Teaching Ethics to Business Students: The Ethics Project (Jason Brennan)

This is a guest post by Jason Brennan, Georgetown University

I work in a PPE-style department at Georgetown’s business school. I generally teach 2 preps a year, one traditional PPE-style course and one applied business ethics course on a particular subject (such as business and the environment, or social business and non-profit management). Most of my students are business majors. 

Teaching business ethics can be difficult for a bunch of reasons. One is that there just isn’t much good business ethics worth reading, period, so there isn’t much worth teaching. The academic subfield is rather weak. (For instance, one of the most widely cited papers on sweatshops literally contains no argument for its conclusion.) Many of the textbooks are bad—they consist entirely of platitudes, or case studies, or awkward “What would a utilitarian do in situation X”-type chapters. A third reason is that business students are often not that interested in learning philosophical ideas—and (fourth reason?) their lack of interest is largely justified. If you study the moral psychological literature on why businesspeople make moral mistakes, it’s not usually a problem of moral confusion which can be clarified with philosophical training, but instead problems about moral blind spots, conformity, akrasia, or bad incentives created by bad rules.

For the past 8 years, in my PPE course and in some of my business ethics classes, I’ve been using what I call The Ethics Project as my main semester-long class activity.

Here’s the basic description:

Think of something good to do. Do it.

The goal of this project is for you to do something that adds value to the world. To help you complete the project, the Georgetown Institute for the Study of Markets and Ethics will provide each group with $1000. However, the university regulates how the money can be spent, and so using the money will require you to navigate complicated spending rules and to deal with often capricious administrators.

On one of the last two days of class, your group will make a presentation that answers the following questions. You will also write up a report answering these questions, due on the last day of class.

Questions: How did you interpret the imperative to do something good? Did you focus on moral or non-moral goodness? Why? How did you navigate the tradeoff between what’s most desirable in itself and what’s most feasible? What were your opportunity costs? How did you allocate labor in your group? What obstacles did you expect to encounter and how did you pre-emptively plan to overcome them? What obstacles did you in fact encounter, and how did you respond? Did you add value to the world, taking into account the costs of your time, effort, and any money spent? Did you succeed or fail, and by what standards should we judge you? What did you learn? What would you have differently?

This project asks students to think carefully about certain metaethical, ethical, management, and economic concepts, and how they interplay. They are asked to deliberate and plan something, actually execute a task of their own design, and then after the fact carefully analyze what they did with economic and philosophical tools. They have to think about principles of effective altruism, issues about cost-benefit analysis and how to commensurate that value of what they do with the value of what they consumed to do it, questions about what they owe to whom and why, issues about ethics of allocating labor within their group, and more.

Over the past 8 years, students have had a wide range of projects, some successful and some not, some impressive and some mundane. One group started an “Unsung Heroes” club which has since spread to multiple campuses and which received extensive national news coverage. Another created a business plan for and donated equipment to poor teenagers in an impoverished part of the world; by the end of the semester, the teenagers were supporting themselves and their families and had greatly improved their income. Others have done fundraisers for various charities—the current record is over $15,000 for the Mocoa mudslide victims. Others have run businesses; one business—Hoya Screen Repair—grossed tens of thousands per semester and had over a 30% profit rate. This past semester, students engaged in arbitrage to turn wasted gift certificates into meals for the homeless, created and distributed hangover kits (which turned out to be high demand), ran a headshot business, and created the first battery recycling pilot program at Georgetown, which was so successful that the university appears poised to take it over and expand throughout the campus.

If this seems of interest to you, I have a lengthier description of the project, its motivation, and how to do implement it (including without money) at The Journal of Business Ethics Education. I’m happy to answer questions in the comments section.

Comments

[Barry Lam]

Very cool Jason, the link you posted leads to a 404

[Bobcat]

This is sort of a tangent, Jason, but in _Cracks in the Ivory Tower_, you mentioned a colleague who gave his business students an assignment that showed them that when they're stressed, distracted, etc., they are likely to cheat. I didn't get a good feel for what that assignment was when I read the book. Do you mind explaining that assignment in greater detail?

-- Rob Gressis

[Jason Brennna]

Hi Rob,

Went something like this:

1. Early class: They read a case study in which a person acts dishonestly because of stress and time pressure. He asks students if they think they would fall prey to the same problem. They say no.

2. He assigns a journal task during their first month. We describe the first month as a "fire hose" because they have a super-intense crash course in many different topics. They work 90 hours a week at first. The journal simply requires them to keep track of any moral dilemmas they face during that month. They must write a page any time a dilemma appears. They are not write it all at the end.

3. Toward the end, he reminds them of the journal task. He points out that it was pass/fail, and that they were required to write it as they go, not all at the end before passing it in. Lots of gaping mouths appear because students forgot.

4. Students later pass in journals. It sure looks like many were backdated. Looks like they broke the rules.

5. To prove it, though, he has them fill out an anonymous survey with a bunch f questions. One includes a question which gets them to reveal that, yes, most of them backdated their journals because they forgot about them.

6. He shows them the survey. He says he's not failing anyone. His point was simply to show them that they too would make the same mistakes as the person in the case study, and now we know from anonymous surveys that most of them in fact did so.

7. Students get mad at him and complain.

[Leslie Harvel]

Jason, I teach Ethics for Concordia University Chicago's program at Hebei University of Economics and Business. I've just discovered The Ethics Project and plan to use it this Spring, but we are virtual again due to COVID19. Have you continued using this virtually? If so, do you have any suggestions? Thanks!