More debatable is the question of just how that specialist knowledge is to be acquired. Is it, as some allege, a matter of applying a scholarly and highly theoretical understanding of ethics to the raw material of business, with business ethics as simply a branch of applied ethics on par with say medical ethics?

If so, then it is at least arguable that teaching business ethics should be pre-eminently, and perhaps even exclusively, the preserve of those qualified in philosophy. As against that, while accepting that the business ethics teacher has to have an understanding of philosophical ethics as a vital theoretical underpinning to the subject, the notion that this in any sense makes it the preserve of philosophers can be fairly easily dismissed as a confusion of origins with attainment. After all, what matters is that the teacher of business ethics has that theoretical underpinning not its point of acquisition.

In any case, just as vital to business ethics is its other component of a broad understanding of business activity in general. So as long as both components are there, it matters little whether the route was from a grounding in philosophic ethics to a grasp of business activity as a whole or from a grounding in business studies to grasp of philosophical ethics. And very arguably, business ethics needs to be approached from both directions to ensure that its grasp of both components is secure.

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