Chapter 11

Published in: Gijsbertse, D.P. & Naeije, W.J. (2014).

Bedrijfskundigen in de 21ste eeuw: Nieuwe perspectieven
op bedrijfskundig onderwijs. Rotterdam: Hogeschool
Rotterdam Uitgeverij.

Beyond Business Ethics and

Corporate Social Responsibility Courses
D.P. Gijsbertse
Abstract
Many business schools have integrated business ethics, sustainability and
corporate social responsibility content into their curricula. The goal of these
reforms is to change the broader economic, environmental and social effects of organizational decision-making by their graduates in positive ways.
This chapter distinguishes four levels of integrating ethical reflection into
business education based on the type of reforms that schools have undertaken so far. It argues that each of these levels is necessary, but not sufficient to effectively change the broader economic, environmental and social
effects of organizational decision-making in positive ways. It then proposes
two further, much more radical levels of integrating ethical reflection into
business education that can change the broader effects of organizational
decision-making in positive ways.

1. Introduction
In recent years, the search for ways to stop the production of economic, environmental and social crises has extended to business education.
Reformers and institutions that address environmental and social issues have increasingly looked to business schools for positive contributions. Progressive business
scholars have argued for the integration of sustainability (e.g. Stubbs & Cocklin, 2008;
Willard, 2004) and corporate social responsibility (e.g. Carroll, 2000; Schwartz &
Carroll, 2003) content in business school curricula. Influential organizations like the
Aspen Institute and even the United Nations have developed programs to promote
more responsible and sustainable leadership development in business education.1

See The Aspen Institutes Business & Society Program and the Principles of Responsible
Management Education initiative of the United Nations Social Compact program.

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Critics, on the other hand, have blamed business schools for the corporate scandals of the early 2000s and the 2008 financial crisis. Several business scholars
(e.g. Adler, 2002; Gioia, 2002; Khurana et al., 2004; Swanson, 2005) have blamed
corporate scandals like Enron, Arthur Andersen, WorldCom and Tyco on the
absence of ethics from business school curricula. Influential journals like Harvard
Business Review (Podolny, 2009) and Forbes (Serchuk, 2009) and quality newspapers like The Financial Times (Bradshaw, 2009), The New York Times (Holland,
2009), The Guardian (James, 2009) and The Independent (Green, 2009) gave a
stage to critics who argued that business schools are responsible for the financial
crisis for the exact same reason.
In response to these concerns and criticisms, many business schools have integrated
business ethics, sustainability and corporate social responsibility content into their
curricula. While Forbes had previously criticized business schools for their complicity
in the financial crisis, it called it encouraging to see that many schools, in response
to the financial crisis, are updating their curricula to better prepare students for the
ethical questions they may be forced to answer in the decades to come (OConnor,
2013). More importantly, a study by the Aspen Institute (2011) found that the percentage of leading business schools with ethics and corporate social responsibility
content in their curricula had increased from 34% in 2001 to 79% in 2011.
This chapter addresses the efficacy of the reforms that business schools have
undertaken so far focusing especially on their capacity to change the broader
economic, environmental and social effects of organizational decisions in positive ways. It argues that these reforms are indeed necessary, but that the ways in
which ethics, sustainability and corporate social responsibility content has been
integrated into business school curricula so far is not sufficient. Therefore, it also
proposes more radical ways of integrating a combination of ethical reflection and
critical thinking into business education that seem to be more promising.
The following section discusses why reformers and critics are right to target business schools in their search for ways to stop our production of economic, environmental and social crises. This is followed by a distinction of four different levels of
integrating ethics, sustainability and corporate social responsibility content into
business school curricula in section three. Section four explains why each of these
levels is necessary to change the broader economic, environmental and social
(side-)effects of organizational decisions in positive ways. After that, section five
will continue to argue that these four levels of integration nevertheless still fail
to address the actual driver behind the production of economic, environmental
and social crises. Section six discusses why, as a result of this failure, the first four
levels of integration are not sufficient to change the outcomes of organizational
decision-making. Section seven proposes two further and much more radical
levels of integrating ethical reflection on the broader economic, environmental
and social effects of organizational decisions into business education.

2. Why Target Business Schools?

For every newly appointed corporate social responsibility or sustainability professor or lecturer, there is at least one business school professor or lecturer who
thinks these subjects do not belong in business education. For every critic who
has blamed business schools for the financial crisis, there are at least ten who
have blamed the financial crisis on governments instead.2 Before evaluating the
ways in which business schools have responded to growing environmental and social concerns and criticisms about their functioning, a brief discussion on whether
reformers and critics are right to target business schools is in order.
In general, there is a tendency among reformers and critics to blame the economic,
environmental and social crises on institutions or actors that can control, or, as
they would argue, could have controlled the production of the negative effects that
create these crises. The financial crisis, for example, is blamed predominantly on
governments, because they could have contained the creation of systemic economic risk through tougher regulation of the financial sector. The environmental crisis
is often blamed on consumers, because more sustainable consumption patterns
on their part could reduce greenhouse gas emissions, pollution and the depletion
of natural resources. Even growing unemployment in an increasingly automated
and competitive global economy tends to be blamed on individual members of
the work-force, because they could as the argument has it compensate for the
decline in labor market demand by becoming better entrepreneurs of the self
(i.e. personal investments in the development of ones human capital or literal
engagement in entrepreneurial activities).3
Although this focus on the failures of the constraining and compensating mechanisms that these actors and institutions have at their disposal can surely be useful
(as will be discussed in section 4), it does overlook where the production of these
crises actually occurs. While governments may be able to curb or compensate
for the creation of financial risks, they do not drive the production of these risks
themselves. Consumers may be able to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, pollution and the depletion of natural resources by changing their consumption patterns, but it is not the act of consumption itself that brings these negative effects
into being to begin with. Individual members of the work force can compensate
for decreasing labor market demand by becoming better entrepreneurs of their
self, but their decisions and actions as individuals looking for work do not drive
the disappearance of jobs.
2

As a quick measure for approximation, there are fourteen chapters dedicated to the
various forms of government failure compared to one chapter about business schools
in Howard Davies (2010) The Financial Crisis: Who is to Blame?
The term entrepreneurship of the self is derived from Michel Foucaults discussion of the
reformulation and generalization of the notion of homo conomicus as an entrepreneur
of himself in American neoliberalism (see Foucault, 2008, p. 226).

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So where does the production of economic, environmental and social crises

actually occur? The answer is rather simple: it occurs as a side-effect of the
current functioning of organized forms of economic production, or, more simply:
business. It is not governments, but financial institutions that have produced the
systemic financial risks that came close to bringing down the world economy. It
is not consumption, but heavy industry that produces greenhouse gas emissions, pollution and the depletion of natural resources as byproducts of their
business operations to begin with. The decisions of business, not individual
members of the workforce result in automation and lay-offs at the expense of
employment opportunities.
Knowing that these crises are produced first and foremost by the current functioning of businesses, it is but a small step to see why business schools are
responsible for these crises indeed. Governments, consumers and individual
members of the workforce can be blamed at most for their failure to constrain- or
compensate for the production of negative economic, environmental and social
effects by businesses. Business schools, on the other hand, can be blamed (in)directly for the production of these crises, as they have developed, taught and
distributed the management tools and theories that have increasingly come to
govern organizational decision-making and the organization and functioning of
economic production (i.e. firms) more generally over the last 50 to 70 years.

3. Four Levels of Integrating Ethical Reflection

So if business schools are to blame, what have they done to change in response to
these crises? Detailed empirical studies about the content, teaching methods and
the position in the overall curricula of their reforms are missing or difficult to find.
But it is still possible to capture most of these reforms by making some conceptual
distinctions. Since we are interested in the capacity of these reforms to change
the outcome of organizational decision-making, these distinctions are based on
the extent to which ethics, sustainability and corporate social responsibility content is integrated in the ways in which business schools prepare their students for
real-world organizational decision-making. Based on this criterion, the following
four levels of integration can be distinguished.

Level 1: Stand-alone Courses

At the first level of integration, business ethics, sustainability and corporate social
responsibility are added to the curricula as separate, stand-alone course content.
There either is one course or part of a course dedicated to one of these three
topics entirely, or there are two or three courses or parts of courses that are each
dedicated to one of these three themes. A separate, stand-alone course on busi-

ness ethics, for example, would teach students to reflect on the effects of organizational decisions on stakeholders from an ethical point of view.

Level 2: Integrative Courses

The second level of integration is reached when business schools offer course
content that integrates and relates ethics, sustainability and corporate social
responsibility topics. Such integrative course content teaches students to reflect on
the effects of organizational decisions for stakeholders and the broader economy,
environment and society from an ethical point of view. (Henceforth, the use of ethical reflection will refer to this broader mode of reflection unless stated otherwise).

Level 3: Integration Across the Curriculum

The third level is reached when ethical reflection is integrated into the core
courses of the traditional curriculum (e.g. strategy, corporate finance, business
economics, marketing, human resource management etc.). These courses would
teach students to incorporate ethical reflection into the problem-solving and
decision-making approaches they learn.
This level can be achieved in several ways. One is to adopt a textbook that treats
the ethical aspects of the kind of organizational decision-making that is typical to
the subject of a course and actively involve reflections on these aspects in teaching the course. Another way is to assign additional readings about ethical aspects
connected to the subject, explicitly discussing the ethical dimensions of business
cases that involve decision-making on the subject of the course. Finally, instructors of stand-alone courses on business ethics can help instructors of courses
from the traditional curriculum to integrate ethical reflection in the approach to
organizational decision-making that their specific courses teach.

Level 4: Integration in Business Assignments

The fourth level is reached when ethical reflection is integrated into business
assignments for real organizations. This level can only be attained by business
schools that have their students carry out projects or internships at real organizations during their studies. Schools that do, can achieve this level by making ethical
reflection on the effects of organizational decisions that are made or recommended as part of business assignments into a standard assessment criterion, as well
as a discussion point for coaching sessions during the project.
Most business schools are somewhere between the first and second level of integration. They have somehow added course content on business ethics, sustainability and corporate social responsibility to their curricula. But the content is not

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yet fully integrated. There is no ethical reflection on the effects of organizational

decisions for the broader economy, environment and society. Business schools
that have progressed to level two, three or four are at the forefront of making
business education more responsible and likely to be concerned with ways to ensure that ethical reflection actually changes the broader economic, environmental
and social effects of the decisions their graduates make in positive ways.

4. Why These Four Levels of Integrating Ethical Reflection

are Necessary
Though each of the first four levels of integration has its shortcomings (as will be
discussed in section 5), they also represent necessary steps for business schools
steps that must be taken in order to change the broader economic, environmental
and social effects of organizational decisions in positive ways.
Adding a separate, stand-alone (Level 1) course on ethics is necessary, because
students have to learn how to make judgments about decisions from an ethical
point of view. From the 1960s onwards, business schools have adopted a sciencebased approach to management.4 As a result, business education has come to be
dominated by a positive approach to business that is based on the-way-the-world(of-business)-is. In fact, this positive approach is so dominant that students would
not even know what ethical reflection and normative reasoning about the-waythe-world-(of-business)-ought-to-be are, if their educational experience were limited to the traditional business school curriculum. If ethical reflection is going to
change the way organizational decisions are made, business students would first
have to know how to reflect on decisions from an ethical point of view. Therefore,
teaching separate stand-alone course content on business ethics is a necessary
precondition for more responsible organizational desicion-making.
Likewise, adding separate, stand-alone (Level 1) course content on sustainability
and corporate social responsibility is also necessary, because students have to
become aware of the (side-)effects that organizational decisions can have on
the economy, the environment and society. Traditional core courses focus on the
way that the relevant aspects of one business function (e.g. strategy, finance,
marketing, human resource management, etc.) are related to the performance of
the individual firm. In doing so, the business environment tends to be taken into
4

See discussions by Mintzberg (2004, p. 27ff), Ghoshal (2005, p. 77) and especially
Khurana (2007, p. 268ff), among others, about the way in which business schools were
transformed into science-based and analysis-centred institutions for training in the
functions of business (as Mintzberg, 2004, p. 5 puts it) and turned away from the project of developing management into a profession (as Khurana 2007 puts it).

account only to the extent that it is relevant for the performance of the individual
firm itself. That is, the effects of organizational decisions on the broader economy,
the environment and society are not considered as relevant in- and of themselves.
Business students who follow a traditional curriculum without any sustainability
or corporate social responsibility course content may even be(come) oblivious
to the fact that such effects exist. If the negative economic, environmental and social effects that are currently produced by businesses are to be changed through
the way organizational decisions are made, then business graduates who are going to make these decisions must be aware of them first. Therefore, it is necessary
to integrate stand-alone course content on sustainability and corporate social
responsibility themes into business school curricula.
By the same token, (Level 2) courses that integrate ethics, sustainability and
corporate social responsibility content are necessary, because students have to
learn to reflect on the broader economic, environmental and social effects of
organizational decisions from an ethical point of view. Teaching students to reflect
on decisions from an ethical point of view and teaching them about the broader
economic, environmental and social effects of organizational decisions is a first
step. But if these topics remain disconnected, students will learn only to identify
the broader economic, environmental and social effects of organizational decisions in purely descriptive ways and remain unable to evaluate, argue and judge
whether these effects are good or bad from an ethical point of view. If business
graduates are to change the broader economic, environmental and social effects
of organizational decisions in a positive way, then they would have to be able to
evaluate- and argue about the normative reasons for doing so first. Therefore,
it is necessary to add courses to business school curricula that integrate ethics,
sustainability and corporate social responsibility themes in a way that students
learn to reflect on- and evaluate the broader economic, environmental and social
effects of organizational decisions from an ethical point of view.
The third level of integration, then, is also necessary, because ethical reflection
needs to be incorporated into every type of organizational decision-making.
Traditional courses like strategy, finance and marketing teach students how to
analyze- and solve problems and make decisions that are typical to the business
functions they address. If ethical reflection on the broader effects of business is
merely taught in stand-alone courses on ethics, it will remain detached from the
standard approaches to problem-solving and decision-making that are taught
for each business function. Business ethics, sustainability and corporate social
responsibility courses would appear to be just another set of separate courses,
each with their own approach to their own domain of problems. Such an isolated
position would make ethical reflection appear as a rather abstract exercise that
is detached from, and therefore irrelevant to, the problem-solving and decisionmaking methods that are taught in other function-dedicated courses. If ethical

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reflection has to change the outcomes of organizational decisions in practice,

it has to be an integral part of all the standard approaches to organizational
decision-making that are taught in business school curricula. Therefore, it is
necessary to integrate ethical reflection across the core courses of the traditional curriculum.
Finally, even the fourth level of integration is necessary, as the traditional curriculum is too theory-centered to prepare students properly for dealing with the
complex dynamics of real world organizational decision-making. The traditional
business school curriculum prepares students for making real-world organizational
decisions by training them in abstract analysis of business cases that are written
in a way that the available theories can easily be applied to find the right solution.
Factors that complicate decision-making in business practice (e.g. limited available
information, changing circumstances, organizational politics and all the unique
particulars of a situation that are not a part of the theory) are either bracketed or
excluded through a series of simplifying assumptions. This predominantly analytical
approach has led Henry Mintzberg (2004) to argue that business education fails to
develop competent managers in general, because it is to detached from the complexities of real-world business contexts. His argument for doubting the efficacy of
business education extends a fortiori to the efficacy of teaching ethical reflection as
an integral part of organizational decision-making in classroom settings only. If business students are to change the outcomes of decision-making in business practice
based on ethical reflections, they will have to learn how they can integrate these
ethical reflections and act upon them in the complex social reality of real-world
organizational contexts. Therefore, it is necessary to integrate ethical reflection into
business assignments, projects and internships for real-world organizations as well.

5. The Actual Driver Behind the Production of the Crises

The previous sections have argued that business schools can indeed be blamed
(in)direclty for the production of economic, environmental and social crises (section 1), distinguished four different levels in the ways in which business schools have
reformed their curricula so far (section 2) and explained why each of these reforms
are necessary to change the negative economic, environmental and social effects
produced by organizational decisions (section 3).
This section discusses why the first four levels of integration even though they
are necessary fail to address the way in which traditional business school curricula drive the production of negative economic, environmental and social (side-)
effects in organizational decision-making. This failure results from their solutionoriented approach, which merely seeks to use ethical reflection as a constraint on

the production of negative external effects. This approach overlooks and distracts
from the actual driver behind the production of these negative effects.
There are two different ways to respond to crises: a problem-oriented approach,
which analyzes and seeks an understanding of the causes of a crisis first, and a
solution-oriented approach, which prioritizes the search for- and implementation
of possible solutions over gaining a complete understanding of the causes of a
crisis first.
The first four levels of integrating ethical reflection into business education are
solution-oriented responses. After the corporate scandals of the early 2000s and
the 2008 financial crisis, critics were quick to blame these negative effects on the
absence of business ethics from business school curricula. Business schools quickly responded by integrating business ethics and corporate social responsibility
content into their curricula. These rapid responses by critics and business schools
were focused on integrating business ethics as a solution that was readily at hand,
without any further or more thorough analysis of the underlying problem.
This solution-oriented approach definitely has one major strength relative to the
problem-oriented approach. It does not wait for an exact and complete understanding of how a crisis could have occured before coming up and implementing
responses to it. As such, it does not lose any valuable time when it is necessary
to mitigate immediate threats. Imagine that governments, in 2008, had commissioned a thorough investigation into the causes of the financial crisis before issuing bailouts to financial institutions that were at the brink of bankruptcy and too
big to fail. The economic system would probably have ground to a halt.
But the solution-oriented approach also has a major weakness. In skipping over a
more thorough analysis of the underlying problem, it tends to treat the absence
of the solutions that it generates as the problem. Consequentially, the solutionoriented approach is at risk of responding to crises situations in a way that does
not address the underlying problem at all.
As responses to the economic, environmental and social crises, the first four levels of integrating ethical reflection suffer from this weakness. Critics and business
schools alike did not so much engage in a thorough analysis of the ways in which
business education has contributed to the occurrence of corporate scandals and
the financial crisis. Instead, they proposed business ethics and corporate social
responsibility as a solution first and then backwards-rationalized that the absence
of business ethics was the problem second. But blaming these corporate scandals
and the financial crisis on the absence of business ethics in business education
does not explain why these (and other) negative effects occur when ethical reflection is absent from business education to begin with.

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So what, then, drives the production of negative economic, environmental and

social effects in organizational decision-making that is devoid of ethical reflection?
It is the principle of shareholder value maximization.
Over the past three decades economic production increasingly has come to be organized around the principle of shareholder value maximization. This principle was
first popularized as a new conception of organizational purpose in the United States
in the early 1980s. Throughout the 1970s, corporate strategies of American firms
had been oriented predominantly towards retention of corporate earnings and reinvestment in corporate growth (Lazonick & OSullivan, 2000, p. 13). In the decades
that followed, this was transformed into an orientation on downsizing of corporate
labour forces and distribution of corporate earnings to shareholders (ibid.). Though
this transformation started in the United States, it has spread far beyond.
Business schools have played a decisive role in crafting this focus on shareholder
value maximization into the overriding objective for organizational decision-making.
The main intellectual thrust behind the aforementioned transformation of organizational purpose came from a group of financial economists (e.g. Jensen & Meckling,
1976). These economists translated a series of standard assumptions from neoclassical economics into prescriptions for corporate governance in what has come to be
known as agency theory. Assuming that market mechanisms are superior to managerial decision-making and that human behaviour is essentially self-interested, they
argued that corporate governance should be designed as to prevent managers from
pursuing objectives that are not in line with the financial interests of shareholders.
One way to do this, as they proposed, is to grant stock options to executives. Another
is to promote a market for corporate control that would replace managers who failed
to maximize shareholder value. The theoretical design and practical implementation
of this approach to corporate governance implicitly transformed the conception of
organizational purpose from one that was tied to institutional stability and growth to
one that was focused on shareholder value maximization above all else.
This principle of shareholder value maximization has developed into the foundational assumption behind most thinking, theorizing and teaching in business
schools. After its development under the guise of agency theory, shareholder value maximization was quickly adopted as the dominant doctrine on organizational
purpose in business education (Gintis & Khurana, 2006, pp. 303304; Khurana
et. al., 2004, p. 9). One measure of its pervasiveness is its spread throughout
academic articles, books and standard educational textbooks on the different
business functions to which most core courses in the traditional business school
curriculum are dedicated. Examples of its adoption can be found in the academic
literature- and educational textbooks on corporate governance (e.g. Jensen, 2001;
Rappaport, 1986), strategy (e.g. Grant, 2008, p. 36), marketing (e.g. Srivastava,
Shervani, & Fahey, 1999) and human resource management (e.g. Becker et al.,
1997). Even more strikingly, studies by the Aspen Institute (2008) show that maxi-

mizing shareholder value is the most cited objective when business students from
the worlds highest ranked MBA programmes were asked what they thought was
the responsibility of business.
The principle of shareholder value maximization drives the production of negative
economic, environmental and social (side-)effects by imposing the maximization
of the firms individual financial performance as the overriding objective on every
organizational decision.
Every organizational decision has a range of possible effects that can be categorized and qualified along various dimensions. One of these dimensions is the
amount of shareholder value it generates, or to put it more simply the effects of
the decision on the financial performance of the individual firm. Another dimension
would be the broader economic, environmental and social effects of the decision.
In theory, these two dimensions would allow for 25 possible outcomes, between
the two of them, if each is divided into five different categories. Figure 1 depicts
each of these outcomes as 25 squares. The firms individual financial performance
runs from minimized to maximized across the vertical axis and is represented
FINANCIAL
PERFORMANCE
MAXIMIZED

POSITIVE

BREAK-EVEN

NEGATIVE

MINIMIZED

EXTERNAL
EFFECTS
MOST
NEGATIVE

NEGATIVE

NEUTRAL

POSITIVE

MOST
POSITIVE

Figure 1: All the possible effects of organizational decisions in terms of financial

performance and their broader external effects
by the top-left triangular part of every possible outcome (with dark-red representing minimized financial performance and dark-green representing maximized
financial performance). The broader external effects run from most negative to
most positive across the horizontal axis and are represented by the bottom-right
triangular part of every possible outcome (with dark-red representing most negative external effects and dark-green representing most positive external effects).

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When organizational decisions are governed by the principle of shareholder value

maximization, however, there are only five possible outcomes that decision-makers will strive to achieve. Only those outcomes where the firms individual financial
performance is maximized (depicted in the top row of figure 2) will do. The rest
are irrelevant and illegitimate.
FINANCIAL
PERFORMANCE
MAXIMIZED

POSITIVE

BREAK-EVEN

NEGATIVE

MINIMIZED

EXTERNAL
EFFECTS
MOST NEGATIVE
NEGATIVE

NEUTRAL

POSITIVE

MOST
POSITIVE

Figure 2: The valuation of all the possible effects of organizational decisions under
the principle of shareholder value maximization
Moreover, which of the five legitimate outcomes a decision-maker will actually
strive to achieve is determined by the expected pay-off of the decision alternatives in terms of financial performance alone. If the decision alternative that is
expected to maximize financial performance is also expected to result in positive- or even maximally positive external effects, the decision-maker will have to
select this alternative. But if the decision alternative that is expected to maximize
financial performance is also expected to result in negative- or even maximally
negative external effects, then the decision-maker will also have to select this
alternative. Strictly speaking, the broader economic, environmental and social effects of each decision alternative are not even considered; they are relevant only
to the extent that they would have an effect on the firms financial performance
(e.g. when juridical penalties or damaged corporate reputation would have a negative- or when communicating responsible corporate behavior would have a positive expected effect on the bottom line). In other words, the broader economic,
environmental and social effects are irrelevant in- and of themselves.
Because of its indifference to the external effects of organizational decisions,
the principle of shareholder value maximization does not only drive decisionmaking in a way that maximizes the firms financial performance. It also drives

the externalization of negative economic, environmental or social effects every

time this happens to coincide with maximizing expected financial performance. As
such, the principle of shareholder value maximization also drives organizational
decision-making according to an implicit logic of externalization:
Wherever profit- or shareholder value maximization functions as the overriding principle in the organization of economic production, negative economic,
environmental and social effects have to be externalized whenever this is
expected to maximize the financial performance of an individual firm.
It is this logic of externalization upon which not only the financial crisis, but also
the continued production of environmental and social crises should be blamed.
Blaming the financial crisis of 2008 on the laxity of government or the corporate
scandals of the early 2000s and the 2008 financial crisis on the failure of business schools to teach their students how to act responsibly, frames the problem
as an absence of constraints. It does not address the underlying problem: the
presence of the principle of shareholder maximization and its implicit logic of externalization, in business education and business practice, as a driver behind the
production of negative economic, environmental and social (side-)effects in the
way organizational decisions are made.

6. Why the First Four Levels Are Not Sufficient

The first four levels of integration are not sufficient because they fail to address
the presence of this driver in traditional business school curricula. Each of the
first four levels integrates ethical reflection more deeply into the way organizational decision-making is taught. Nevertheless, ethical reflection still remains a
separate supplement to the standard approaches to decision-making that are
taught in the traditional core courses of business school curricula. In light of the
previous discussion, this separation results in at least two problems for the capacity of ethical reflection to change the broader economic, environmental and social
effects of organizational decision-making in positive ways.
Problem
Identification

Problem
Analysis

Option
Generation

Option
Evaluation

Option
Selection

Implementation

Figure 3: The general stages of standard approaches to decision-making that are

taught in busines education
First, ethical reflection comes in too late. Decision-making is only one stage in the
much broader process of problem-solving that business schools teach. There are
several other stages involved that precede the option-selection or decision-making

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stage (as figure 3 depicts). Now, if these preceding stages were neutral, it would not
be a problem that ethical reflection only enters in the decision stage. But they are
not. The earlier stages of problem identification, problem analysis, option generation
and option evaluation are all guided and shaped by the theories, tools and the dominant approach to business that are taught in the core courses of traditional curricula. Given the dominance of the principle of shareholder value maximization in business education (see section 5), this means that these stages tend to be governed
and shaped by the overriding objective of financial performance maximization.
Because the principle of shareholder value maximization guides and shapes the earlier stages in the process of problem solving, ethical reflection will only be brought
to bear on preselected options. Some alternatives that would have more positive
external effects could be precluded during the problem analysis and option generation phase. More importantly, problems that are not directly related to the firms
individual financial performance, but could be significant in terms of their broader
economic, environmental and social effects, will likely not be raised during the problem identification phase to begin with. For under the principle of shareholder value
maximization, they do not qualify as a relevant business problem at all.
The second problem is that ethical reflection is overruled by the logic of shareholder value maximization whenever its outcomes conflict with the overriding objective
of financial performance maximization. The first four levels of integration leave
the principle of shareholder value maximization with a trump-card that overrules
any normative judgment that conflicts with the objective of financial performance
maximization. This is best explained through a quick review of a classic debate
in the literature and most courses on corporate social responsibility: shareholder
value maximization vs. stakeholder value, or (as it has also been dubbed after the
principal proponents of both positions) Friedman vs. Freeman.
The two positions in this debate are relatively simple. Friedman (notoriously) represents the position that the [only] social responsibility of business is to maximize
its profits (Friedman, 1962, p. 133, 1970, p. 122). In other words, financial performance maximization should figure as the one and only corporate objective that
overrides all other considerations in making organizational decisions (see Jensen,
2001 for this more recent rendering of the same position). Freemans side, on the
other hand, can be said to represent the position that businesses has a broader
responsibility to all the groups and individuals who can affect- or be affected by
the firms actions,5 i.e. the stakeholders of the firm (Freeman et al., 2010, p. 9;
Freeman, 1984, p. 25). In other words, shareholders do not have a privileged posi5

Note that this position is committed fully to the normative use of stakeholder theory,
instead of its mere descriptive or instrumental uses (see Donaldson & Preston, 1995 for
a discussion of these distinctions).

tion; ethical reflection on the broader effects of organizational decisions on all the
stakeholders are decisive.
Now if this debate is approached from an ethical point of view, normative judgments about the broader effects of organizational decisions on all stakeholders
will have a reasonable chance to overrule the narrow objective of financial performance maximization. There are only two moral arguments to defend Friedmans
position, which have become increasingly unconvincing. The first is that overall
utility for all stakeholders in society is maximized when firms maximize their individual financial performance (e.g. Jensen, 2001, pp. 1112). But this claim, as many
proponents readily admit, brackets the problem of externalities (also see Jensen,
2001, p. 11) and relies on assumptions about trickle-down economics that have
recently been refuted (see Piketty, 2014). The second argument is that managers
and employees have a fiduciary duty to act in the interests of shareholders, since
they are their employers and the owners of the firm (see Friedman, 1970, p. 122).
But this duty is difficult to defend as being absolute, since the rights of other
stakeholders can easily be argue to give rise to fiduciary duties that need to be
taken into account as well (see e.g. Boatright, 1994). Approaching the debate from
an ethical point of view, more than a few proponents of stakeholder theory have
therefore congratulated themselves on triumphing over Friedmans position based
on the superiority of their moral arguments.
The problem, however, is that proponents of the shareholder value maximization
principle ultimately settle the debate with a positive argument about the necessity
of financial performance maximization. This argument which goes back, most notably, to an argument that Milton Friedman has developed elsewhere (see Friedman,
1953, p. 22) is that firms have to maximize their profits, lest they will succumb
to the natural selection pressures of competition. In Jensen (2001), this argument
presents itself as the claim that organizations that do not maximize financial performance over the long term will be handicapped in the competition for survival (pp.
10, 11) and selected out in an environment of competing firms that do (p. 14). Grant
(2008) uses the same argument in one of the most widely used textbooks on business strategy and extends its logic to managerial positions (in a way that shows
just how much influence agency theorist have had since the 1980s). Not only does
Grant argue that inter-firm competition necessitates shareholder value maximization, he also adds that management teams that fail to maximize the profits of their
companies will be replaced by teams that do on the market for corporate control
(Grant, 2008, p. 36).
This positive argument overrules normative judgments that conflict with financial
performance maximization with an implicit philosophical twist by playing what
can be called the ought-implies-can card against them. As an ethical precondition, ought implies can means that ethical reflections cannot result in normative

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judgments that tell us that something ought to be done, whenever that something
cannot possibly be done under natural conditions.6 The selection argument effectively plays this precondition against all normative judgments that are not aligned
with financial performance maximization. It implies that such judgments cannot
guide organizational decision-making, because organizations that do eventually
would not survive.
The positive claim of the selection argument thus undermines the efficacy of
ethical reflection under the first four levels of integration whenever the normative
judgments at which it arrives do not coincide with financial performance maximization. Courses on business ethics and corporate social responsibility (Level 1) and
the more integrated applications of ethics (Levels 2 to 4), can thus teach students
to reflect on the broader external effects of organizational decisions from an ethical perspective. But core courses from the traditional curriculum will teach them
that acting upon the outcomes of such reflections is impossible whenever this
would conflict with financial performance maximization. The first four levels of
integrating ethical reflection into business education therefore remain ineffective
at stopping the production of negative economic, environmental and social (side-)
effects in organizational decision-making.

7. More Radical Levels of Integrating Ethical Reflection in

Business School Curricula
The previous section discussed that the first four levels of integrating ethical
reflection into business education are not sufficient for two reasons: at each level,
ethical reflection enters into the process of problem-solving too late and is overruled by the principle of shareholder value maximization. These two problems can
only be overcome by more radical integrations of ethical reflection in business
education. To that end, this section proposes two further levels of integrating ethical reflection into business education.

Level 5: Critical Reflection

The fifth level of integration deals with the problem that ethical reflection remains
a separate approach to decision-making that enters into the broader process of
problem-solving too late. It solves this problem by supplementing ethical reflection with a mode of critical reflection that extends its reach and influence to the
earlier stages of the problem-solving process.
6

This short formulation of ought implies can is commonly traced back to Immanuel
Kants formulation that an action must be possible under natural conditions if the
ought is directed to it (Kant, 1998, p. 540 A548/B576).

The importance of moving beyond the separation between traditional theoretical

approaches to problem-solving and decision-making and ethical reflection has
been stressed before. Freeman et al. (2010) have argued that business research
and education should move beyond the separation fallacy (p. 7) by taking different perspectives into account, acknowledging the importance of conceptual
framing and bringing together ethics and traditional management literature (pp.
76-78). Khurana (2007) even goes as far as to argue that debates about integrating ethics into business education should examine, first of all, whether and how
the fundamental rationale, structure, and content of business education might
need to be revised or even overhauled (pp. 365-366).
These suggestions point business scholars and educators in the right direction.
But they still require concrete and specific elaborations on how a much more radical integration of ethics into business education can be achieved.
One way which is proposed here as a fifth level of integration is to supplement
ethical reflection with critical thinking and reflection skills in two ways.
First, the development of a critical reflections course and its integration into business school curricula. This course should combine and integrate elements from
basic philosophy of science, critical theory and ethics in ways that challenge and
tackle the separation problem. Here, students should learn why theoretical and
analytical approaches to problem-solving and decision-making cannot be separated
from ethical considerations in an applied social science like business administration.
Second, the combination of critical and ethical reflection that is taught in this
critical reflections course should be integrated into the standard problem-solving
and decision-making methods that business students learn in the rest of the
curriculum. These reflections need to be critical, in the sense that they have to
explicate how the assumptions of (traditional) theories shape the outcome of the
problem-solving and decision-making processes in which these theories are applied. They need to be ethical, in the sense that they have to integrate normative
judgments in the process. And they need to be radically integrated, in the sense
that they have to be incorporated throughout all the phases of these problemsolving and decision-making processes.
One way to integrate this combination of critical and ethical reflection in problemsolving and decision-making processes, is to teach the following five steps as a
standard part of these processes.
1. Identifying how the theory represents reality

Business students must learn (a) that theories only offer partial accounts of
reality and (b) that the implicit choices about what is included and excluded

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in a theory affect how the application of this theory represents reality. Based
on such an understanding, they should subsequently learn to ask and answer
the following questions when they are applying theories in problem-solving
and decision-making processes: Which objects, phenomena and actors does
this theory include? Which objects, phenomena and actors does this theory
exclude? How are these objects, phenomena and actors conceptualized?
That is: Which characteristics of these objects, phenomena and actors does
the theory include as relevant? And which characteristics of these objects,
phenomena and actors does the theory exclude (as irrelevant)?
2. Identifying how the theory rationalizes reality

Business students must learn (a) that the ways in which theories are developed and validated in an applied social science like business administration are
not simply based on their objective truth, but on their ability to describe and
explain how some aspect of reality works in a way that aids the advancement
of certain often implicit goals. In addition, they should learn (b) that these
(implicit) goals imbue theories with a way of rationalizing reality. That is, they
determine how objects, phenomena and actors should be related to each
other in purpose(-)ful(l) ways. Based on such an understanding, they should
subsequently learn to ask and answer the following questions when they are
applying theories in problem-solving and decision-making processes: What
(implicit) goal(s) does this theory assume? What other ends are excluded
through the (implicit) assumption of this (or these) goal(s)?
3. Identifying the broader economic, environmental and social effects that
(could) result from these ways of representing and rationalizing reality

Business students must learn that the way in which a theory represents and
rationalizes reality guides and shapes the outcome of the problem-solving
and decision-making processes in which it is applied. Based on such an understanding, they should subsequently learn to ask and answer the following
questions as an integral part of problem-solving and decision-making processes: What are the (potential) consequences for the broader economy, the
environment and society when problem-solving and decision-making would
assume that the way in which this theory represents reality is exhaustive?
What are the (potential) consequences for the broader economy, the environment and society when problem-solving and decision-making processes would
strictly follow the way in which this theory rationalizes reality?.
4. Evaluating all the consequences from the application of the theory from
an ethical point of view

Business students must learn that not only the implicit goals of theories are relevant in evaluating alternative options in problem-solving and decision-making

processes, but that the potential economic, environmental and social (side-)
effects of these processes are also relevant from an ethical point of view. Based
on such an understanding, they should subsequently learn to ask and answer
the following questions as an integral part of problem-solving and decisionmaking processes: How do you judge all the available decision alternatives
based on the effects that are included and relevant according to the way in
which the theory represents and rationalizes reality from an ethical point of
view? What decision alternatives, that could be relevant from an ethical point of
view, are overlooked or excluded by the way the theory represents and rationalizes reality? How do you judge all the available decision alternatives, based on
the broader economic, environmental and social effects that are excluded and
irrelevant according to the way in which the theory represents and rationalizes
reality, from an ethical point of view?
5. Integrating these normative judgments in decision-making

Business students must learn that problem-solving and decision-making processes always have an ethical dimension (because these processes prescribe
what ought to be done and because their outcomes can always be questioned
in terms of right and wrong). Based on such an understanding, they should
subsequently learn to ask themselves and answer the following questions as
an integral part of decision-making processes: What is the best decision from
an ethical point of view?
This five-step approach can be taught as a second part of the critical reflections
course that has to be integrated into business education in order to reach Level 5.
But from there on it should be integrated into the standard problem-solving and
decision-making approaches of the traditional core courses as well. One way to
do this is to develop criteria for the assessment of students application of these
steps in business assignments and internships for real organization.
When this five-step approach is integrated into the problem-solving and decisionmaking methods taught by business education, this will at least ensure that winwin alternatives (where financial performance is maximized and external effects
are more positive or less negative than other alternatives) are not overlooked
because of the way traditional theories guide and shape the outcome of problemsolving and decision-making processes. At best, they will also prevent the morally
indefensible externalization of negative economic, environmental and social
effects that would have resulted from a narrow focus on financial performance
maximization otherwise. But that brings us back, of course, to the second reason
why the first four levels of integration are not sufficient.

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Level 6: Ethical Prioritization

Though the fifth level of integration will change the outcome of some problemsolving and decision-making processes, it still remains powerless against the
logic of externalization. Even if business graduates integrate critical and ethical
reflection into problem-solving and decision-making processes, their normative
judgments would still be overruled whenever they conflict with the objective of
financial performance maximization.
Solving this problem requires an even further and much more radical integration
of critical and ethical reflection into business education than what has been discussed as Level 5. It requires a critical perspective that enables a prioritization of
ethical reflection over the objective of financial performance maximization and
its necessity according to the selection argument in the way business scholars
theorize-, business educators teach- and business students and professionals
learn to think about organizational purpose.
Though this sixth level of prioritizing ethical reflection cannot be fully developed
here, its contours can be sketched in terms of the following requirements.
1. Organizational purpose is transformed into an open-ended ethical question

The dominant approach to business that is currently taught by business
schools (implicitly) assumes that businesses have to maximize their individual
financial performance. Prioritizing ethical reflection in business education
turns organizational purpose into an ethical question that cannot be subjected to any prior necessity.
2. This open-ended ethical question defines problem-identification

The problem-identification stage of problems-solving processes (figure 3)
is currently defined by problems that traditional courses teach to be most
relevant for the financial performance of individual firms. Prioritizing ethical
reflection in business education expands this set of problems and reprioritizes them based on ethical reflections on the functions that firms fulfil in the
broader economy, the environment and society.
3. Ethical considerations inform problem analysis and option generation

Traditional theories tend to represent and rationalize reality in ways that are
defined and shaped by the implicit assumption of financial performance maximization. Prioritizing ethical reflection in business education seeks to inform
the problem-analysis and option-generation stages of problem-solving processes (figure 3) with ethical reflections on the broader economic, environmental
and social effects of organizational functioning.

4. Ethical considerations act as the overriding criterion for decision-making

The objective of financial performance maximization currently overrides all
other criteria in the decision-making phase of problem-solving processes (figure
3). Prioritizing ethical reflection in business education teaches organizational
decision-making that is based on normative judgements first and foremost.
Realizing such a radical prioritization of ethical reflection in business education
seems impossible, to be sure. Any push in this direction is likely to encounter
many obstacles and problems. All the possible objections and criticisms against
its proposition therefore simply cannot be exhaustively addressed here.
Yet one problem has to be addressed, if only in a tentative and exploratory way.
If this sixth level of prioritizing ethical reflection in business education is to be
taken seriously at all, the selection argument which unambiguously precludes
the possibility of ethical prioritization would somehow need to be displaced.
Though such a displacement, again, cannot be fully developed here, it is possible
to indicate three lines along which such a displacement could take place.
1. Entrepreneurship over economics

A first line of displacement would be to recast the question of organizational
purpose into an entrepreneurial, rather than an economic problem. This line
would free thinking, theorizing and teaching about organizational purpose from
the positive necessity of the selection argument, as it shifts the focus to an
entrepreneurial position, prior to any selection pressures, where ethical reflections about which firms ought to- and ought not to be founded can be prioritized.
2. Denaturalizing competition

A second line would be to denaturalize the selection pressures that are currently assumed to necessitate financial performance maximization at every
external cost. This line would affirm that these pressures are not natural
givens, but the outcome of complex historical interactions between socio-economic factors and legal frameworks. Such an affirmation subjects the nature
of selection pressures to a (politico-juridical) order of organizational decisionmaking. This denaturalizes their necessity and reverses the relation in a way
that ethical reflections can be prioritized.
3. Critical displacement

A third line of displacement would be to extend the mode of critical reflection
developed under Level 5 to the selection argument itself. This line would treat
the selection argument as one way to represent and rationalize the way the
world works and challenge its assumptions based on ethical reflection on its
effects. Such a critical displacement would dissolve the epistemic structure

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that supports the selection arguments use of the ought-implies-can card.

This, too, opens up the possibility to prioritize the question how the-world(of-business)-ought-to-be in thinking, theorizing and teaching about business
and organizational decision-making.
These three lines of displacement are just brief sketches of ways in which the biggest obstacle to a more responsible role for business schools in our society could
be displaced. Each of them has a different degree of difficulty, focus and expected
effect to it.
The first line is probably the easiest way to reach the sixth level of prioritizing
ethical reflection in business education. It draws on entrepreneurship, which is a
subject that is close to- and already present in parts of some traditional business
school curriculum. Here, the focus would be on aligning the entire curriculum with
the notion of social entrepreneurship. This line could have significant effect on
the broader economic, environmental and social functioning of organizations that
will be founded in the future. Yet its scale is limited as long as the prioritization of
ethical reflection cannot be transferred to extant organizations or loses its grip
when firms that were founded based on ethical reflections mature.
The second line is more difficult, as it requires macro-level changes that are
outside the traditional scope and reach of business education and the field of
work for business(wo)men. If business schools would somehow play an active role
in its pursuit, this would require a partial reorientation on the intersect of public
policy and corporate governance with a particular focus on the governmental and
regulatory end. Though this indicates a possibility to displace the necessity of the
selection argument in theory, its efficacy is questionable in practice. Government
regulation has an unpromising track-record. More importantly, following this line
is also likely to distract from the presence of a driver behind the production of
these crises in business education itself.
The third line of displacement is the most difficult, as it requires a profound and
elaborate philosophical critique of the assumptions and the epistemic structure
upon which the selection argument and the necessity of financial performance
maximization are built. This line would shift the focus of business education to
an integration of different branches of philosophy (in order to open up ethical
reflection) and quite possibly other disciplines from the humanities in its wake
(in order to cultivate and inform ethical reflection). But although this line is difficult, it is also the most promising in terms of its expected effect. For if such a
critical displacement of the necessity of financial performance maximization and
a prioritization and cultivation of ethical reflection would succeed in business
schools, business education could truly succeed at changing the broader economic, environmental and social effects of business in positive ways.

8. Conclusion
Reformers and critics are more than right to target business schools in their
search for ways to stop our production of economic, environmental and social
crises. The content of business school curricula exercises tremendous influence
on the way organizational decisions are made. This does not merely make business education a promising site to plug solutions to these crises. Business schools
are also deeply responsible for the past and current functioning of businesses
in the production of economic, environmental and social crises. The principle of
shareholder value maximization, which is (implicitly) adopted as the underlying
assumption about organizational purpose throughout traditional business school
curricula, actively drives organizational problem-solving and decision-making to
externalize negative economic, environmental and social effects whenever this
maximizes the financial performance of an individual firm.
The various steps that business schools have taken to integrate ethics, sustainability and corporate social responsibility content in their curricula, so far, are necessary to address this problem. But more needs to be done if business education is
to change the broader economic, environmental and social effects of organizational decision-making in positive ways. The next step is to develop a critical reflections course that extends ethical reflection and integrates it more radically into
the problem-solving and decision-making methods that are taught by business
schools. Beyond such a critical reflections course, business schools should even
go as far as to prioritize ethical reflection on the broader economic, environmental and social effects of organizational functioning in their thinking, theorizing and
teaching about organizational purpose.
These much more radical ways of integrating ethical reflection into business education are demanding and challenging, to be sure. But they are much needed and
even necessary if business schools are to truly change the broader economic,
environmental and social effects of organizational decision-making in positive
ways.

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