Business schools use headlines to teach ethics
Today’s classes look at workplace harassment, rights to protest and political discourse
Professors at area business schools have no shortage of subjects to discuss with students these days.
From workplace sexual harassment scandals in the movie and news industries to reports of rampant misbehavior at onetime startup darling Uber, the headlines are providing plenty of fodder for the leaders of ethics classes at area universities.
And they’re taking advantage of the ripped-from-the-headlines controversies to reinforce the ethics lessons they believe future business leaders should have.
“We’ve been doing this forever. It used to be there was a situation every month; now, there’s a crisis a day,” said Lynne Andersson, associate professor of Human Resource Management at Temple’s Fox School of Business
As at Temple, West Chester University began requiring business students take at least one ethics course following the Enron and Worldcom accounting scandals of the early 2000s.
“It is different this time,” said Lisa Calvano, assistant chair and associate professor in West Chester’s Department of Management. “Those were financial crimes.”
Until recently, only students going into human resources would have studied sexual harassment cases that dominated headlines in 2017 as the #MeToo movement spread.
“Now, teachers are very interested in using these headlines” to teach ethics to their students, Calvano said. “Business and society classes and ethics learning goals at WCU have been ongoing and predate what is happening now, but have an even greater urgency given the current climate.”
Students at Penn State
Great Valley, a campus for graduate students already in the workplace, also are required to take ethics courses to receive their advanced degrees.
“It’s fascinating to me to see what’s going on,” said John Cameron, associate instructional professor in school’s Department of Graduate Professional Studies. “Everybody thinks they’re special, that their situations are unique because they’re in big data or in bioscience. But no matter what field you’re in it all boils down to the same things: integrity, honesty, trust, loyalty, respect for the other person, taking consequences for your actions. We’re all the same.”
The subject of ethics – and how the lack of them is affecting society – was the subject of a recent in-depth report in the New York Times that looked at how leading national business schools are using current headlines in their classes.
At Vanderbilt, for instance, there are classes on Uber and “bro” culture. At Stanford, students are studying sexual harassment in the workplace. And at Harvard,
the debate encompasses sexism and free speech.
“There’s a turning point in what’s expected from business leaders,” Leanne Meyer, co-director of a new leadership department at the Carnegie Mellon Tepper School of Business, told the Times. “Up until now, business leaders were largely responsible for delivering products. Now, shareholders are looking to corporate leaders to make statements on what would traditionally have been social justice or moral issues.”
That is the case at the local universities as well and, if anything, is expanding. As part of WCU’s new general education program, for instance, there will be an ethics requirement for all students, not just those in the business school.
At Temple, Andersson provided a list of topics she said she discussed in her business ethics class this year:
• Sexual harassment and discrimination in Silicon Valley masculine nerd culture;
• Facebook’s prioritization of advertisers and collection of personal data over protection of users’ privacy;
• La Colombe’s CEO publicly
taking a stand on the fallacy of corporate tax breaks leading to job creation;
• The firing of white supremacists by their employers after participation in the Charlottesville rally;
• Does the “me too” movement distract from deeper systemic discrimination against women in the workplace;
• Corporations speaking out of both sides of their mouths trying to please everyone in a country deeply divided over sociopolitical issues;
And in a class she teaches
with men’s basketball coach Fran Dunphy:
• NFL players taking the knee against the wishes of many NFL owners;
• Lindsey Vonn and her vocal anti-Trump stance in the upcoming Winter Olympics;
• The Sixers’ tanking strategy and it’s implications for business organizations.
Today’s breaches of ethics seem to take on greater significance due to the nation’s divided political climate, Andersson believes.
“It’s different only in that the sociopolitical issues that are affecting corporations
– and caused by corporations – today are arguably more explosive because of the divisiveness in our political realm,” she said. “In addition, our president and the political climate that he has built appear to encourage incivility, speech before thought and ‘flexibility’ with facts.”
At Penn State Great Valley, the goal is not only to discuss the ethics shortfalls but to look at ways companies can provide ethical workplaces, Cameron said.
Companies should provide new employees with an orientation into their ethical codes and should integrate its ethical culture into worker performance reviews.
“We don’t just look for scandals, we look for best practices,” Cameron said. “Fortune Magazine does a great job recognizing companies for this. Management must be supportive and be clear about their ethical expectations.”
To contact Business Writer Brian McCullough, call 610235-2655 or send an email to bmccullough@21stcenturymedia.com.