1. This segment’s readings and videos introduced us to various ethical theories.  These theories are useful ways for us to both understand our own ethical orientations and to analyze the actions and outcomes of ethical decisions.  You may have noticed that there has been a lot of criticism lately of the role of business education in the recent financial scandals (many of the CEOs and employees in the spotlight are alums of schools of business).  The criticisms center on the primacy of financial success and the shareholder model in traditional business education.  In other words, business schools have been criticized for teaching students to focus only on profit and performance to the general neglect of social and ecological systems.  As a result, many schools of business have taken steps to create a values driven business education and have engaged in various initiatives– including asking students to take oaths of responsibility and requiring business ethics courses such as ours.

One of our biggest discussions in implementing a values based education is concerned with identifying from where do ethics and values arise? Who has the responsibility to instill ethics and moral values in individuals? Can a sense of ethics and morals be instilled at the college and/or professional level or is this too late in an individual’s life?  What do you all think?  Since we are discussing ethical decision making this week, can ethics and ethical decision making be taught in schools or organizations?  Use the readings and videos from this segment and real life examples to support your analyses.

2. Business Ethics and entrepreneurship

My question is if you were an entrepreneur, what are you going to do when facing challenges? Will you compromise to financial statements for a short-term and fix it after a while? Will you tell the truth to the founders? Or, you deem integrity as the top priority, nothing can change it? I am sure these questions could be very tough to real entrepreneur. What do you think?