Needed: Formal Instruction in Business Ethics for Managers

Considering the highly publicised ethical crisis in public and private administration recently, the flurry of management‐oriented articles on ethics is an encouraging sign. But in their rush to recommend solutions, management theorists have gone off in many different directions. For example, while using the term business ethics, Owens has called for written codes of ethics enforced by appropriate sanctions. Boling, meanwhile, preferring the term management ethics, has suggested democratically developed codes of ethics to reduce emphasis on policing. Finally, Payne has deplored the lack of substantive behavioural research in the area he labels organisation ethics. This somewhat confusing array of terminology aside for a moment, an important remedial option has been ignored or overlook‐ed in these and related treatments. Namely, in the face of encouraging testimonial evidence that business ethics instruction works, the business management classroom affords an excellent opportunity to begin redressing the ethics crisis. Moreover, formal business ethics instruction can help reestablish the administrative importance of such ethically‐grounded values as idealism, compassion, and generosity that researchers have found to be seriously atrophied among business school seniors.