If business ethics can be taught - and I have yet to read a convincing argument that they cannot - how should such an important lesson be taught?
In business school, perhaps? That would seem to make a whole lot of sense. Business schools seem to be the only environment where it’s possible to gather together a group of experienced business ethics sages (professors) with the fewest number of outside interests that might compromise their teachings. After all, B-school professors may still have a few ties to the business world through consulting relationships and whatnot, but one would assume that because they’ve turned to teaching (where they can’t possibly make what they might on Wall Street), these educators are indeed interested in teaching the next generation of MBAs how not to end up like, oh say, Ken Lay.
And yet even this presumably ideal ethics training ground proves to be problematic. Case in point: A months-long scandal at West Virgina University, where the business school dean apparently awarded the governor’s daughter an MBA based on grades pulled out of “thin air” for classes she never attended. (Here’s a complete timeline of how the incident unfolded.) The Charleston Gazette today reports that the state’s Ethics Commission has begun a formal investigation into the matter.
From my outside view, it looks like a classic ethics breach: the dean and the provost, who was also involved, presumably let the rules slide so as to be able to count among their alums someone who is not only the governor’s daughter, but also an executive at big pharma company Mylan Inc.
This is exactly the sort of pedestrian dilemma that business leaders must know how to handle by the time they’ve graduated with (hopefully) well-deserved MBAs in hand. And if business schools aren’t following the fundamentals of ethical decision making, then I ask again, where should these all too valuable lessons come from?
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