Teaching Business Ethics

Teaching business ethics at universities involves delivering instructional material on the social value of commerce aimed at helping students understand society’s expectations of business responsibilities and the responses of corporations and their agents. Although investigation into the role of commerce in society has been a topic of discussion throughout recorded history, teaching ethics in university business schools is largely a product of the latter part of the 20th century. Specifically, interest in teaching business ethics grew in the 1960s as a result of business school reform spurred by the publication of the Ford Foundation study Higher Education for Business and the Carnegie Corporation report Education of American Businessmen. This development was reinforced in the 1970s when the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business (now ...