MBA Ethics Education Roundup
Back in November I did a 4-part series on ethics education for MBA students. I thought it might be a good idea to collect all of them, plus a couple other relevant blog entries, on a single blog entry. So here they are:
- MBA Ethics Education: Designing the Designers (…whether we are thinking about training MBAs to make particular decisions, or training them to build the contexts in which particular decisions are to be made, business schools are in the business of designing designers….)
- MBA Ethics Education: Avoiding Excuses (…Sometimes, doing the right thing simply requires that we avoid the temptation to do the wrong thing. Positive role models are definitely a good thing, but we also need to understand why things sometimes go wrong…)
- MBA Ethics Education: All Decisions are Ethics Decisions (…there really is no clear distinction between “ethical” decisions in business and straightforward business decisions…)
- MBA Ethics Education: Speaking Up (…too often, bad things happen because good people don’t speak up….)
And see also these earlier blog entries by me:
The Business Ethics Blog 
On February 15th you admitted to being content for “having some impact on the world”.
However, I’m uneasy with the idea that teaching ethics academically to MBA students will bring them to act ethically: Does possessing ethical knowledge actually refine business practice? With a slight change of parlance, I cannot forget Hume’s statement that “tis’ not contrary to reason to prefer making piles of profit to the destruction of the entire world.”
How do you think ethical knowledge bridges the gulf between knowledge and practice?
Kirk:
Fair question, and each of the blog entries above provides part of the answer, I think. But see especially the one on excuses, and the one on why all decisions are ethics decisions. Both give some idea how knowledge can affect practice.
Chris.
Great list. Thank you putting this together.
Dan