Business Ethics: Can Ethics Be Taught? - Argumentative Essay

Introduction

The scandals that plagued the business world in the United States at the end of the 20th century necessitated the debate on what kind of administrators were being formed in schools (Mastracchio, Jimenez-Angueira & Toth, 2015). The question was more than reasonable if one were to consider that several of the scandals were at the forefront of the country's most prestigious business schools. In addition, the issue of sustainability has been more time in management courses and business agendas. With humankind in the seven billion occupancies of the planet, not only ecological but also economic and social sustainability seems increasingly threatened. The search for sustainable proposals for the economy and society, in general, leads to issues that are not only technical, economic or operational. Ethics inevitably is at the heart of the discussions, particularly on how they are acquired.

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Although not everyone seems to agree with the popular argument that ethics can be taught, various efforts have shown the faith placed in the ability to teach business ethics. For instance, schools and management programs around the world have begun to include courses focusing on topics of business ethics, social and environmental responsibility, sustainability, and correlates in their programs. It is timely to ask: Is it possible to teach ethics to be applied in the business world? This work tries to contribute ideas to the debate on the possibility of teaching business ethics. Professional ethics is an inescapable commitment to ourselves, which consists of being aware of the responsibility and honor that implies exercising a profession for the company. For a company manager, the ethical capacity of their staff is as important as their ability in performance. Loyalty to an organization is worth more than its productivity.

According to the European Business Ethics NetWork (EBEN): "Business ethics is a reflection on business practices that involve the norms and values of individuals, companies, and society." (Mihai & Alina, 2013). The ethics of the company consists of the discovery and application of the values and norms shared by a pluralist society to the particular field of the company, which requires understanding it according to a community model ". From the business point of view, ethics seeks the right way to live as well as the right way to develop the life of the company. When a company intends to be ethical, it tries to apply ethical principles when making decisions or taking concrete actions (Chell, Spence, Perrini & Harris, 2016). Nowadays, companies play an essential role as a catalyst for a better society through their actions and their commitment to the community, for this reason, the ethical behavior they must assume is important, since they teach to work, provide values, promote and create a culture, being a social entity that acts as a factor of change.

Ethical conduct in the work environment and in personal relationships is a fundamental condition for building a good reputation and credibility. The correct and profound image of man is what presents us as a being endowed with self-control and open to transcendence that is, responsible and free of desire (Chell et al., 2016). Business management schools have responded to the challenge launched by society by demanding an intensification of the teaching of ethics in their programs. With the passage of time, our knowledge of why, with what methods and with what content and scope can be taught, business ethics has been improving.

Argument

Trevino and Nelson (2016) describe ethics as the science that deals with the conduct of man, with a view to the achievement of his final end-call; good life: his happiness, self-perfection, holiness, fulfillment, etc. It is a science, not a set of opinions or beliefs, because there is a truth about the end of man and about the means to achieve it (for example, a person who becomes addicted to drugs, or who murders another, is harmed by such a way to themselves - and the society in which they live - that it will be difficult to reach their goal if they do not correct their error in time. Ethics is a practical science because it interests not so much the knowledge as the implementation. It is also because of the way of knowing: the exercise of practical reason. It is also a normative science that explains what man should do. It is not a mere account of the behavior of people - that would be sociology - nor an introspection about what each one would like to do. It is a science of man, based on anthropology - which is the philosophical study of man. Since man is a social being, ethics also has a social aspect justifying why it must be taken into account in all social sciences: business management, economics, sociology, etc.

According to the authors, like all sciences, ethics can be learned. It consists of a set of principles, reasoning, and corollaries that lead to practical conclusions and can be studied from a minimum knowledge of anthropology. Above is a practical science, ethics is learned in daily life. In fact, it an important part of the education that anyone receives from a young age, education that tries, precisely, to make them a complete person, capable of reaching its end which is the task of their whole life. Through training, the person is able to reflect through experience ethical values crucial for healthy development. Ethical principles, theorems, and corollaries - moral laws - can be taught like those of any other science, through books, articles, classes, conferences, seminars, debates, study, etc. Ethical practice is acquired as habits are acquired: through the repetition of acts, with the guidance of the will which strives to overcome the resistance that these acts provoke in man (Trevino & Nelson, 2016).

Socrates considered it possible to teach ethics (Ergas, 2017). He was popularly referred to as the father of enlightenment and ethical optimism because he thought that the lack of ethics was the result of ignorance. Knowledge would generate the sage, who would be inevitably ethical. In this twenty-first century, it would suffice to teach ethics, to clarify to all on the importance of us to conscientize ourselves on the fragility of the Earth ship, so that the ethical behavior of humanity would unfold. The other sage was called Paul of Tarsus, often also known as St. Paul, the apostle, who recognized that his human condition allowed him to see clearly what was good and what was evil, but that he often did not do the good he wanted, but the evil he repelled. There is no way to reject the Socratic contribution to the need for knowledge, but we cannot minimize the cruel realism of Paul of Tarsus, which we know as we do, and which knowledge and virtue are not necessarily together. The author concludes by arguing that teaching ethics is possible, but that the generation of ethical behavior will not only occur through school instruction but will depend on individual factors of intimacy and also on a society that has the instrument to punish positively and negatively ethical behavior and its deviations.

In answering the question as to whether it is possible to teach business ethics from the academy, authors Christensen, Peirce, Hartman, Hoffman and Carrier (2007) argued that it is necessary to stop at the environment, from the closest to the most global. The classroom is a natural and ideal setting for these reflections and purposes. It is the place where new managers are trained, where responses to the new realities of the companies are generated. It is an active and participative methodology bet, through which essential conceptual elements are tackled and supported by didactic, problematic or casuistic approaches, cases of success and famous failures of recognized multinationals are brought together. Undoubtedly, this constitutes an effective learning model, of a practical nature. According to the authors, the lack of rectitude, that is, the proceeding ignoring the natural demands of transparency and honesty, has become commonplace, particularly in the business sector. They argue that distrust has turned into a budget for interpersonal and corporate relationships. Although this procedure cannot be attributed exclusively to the organization, it is not free of its pernicious consequences. The phenomenon happens, necessarily, by the organizational model. The authors further argue that in the current business environment, capital is privileged at the expense of the person and the profits on the development of individuals. It is said that in this world everything counts. Tax evasion, insufficient remuneration, strategies to reduce production costs above quality and customer expectations, influence peddling, and poor management of industrial waste to the detriment of the environment (Lau, Tong, Lien, Hsu & Chong, 2017). In short, companies today move in an environment in which the author insists that capital is privileged over the person. Those who have assumed the task of trainers, from the university, have the unwavering commitment to promoting, in the classrooms, a new business model that guarantees adequate profits, respects the fundamental ethical demands, safeguards the intrinsic value of work and the development of the person through it. Therefore teaching ethics enhances people's self-regulation through reading codes of good governance (Christensen, Peirce, Hartman, Hoffman & Carrier, 2007).

Crane and Matten (2016) argue that ethics training promotes institutional values based on an ethical commitment at all levels of the organization and is not only possible but also an essential element of professional development. According to the authors, the social construct is a consequence, necessarily, of what happens inside companies. The political community is modeled, in a good degree, by the axiological structure of entrepreneurs. Your image in the organization promotes values or lack of. This legitimizes the academic commitment to seek the personal transformation of the student, who will become the future manager, aware of the impact that their work has on the proposed organizational model. Ethic training business atmosphere guarantees the legitimate expectations of shareholders, the permanence and transcendence of the business model and guarantees that the reputation of the brand is never exposed negatively. Undoubtedly, in the national panorama, important efforts can be registered around the new management. In this way, the academy generates a dynamic relationship with the business world, responds to its commitment to the substantive function of social projection and legitimizes its presence in society. The authors respond, then, that not only is it possible to teach business ethics in the classroom but it is an imperative that cannot be postponed (Crane & Matten, 2016).

Counter Argument

Tucker (2016) argues that it is impossible to teach ethics because human beings are naturally conscious of moral and ethical values. In refuting the role of learning institutions in instilling ethical values, the authors pose that the teaching of business ethics in management programs starts from two premises. The first is that one should not approach the subject from a philosophical perspective. Philosophical ethics is too complex and arid for the majority of students enrolled in training courses and participants in executive programs because the majority simply had no training in philosophy (Tucker, 2016). Ethics, when approached philosophically, presupposes familiarity with other parts and topics of philosophy, such as ontology, history of philosophical thought, axiology. All this makes the philosophical approach to ethics unfeasible for the majority of management students and management professionals. The other premise is that the human b...