Rethinking Business Management:
An Examination of the Foundations of Business Education
Princeton University | May 17-19, 2007

Organized by
The Program in Ethics, Culture, and Economic Development
of the
Witherspoon Institute

Sponsored by
The Social Trends Institute
The Clayton Fund
The Philadelphia Trust Company
The Bendheim Center for Finance, Princeton University

Under the direction of Harold James (Princeton University), the Witherspoon Institute organized a public conference that examined the experience of business school education in light of social and ethical responsibilities. The thesis that was presented for discussion at the conference maintained that effective business management is grounded in good business science and robust ethical and anthropological conceptions of human flourishing. The papers presented at the conference are published in the following edited volume:

Rethinking Business Management:
Examining the Foundations of Business Education
Edited by Samuel Gregg and James R. Stoner, Jr.
The Witherspoon Institute: 2008
ISBN: 978-0-9814911-0-3 | USD $25.00

Below are some considerations that may help framed the conference.

1. What is being taught in business schools?
A single approach seems to dominate business management education in most of the worlds business schools. While it speaks about values as a driving force behind business decisions, the question remains: whose values? The current cultural atmosphere of neutral morality makes it difficult to identify an objective moral commitment in business decision-making. Consider the following observations:

A. Many Business Schools educate managers to focus almost exclusively on profits and to base their professional careers largely on monetary achievements.
B. Some Business Schools have established new departments of social sciences, but these seem to impart mostly pragmatic values.

2. Some key ideas on the anthropological, ethical, and sociological foundations of business management.
Despite the dominant approach described above, there is also a growing concern for exploring the anthropological, ethical, and sociological foundations of business management in the context of business. The following notions could begin a discussion about the inclusion of these foundations in mainstream practice and education:

Philosophical Anthropology (Rational Knowledge of Humans)
 ▪ There is a growing understanding that humans are at the same time body and spirit, making a substantial unity.
 ▪ Humans are social and develop within society, of which business is an integral part.

Ethics
 ▪ Ethics is affirmative and not only prohibitive: it would be incomplete to apply a reductionist view by referring to ethics only in connection to fraud, misconduct, or other pitfalls.
 ▪ A general approach to ethics must be applied to business, rather than considering specific subdivisions of ethics, such as business ethics, family ethics, etc. There is only one human ethic that has its own application to different areas of human existence

The Nature and Goals of Business
 ▪ A business is, above all, a social institution and a community of people who work and serve society through the production and distribution of goods and services, thereby creating jobs and wealth and contributing to human progress.
 ▪ Businesses contribute to the common good when they carry out their mission in a sustainable and conscientious relationship with those who are touched by the activity: shareholders, employees, clients, consumers, local community, etc.
 ▪ Is the social responsibility of business limited to the pursuit of shareholder interests (or profits), or should businesses have enough information to pursue the interests of other stakeholders or the common good.
 ▪ In the course of the conference, speakers will also touch on the criticism that capitalism lacks the internal mechanisms to care for the poor and that it is incompatible with a compassionate society.

Conference Moderator:
James R. Stoner, Jr., Political Science, Louisiana State University

Conference Presenters
Anthony Daniels, Writer, Physician, and Pyschiatrist
Topic: Management and the Corporate State: Private Enterprise without Enterprise and the Public Service without Service?

R. Edward Freeman, Elis and Signe Olsson Professor of Business Administration and Director of Olsson Center for Applied Ethics, University of Virginia Darden School of Business
David Newkirk, CEO of Executive Education, University of Virginia Darden School of Business
Topic: Management as a Human Activity Implications for Education.

Edwin Hartman, Peter Schoenfeld Visiting Faculty Fellow, Stern School of New York University
Topic: Flourishing in the Organization: Why Do It; How to do It; how to Teach It.

Wilfred M. McClay, SunTrust Chair of Excellence in Humanities and Professor of History, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Topic: Invisible Hand to Glad hand: Workplace Community and the Problem of False Personalization.

Ian Mitroff, Harold Quinton Distinguished Professor of Business Policy and Founder of the USC Center for Crisis Management, University of Southern California Business School
Topic: The Moral Contemptibility of Modern Management.

David Novak, J. Richard and Dorothy Shiff Chair of Jewish Studies, University of Toronto
Topic: Natural Law, Human Dignity, and the Protection of Human Property.

James OToole, Research Professor in the Center for effective organizations at the University of Southern California.
Topic: Aristotelian Virtue and The MBA: The Odd Couple.

Roger Scruton, Visiting Professor of Philosophy, Princeton University
Topic: Profit as by-product, versus profit as goal.

Robin Fretwell Wilson, Professor of Law, University of Maryland School of Law
Topic: Keeping Women in Business: Examining the Business School Education and Workplace Practices.

Discussants
Antonio Argandoa, Chair of Corporate Social Responsibility, IESE Business School
Wesley Cragg, Business Ethics Program Director, Schulich School of Business, York University
Michael Crofton, President & CEO, Philadelphia Trust Company
Aine Donovan, Executive Director, Institute for the Study of Applied and Professional Ethics, Tuck School of Business
Samuel Gregg, Director of Research, The Acton Institute
Harold James, Professor of Economic History, Princeton University
Daryl Koehn, Executive Director of the Center for Business Ethics and Cullen Chair of Business Ethics, University of St. Thomas - Houston
Michael C. Maibach, President and CEO, European-American Business Council
John D. Mueller, Director of the Economics and Ethics Program, Ethics and Public Policy Center
Douglas Puffert, University of Leeds Business School

Publications from the consultation:

Rethinking Business Management:
Examining the Foundations of Business Education
Edited by Samuel Gregg and James R. Stoner, Jr.
The Witherspoon Institute: 2008
ISBN: 978-0-9814911-0-3 | USD $25.00

Profit, Prudence and Virtue:
Essays in Ethics, Business and Management
Edited by Samuel Gregg and James R. Stoner, Jr.
St. Andrews Studies in Philosophy and Public Affairs, 2009
ISBN: 1845401581  | USD $80.00