Business schools look to bolster ethics classes

by Darren

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It’s not completely shocking that ethics would be a top priority at higher learning institutions. Many of the most famous business people in the last ten years have ended up involved in huge giant scandal. These scandals have done a ton of damage to the financial markets, which relies heavily on the perception of fairness.

Different modes of teaching ethics are available to current students, based on the changes that business colleges are sure are needed.

Efforts to integrate ethics into core courses in financing, accounting and marketing are gaining steam, and ethics courses are as popular as ever, professors said. The scandals have spawned new positions at some companies (think legal and ethics compliance officers). The University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business has a new class this fall called “Ethics and Compliance in a Post-WorldCom World,” formed in part after professors saw the job demand.

The idea makes complete sense. A company like Enron didn’t go bad all at once. They went bad in pieces, which then infected the rest of the company. The closer these colleges can integrate the training into real world situations, and then spread the teaching across all of the disparate disciplines that make up business, the more likely the curriculum is to have a lasting impact. U.S. business is a world leader because investors are sure that the people they entrust their money to don’t rip them off. This hasn’t always been the case, but the issue cuts to the core of business.

Of course there’s no evidence of how well any of this will operate in the real world. When people are faced with enormous pressure to make difficult decisions every day, some will make the wrong ones. But the big dilemna is to prevent a company from devolving into a culture of greed which will destroy any longterm shareholder values. Any classes which prevent the future leaders of business from accomplishing this have to be helpful.

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