Dear Esteban,
There seems to be some confusion and cross-posting going on here. The
query you sent is posted on Mg-Ed-Dv. The post I sent titled
"Teaching ethics in business education -- what is our responsibility
?" went to BETS-L, Prof. Wankel's other list.
To clear things up, you asked,
"Your statement 'The note that Charles Wankel posted to the Business
Ethics list today...' may be referring to what I sent yesterday and
was posted by Charles today. Though you may also be referring to
something entirely different."
My post wasn't a response to your post on BETS-L. I responded to the
anonymous post that was sent to all AoM members using a spoofed Yahoo
account. Charles Wankel posted it to BETS-L as part of the current
debate that seems to have stirred up many issues among AoM members.
This was the post that most of us received under the header, "From:
AoM Concerned Members [mailto:
notaom@yahoo.com]"
This post began, "As the corporate scandal crisis continues to
unfold, every management professor and professional must ask: What
role should professors of management play in
developing/shaping/guiding the ethical mindset of our
students/institutions/alumni?"
Since my post has been referenced here on Mg-Ed-Dv, and since
everyone has already seen the post to which this refers, I will take
the liberty of copying below my post. Apologies to anyone bothered by
the cross-posting. It is interesting to note, however, that this does
intersect with teaching leadership, and some of the issues here bear
on the response I will later make to Bob Carr's thoughtful and
articulate reply to my earlier note.
Hope that clears up the confusion.
Best regards,
Ken Friedman
[Reposted to Mg-Ed-Dv from BETS-L]
Subject: Teaching ethics in business education -- what is our responsibility ?
Dear Colleagues,
The note that Charles Wankel posted to the Business Ethics list today
caught my eye for many reasons. One was the fact that it was
anonymous, the sign of a person who refuses to accept the ethical
responsibilities of standing for the position he or she presents. The
second was the fact that it was sent out as a spam using a false
account, another unethical behavior. The third was the fact this it
was sent out to the members of the Academy of Management using lists
acquired by unethical means.
Even so, I am going to respond to the content because this unethical
post presents some of the genuine issues that have been circulating
in the notes that have gone round these past few weeks.
The stream of strong - and often emotional - comments responding to
Michael Lissack's post on teaching ethics in business schools has
interested me and puzzled me in equal measure.
The emotional and intellectual strength of stated positions for and
against teaching ethics has been interesting. The fact that so few
commentators have discussed the long-standing foundation for ethical
study in professional schools is puzzling, along with the fact that
no one seems to have pointed to the ethical purpose of management
education.
It is true that we cannot be responsible for the behavior of adult
students. This is not the point of ethical inquiry in business
education.
Business schools are professional schools. We are obliged to
challenge our students to reflect on the ethical dimensions of their
behavior in professional life.
The argument that a business school curriculum has no necessary
ethical dimension overlooks the fact that business schools are now
located in universities or function as their equivalent. This
argument also overlooks the purpose for which business schools were
first established.
This purpose becomes clear when we examine the birth of universities,
the development pf professional education, and the reason for
planning the first business schools.
Universities have always had multiple goals. Training specialists,
and educating citizens are among the most important, along with
increasing and preserving knowledge.
The first universities were born around professional schools in
medieval Italy and France. These professional schools taught
medicine, law, and theology, along with fundamental administrative
management skills for the business of state and church that would be
practiced by legal and priestly graduates, clerks and clergy.
The purpose of each of the three professions was service to society.
The professions ministered to the social, physical, and spiritual
needs of human beings. However well or poorly any one physician,
lawyer, or priest fulfilled a professional role, the goals were
located within and bounded by the larger society to which all human
beings belong.
These professions had toward ethical dimensions as well as technical
dimensions. So did the trade and craft guilds in which master
standing defined the other major professions of medieval and early
modern society.
The claim of professional education is a claim of service to society.
It is bounded by the oath of service that each physician, lawyer, or
priest takes on entering office, and it stands for the highest
professional ideals of humanity.
The oldest extant professional oath is the Hippocratic oath.
Physicians half a millennium before Christ was born first swore it.
It is still sworn by everyone who practices the medical arts today.
This professional oath is ethical, and every physician is obliged to
understand his or her work in the ethical terms that give meaning to
the skills and techniques of healing. Lawyers and priests swear an
oath, as well. So, too, do specialized professionals such as military
officers who swear an oath of service on leaving the academies. In
medieval society, guild members swore and oath on entry to the guild,
on promotion to journeyman status, and finally on rising to master
status that distinguished the professional or executive level of
guild membership from worker roles. All of these were declarations of
ethical obligation and a promise to meet the ethical responsibilities
of the profession.
A new kind of professional school was born in the 1870s. Robert E.
Lee planned the first business school in the late 1860s as president
of what is now Washington and Lee University. Mr. Lee, best known to
history as a general in the American Civil War, spent the last five
years of his life as a college president. Unlike the other great
generals on both sides of the war, Lee declined lucrative offers to
enter business life. While Lee's name was as valuable as that of his
great opponent, Ulysses S. Grant, Lee's life after the war involve
neither politics nor business. His goal was to build an enduring
peace by rebuilding the severely damaged Southern economy and
society. His means was education, and to this end, he accepted the
presidency of what was then Washington College.
In developing the college, Lee planned a school of commerce as a
keystone of his civilian strategy. This was the first plan ever
developed for a college or university business school. While Lee's
death in 1870 meant that Wharton would become the first business
school to be established, Lee's school was the second to be
established. The purpose - the major purpose - of this business
school was ethical in nature. Business was the means, not the end.
Ethics has been interwoven with every aspect of professional
education since the first professional schools were established in
the great river civilizations of China, Egypt, and Sumeria. These
were schools of administration and not business administration. The
point is nevertheless the same. For five millennia, professionals
have defined their role and standing in society in part by their
relationship to society, and that relationship entails ethical
obligations.
Without arguing for a specific normative ethics, I argue that
business education necessarily involves considering and reflecting on
ethics. More than this, I argue that some aspect of ethics is
involved in most of the courses we teach other than purely technical
courses.
There are two approaches to teaching business ethics. One is the
study of business ethics as a subject field. This important field
involves inquiry by professional ethicists, philosophers, ethics
researchers, and their students. This is one among the specialized
management disciplines. This is not my field, and my argument for the
importance of ethics in business education is not based on the
importance of ethics as a subject field.
My field involves preparing adult students to work as leaders of
other human beings. Since leadership by definition involves working
with groups of human beings to reach goals, every leadership decision
affects human beings. Every leadership decision therefore has an
ethical dimension.
Across the business school, we teach subjects that have ethical
dimensions. In accounting, finance, human resources, corporate
governance, organization theory, corporate relations, and a dozen
more fields we ask questions to which we seek answers. The answers
are hopefully good policy choices and good strategy choices.
Herbert Simon classified management as one of the design sciences.
For him, design sciences were fields in which we "[devise] courses of
action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones."
This covers most fields of policy studies and administrative studies,
and it covers nearly everything we teach and study in business and
management.
While many of the means we use to change existing situations into
preferred ones are technical, the choice of a preferred situation
nearly always has ethical dimensions. Is it best to close a factory?
Shall we award stock options to the senior executives? What is the
most prudent choice for a pension plan? Should we have a pension plan
at all? To whom should a certain class of benefit be extended? Shall
we manufacture a specific product? If we are the only manufacturer of
a specific product that is vital to a small market, should we
continue to produce it for a small profit or should we allocate
resources to other products that we hope will be more profitable?
Such issues as externalities, monopolies, oligopolies, and
transparency always imply ethical dimensions. Whatever the choices we
make, when we choose between preferential alternatives, we make
ethical choices.
My point is that we should recognize that these choices exist. The
argument for a free market is in part based on an ethical foundation.
The notion that the efficient allocation of resources is a social
good preferable to allocating resources under state control is partly
an ethical and political argument. The concept of management itself
is an ethical argument, resting as it does on fiduciary
responsibility.
Consider the issue of fiduciary responsibility in relation to the
managerial ethics of stock options. Many argue that profit is the
primary goal of a company. Few argue that the profit on corporate
resources should accrue to managers rather than to shareholders. The
argument for options and managerial equity is - in theory - an
argument that allies the manager's interest to the shareholder's
interest. This is an ethical argument that is based on a theory of
shareholder benefit. Any policy choice that involves the manager's
responsibilities to shareholders has ethical dimensions.
Where business and work in intersect with the larger social context,
ethics comes in.
Some issues involve greater ethical questions, and some are less
important. Few of us study ethics in a professional sense, and I see
no reason that more should.
I simply state that we should be alert to the fact that ethical
choices are implicit in much of what we teach. Ethical issues should
be addressed whenever appropriate in whatever subject course they
occur. Drawing attention to ethics may take five minutes here, an
hour there, a passing comment on another day. We owe it to our
students to bring out the ethical dimensions of the subjects we
address.
One of the comments I read suggested that ethics is a matter for law
schools rather than business schools. This does not seem entirely
appropriate. Violations of law are matters for law schools. Learning
to appreciative and understand the ethics of our professional is a
matter for business schools. If we were better at it, there would be
fewer violations of law.
There will always be crime and greed, and there will always be
executives and managers who lack the appropriate understanding and
reflection that give rise to ethical behavior. Even those who do
reflect on ethics and strive skillfully to make wise choices
sometimes make the wrong choice. Nevertheless, in this imperfect
world, one of the best ways to move toward ethics in professional
life is to reflect on ethical issues at appropriate times.
We cannot take responsibility for the behavior of our adult students.
We can take responsibility for introducing them to the ethical
dimensions of the decisions they will make.
Best regards,
--
Ken Friedman, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design
Department of Leadership and Organization
Norwegian School of Management
Visiting Professor
Advanced Research Institute
School of Art and Design
Staffordshire University