<p>Given all the recent, seemingly unending revelations about financial fraud, willful misconduct and the apparent lack of moral judgement by many business school grads working in banking sectors recently, one has to wonder.
This thoughtful, well written article by a U of Chicago Booth School of Business professor suggests that its time to revamp how ethics are taught in Business Schools. </p>
<p>"ethics should become an integral part of the so- called core classes – such as accounting, corporate finance, macroeconomics and microeconomics – that tend to be taught by the most respected professors. "</p>
<p>**“Succeed at any cost” **and its corollary, “If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying” defines the ethos of many of our so called best and brightest.</p>
<p>Off-topic, but this would be extremely impractical for engineering. There’s just way too much to learn. Also, undergraduate engineering is very broad; it is basically an applied math/physics degree, not a professional major like business. Plus, if engineering were a strictly graduate major then there would be far fewer engineering graduates than there are today. </p>
<p>Most programs have a liberal studies requirement of about 20 credits. Having a more extensive requirement would add more semesters to the traditional four-year degree, unfortunately. </p>
<p>Luckily my undergraduate program did have an engineering ethics component to it. Only about a third of all accredited programs do. We did a lot of case studies, and I think it was a valuable learning experience.</p>
<p>I believe the schools could do a better job teaching ethics and also teaching about the multiple stakeholders of companies (e.g., that maximizing profits for shareholders is not the end all be all of running a company).</p>
<p>However I think the much much bigger problem is the regulatory environment in which bankers and wall street types work … regulation was minimized, the staffing to enforce the limited regulation we have was purposely starved, they have a legal oligopoly, the corporate rules of governence are rigged in their favor, the rules about compensation are rigged in their favor. In so many way we’ve told them they are special and reinforced going for the big bucks … and have also told them we won’t watch want you do … we got exactly what we set-up.</p>
<p>Taking an ethics class makes you more aware of ethical issues. It won’t fix sociopaths but I believe it will at least reinforce ethical behavior in most people.</p>
<p>an ethics class is a waste of time. It might make some feel good for requiring it, but do you really think ‘stuff’ happens because criminals don’t know right from wrong? Would an ethics class make a difference in insider trading? In fudging LIBOR? </p>
<p>Highly laughable.</p>
<p>In any event, ethics is taught in b-schools. Just shows how worthless it is.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Puhleeze. Enron and Worldcom were outright fraudulent activities, as was the manipulation of the LIBOR. They had nothing to do with ‘accounting ethics’; they were accounting fraud – illegal fraud, which is way beyond an ethical lapse.</p>
<p>It’s not about the ethics classes, it’s about the culture. Culture incubates criminals. Unfortunately unlike Singaporeans, Americans are not very good at social engineering.</p>