BUSINESS ETHICS | Finance Business Articles

Posted by admin on 11 October, 2011

These are just a few examples of what history can tell us about the ethical challenges
of engaging in Business Ethics. Let us now tum to more a recent past and look at the use
of history to teach ethics in a business school. When I was at the Harvard Business School (HBS),

I had the pleasure of sitting in on a few of Alfred Chandler?s
seminars on business history. I was just starting to do work in business ethics and
I was struck by the inextricable relationship between business history and business
ethics. At the time, a colleague named Jeffrey Cruikshank was writing a history of
the Harvard Business School called, A Delicate Experiment HBS 1908-1945. We
often talked about the research that he was doing for the book. It was fascinating
because Cuikshank had access to old letters and documents dating back to the
school?s inception in 1908.
Donham was particularly concemed with the impact of technology on business and
society. When the British philosopher Lord Alfred North Whitehead joined Harvard?s faculty in 1924,

Business Ethics

Since Donham did not think that religion was likely to be reinstated to its position of
moral authority, it fell to the business community to face what Donham saw as the
critical social problem: the ?control the consequences of scientific development.
Donham wanted a business school curriculum that would prepare students to take
on the responsibility of managing the moral impact of business and technology on
society. The school?s first approach to this was to introduce a history course?not
a business ethics course?into the curriculum in 1927. A professor named Norman
Gras taught the course. Gras began his class with cases from medieval history and
later moved on to more contemporary ones. Gras said that the reason why the course
was successful because ?history placed business into human culture or recognized
human culture in business. But history did not seem to be enough preparation for business

students to take on their social responsibilities.
In 1928, HBS introduced what was perhaps the first business ethics course in an
American business school. They hired a philosopher named Carl F. Taeusch from
the University of Iowa to teach a second year elective in business ethics. I was able
to buy an old library copy of the business ethics textbook that Taeusch wrote. It still
had the record of borrowers in the back. There did not seem to be much interest
in the book since it had only been checked out 24 times in 56 years, HBS students
did not like Taeusch?s business ethics course, in part because they thought it was
too theoretical, so HBS dropped business ethics from the curriculum in 1935.
Thirty years later, HBS introduced its first required module ?Decision Making and
Ethical Values.

Business Ethics -?business school

Despite business scandals, the Great Depression, and the recent collapse of the
banking system (based on a mortgage bubble), some business schools are still reluctant

to commit time and resources to business ethics courses?yet they spend
lavishly on courses related to finance and accounting. When we look back at recent
history, few would argue that financial disasters and business scandals were the result
of people having poor quantitative skills. Going back to Plato, we might say that
some business schools focus more on teaching students the craft of making money
than on the craft of actually running a business or a sustainable business. Some of
the business school graduates who drove their companies into the ground lacked
perspective and a historical understanding of the ethical traps inherent in business ethics.

Source: http://finance2business.com/business-articles/is-business-ethics-getting-better/

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