21st century skills: Ethics
In light of recent financial and corporate scandals, many have begun to question why many business schools don’t spend significant time and resources teaching their students about ethics. As part of our ongoing series on 21st-century career skills, we spoke with several experts about why ethics should be an essential skill in the 21st-century workplace.
Dulcelina A. Stahl, PhD, is the Lead/Area Chairperson for University of Phoenix’s College of Natural Sciences as well as a Faculty Council Member for the University’s School of Business. Dr. Stahl teaches a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses in Natural Sciences and Business, and she incorporates ethics across her curricula. “Drawing from my own 15+ years of professional experience as an executive in both for-profit and non-profit corporations/organizations, as well as a business entrepreneur, I provide examples of how ethics, values and principles impact decisionmaking at various levels of the business organization,” says Dr. Stahl. “I also emphasize the need for a culture of ethics throughout the organization.”
While some might question the need to teach ethics across so many different courses and disciplines, Dr. Stahl’s personal experience applying ethics to decisions she made in her own career directly impacted her decision to teach ethics at University of Phoenix. "In my professional career as an executive in health care administration and business, I came across several instances wherein I realized that there was a lack of knowledge on ethical principles and how these could have made a difference,” she says. “As such, I made a pledge to myself to teach business and medical ethics at the college level, with the objective of enabling my students to be able to make ethical decisions and also be more cognizant of their social responsibility.”
And while some may believe that ethical behavior and business profitability are mutually exclusive, Dr. Stahl vehemently disagrees. “Many experts contend that for-profit organizations with an ethical climate generate consumer and employee trust, employee commitment and customer satisfaction that subsequently lead to profitability,” she says.
Norman E. Bowie, PhD, is a retired professor of business ethics and corporate responsibility at the University of Minnesota, as well as the author of several books on the subject — including "Business Ethics for Dummies" (For Dummies Press, 2011; co-authored with Meg Schneider) — and his beliefs on the subject of business ethics mirror that of Dr. Stahl’s. When asked why teaching business ethics is important, he puts it bluntly: “I want to keep students out of jail,” he says. “I want to convince them that bad ethics can destroy a company. More importantly, I try to show how ethical business standards can in principle make a business more successful. If students can find ways to make ethics pay, it will help their careers.”
While Dr. Bowie’s ethics courses and research at the University of Minnesota are nationally renowned, ethics are by and large not taught at most American business schools. And when business ethics courses are offered, they are usually electives, and not requirements for graduation. However, Diane Swanson, PhD, a professor of business administration at Kansas State University, has launched a major national campaign to make ethics courses mandatory at American business schools, as well as a requirement for accreditation. “Universities have an obligation to deliver and require a standalone business ethics course as part of their business school curricula, and as of right now that’s not happening,” she says. “According to the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB; an accrediting body for business schools), only about one-third of business schools even offer a business ethics course, and presumably even fewer require it.” While Dr. Swanson and her colleagues launched a campaign to make business ethics courses a requirement for AACSB accreditation in 2003 in direct response to the corporate scandals of the early 2000s (e.g., Arthur Anderson, Enron, etc.), the AACSB has yet to adopt such a policy. “What really concerns me is the fact that the United States used to be a leader in studying business ethics at the university level, but that study has declined since the 1980s,” says Dr. Swanson. “And now the centers of ethical study seem to be shifting to other parts of the world. I would hate to see the United States lose its edge.”
Another concern Dr. Swanson has regarding the decline of ethics-based business curricula in American business schools are missed opportunities for students to train for ethics-based careers. “With the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, we are seeing strong growth in compliance and ethics positions at most large corporations, as encouraged by the Act,” she says. “There are tremendous opportunities for people to work in compliance positions, and yet our business schools aren’t adequately preparing students to work in these jobs.”
Dr. Bowie agrees that the current lack of focus on ethics in business schools can have wide-ranging consequences. “If we had a different paradigm in the business schools, perhaps the financial crisis would not have been so bad,” he says. “However, quite frankly we have a larger cultural problem. Americans have become too short-sighted, too concerned with themselves, and greedy to boot.”
While only a minority of business schools nationally are offering ethics-based coursework, University of Phoenix is at the forefront of integrating ethical decisionmaking and social responsibility into its curricula. “Knowledge of ethics provides the foundation for University of Phoenix students to make ethical decisions in their personal and professional lives,” says Dr. Dulcelina Stahl. “In addition, familiarity with ethical decisionmaking models that can be applied in challenging situations enables students to be successful in their future careers.”
