Volume 14, Number 4 Article by B A Prajapati December, 2002
Teaching Ethics Effectively :
Stating his proposition pithily, B A Prajapati, Professor and Head, S K School of Business Management, North Gujarat University, enumerates the three basic areas of managerial decision-making: choices about the law, choices about economic and social issues beyond the domain of the law – the ‘people values’, and choices between self-interest and the interests of the company/its stakeholders. Business ethics is the study of how moral norms apply to these activities and goals of commercial enterprise and how the business context poses its own unique problems for the moral person who acts as an agent of this system. Exercising power with responsibility calls for knowledge, perception, a well-developed philosophy, and a set of ethical values, which can be systematically developed through pedagogy.
After outlining the theories of ethics and the objectives of teaching ethics courses, Prajapati elaborates how ethics modules can be incorporated into different courses. The case study method would capture the synergy of theory and practice in business ethics. There is a need to restructure management education and place ethics at the centre of its mission.
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