This list is not necessarily unique to business ethics – some of these problems apply to other courses as well, particularly other applied ethics courses. And, very importantly, some of these problems also apply to the teaching one does as an ethics consultant or an ethics officer, serving on an ethics committee or in an ethics program.

1. You’re a philosophy professor. Know that both inside and outside academia, philosophy doesn’t have a very good reputation.[1] (Indeed, ‘academic’ doesn’t have a good reputation. The word is often used in the business world to dismiss something as irrelevant – ‘Yes, well, the question’s academic, isn’t it.’) Philosophy is typically considered useless or easy. Or both. Since it’s useless, you’ll never have your students or committee members/employees’ attention. Since it’s easy, you’ll never have their full effort. And when your students receive a grade they were not expecting (usually that’d be anything less than an ‘A’), they’ll be outraged. And likely very vocal about it.



A solution to this problem might be to team teach the course with a business prof.

2. You’re teaching to non-philosophy majors. Philosophy majors tend to understand, or learn pretty quickly, that philosophy is more, not less, difficult than other disciplines (top scorers on the GRE tend to be philosophy majors or physics majors – they are the ones most adept at critical, abstract reasoning), so they pay close attention and work hard. Non-philosophy majors tend to think that philosophy is a ‘bird’ course. So, as mentioned above, they won’t work very hard and yet will be outraged to receive a poor grade.

It might help to present the GRE stats. But don’t just tell them. They won’t believe you, you’re just a philosophy prof. Give the url of the study. See for example http://www.umflint.edu/philosophy/phl-gre.htm and http://www.phil.stmarytx.edu/faculty/philhp/articles/gre.html.

3. You’re teaching philosophy – which typically involves the higher cognitive skills. To explain in terms of Bloom’s taxonomy, while most business courses deal with knowledge and comprehension, and application; philosophy deals very much with the higher three levels – analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. If it’s true that business students are typically the ‘B’ and ‘C’ students in high school (‘A’ and ‘B’ students go into science and humanities), then many of your students will simply not be up to it.

There are two important implications. First, abstraction is involved. Although the task is to apply the abstractions, the abstractions must nevertheless be dealt with. Principles and values must be understood and juggled (compared, evaluated, weighted). Business students (indeed, most people) are not comfortable with abstraction.

Second, evaluation is involved. You’re requiring your students/participants to be critical. Most students, most people, have no training in critical thinking. And no, it doesn’t come naturally.

Furthermore, your students/participants will misunderstand ‘critical’ – when you model the thinking you want them to develop, they will think you’re being either needlessly negative or needlessly adversarial. They will not understand that being critical means simply evaluating the strength and weakness of an argument. They’ll understand your critical approach as antagonistic, a personal attack. They’ll call you rude. They’ll be offended. They’ll accuse you of not respecting their beliefs. (And indeed you’re not. Not without some support, some defence.) They’ll complain to the Dean.

And the reason they will not understand that is because they will persist in thinking that everyone is entitled to their own opinion. They will not understand that some opinions are better than others. Because they will not understand the criteria for evaluation – they will not understand that there are rules of reasoning about which there is no ‘matter of opinion’ (For example, to conclude that because all A are B, all B are A is simply wrong – as wrong as concluding that 2 + 3 = 5.) And it will come as a rude awakening to be told that they are simply wrong. [2]

What exacerbates all of this is that many assumptions have been presented as fact in the business program. For example, your students think the goal of business is to maximize profit. Philosophers examine assumptions. And most of them can argue that ethics trumps profit. But say that in a room full of business students and most will tune you out – and, therefore, fail the course. The others will call you names and complain to the Dean that you don’t respect their opinions. (And also fail the course).

It would help, of course, if Critical Thinking 101 were a prerequisite. Explain that some opinions are better than others: you can express your opinion that Santa Claus exists until you're blue in the face, but until you present some reasons for your opinion, the rest of the class is justified in ignoring you (politely, of course); and until you present good reasons, the rest of the class is justified in not changing its mind (assuming they disagreed with you).

4. You’re teaching ethics. There are several implications of this.

First, people tend to think they already know right from wrong. After all, it’s something we’re taught as children. So, since you’re not teaching them anything new, you won’t get their attention or effort.

Further, since it is something we’re taught as children, most people feel infantilized to be taught it as adults – and will resent it.



It might help to explain that ethically speaking, most of us are quite unsophisticated; we haven't updated our childhood. Most of our moral training stopped when we were somewhere around thirteen or fourteen years of age, but as adults, we have to deal with a lot of ethical issues that our childhood morality simply can't handle very well. It doesn't have much in the way of conceptual complexity and subtlety; it doesn't make the fine distinctions that are necessary; it's not as precise as it needs to be. For example, 'Do what your parents tell you' is fine until you realize that parents make mistakes too. 'Don't steal' is adequate as long as you're not starving and someone else has food that they have stolen. Even 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you' must bite the dust: you may say 'tell me the truth' but some people really may prefer not to know – do you respect their wishes?

Just as someone who is educated about forestry can tell the difference between a five-year-old sick white pine and a ten-year-old healthy red pine (to me, they're all trees), and someone educated about colour can distinguish between magenta, scarlet, and burgundy (to you, they might all be red), someone educated about ethics will be able to distinguish between justified discrimination and unjustified discrimination or between morally acceptable profit and morally unacceptable profit. Those distinctions can then be used to make decisions.

Second, despite the critical thinking element, in which there is a great deal of black and white, ethics is very ‘grey’. Unlike many disciplines, there is typically no correct answer. In ethics, and ethics assignments, it’s how you get the answer that is typically evaluated, not the answer itself. (See point 9.) Business students (and again, most people) are uneasy, uncomfortable, with grey. They want black and white, a bottom line. (Which is why perhaps they cling to the bottom line of profit. It’s easily quantifiable.)

It might help to articulate and emphasize that before they become overwhelmed and give up, their goal is to become able to make better ethical decisions, more carefully considered decisions; they don't have to figure out with absolute certainty what’s right, but just what’s better.

Third, the subject matter is very sensitive. People will get upset; they will become disturbed. You are teaching what is perhaps the most sensitive course in the curriculum. No matter how carefully you lay the groundwork and say things like ‘We’re discussing positions/opinions, when someone criticizes a position, they’re criticizing the position, not the person who holds that position, in fact we don’t even need to know what positions you personally hold, that’s your own business’, there will be many students who don’t have the maturity to handle a course that implicitly and explicitly questions the beliefs and values they hold dear. Their response is (further) resistance, anger, and hostility.

Fourth, morality is very personal. So people may respond with ‘It’s none of your business’ when you try to elicit discussion. This is intensified in the workplace because there is this unfortunate assumption, belief, that one must leave one’s personal life at the door.

5. The course (or participation in the program) is mandatory. Students (participants) will resent such coercion. This resentment will spill over.

6. The course ( or participation in the program) is an elective. In this case, students (participants) will assume that it’s not, therefore, very important – certainly not integral to their business education, their job performance. Add this to the first point, that you’re a philosophy professor, and you’re truly fringe, so very unimportant. [3]

7. Writing skills become very important in business ethics courses because students are typically required and write extended analyses of and arguments for various ethical positions. This kind of writing is very unlike the point form norm of business presentations (consider the standard of Power Point) and the expository short answer and multiple choice questions of business tests and exams. And most students aren’t very good at it. (This is related to point 3.)

It would help if Business Communication 101 incorporated such writing.

8. High level reading skills are required since the student must be able to follow the extended reasoning typical of the text material; quite simply, the essays written by philosophers that rightly appear in many business ethics texts are way beyond business students.

9. You’re a sessional instructor. Business students are very aware of rank. Hierarchy rules their world. So if you’re ‘just’ a sessional, again, the course can’t be very important or very difficult.

10. If you teach the course in the evening, see point 9.

11. If you teach the course in a portable, see point 9.



References


[1] To be fair, humanities students don’t think much of business either. The disdain is reciprocal. And yet I have a feeling that a course called “Marketing your Poetry Book” or “Running your Theatre” taught to humanities students by a marketing or management prof would be more attended to than the business ethics course taught to business students by a philosophy prof.

[2] Formal logic and even informal logic is full of correct and incorrect reasoning. It takes a lot of work to critically evaluate a philosophy paper and maybe that’s why so much bullshit gets an ‘A’ – the prof simply becomes too tired to do a good job.

[3] Being offered as an elective every second year sends a message of such unimportance, you may simply not be able to compensate. Give up.