Business courses ignore ethics

By Steven Ellis

There's something missing in the Leavey School of Business. We certainly hope it's not leadership; and don't worry, that's not what I'm thinking. After making my way through four years of the business school, I've begun to feel the weight of many common themes upon my shoulders: getting a job, learning how to sell myself and making money.

I agree that the business school should be preparing students to get good jobs and to be successful businesspeople, but isn't this a bit superficial? Education should be about more than just getting ahead.

The business school lacks self-reflexiveness and makes no attempt to explore the intrinsic values of business. It teaches nothing to help facilitate a critical evaluation of the impact of business on the world.

Economics classes teach us about the workings of our capitalistic system, but there is never a discussion about why we use this system, beyond that it has appeared to be the most efficient. Also, are we sacrificing certain values by using this system?

International business tells us that we must be sensitive to cultural norms, tastes and differences, but it doesn't question the validity of international venture in the first place.

What are the implications of United States agricultural companies operating in Thailand or pharmaceutical firms developing drugs in Africa? A business student will probably tell you that the key issues surrounding international ventures are profitability and whether the company is prepared for the different environment and management of the expanded operation. The companies do not care about the adverse effects of their presence in these foreign countries.

Santa Clara does offer a course in business ethics, but the ethics process always starts with the business practice and works backwards. Shouldn't we be working from the other side? Let's first define our ethics and then model business practices after our established ethical norms.

Currently, business ethics is an attempt to fit ethics into business practices, rather than fitting business practices into ethics. This is exactly how our business school operates as a whole. Everything starts with profit, efficiency and growth. Are these things supposed to be the ideals of our society? Unfortunately, the problems go beyond this one course.

Core classes are great, but, perhaps through no fault of the professor or department, students do not get to explore the more in-depth and abstract areas of certain subjects. Exploration of the theoretical questions surrounding these subjects could be beneficial. But, more generally, I think all students at Santa Clara should be taught to question the very nature of that which they are studying.

The absence of such introspection in the business school poses a major societal problem: people who will have the ability to change the world (thanks to the influence and power of the modern corporation) are dreadfully ill-equipped to handle the responsibility. They fail to fathom the implications of their profit-seeking ventures. A program mostly devoid of classic academic values and intellectual traditions does not give students much of a chance to explore other ways of thinking.

Now, I'm not suggesting that our particular business school isn't a good school for business. Rather, I think the major itself is flawed in its current representation. In addition, I recognize that I'm making generalizations here, essentially grouping together all of the business majors versus all of the Arts and Sciences majors (and excluding engineering). However, there is a distinguishable difference between the underlying values of the Leavey School of Business and the School of Arts and Sciences.

Education has been designed to foster knowledge that can be used to explore the most basic questions about humanity and the world. Central to this is a broad intellectual base and an exploration of the ways in which we view our society í-- how it should function and the definition of the individual's role in that society. When students aren't getting this foundation, when have we stopped educating students and simply begun to assemble producers and consumers?

Steven Ellis is a senior history and marketing major.