This is the issue of whether business
ethics teaching should aim to ensure that those taught are morally good people
or simply equip them to understand and deal with moral problems, leaving them
to decide what they ought to do: in short, influence their attitudes and behaviour
(the affective aim) or merely provide them with knowledge (the cognitive aim).
This is not, of course, to say that the two aims are totally separate. Clearly,
what we know (or believe) about moral matters can affect our responses to moral
problems and perhaps the more we know the more likely it is that we become morally
good persons (although there is, of course, no guarantee of this). However, there
is clearly a step beyond the imparting of knowledge in seeking to influence attitudes
and behaviour. Moreover, it is a step that can be taken quite separately from
merely seeking to impart knowledge in that it can be solely a matter of persuasion:
be it persuasion by the utilisation of arguments or, what is arguably more effective,
appeals to emotion.It is from the fact of it being about persuasion rather
than the imparting of knowledge that the principal objection to an affective approach
to teaching business ethics derives. What results, it can be argued, is not education
but something antithetical to it: namely, indoctrination. This linking
of persuasion to indoctrination need not be argued for on the basis of a fact-value
distinction (see issue 5) - although it might
be. Nor need it even be argued for on the grounds of the controversy surrounding
all but the most basic of moral stances - although again it might be. Rather more
fundamentally, it can simply be a question of regarding the aim of persuading
as incompatible with the proper function of education: which, roughly speaking,
is to equip students to think for themselves rather than having them being told
what to think. >> next
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