Panel 3: Successful Programs for Teaching Business Ethics Thursday, July 22, 1:15pm Linda Ferrell (intro) Anthony Buono Brian Burton Peggy Cunningham John Fraedrich Peggy Cunningham: (See also slides in conference notebook.) Defining successful business ethics programs can be very intimidating: What do we mean by success? Are we doing the right thing in business schools? Reputation and integrity are very important, and people are very aware. The goals that define success of a business ethics program differ (see slides). We need to have more than a few standalone or integrated courses. Ethics must be experienced on a variety of fronts, including student initiatives, community outreach, etc. Also, you are expected to walk the walk as the program leader, and a lot of attention may be on you. You need to define what you are trying to accomplish. Are you trying to just meet AACSB standards, or are you trying to teach students how to be ethical people? An ethics program is very much like a strategy plan: it starts from the top and then develops other aspects. Queens started with a standalone ethics class a number of years ago, and had a philosophy professor teach it. It was a disaster because it focused too much on what was wrong with business. Over time several standalone programs evolved, and then it evolved into an integrated program with many community outreach activities. Now over 50% of our faculty do research in ethics. This has been an evolutionary process, so when starting a program, remember that it takes a long time. Our business advisory board was instrumental in starting the program. Businesses were appalled that we were graduating MBAs who had no sense of right or wrong. We also had a “product champion” (me). Our student driven initiatives have pushed faculty to provide better ethics education. There are factors slowing integration of ethics. The primary factor that makes it difficult to teach business ethics is what our colleagues do – by the time they get to ethics, students are often convinced that they should only focus on the bottom line.
Anthony Buono: We do have required ethics components in our undergraduate and MBA programs, but not in all of our masters’ programs. There is a concentration in the MBA program that has to do with ethics and management. We also have the Raytheon CEO series, where
each semester a CEO comes to talk about the importance of ethics. Our business ethics gadfly workshop teaches faculty to be more effective in integrating ethics into their courses. There is also a Verizon business ethics professorship, and other faculty workshops. Another important component is providing a sufficient infrastructure so ethics is really part of the institution’s culture. Our Center for Business Ethics was established in 1976. We also have the Bentley Alliance for Ethics and Social Responsibility, which is only about 2 years old. Bentley is unique because we are a standalone private business college. We are relatively small for a college, but pretty large for a business school. Typically a required course has 22 to 25 sections per semester, and it is hard to maintain uniformity between sections. There are 260 faculty, who are evenly split between business and art/sciences. The ethics initiative at Bentley was started by a philosopher. Our gadfly program started in 1988. For a semester, the founder audited some classes, then during the next semester worked with faculty in developing ethical content. In 1991 we officially launched the business ethics workshop. This workshop allows faculty to develop ethical content, and has been recently expanded to arts and sciences. We have had at least a core group in each department take on establishing ethics as part of their curriculum. This workshop is an excellent mechanism for infusing ethics throughout the curriculum. In May 2004, we brought in 8 faculty from outside colleges (international) to take the workshop. Bentley also has a service learning center, a cyberlaw center, an institute for women in leadership, and the Cronin International Center. All of these have a strong focus on ethics and responsibility issues. None of these centers were coordinated until they were brought together under the Bentley Alliance for ethics and soc responsibility. Bentley also created an academic integrity system to imbed the sense of commitment to ethics into the whole college, because students who cheat in school are likely to cheat as business professionals.
Brian Burton: Western Washington University’s College of Business and Economics is about 25 years old. It started with the idea that ethics was a core portion of the curriculum, and there has been a required standalone course in many programs from the beginning. Faculty in many different departments are involved in teaching ethics. We also team teach ethics and corporate social responsibility courses at the MBA level. Our standalone undergraduate ethics class is a 400 level class – maybe we need to rethink the placement of this class? When should it occur? There are pressures from AACSB, including assurance of learning pressures. We need to graduate students who know something about ethics, and we have to evaluate student
learning outcomes. Our faculty do have a lack of knowledge about certain fundamental things relating to ethics. There are resource constraints, and we already have a large credit-hour requirement for the major. So how do we get there within these restraints? Our approach was to help the faculty directly, and therefore help students indirectly. We went with the ethics gadfly approach used at Bentley. Western Washington does not have a center for ethics, but we do have a center for excellence in management education. The center director is a strong supporter of faculty initiatives, and the center also has an advisory board composed of local business representatives from the Puget Sound area. The workshop focused on ethical decision making and ethical theory. The faculty said that after the workshop they had a better understanding of models to use in incorporating ethics into their courses. We also have interest in sustainability issues and issues related to diversity, and will probably have another workshop next year covering these topics. In the process we’ve gone through in thinking about covering more ethical issues, several things were important: Institutional support: Your organization needs to support your initiative and provide resources. Faculty interest needs to be cultivated. People won’t necessarily fall all over themselves trying to get involved in the program. Development of knowledge is necessary: People need to get an understanding of what ethics is all about, beyond having done some reading on their own. People want knowledge that they can bring into the classroom. Success is possible! It can be done: We can get people enthused about teaching ethics!
John Fraedrich: Southern Illinois University does not have a very good ethics program because they don’t have a lot of resources. Also, we have an uphill battle because most professors don’t like to change. Business ethics has become a global issue; ultimately, ethics is the glue that holds everything together. There are certain things in business ethics that philosophers may disagree with: for instance, that man has agency, and man is essentially good. Man can be changed by his environment, and man can be taught ethics. However, if you do the right thing you can be punished, and sometimes people do bad things and are not caught. The bottom line is not the ultimate good; we know from empirical research that a lot of philosophies out there no one really believes or uses. We also need to sensitize students in many different ways. Personal values are very important, and students need to understand their own personal values. However, we cannot really change their personal values. We need to teach students about corporate culture, that good people make bad choices because of opportunity, societal and legal concepts in the US and abroad, and about global issues. What should we cover? Are students really learning, and what are they learning? We need to test the measures we have for our students, both empirically and subjectively. Ethics is a very multidisciplinary topic.
The business reality game available at http://www.b-reality.com takes the student out of the classroom and sucks them into an alternative reality. This game gives them the opportunity to practice ethical decision making. Students at the end of this simulation are very, very scared about business! They don’t understand necessarily what they are making decisions about, but you want them to make mistakes while they are in school, not when they are out in the real world
Linda Ferrell: AACSB’s Ethics Education Resource Center can be found online at http://www.aacsb.edu/eerc/. This website is still growing, and is very much a work-inprogress. This website includes links to cases and exercises, reading lists, and examples of noteworthy programs. Descriptions of ethics initiatives at Kansas State University and Duquesne University are also included. Many ethics education programs that are noteworthy have additional programs or activities outside of courses, for instance, a speaker series, etc. It is also a good idea to have a code of ethical behavior/conduct for students to sign off on.
Q&A period: Eugene Heath: I got the impression that people believe that ethics can be taught – what is it that can be taught, and how does it relate to human motivation? Also, I think it is a nonsequitor that because man has agency he is inherently good. John Fraedrich: What’s being taught is that the students will be more aware of moral philosophies and value structures (we can use pre/post test to measure this). We help them understand the concept of opportunity and how it affects behavior, and teach them about good and bad corporate cultures. There does seem to be agreement on core values between the seven major religions, which means that there is an absolute. Milton Friedman believes the key stakeholder is the shareholder and the most important goal is to maximize shareholder wealth. However, Adam Smith talked about enlightened capitalism, where businesses help society and serve people and make a profit. Peggy Cunningham: You must have ethics integrated throughout your entire business school in addition to teaching frameworks in order to really teach ethics to students. All of these components lead to student internalization of ethics. Brian Burton: Two things can be accomplished by an ethics course: lessening people’s comfort with rationalization of their behavior, and letting them know that moral truth exists, to as great an extent of an ontological truth (like this table in front of me exists). There is a concept called moral truth that exists. Harry Hollis: Should there be college of business student codes of conduct in addition to university-wide codes of conduct? Linda Ferrell: One shouldn’t preclude the other, but if the university-wide code doesn’t fit your business school, maybe you need another one especially for the business college.
Dan Tinkelman: What are the attributes of successful codes of conduct for nontraditional students? Peggy Cunningham: We built ethical codes of conduct into regulations. Students can be expelled from the program for violations, and we make it really clear what is considered inappropriate. Pam Smith: What is the difference between business ethics and just ethics? John Fraedrich: It’s corporate culture . . . you have individual ethics, societal ethics, global ethics, etc. Business ethics is the relationship between a person’s individual value structure and the corporate code of conduct or value structure. Business is not a game, but it has rules – society has rules, and the corporation has rules. Linda Ferrell: Business ethics is acceptable or unacceptable behavior within an organization, and how much ethics are incorporated into a particular company. Peggy Cunningham: Individuals are subjected to different pressures within a company than they are individually, and they need to be taught about these different pressures. Anthony Buono: So much of what we do in life is role based. People tend to divorce what they would do individually from what they do in a business setting as an officer of a company. Brian Burton: Applied ethics in general is ethics in a context – we need to teach how to make ethical decisions in this context. Paul Govekar: When we talk about business ethics, most of the textbooks and speakers are referring to corporations. Most of my students work for small businesses and nonprofits. Are we focusing too much on corporations and not enough on the business environment in general? Linda Ferrell: The scope may change, but the way ethics is operationalized doesn’t really change. Speaker: Do you seek student input on your student code of ethics? Also, are nonbusiness faculty involved in the ethics gadfly program? Linda Ferrell: It’s a good idea to include students in developing a student code, because it could increase buy-in. Anthony Buono: Our new academic integrity policy had lots of student input. You have to involve them to get student buy-in. Our gadfly program was concentrated on business faculty when it first started, but has recently been expanded to include arts and sciences faculty. We need to have a diversity of departments represented to create good discussions. Brian Burton: We intentionally brought in people from outside the college of business. We wanted to insure that dialogue would take place “across the divide” between the college of business and other departments across campus. Gail Porter: How much have adjunct faculty been included in ethics initiatives? Brian Burton: We have involved one adjunct faculty member, and would like to include more. They need this training also.
Anthony Buono: Very good point - at Bentley they do bring long term adjuncts in when there is an opening, although full time faculty are given a priority. I don’t think we do a good enough job in this area, so I think this is a very good point. We abuse adjunct faculty and need to treat them like the professionals they are. Richard McGowan: Does anyone have any data on the defining issues test? John Fraedrich: Yes, I did a study that is in progress where I took approximately 300 students in various business disciplines and gave them pre/post DIT and put in Boyce and Jensen’s MDT, and terminal and instrumental values test. I found that the DIT measures did not really increase significantly as a whole. However if you break down the DIT, we did find there is a significant change in the DIT when looking at nonbusiness dilemmas vs. business issues. The DIT really doesn’t measure a whole lot, I feel. Joe Gilbert: Much of what we’ve talked about requires good business ethics teachers. No one is graduating PhDs in business ethics, so where do we get teachers to expand these programs? Peggy Cunningham: This is a real dilemma. Very few people are trained in this field, and many are drawn from other disciplines. This is a very big challenge in having these types of programs. We are leaving this as a huge hole in PhD programs.