How Business School Professors Can Assist in Reducing Today´s Lack of Ethics in Business

Resumo

This paper discusses how business school professors can assist in reducing today’s lack of ethics in business by orienting future leaders on how to behave and decide properly when confronted with the myriad ethical dilemmas of the corporate world. To accomplish this, business school professors must be able to make future leaders understand what is right and what is wrong from the ethical point of view. This requires that they engage these future leaders in philosophical discussions on ethics in business, particularly to deconstruct the misconceptions that justify today’s unethical behavior. To help them in these discussions this paper presents three explanations for today’s unethical behavior, the most important misconceptions built on five half-truths, the fundamental ethical principles, and the requisites of skilled ethical reasoning.