Kendy Hess (College of the Holy Cross) and her colleagues have received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for the College’s interdisciplinary minor in Ethics, Society, and the Institution of Business. 

Title:  Interdisciplinary Minor in Ethics, Society, and the Institution of Business (ESIB)
Amount:  $140,230 over two years
Brief description:  What is the “business” of “business ethics”? What is the subject that we’re trying to explore through an ethical lens when we teach it? An unfortunately common answer is that “business” is basically a highly intellectualized trade – something which, like carpentry or construction, requires the acquisition of a recognized set of skills to be employed in pursuit of a more or less fixed set of ends. On this understanding of business and business education, ethics will always be secondary (and more of a nuisance than anything else).  Among the many difficulties with this approach, it closes off the questions about purpose and meaning that students find most compelling: the purpose and meaning are fixed (and rather uninspiring), and all that remains is to pursue them effectively.

But business is not simply a trade. Business is a social institution on a par with the family, the church, and the state. As such, it necessarily has (1) a morally inflected social purpose, (2) broadly based ethical standards for practice, and (3) a pervasive shaping influence over the characters of the people who participate in it. Shifting our focus from the practice of business to the institution of business thus brings a wide array of pressing ethical questions to the absolute center of the project, only one of which (the second) is typically addressed under the traditional model.  At the College of the Holy Cross we have established an interdisciplinary minor in Ethics, Society, and the Institution of Business  premised on this understanding of business, which requires our students to draw on courses in the humanities and the social sciences to to understand both the realities and the broadest possibilities of this essential institution. We are grateful to the National Endowment for the Humanities for their support.