is experience that somehow distances the person from the capitalist paradigm....Another quality is an abiding interest in human expression that is beyond the capitalist paradigm and focused on the process of individuation itself,” (Wolfe, pp. 409–439.) Such fundamental moves are not only part of our Ph.D. training, they are standard fare in philosophy classrooms.

19 APPE, St. Louis February 29-March 2, 1996.

20 Debbie Thorne, “Using Behavioral Simulations to Teach Business Ethics,” APPE, St. Louis, February 29-March 2, 1996.

21 At the APA Eastern Division meeting in New York, December 28th, 29th and 30th, 1995, I attended a session on “Issues in the Profession.” When concerns about the sanctioning of anyone as an “ethics expert” (primarily with respect to business and medical ethics) were raised, they were ignored by most of the APA’s officers that were present. It seems that the APA’s “official” stance is that the APA is a “learned society” as opposed to a “professional society.” (As an aside, this seems incredibly hypocritical to me in the light of the “meat market” ambiance exhibited in the placement and interview rooms, the cutthroat attitude professors, professional teachers, have about their jobs and perks, etc.) The practical outcome of this hubris, however, is that while anyone who is no one in particular is being hired as an ethics officer in a major corporation, bioethics consultant to a hospital, or even professor of business ethics at our own academic institutions, Ph.D.s in philosophy, in the name of scholarly hubris, are being shunned by their own association for even bringing up the issues about such devaluation.

22 A young woman philosopher raised this criticism to me when I tried to help another philosopher argue that this behavioral account of manipulation missed the point of teaching business ethics, adding that this is one of the reasons that business ethics should be taught by philosophers.

23 At my own campus the most senior philosopher never bothered to suggest to the School of Business that a philosopher teach business ethics. When I was brought on board and, later (around Spring 1993), offered this suggestion to my subdepartment, much to my dismay I discovered that neither of the other two philosophers saw the importance of philosophical expertise and thought it just fine that business ethics be taught by a management professor or anyone else who wanted to teach it.

24 Ronald F. Duska, “What’s the Point of a Business Ethics Course?,” Business Ethics Quarterly, Vol 1, Issue 4, 1991, pp. 335–354, p. 347.

25 Duska, pp. 348–349.

26 Some interesting work has been done on the notion of expertise, even philosophical expertise. See, e.g., John Hardwig, “Toward an Ethics of Expertise,” in Daniel E. Wueste, ed., Professional Ethics and Social Responsibility, Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 1994, pp. 83–102; Jenneth Parker, “Moral philosophy—another ‘disabling profession?’” in Ruth F. Chadwick, ed., Ethics and the Professions, Brookfield, USA: Avebury, 1994, pp. 27–41.

27 See, for example the work of Marios I. Katsioloudes and Jack M. Kendree, “An Organizational Model of Ethical Problem Recognition and Formulation,” Business & Professional Ethics Journal, Vol. 13, No. 4, pp. 81–93.

28 Joseph L. Badaracco, Jr. and Allen P. Webb, “Business Ethics: A View From the Trenches,” California Management Review, Vol. 37, No. 2, Winter, 1995, pp. 8–28, pp. 18–20.

29 Both idealized and actual cases can be found in business ethics texts. In addition, for really contemporary example, one can look to the Wall Street Journal (See Susan G. Rozensher and P. Everett Fergensen, “Business Faculty Perspectives on Ethics: A National Survey,” Business Horizons, July-August, 1994, pp. 61–67.) And I have suggested taking practical training one step further. What I have done in the past is to bring students into area businesses where they can work with management and employees answering grievances, establishing codes of ethics, help ethics officers with the decision making process, etc. (See my “From Classroom to Boardroom: Teaching Practical Ethics Outside the Academe,” Teaching Philosophy, 16:2, 1993, pp. 123–130.)

30 V.K. Strong and A.N. Hoffman, “There is Relevance in the Classroom: Analysis of Present Methods of Teaching Business Ethics,” Journal of Business Ethics, 9, 1990, p. 603.

31 Joseph W. Weiss, Business Ethics: A Managerial, Stakeholder Approach, Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1994.

32 Scott H. Partridge, Cases in Business and Society, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1989; John E. Richardson, ed., Business Ethics 95/96, Guilford, CT.: Dushkin Publishing Group, 1995.

33 A similar criticism has been independently developed by Stephen Cohen in “Who Are the Stakeholders? What Difference Does It Make?,” paper presented at the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics, February 29-March 2, 1996.

34 These problems, of course, sparked deep philosophical discussion about, among other things, personhood and the metaethical problem of the epistemological grounding of value claims.

35 Of course there are always exceptions to any rule. First, not all professional philosophers are good teachers, and secondly some teachers from other disciplines are well trained in philosophy. But as is the case with all “exceptions” such cases are rare.

36 Gael M. McDonald and Gabriel D. Donleavy, “Objections to the Teaching of Business Ethics,” Journal of Business Ethics, 14, pp. 839–853, 1995.

37 Joseph Solberg, Kelly C. Strong, Charles McGuire Jr., “Living (Not Learning) Ethics,” Journal of Business Ethics, 14, pp. 71–81, 1995.

38 McDonald and Donleavy, p. 839.

39 Solberg, Strong, McGuire Jr., pp. 71–81, p. 73.

40 McDonald and Donleavy, p. 839.

41 Solberg, Strong, McGuire Jr., p. 80.

42 McDonald and Donleavy, pp. 846–847.

43 K. Andrews: 1989, “Ethics in Practice,” Harvard Business Review, 67(5), 99–104; C.W. Powers and D. Vogel: 1980, “Ethics in the Education of Business Managers. Institute of Society, Ethics and the Life Science,” Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y. Cited in Pamental, G.L.: 1989, “The Course in Business Ethics: Can it Work?” Journal of Business Ethics 8, 547–551; B. H. McCoy: 1983, “Apply the Art of Action—Orientated Decision Making to the Knotty Issues of Everyday Business Life,” Management Review, July, 20–24.

44 McDonald and Donleavy, p. 846.

45 I believe that, to date, my article documenting having taken students into active area businesses in which they can work with management and employees to, e.g., establish (or update) actual codes of ethics, is the only piece in the journals with such an approach. Are the members of the ABC simply ignoring the work of philosophers, or published in philosophy journals? Certainly this kind of innovative approach is by no means theoretical. In one of McDonald and Donleavy’s “recommendations” there is a call for “innovative means of teaching ethics,” (McDonald and Donleavy, pp. 849–850), in which my work (“From Classroom to Boardroom: Teaching Practical Ethics Outside the Academy,” Teaching Philosophy, 16:2, pp. 123–131, 1993) was simply overlooked or ignored.

46 Robert Landenson, a philosopher, has invented “Ethics Bowl,” in which students compete with each other for judged points with respect to their responses to actual ethical cases from the business and academic communities. I first met him and saw this demonstrated at the APPE meeting in St Louis, February 29-March 2, 1996.

47 McDonald and Donleavy, p. 847.

48 McDonald and Donleavy, p. 847.

49 McDonald and Donleavy, p. 848.

50 McDonald and Donleavy, p. 848.

51 McDonald and Donleavy, p. 849.

52 Ellen R. Klein, “From Classroom to Boardroom: Teaching Practical Ethics Outside the Academy,” Teaching Philosophy, 16:2, pp. 123–131, 1993, p. 128.

53 Whether they use contrived cases, actual cases, The Wall Street Journal, simulations and role playing, or actually go into the boardroom will depend on the particular styles of each philosopher, but no one does only theory. To believe so is to caricature philosophy and philosophers. Members of the ABC are not fooling anyone but themselves.

54 Solberg, Strong, McGuire Jr., p. 76.

55 Solberg, Strong, McGuire Jr., p. 77.

56 Solberg, Strong, McGuire Jr., p. 80.

57 As I have said above, there are approximately 200 applicants for every one-year position in philosophy. Tenure-track jobs bring in an even larger pool. Certainly, if the ABC opened its doors to Ph.D.s in philosophy—offer jobs specifically in business ethics—they could easily fulfill their pedagogical duty to this important part of the business curriculum.

58 Plato, The Republic (487b–489e).

59 For anyone skeptical of a philosopher’s commitment to business per se, see Tibor R. Machan, “Teaching Business Ethics in and Academic Environment of Mistrust,” The Mid-Atlantic Journal of Business, Vol. 27, No. 1, March 1991, pp. 59–65, where he argues against the “denigration of the profession of business,” p. 59 in the business ethics classroom.