Ethics in Curriculum

Gu and Neesham (2014, 527) stated that in order to manage ethical issues in business practices effectively, “it is important to improve managers’ ability to make ethical decisions.” Tanzler, Maras, and Giannakopoulos (2012, 79) expressed the view that public trust in politics and politicians may well be affected by clearer and more detailed ethics rules. The same authors also said that “without any increase in improper behavior—whether through hard law, conflict of interest rules or simply codes of conduct—it may increase perceptions of ethical failure and therefore undermine trust” (p. 79). Having said this, there is more interest in integrity nowadays because according to Tanzler, Maras, and Giannakopoulos (2012, 81) (a) politicians are no longer interested in performing a public good but are careerists and self-promoters; (b) the public/private sector has become diluted, with the private sector having a higher value, where the shift to a free-market created competition and “radical alteration of style and ethos” (p. 81); (c) media attention to and interest in integrity has influenced how the public perceives some issues; and (d) policies and institutional innovations are designed to promote greater transparency.

Lambropoulou (2012, 94) noted that “the lack of moral standards for serving citizen’s interests in local communities is a unique development of the last decades.” She goes on to say that a common reaction by the authorities is to issue laws and/or amend existing ones. However, legislation is not the answer if the moral standards contribute to corruption and corporate fraud.

Due to the wide number of stakeholders affecting the integrity of a country, with politicians, judiciary, legislature, management, civil servants, employees, customers, and consumers all having a contributory part in the integrity of a country, the present author is of the view that ethics and moral values ought to be in the curriculum of all students from primary school age until employment. While business ethics courses have been popular for decades in business schools in universities a quick shower of moral values when one is in his/her 20s is not sufficient.

Business ethics education has evolved over the last three decades, business ethics classes have increased (Wart, Baker, and Ni 2014),²¹ and academic literature supporting business ethics has mushroomed. The fact that business students and business graduates are rushed through a one-semester course that discusses business ethics does not ensure that when out in business they will apply the virtues learned. Haidt (2014) claims that Business Schools ought to become more sophisticated and not address only conscious reasoning but unconscious processes like intuition, emotion, and habit. Some, of course, argue that there is a need for greater ethical robustness (Koehn 2005). Wart, Baker, and Ni (2013) attributed the decline of business ethics to the following:

• • The fact that the “basic conception of virtue has been abandoned in business curricula” (p. 572) and thus “honesty, trustworthiness, fairness, conscientiousness, and prudence when the fate of others is linked to your own” have been neglected.
• • “Competition commonly is accentuated so much that cooperation is given short shrift” (p. 572) because competition is about winning rather than playing by the rules.
• • The fact that “competition and success” are at the expense of humane values such as compassion, philanthropy, and environmentalism.

Despite the fact that in some countries the accrediting bodies²² of business schools require that business ethics be taught in undergraduate and/or graduate business courses, they have failed to ensure that graduates will behave ethically. First, the reason for this is the culture in universities and in particular in business schools is influenced by the upper echelons theory and the influence of the dean (Rutherford et al. 2012), who may be behaving unethically and immorally, bullying his staff, and promoting based on his personal agendas and ambitions rather than on merit. Second, the ethics teacher ought to be teaching morally by being fair, compassionate, and respectful. Third, the ethics teacher ought to be teaching morality by bringing matters of moral significance to the students’ attention (Fenstermacher, Osguthorpe, and Sanger 2009). By applying his/her own moral traits and dispositions (i.e., modeling), the ethics teacher is applying the most “prominent form of teaching” such a course (p. 10). Furthermore, Wart, Baker, and Ni (2013, 574) argued that business ethics courses ought to (a) target the purpose and specific audience; (b) ensure commitment by college leadership; and (c) recruit faculty champions who are passionate about the importance of teaching business ethics. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to discuss how business ethics courses ought to be taught at the university level, but suffice it here to say that such a course ought to be compulsory for all undergraduate and graduate students since they can have an impact on the graduates’ sensitivity and judgment, a critical component of “which initiates the ethical decision-making process” (Martinov-Bennie and Mladenovic 2015, 189) and “[develops] the skill sets required for enacting ethical behavior” (Kretz 2015, 151). However, treating ethics as a morality that reflects critically stresses the fact that we can talk about exploring ethics; ethics is a process of thinking, not a set of well-accepted answers that only need to be accepted passively (Borstner and Gartner 2014, 9).

Based on Kohlberg’s (1969) stages of moral development (see Chapter 3), which constitute an adaptation of a psychological theory originally conceived by Piaget (1966), the current author proposes that the teaching of ethics, morality, morals, and virtues ought to commence much earlier than university life. Kohlberg’s work expanded Piaget’s work and determined that the process of moral development was principally concerned with justice and it continued throughout an individual’s lifetime. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” ought to start from the early schooling years. According to Kohlberg’s theory, individuals move to higher levels or stages of moral reasoning as they get older prior to reaching moral maturity. Kohlberg (1987) concluded that most American people never move beyond stage 4 (which is attained after the age of 20), and therefore morality is basically limited to obeying the rules and laws of that society. In fact, moral teaching ought to begin as early as possible in a child’s learning to ensure that virtues, morals, and ethics are deeply rooted in his/her character. The CCFP model proposed here emphasizes the importance of morals in all three of its pillars. Therefore, let us next focus on the concept of responsibility.