I think its interesting that on page 414, the textbook draws attention to the fact that most business students do not rank compassion as being an important value. Even here at SJSU in the MBA program we have entire courses dedicated to finance, marketing, communication, etc. but it is unlikely that we would have an entire course for solely ethics. Is it because its not important? I don't think so; I think its assumed that we, as future leaders, already know what ethics is and understand its importance. I agree with this as we all have our own idea of what is ethical, and in a perfect world we would all just know what ethics is. I think that MBA programs should also focus on providing guidance on managerial ethics. When does ethics take importance over the bottom line? How can behaving ethical actually lead to company success in the future? How does this affect an organization? These are such important questions and I don't even think one course would be enough to cover all these topics. Similar to any other business subject, ethics should hold equal importance and be taught with equal importance. I think this will have a big impact in the business world. I, of course, understand that its extremely difficult to teach ethics, but I don't think enough effort is being made.
5 comments:
I really enjoy this online class because of the merging of Comm Studies and Business. As a communication studies student, power and ethics are a continual part of our classroom discussions. As a discipline, we probe human verbal and nonverbal messages with specific attention to race, class, and gender relations. However, I can see how it would be easy for a business student to see numbers, money, and profits when they look at people. In your discipline, there is no need to consider the consumer's emotions unless it increases the consumption of your product. Yet, this doesn't dismiss the effects of the corporate messages, nor does it dismiss the use of administrative power and status. I'm looking forward to learning more about business perspectives and how they relate to communication studies.
I think ethics in business is a very important area. Numerous companies pay lip service to maintaining high ethical standards, but do as they please behind closed boardroom doors. The example given in the bookt of the Dow Chemical company's response to the release of poisinous gas in India, demonstrates that more attention is given to damage control public relations than pro-active prevention of industrial accidents. One problematic phrase you often hear in news reports is: XYZ Corporation has reached a multimillion dollar settlement with the plantiffs, but "admits no wrongdoing." To me, this is an aexmple of questionable ethical standards.
I presume that you are aware that the MBA program at San Jose State University has a required course called "Law and Ethics" (BUS 250), which is supposed to cover both law and ethics from the business and managerial perspective.
Your concern is quite relevant though, since the course takes the "law" part more seriously than ethics. It would perhaps be more prudent to concentrate on the "ethics" part of the course, but then the course is designed to give business majors a feel for the legal issues of the business world, and the ethical reasons for the existence of the laws governing businesses. It should be noted that the laws of the United States, for instance, already take important ethical theories into consideration, so I believe that the course as it exists, covering both law and ethics, is quite useful for the MBA student.
I too found this section interesting. I am neither from the MBA program nor the Comms Studies program, I am in the Mass Comms and Journalism program. In this program you have the option to take electives that focus a great deal on ethics. The high level objectives of ethics in journalism and mass communications are introduced in the very first class but then rarely revisited. I think that ethics are so important to our lives, careers, and what kind of leaders we are but it is often hard to define exactly what those ethics are. We hopefully all have a general radar of what is right and wrong but sometimes it is situational and cannot be accurately taught. I honestly think that a course on the importance of ethics should be an undergraduate requirement in every school. It is too often overlooked and these students should be introduced to it young. Then, if they later enter a program that does not have a strong emphasis on the exact ethics of that field, the importance of ethics has at least been introduced.
At SJSU, a Business Ethics course is required for undergraduate business majors and a Law and Ethics course is required for MBA students. I was told by a professor that SJSU along with several other business schools did not used to require an ethics course for their students. But as cases such as the Ford/Firestone tire cases and Enron fiasco began to raise questions of ethical business practices, several schools decided it would be a good idea to educate students earlier on where to draw the line between profit and ethics. In a textbook I was reading for one of my courses, it mentioned how Ford actually printed out a cost analysis of how much money they would lose if they decided to or not to publicize about the likelihood of the Firestone tires rupturing on a Ford vehicle that was leading to several accidents and fatalities. Ironically, there was a note on the end of the memo that briefly commented on how a human life is priceless. Either way, Ford and Firestone waited too long before publicizing the design flaw.
I think ethics courses in general are a good idea. You never know when you might face a decision that could impact someone’s safety or life.a
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