Empty Ethics and Reasonable Responsibility: Vocabularies of Motive among Law and Business Students

Abstract

Despite professional norms of being socially responsible and providing service to the underprivileged, the attitudes of law students toward ethical duties and public service bear similarities to those of business students. Using data from multiple interviews with law and business school students at one university, I find that these attitudes develop in response to the expectations of peers and professors during school experiences. Ethics courses are marginalized by the schools, and courses focus on such pragmatic issues as the professional code of conduct (law school) or how the appearance of social responsibility affects the bottom line (business school). Provided with little guidance on what they might do when they encounter real ethical dilemmas, students larn vocabularies of motive concerning how lawyers and managers should balance profits, carry out responsibilities to various stakeholders, and weigh ethical concerns, and they then moderate their own expressions of extreme self-interest or self-sacrifice. Both groups learn to maintain social responsibilities only within reason, emphasizing the separation of work from personal convictions. These elements have implications for the performance of public service in their future careers, as well as for a scholarly understanding of professionalism.