What is ‘Business’ and Why Does That Matter?
There’s been discussion lately (constantly, in fact) about whether President Obama is “pro-business” or “anti-business.” What commentators generally mean by that is whether Obama is sufficiently sympathetic to the needs of the business “community,” or rather excessively sympathetic to the wants of Big Business. A lot turns here on what we mean by business. Confusion about that muddles discussion of business ethics, too.
Confusions about business ethics abound. Some people, for instance, think business ethics is about the pursuit of sainthood in commercial domains, a definition which makes the field an eminently unpromising endeavour. Others mistakenly associate the term “ethics” with a narrow range of limits on personal behaviour, things like accepting bribes. Still others seem to think that the word only applies to big corporations. All of that is wrong, and starts discussions of business ethics off on the wrong foot.
If you want to understand the scope of business ethics, it helps, as a starting point, to begin by looking at what business itself is. Here’s my informal, non-textbooky definition of “business”:
Business is the activity of making stuff or doing stuff for other people, in return for money (or in exchange for other stuff).
That’s it. That’s all business is, fundamentally. What motivates those involved is another question. So is how they behave. Which brings us to ethics.
Business ethics is about what you can and cannot do in the process of doing business. What kinds of behaviours are good or bad, right or wrong, virtuous or vicious, in a context in which we are all trying to make a living?
I think this way of explaining business ethics is useful for a many reasons, but mostly because it’s non-confrontational. It ought to reassure — and hence draw into the discussion — the business community. As a business ethicist, I’m not poking my nose into the world of commerce to tell people there that they have to stop pursuing profits. Far from it. Profits are great — go for it! I’m just here to talk about what reasonable limits there might be on profit-seeking activity.
It also reminds those who are critical of “business” that what they are actually critical of is certain business practices, certain ways of doing business. “Business” isn’t synonymous with “Wall Street.” The idea of being “anti business” verges on incoherence, given this understanding of what business is.
Of course, the right understanding of business is only a start. But it’s an awfully good start.
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(You can check out my more formal definition of business ethics here.)
Should Penn State’s Board Resign?
Filed under: governance, sports, accountability, stakeholders, boards, ethics, education, excuses, transparency, trust, public relations |
Comments (3) In the wake of the Sandusky sex-abuse scandal the question has arisen whether Penn State University’s Board of Trustees should tender its collective resignation. And now, following the death of Coach Joe Paterno on Sunday, the question has taken on additional emotional resonance. The university’s Faculty Senate is scheduled to discuss a motion to strike an independent committee to investigate the Board’s role in the whole affair, and indeed has seen at least one motion calling for the entire Board’s resignation.
So, should the members of the Board be asked to resign? And if not, should they do so of their own volition?
To answer these questions, here are some questions that need to be considered:
Fist, did indeed the Board fail in its fiduciary (‘trust-based’) duties? It’s worth noting that the Board has been under fire from two different directions, here. Some think the Board failed in not staying sufficiently ‘on top of’ the Sandusky situation, and in resting satisfied with whatever dribbles of information the university administration saw fit to feed them. (The only detailed account I’ve read so far paints the Board in a rather sympathetic light, in this regard.)
Others think the Board failed in firing — in their eyes, scapegoating — the beloved Paterno. Both sides think the Board screwed up, but for very different reasons. Of course, both can be right at the same time. Perhaps the Board has just generally done a bad job, first by letting the situation get out of hand and then second by botching the task of responding to it. Rather than cancelling each other out, maybe these two sets of complaints just compound each other.
Next, we need to ask, if the Board failed, was it a failure of people or a failure of structure? A board, after all, is both an institutional structure and a set of people occupying that structure.
If it was a failure of structure (and, as governance expert Richard Leblanc wrote back in November, there are serious problems with how Penn State’s board is configured) then there’s little reason to think that a change of personnel on the Board is either necessary or sufficient to fix the problem. And if instead it was a failure of people, then getting rid of them all is a blunt, but perhaps effective, way to solve the problem — providing, of course, that the new people brought in to replace them are better.
Of course, the problem is that it’s difficult to distinguish between a failure of people and a failure of structure, in a case like this. Perhaps people better-suited to the job would have risen above the confines of a poorly-structured board, or lobbied to have its structure revised. Human behaviour and institutional structure shape each other.
And finally, regardless of the above questions about the sources of failure, it might be the case that the removal or resignation of the Board is necessary in order to restore public confidence. That is, even if the individuals currently on the Board are not in any way to blame, the fact that key stakeholders have lost faith in the Board might be sufficient grounds for calling for the entire Board to go. Without the confidence of key stakeholders, any Board is going to find it hard to do its job.
But then, while the current Board certainly faces challenges, so would an entirely new Board. The loss of continuity that would result from a 100% change in membership could seriously impair the Board’s functioning, and make it even more reliant on — and susceptible to control by — university administrators. There’s a good reason why well-governed boards have careful plans in place to make sure that new blood is brought in regularly, rather than en masse. In the end, it seems to me that the best prescription is this. The Board of Trustess at Penn State needs to see substantial structural change. It also needs enough new blood to restore confidence, while retaining enough of the old guard to ensure continuity. Beyond that, the Board is just going to have to do its best to muddle through whatever challenges lie ahead, with whatever strengths and limits it possesses, just like any other board.
Must the CEO Go Down With the Ship?
Filed under: accountability, CEOs, contract, decision-making, disaster, ethics, excuses, governance, leadership, shareholders |
Comments (2) 
Two days ago, I asked — in the wake of the Costa Concordia disaster — whether the captain is duty-bound to “go down with his ship.” The question, I said, bears not just on the obligations of sea captains, but on individuals in positions of responsibility at organizations of all kinds. It also has implications for how organizations enculture individuals so that they see following through on promises as more than just a contractual obligation.
But today I’ll make explicit the analogy that is likely on the minds of most readers of this blog: never mind sea captains…what about CEOs? Does the CEO of a “sinking” company have a duty to “go down with the ship?”
First, it’s worth pointing out that sea captains don’t literally have to go down with the ship: closer to the truth is that they’re supposed to be the last ones off, or as close to last as is possible and permits them to do their duty to preserve the lives of crew and passengers. Similarly, bankruptcy for the company doesn’t literally have to imply bankruptcy for the CEO. In some cases, surely, bankruptcy isn’t the CEO’s fault, and there’s no reason to think that justice demands that a blameless CEO walk away penniless. But they should stick around to see the job done, even if that implies some financial risk to themselves.
Second, it seems to me that, as in the case of sea captains, the answer here has to depend a lot on the details of the situation. Sometimes staying aboard will genuinely help, and sometimes it won’t. Also, a CEO’s ill health might be a decent excuse, in some cases. And indeed, some corporate “captains” aren’t even wanted on a sinking ship: in 2008, for example, the US government forced Robert B. Willumstad to resign as CEO of the faltering AIG, and replaced him with Edward M Liddy. The idea that the captain should stick around to help only makes sense where the captain’s services continue to be seen as having value.
Third, there are several different ways in which a CEO can “abandon ship,” and they might not all be equally ethically bad. Abandoning ship could mean selling shares that are about to tank, or it might mean resigning prior to bankruptcy. Or it might mean resigning prior to an inevitable criminal investigation: several rats are known to have abandoned Enron’s sinking ship — Jeff Skilling, for example. Worst of all, perhaps, are “take the money and run” situations. Arranging a bonus for yourself just prior to declaring bankruptcy is the moral equivalent of looting the ship’s safe (or perhaps scuttling all the lifeboats) prior to prematurely abandoning ship.
As always, we need to be careful when engaging in moral reasoning by analogy. A company is not a boat, and bankruptcy is not the same as sinking. But what’s certainly true is that in both cases, the ethical requirements of leadership don’t end at the first sign of trouble.
Must the Captain Go Down With His Ship?
Filed under: accountability, CEOs, character, codes of ethics, contract, decision-making, disaster, employees, ethics, excuses, leadership, professionalism, risk, workplace safety |
Comments (5) 
Italian cruise-ship Captain Francesco Schettino is in jail, following an incident that left 6 dead and (at present) 29 missing. Among the accusations levied against is that he fled the foundering vessel before it was empty. (According to maritime law, a captain doesn’t literally have to “go down with the ship,” but he or she is supposed to be the last one off after ensuring the safety of others.)
Legal requirements aside, is there an ethical obligation for a captain to risk life and limb to stay on board until the last passenger and crewmembers are off? The answer is pretty clearly “yes.” Like many jobs, the job of captaining a ship comes with a range of risks and benefits. As long as the risks were understood when the job was taken on, you’re obligated to follow through.
There’s a more general point to be made here about the nature of ethics, and about ethics education and training.
Ethics often requires of us actions that we’d rather not carry out. You should tell the truth, even when it would be more convenient not to. You should keep your promises, even when breaking them would be more profitable. This is necessarily the case: if ethics only ever required you to do things you already wanted to do, there’d be no need for ethical rules (or at least no need to think of them as rules in the prescriptive sense).
But there’s at least a superficial tension, here, with the idea that ethics should be useful. After all, if having and following an ethical code doesn’t benefit us in some way, why bother? Sure, it’s easy enough to say “The right thing to do is the right thing to do,” but a system of ethics needs some justification in terms of human well-being or it’s just not going to be very credible, not to mention stable. Indeed, some ethical systems are subject to serious criticism precisely because their implications for human well-being are negative. Yes yes, I understand that your code of honour requires you to kill the man who killed your brother, but don’t you see how crazy this all is?
So there’s got to be some connection between ethics and benefit. And it’s not enough to point to social benefit. After all, pointing out that the community benefits from me taking ethics seriously merely pushes the question of justification to a second level: why should I care about the good of the community, especially if doing so requires significant self-sacrifice?
None of this should engender skepticism or cynicism. It just means we need to think carefully about who benefits, and how, from a system of ethics.
It also means that we need to think about how we can help individuals keep the promises that it was in their interest, initially to make. Captain Schettino found it in his interest to make certain promises (albeit perhaps implicit ones) when he signed on to be captain of the Costa Concordia, but then all of a sudden found himself in a situation where it was not in his interest to keep that promise. Threats of punishment were understandably insufficient, here. Staying out of jail is no great incentive if you’re free-but-dead.
Organizations of all kinds — including especially corporations and professional associations — need to work hard to help members think of the relevant ethical rules as something more than the terms of a contract, to help members become the sorts of people who simply would never abandon ship when they are needed most.
Consumer Savvy: Must Customers Understand Your Business Model?
I’ll put this on the table as a fundamental ethical principle for commerce:
If your business model relies upon customers not understanding your business model, your business model is not an ethical one.
We might justify this principle in at least a couple different ways. We could work from first principles, and say that making sure your customers aren’t deceived goes along with basic standards of respect for other human beings. A decent company wants its customers to benefit, and thinks it has genuine value to offer them. Or we could point out that information is essential to the functioning of markets, and that the moral underpinning of markets requires that market transactions at least approach the ideal of full information for all parties.
Ponzi schemes are the extreme example: they rely entirely on “customers” (i.e., victims) not knowing that they are part of a Ponzi scheme.
But there are plenty of other, less extreme examples. For instance, when pricing is central to your business model (e.g., positioning yourself as an airline offering low-cost flights) then deceiving people about the true cost of your product essentially means hoping they don’t understand your business model, which is essentially as follows: “Advertise low prices but charge high prices by adding hidden fees.”
Here are a few current headlines about companies that seem to violate this principle:
- Subprime loan websites ‘mislead customers’
- New rules require airline ads to include all costs
- Consumers Can’t Sue Credit Repair Companies
- BBB Warns Consumers About Puzzle Contests From Opportunities Unlimited Publications Of Kansas City
Note that this principle doesn’t stipulate that all (or even any) customers actually understand your business model. (There are lots of reputable companies I that I deal with every day without having any real clue what their business model is.) The principle only says that your business model can’t rely upon people not understanding. If you’re relying on people not to understand, that means you essentially have nothing of genuine value to offer them in the first place.
And for that reason, it strikes me that deception about one’s business model is even more egregious than other kinds of deception in business.
Responsibility for Consumer Error
Who is responsible for a consumer’s subconscious and erroneous conclusions about a particular product? What if a manufacturer honestly and accurately says “our product does X”, and consumers mistakenly believe, as a result, that the product also does Y?
Case in point: a study was recently reported, indicating that consumers are more likely to perceive chocolate as low in calories when they are told that it is fairly-traded. This is a great example of the “halo effect,” according to which humans have a tendency to attribute a variety of unrelated positive attributes to any person or thing that they perceive in a positive light to begin with.
Now, it’s clear that consumers are being led astray, here, though presumably that deception is not the intention of the sellers of fair-trade chocolate. But, on the other hand, whatever their intentions in the past, the sellers of fair-trade chocolate now know that consumers are susceptible to this error. Do they now have a responsibility to disabuse consumers of this particular misconception about chocolate?
Now hold on, you say. Companies that label and advertise their products accurately and honestly can’t be responsible for every crazy, false idea that enters a customer’s head. Surely companies can assume a degree of common sense; and surely anyone with a bit of common sense knows that there’s no link between fair-trade and calories.
(It’s worth noting that companies sometimes do see fit to warn consumers about matters that ought to be common sense: “Don’t use hairdryer in tub;” “Results are not typical;” “Keep knives away from children.” Etc.)
But here’s the problem. The halo effect is a species of cognitive bias, which is the term applied to any of a large number of pervasive, subconscious mental leanings that tend to lead human reasoning astray. When subject to cognitive biases, humans tend to make decisions that are not rational, not in line with their own values and preferences. The point here is that no one is actually saying to themselves, “Gee, this is fair-trade chocolate, and therefore it must be low in calories.” That would be insane. But cognitive biases don’t work by rational processes; indeed, they short-circuit rational thought. That’s the whole problem.
So, do such effects, when discovered, result in new obligations for companies? Maybe. Sometimes. At least, if the effects of a particular cognitive bias are significant. The example cited above is pretty trivial — presumably the effect in question is not sufficiently powerful to send droves of consumers onto chocolate-eating binges. But more serious cases are easy enough to imagine. And surely some bit of responsibility comes with knowledge: companies tend to have sophisticated knowledge about their products, and are more likely than consumers to know when a dangerous bias is in the offing.
But the real challenge — for both companies and consumers — is that these sorts of subconscious effects are legion. And as more and more of them come to light, we’re going to understand better and better just how little we understand our own minds. Bit by bit, whatever is left of the idea that market exchanges occur under conditions of full information is going to evaporate. What that will mean for business ethics is hard to say; but the time to start thinking about it is now.
Is Animal Cruelty Illegal but Ethical?
Canadian’s largest independent chicken-processing company, Maple Lodge foods, was recently slapped with no fewer than 60 criminal charges related to inhumane treatment of chickens in transport.
This is a nice example to use to continue our exploration of the relation between ethics and the law. (Two weeks ago we discussed why what’s legal isn’t always ethical; last week we explored why following the law can be hard and hence breaking the law sometimes ethically forgivable.)
The Maple Lodge case is still before the courts, but let’s make a leap and assume, for sake of argument, that the company’s treatment of its chickens does turn out to be criminal. (I should add that my non-expert sense of things is that these charges are far from making Maple Lodge unique — legal violations seem pretty common in the business of processing animals for food.)
So let’s accept for the sake of argument that ML’s behaviour is criminal. Is it unethical?
I’ll apologize if it strikes you as crazy to ask whether inhumane treatment of animals is unethical, but we can often learn something by asking questions the answers to which seem obvious. There is, on the surface, broad consensus that animals are ethically significant — that they ought not, for example, be abused or tortured — but that consensus papers over an enormous number of differences of opinion with regard to exactly how animals should (and should not) be treated and exactly why.
The ethical basis for the presumption against animal cruelty, as it turns out, is far from clear and far from being a matter of consensus. Is animal cruelty bad because all suffering is bad? Because animals are part of our moral community? Because God made them? Because cruelty to animals engenders cruelty to humans?
And there are indeed respectable philosophical points of view that hold that animals don’t have any (direct) ethical significance at all, though the philosophers who hold such views are often at pains to reconcile those views with common human sympathies. The point here is that it’s not clear that inhumane treatment of animals is unethical per se. It’s clear that all ‘normal’ people feel sympathy for animal suffering, but that’s not the same thing.
The point here is not to pull the rug out from under the idea that hurting animals is unethical. The point is to say that, with regard to particular behaviours, we need to make an argument rather than just attempting to subsume all such behaviours under the general heading of “unethical behaviour.”
There’s another way to get at the ethics of animal welfare, and that’s to point to the general ethical obligation to follow the law.
In a reasonably-well-governed democracy, we all have a basic obligation to obey the law. There are, of course, a few well-understood exceptions. Speeding to get an injured child to the hospital can be ethically justified. And civil disobedience can be ethically OK (or even ethically obligatory) if done right. But such exceptions are rare, and it remains true that most of us should — ethically — follow the law, most of the time. If you disagree with the law, you should try to get it changed; wanton failure to comply isn’t activism, it’s just lawlessness. In a large democracy, there are an enormous number of differences of opinion, and there are always going to be a few laws that you, in particular, don’t really agree with. But you still — generally — need to follow the law. And that goes for corporations, too.
And so there’s a sense in which Maple Lodge’s behaviour may have been unethical, even if we set aside the thorny issue of the moral status of animals, if the company failed in its ethical duty to treat animals as it is legally required to treat them. But of course, that just brings the philosophical question full-circle: laws themselves stand in need of moral justification. And as I argued above, the moral foundation for animal cruelty laws is far from clear. So, question for discussion: in order to justify passing a law, is it enough to have broad social consensus that a business practice is wrong, or do we need to have agreement on the underlying moral principles?
Transparency and Hospital Executive Perks
The Globe and Mail reported yesterday that Ontario hospitals are “scrambling” to eliminate executive perks, in the face of new rules stating that compensation practices must be made public. Ontario’s hospitals are funded by tax dollars, and clearly they don’t want to be seen spending those dollars on things the public is likely to find dubious.
A few quick thoughts:
1. To a certain extent, transparency is an alternative to good governance: we the public want access to the details if we worry that the people who are supposed to be taking care of those details aren’t doing a good job of it. Yet the Globe story makes no mention of governance. There are quotations from a couple of board members, but no discussion of what hospital boards do and whether they’ve been doing it well.
2. The comments under the Globe story provide reason (though not necessarily a conclusive reason) against transparency. In particular, many of the comments reveal lack of understanding of what it takes to run a hospital or other major institution, and a general cluelessness about executive perks. (Example: A perk like membership in an exclusive private club might look odd from the outside, but a moment’s reflection should reveal that an executive who is responsible for massive fundraising efforts genuinely needs to be part of the kind of clubs where he or she can network with the right sorts of people.) Of course, if the public has a genuine ‘right to know,’ then that cluelessness is lamentable but not decisive. The public ain’t always right, but it’s always the public.
3. The fact that this story is about taxpayer money makes no difference, ethically. Some people will be aghast at the perks being paid “out of taxpayers’ pockets.” That’s silly. If there’s a good business case for offering perks, there’s a good business case for offering them at a public institution. If there isn’t a good business case, then offering them would be just as much an affront to shareholders as it would be to taxpayers.
4. Beware the perverse effects of transparency. In the the world of corporate (private sector) executive compensation, it’s been suggested that transparency is part of the problem. The worry is that a CEO at one firm sees how much executives at other firms are making, and not surprisingly asks to receive the same or more. And boards, not wanting to publicly declare their own CEO to be “below average”, give in. So transparency fosters a ratcheting effect that is partly responsible for current insane levels of compensation. Will the same happen at hospitals?
5. Currently, it looks like transparency is driving hospitals to eliminate perks. But the more likely long-term effect is that, rather than accepting reduced overall compensation, executives will simply ask for the cash equivalent of the perks they no longer receive. I’m not an expert on compensation, but my intuition says that that would end up costing hospitals (and hence taxpayers) more. Compare: my own contract with the university I work for allows me some benefits that I don’t make use of (and that, hence, the university ends up not paying for). If I demanded the cash value of those benefits instead, it would cost my employer more. So again, we need to return to the question of governance. If institutions are well-governed, then we on the outside shouldn’t sweat the details. If they’re not being well governed, the key question should be why not?
Obeying the Law is Hard
The The FCPA Blog recently published a useful roundup of enforcement actions taken under the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act during 2011. It’s a fascinating window into what is a huge and fascinating topic, namely law-breaking by or at corporations.
For businesses, following the law doesn’t exhaust ethical responsibilities, but it’s an awfully good start. Most of us probably think that following the law is absolute minimally-decent behaviour for business. You absolutely must follow the law, and a business certainly shouldn’t be praised for achieving that basic minimum, right? But in fact, it’s not always so easy for companies to follow the law.
Part of the problem is that “the law” is not a simple, straightforward thing. Particular laws can be vague or ambiguous. And what counts as legal cannot always just be looked up, in part because so much depends on prosecutorial discretion. Many people have commented on the difficulty of knowing, in advance, what sorts of behaviours prosecutors are going to decide to take a swing at, whether in applying the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act or deciding when CEOs have neglected their duties to shareholders.
The other problem has to do with scale. If you operate a business with 100,000 employees, there’s a pretty high likelihood at any given moment that, despite your best efforts, one of those employees is doing something either illegal or in a legal grey zone. Compare how likely it is to achieve a zero crime rate in a town of 100,000 citizens. Of course, the citizens of a town aren’t part of an authority hierarchy the way that employees of a corporation are, but still you see the problem scale brings.
(Also compare this to the FDA’s food contaminant standards. The fact that there’s an allowable number of rodent hairs for a jar of peanut butter may be disgusting, but it shouldn’t be surprising: it is inconceivable that there could be a large-scale food-production system with zero contaminants.)
Another factor is the number and complexity of laws and regulations. For you & me, the legal rules to follow in our everyday lives are few and simple and minimally disruptive: don’t kill, don’t steal, etc. Not so for many companies. Companies in some industries are subject to perhaps hundreds or thousands of separate legal requirements. Note, for instance, that the full text of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act is over 2000 pages long.
A final factor worth pointing out is the apparently-criminogenic nature of corporate workplaces. For a range of reasons much more complex than is commonly acknowledged, people seem more willing to break the law at work than they are at home. Among the likely factors are competitive zeal, the desire for career advancement, tunnel vision, and group-think.
The net result of all these factors is that, for a big company, consistently complying with the law is actually a significant achievement. Getting employees consistently to follow the law is in fact a fundamental managerial challenge. The US Federal sentencing guidelines reward companies for even attempting to do a competent job of implementing an ethics and compliance program.
But compliance with the law is unlikely to win a company kudos from very many observers, focused as so many are on the “above-and-beyond” stuff normally associated with Corporate Social Responsibility. But when a particular behaviour is so incredibly difficult, and so incredibly important, what on earth could possibly be more deserving of praise?
PhD Programs in Business Ethics: 2012
It is an indicator of the growing interest in the field of Business Ethics that a number of universities now offer opportunities for students to earn a PhD in the topic.
I often get email from students and professionals looking for advice on how and where to study ethics at the graduate level. I point out that there are two main ways to get a PhD in Business Ethics. One traditional way is to do a PhD in Philosophy like I did — Philosophy departments are the traditional home of ethics scholarship at universities — and focus on ethical issues in business. The other way is to find a Business school that offers either a PhD program specifically in Ethics, or one with a PhD program that is at least open to students who wish to specialize in ethics.
For students with a background in Philosophy, doing a Philosophy PhD is the obvious route [though not necessarily best route*], and there are literally dozens if not hundreds of Philosophy departments where you could do a PhD in Business Ethics — all that’s required, really, is a willing and qualified supervisor. But this route is typically only open to students with a background (at least an undergraduate degree, and preferably a Master’s degree) in Philosophy.
The situation is less clear for students with a background in Business — B-school programs are out there, but they’re harder to find. So I’ve done a bit of digging and prepared the following list.
Caveats:
The following information was gathered fairly casually by word-of-mouth. No guarantees, and no endorsement is implied. Please contact the directors of particular programs for further details.
Business School PhD Programs in Business Ethics:
In no particular order…
- Rutgers Business School (my pal Miguel Alzola, who now teaches at Fordham, got his PhD there, under the direction of Ed Hartman.)
- Wharton (at UPenn) has a PhD program in Ethics and Legal Studies
- The PhD program at the Darden School of Business lists ethics among the areas on which students can focus.
- The University of Groningen (in the Netherlands) doesn’t have a “program” in business ethics, but I’m told that both the Faculty of Philosophy and the Faculty of Economics and Business welcome applications from students interested in doing research in business ethics.
- Benedictine University has a Doctor of Philosophy/Doctor of Business Administration (Ph.D./D.B.A.) Program in Values-Driven Leadership
- Penn State: Ph.D. in Business Administration – Management and Organization
- The PhD program in Organizational Behaviour at Utah has several faculty members who specialize in ethics.
- PhD program at the Schulich School of Business (where my friends Andrew Crane and Dirk Matten teach) encourages work in Ethics and CSR.
- Students in the Ph.D. program in business at the University of Kansas can study topics in business ethics via the program’s Organizational Behavior concentration.
- Students at Nottingham University Business School can do a Phd in CSR.
If you know of programs that should be added to the list, email me.
For additional perspective, you can also find out which business schools take ethics seriously by looking at the “Beyond Grey Pinstripes” rankings — but not all of the schools listed there will have PhD programs.
(Note: This is an updating of the list I did back in 2008, based on an informal survey of colleagues, of PhD Programs in Business Ethics. The information there may still prove useful, though I haven’t been able to verify that all the schools listed there still allow or encourage PhD work in ethics.)
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Addendum: I’m told that people have recently done ethics-related PhD’s at Michigan, Maryland, and Central Florida. I had originally omitted those schools because their PhD programs make no specific mention of ethics.
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*Addendum 2: A reader has rightly pointed out to me that those with an undergraduate or MA in philosophy can also do a PhD in business, that doing so broadens a student’s perspective, and that doing so is likely to improve chances at employment.
