This is a vexed question to which there is, unsurprisingly, no easy answer.

Unquestionably, ethical theory is the area of business ethics that causes both students and teachers the most trouble: students because it is both difficult and new to them; teachers because not only might it be a relatively new subject to them as well (see issue 3 above), but also because they have to treat what is a huge subject in its own right as simply a component part of business ethics. Hence, their problem is how to compress while still conveying enough of the complexities of ethical theory to equip students to use it effectively. Moreover, it is a problem that is made even more difficult by the prevalence in textbooks of a view of ethical theory as a series of contending schools of thought: Kantian, utilitarian, virtue theorist, feminist, rights-based, justice-based, and so on.

The difficulty this viewpoint adds is not merely that of having to devote time to assessing the merits and deficiencies of many different schools of thought but also, and more importantly, a tendency to relativism in that it leads students to see answers to ethical problems as entirely dependent on the theoretical stance adopted, with different and opposing answers following on from an approach that is Kantian, utilitarian, or whatever. To an extent, that tendency can be overcome by simply pointing out that different answers do not necessarily follow: that, for example, unless they are surrounded by highly restrictive clauses, a prohibition on cheating or stealing can just as readily follow from an assessment of utility as from one based on Kantian notions of duty.

A more radical option, however, is to infer from this possibility of arriving at the same answer by a different route the view that far from being discrete explanations of the nature of morality, these supposedly contending theories are merely focusing on a particular aspect of morality, be it duty, utility, the acquisition of virtues, the importance of caring relationships, rights, equity, or whatever. Though it can no doubt be attacked as a facile eclecticism, the great advantage of this alternative to the contending theories viewpoint is that it not only counters the tendency to relativism inherent in that viewpoint but also greatly simplifies the teaching of ethical theory in that it justifies treating the different approaches as merely a source for key concepts and useful distinctions rather than a long and complicated series of arguments and counter arguments. Whether, of course, this alternative is an over-simplification is another matter. But even if it is, there are perhaps sound pedagogical reasons for adopting it as an at least initial treatment of ethical theory, with argument and counter argument reserved for after concepts and distinctions have been mastered by students.

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