How does that differ from teaching ethics in a business school?
When I began teaching in a business school I was shocked to realize in the first week that my dean and my colleagues thought that my primary aim as a professor of ethics was to make the MBA students ethical! In other words, to spend much more of my time motivating them to want to do the right thing in business contexts and not merely to give them the tools to make wise ethical decisions once they were motivated in this way. Soon, however, it became second nature for me to see the tasks of motivating and inspiring the students and giving them the tools to be effective ethical managers to be two sides of the same coin. Do you think that ethics can be taught? In particular to undergraduates or to MBA students who may be in their late 20s or 30s? Absolutely. But I do understand why some people are skeptical. They think that if folks haven’t learned why it’s important to be ethical by the time they’re adults, there’s not much you can say to them in a university classroom. If they haven’t le
