The paper discusses the need for reforms in business school curriculums to include subjects such as business ethics, in the wake of the recent spate of dishonest business practices.
The paper shows that in the wake of recent dishonest practices by Enron, WorldCom, Global Crossing, Xerox, Qwest, Arthur Andersen and Merck, many people are asking how businessmen, believed to be so well educated and leaders in corporate America, lacked the moral courage to seek and state the truth. It shows how business ethics has been thrown to the side as a wild-wild-west form of capitalism has taken hold on America’s corporate leaders. This corporate malfeasance has cost thousands of jobs, trillions of dollars in stockholder value, and a skepticism of our once revered free economic system. This paper shows show why a lack of business ethics is such a far-reaching problem in our society and suggests reforms in the business school curriculum to help instill responsibility and accountability in our business leaders. It also shows how consumer education classes would help protect individuals from becoming victims of corporate greed.
Everywhere we look corporate America is bombarding us with advertising in the hopes of creating demand for their relatively unneeded products. Britney Spears dancing around selling Pepsi, the Dell Computers Dude you’re getting a Dell” guy, and the billboards for SKYY vodka with images of sexy supermodels are used to create desires for individuals to increase their spending and sink further into debt. One of the underlying problems that corporations have had is that even if they bombard us with sexual images that sell products is that our demand can only be as big as our pocket books. Corporate America then came up with the idea of credit cards, which eased the liquidity problems. An article entitled “Corporate Power and the Evolution of Consumer Credit” appearing in the December 2000 issue of The Journal of Economic Issues, John Watkins, professor of Economics at Westminster College, describes how corporate power has perpetuated the debt crisis in America.”