Can Management Ethics Be Taught Ethically? A Levinasian Exploration

Abstract

Courses in business ethics3 are part of most Higher Education programmes in Management and Business Studies. Such courses are commonly aimed at providing students with knowledge about ethics, usually in the form of a set of ethical and meta-ethical theories which are presented as ‘tools’ for ethical decision making. This reveals an approach to the teaching of management and business ethics which is based upon a cognitive view of moral education — one which sees ethical knowledge as at least a necessary condition for moral action — and in which it is assumed that ethical practice in management and business follows from the application of ethical knowledge. In this paper we ask whether the teaching of management and business ethics can be done differently and, more importantly, whether it can be done in an ethical manner, one which focuses on possibilities for being ethical rather than knowing ethics. Our explorations are informed by the work of Emmanuel Levinas and centre on the idea that responsibility is the first reality of the (ethical) self. Through a discussion of the notions of ‘the face’ and ‘the third part’ (le tiers) we explore how ethical subjectivity might be possible. We then ask what it might mean to organise a curriculum for management and business ethics around the ‘experience’ of responsibility-for-the-Other.