The Toolkit and the Carpenter: Teaching the Critical Distinction between Business Ethics and Personal Morals.

IntroductionHistorical Presence of Ethics in Business SchoolsThe historical integration of ethics coursework into traditional business school curricula arose, in part, because of need for businesses to cultivate and preserve trust and confidence of its investors, consumers, regulators, vendors, and lenders (Gandz and Hayes 1988: 658). In 1970's, organizational ethics1 became an emerging field among business programs (Ferrell, Fraedrich and Ferrell 2015: 11), and in 1980's, its place as a defined field of study for business students solidified, although it [was] not altogether clear just what business ethics (De George 1987: 201).Drucker (1981) highlighted issue in his manuscript on business ethics and, his work, has served as a precursor to development of popularized management theory over past three decades. Drucker, even in his most early work believed that every social order requires a basis in morality (Hoefle, 2005). Suggesting that his work, and subsequent work of his followers is strongly rooted in morality. Morality, in this sense, can most aptly be characterized as maintaining a religious, and specifically, a judeo-Christian values undertone. For purpose of this paper, value systems, or morality, can be defined as:Includes or consists of judgments (rules, principles, ideals, etc.) that pronounce actions and agents to be right, wrong, good, bad, etc., simply because of effect they have on feelings, interests, ideals, etc., of other person or centers of sentient experiences, actual or hypothetical (Frankena, 1966, p. 689).A survey of member business schools of American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) in early 1990's reported that over ninety-percent of those institutions included ethics as a significant curriculum topic (Schoenfeldt, McDonald and Youngblood 1991). In 1996, a worldwide survey was conducted to reflect the state-of-the-art of business ethics in world today, with its challenges, initiatives, achievements, and open questions (Enderle 1997: 1475). Interestingly, survey's report recognized dynamic nature of field of business ethics, partly because of a growing awareness of value-conflicts among different cultures and nations (Enderle 1997: 1475). In early 2000's, increasing appreciation of diversity within marketplace-especially within an international marketplace-and in light of several spectacular corporate, immoral failures-such as Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, Kmart, Countrywide, and Adelphia Communications-scholarly proposals for curriculum development attempted to broaden framework of business ethics beyond traditionally morality-centric theories, and to identify and design a more practical, real-world approach (cf. Sims and Brinkman 2003: 69-70).More recently, ethics education pedagogy has attempted to blend through lens of separate bodies of literature including social innovation (Fernando, 2011) and in consideration of public good (Lamb et. al, 2011). The more recent articles dedicated to ethic education argued that principle-based model of business ethics education that dominated field in 1990s may lack applicability to real world business settings. Culham (2015) recently suggested necessity of virtue ethics, but argued that although business schools do well to educate intellectual virtues, they may be lacking in effective pedagogy related to character education. The following may potentially subscribe to virtues of character by suggesting a critical-thinking framework separate from an inherent value system.The Present State of Ethics CurriculaIn an effort to subscribe to proposals to change framework of business ethics curricula, and in consideration of questioning effectiveness of an historical morality-centric framework for teaching business ethics, a persistent theme of ethics curricula seems to be significant emphasis on moral conduct and dilemmas, versus ethical conduct and dilemmas. …