Ethics should be required study for business students Options

[mipadi]

I studied computer science as an undergraduate. At my school, computer science students are required to take a course on computing ethics. This courses requires students to think about the ethics of computing technology. For example, computer scientists may have the technology to build a system to record every phone call, email, and online chat of every American, but should we, as computer scientists, build such a system?

Such a discourse on professional ethics was not required for business students at my school (which had a pretty strong business program).

This situation occurred to me after reading an article about Trafigura, an oil trading company that is responsible for illegally dumping hazard waste in Africa's Ivory Coast, and poisoning thousands of people as a result:

The news of the settlement came as a UN report on claims that people had fallen sick or died as a result of the dump was published.

The report says there is "strong prima facie evidence that the reported deaths and adverse health consequences are related to the dumping of the waste from the cargo ship".

The chemical waste came from a ship called Probo Koala and in August 2006 truckload after truckload of it was illegally fly-tipped at 15 locations around Abidjan, the biggest city in Ivory Coast.

In the weeks that followed the dumping, tens of thousands of people reported a range of similar symptoms, including breathing problems, sickness and diarrhoea.

This sort of behavior is hardly unique to Trafigura. Shell Oil recently agreed to pay $15.5 million for complicity in the execution of several Nigerian activists, including Ken Saro-Wiwa (see Wiwa family lawsuits against Royal Dutch Shell). And these two cases, of course, are just the tip of the iceberg.

I am amazed that the officers of corporations such as Trafigura and Shell Oil can sleep at night, knowing that their own actions have directly resulted in the deaths of dozens, hundreds, even thousands of individuals. Operating sweatshops in developing countries through a complex system of subcontractors is one thing (such activity is still morally bankrupt and deplorable) but ordering actions that directly cause death to innocents clearly shows that the officers of such corporations, as well as lower-level employees, lack a sense of morality.

Do actions such as these (and I stress that the two incidents listed above are part of a pattern of behavior of large corporations, not just isolated incidents) demonstrate a flaw in the way we teach business in developed nations? Do these incidents occur because of the stress to turn a profit for shareholders, which often neglects the human aspect of doing business? Should business students be required to take at least one course on ethics in order to more fully understand the consequences of the large corporations for which they will work (and maybe eventually lead)? Or are these actions an inevitable consequence of large, multinational corporations wielding more power than most governments?

[Joanne]

The title caught my eye... but not really in the mood to read the whole post right now, so I'll just say this:

My school requires business students to take ethics.