Book Reviews
Toward assessing business ethics education
By Diane L. Swanson and Dann G. Fisher
ISBN: 978-1-61735-163-1; 2011; Information Age, Charlotte, NC;
Reviewed by Robert Shaw
The Open Polytechnic, New Zealand
The war over business education rages - yet you might never know it from this book. One major battle is that being fought between those who think business ethics is a vehicle to make the workforce more honest and those who want their courses to teach people to think for themselves. Another battle is over the teaching strategy: should we teach the discipline of ethics and then require that our students apply the theories, or should we begin with case studies (the real world, as they say) and then take what we can pick from the students' deliberations about them. Experienced teachers much prefer the first approach. A third battlefront is between those who support the capitalist liberal economy and seek to make it more humane by offering business ethics and corporate social responsibility courses, and those who think capitalism is fatally flawed and ask us to examine the ethical foundations of society. Another battle is between those (mainly administrators) who think that ethics pervades all business degree subjects and this obviates the need for a dedicated course, and those who think they may not be employed if their subject is cut. As this reviewer believes business ethics needs to be more about ethics and less about business he searched in frustration for references to Aristotle, Kant, Nietzsche, Mill and Bentham. What is the discipline of ethics if it does not feature those who contributed to humankind's thinking? According to its editors, the book aims to advance the enterprise of assessing business ethics education in three ways: (1) they provide a venue for scholars to share innovative was of assessing in business ethics courses, (2) leaders in the field identify 'what needs to be assessed', and (3) by assisting with the expansion of 'ethics coverage in business schools' (p.2).
Of these aims the most critical is the identification of what needs to be assessed if a course is to carry the name of 'business ethics'. There is nothing distinctive about the question of course content in business ethics - we must expect that same answer will relate to medical ethics, ethics in education, and the ethics of lawyers. The disciple of ethics is singular and the examples are diverse. Equally, the discipline relates to ordinary living and the goal when we seek to educate children about ethics. One of the most profound attempts to say what needs to be considered when one assesses ethics education is that of the Farmington Trust Research Unit which was established at Oxford in the mid-1960s to consider moral education for secondary school students. Wilson's book The Assessment of Morality (1973) should be required reading for all who touch Toward assessing business ethics education: it really is helpful to know what you want to measure before you apply the ruler.
Several papers in the collection provide useful statistical information on degree offerings, the popularity of course delivery methods, and the epidemic of cheating (which evidently shows more in business students than those in other disciplines).
