IMCA Seminar - Peter Seele - room A23 - 13:30

Standalone, Curricular Infusion or Generic Skills in Business Ethics Education?

The presented paper discusses studium generale programs as an extracurricular alternative for standalone courses in business ethics. 41 website publications of existing studium generale programs from Austrian, German and Swiss universities were analyzed with regard to their curricular status and institutional setting. Only 14, 63 % show a distinct, dedicated and professional studium generale program providing training in generic skills by specialists based in an independent organizational unit. 46, 35 % provide access to courses in the humanities and make use of the label studium generale, but engage only in a limited way in offering subject- transcending courses as proposed by military authorities in post-war Germany in order to prevent overspecialization and uncritical thinking. The authors argue that inadequate programs might rather harm than support students’ individual commitment to ethics. However, with regard to business ethics education extracurricular studium generale programs can be seen as foundational addition to standalone courses in business ethics.

The aim of the seminar will be to discuss the positioning of business ethics education at IMCA and the faculty. The paper, besides the studium generale model, gives an overview over the current debate on how to integrate CSR and business ethics into curricula. The debate is rather controversial. So there are two agendas: the paper itself, which is in a first draft status and the internal discussion on curricular development.