Can you teach ethics to students?
Financial Times
THE PROBLEM:
Last week Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan, said: "I don't believe that ethics can be taught in class." He was speaking after the arrest of Raj Rajaratnam, the head of hedge fund Galleon Group, and two other alumni of his MBA class at Wharton. Have business schools paid enough attention to ethical questions? Or are ethics a personal matter?
THE ADVICE: THE ETHICS PROFESSOR
James O'Toole
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. more>
