Toward the Virtue-Based Business School

Abstract

U.S. business schools' commitment to positive social science has led to their excluding ethics from the core curriculum. In place of ethics, management scholars have adopted either nihilism or, more frequently, a subliminal virtue ethics. The nihilistic approach has influenced some executives, contributing to the business world's moral malaise. The literature on managerial competency is an important example of the subliminal approach. The competency-based approach to teaching management has gained increasing recognition as a research paradigm and a pedagogical tool. But it omits justice from its catalogue of virtues. Justice ought to serve as the foimdation of managerial competence. Because Aristotle's approach to ethics is compatible with the existing literature, it can be integrated with the instructional model adopted in some business schools. A competency-based ethics founded on justice and natural law would integrate ethics with the business curriculum and be more effective than positivism in fostering ethical business behavior.