No Required Ethics Course at Chicago-Booth
10 November 2009 at 10:12 am Peter G. Klein 1 comment
| Peter Klein |
Bucking the trend, the Chicago-Booth MBA program will not offer required courses in business ethics (via Cliff). The school “has no set standard for ethical case studies used in the classroom,” according to Executive Director of Faculty Services Lisa Messaglia,”but leaves it up to faculty, instead.”
[T]he business school is disciplined-based, meaning that classes are divided by disciplines such as sociology or psychology, rather than by industries. As a result, she said, professors may use different examples in their lectures, but Chicago Booth “[doesn’t] change required classes based on trends in the economy.”
I’m not keen on the way ethics is taught in most business schools so I’m sympathetic to the Chicago position. Some previous O&M posts on teaching ethics are here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Entry filed under: - Klein -, Management Theory, Myths and Realities, Teaching.
Organizations and Markets 
1.
jfespino | 10 November 2009 at 4:45 pm
I also agree that the way that Business ethic is taught at business schools is not the best. I will really want to see philosophers and the new philosophers of organizations (see for example see here Professor Jones profile:
http://www.le.ac.uk/ulmc/academics/cjones.html
But I don’t think that the “There is no one real answer”, as Mrs. Messaglia said, must impply that there is no need for a curriculum change.
There is an urgent imperative for ethics. This imperative is even higher in the hands of people that going to have the power and high responsability levels at companies and organisations.