RUDN Journal of Philosophy (Dec 2017)
MODERN CORPORATE UNIVERSITIES: ETHICAL THREATS AND ETHICAL HOPES
Abstract
The article considers the problem of implementation of ethics as a taught subject into modern business education. Modern business schools reached a stable point of development during last decades and became less adaptive to the needs of modern business community. In this sense, business schools represent a longer educational tradition while education in corporate universities which emerged a half a cen-tury ago is grounded upon more innovative and experimental principles. Practical orientation and correlation with the functioning of a specific organization allows corporate universities to avoid several problems accumulated during the decades of business schools’ existence. However, the renunciation of some principles which are traditional for both public and private education can potentially lead to contradictory consequences including those in the sphere of ethics. The first part of the article is a brief historical overview of the development of economic education in the world. It is also shown on the example of the USA why some of features of business schools have developed like we know them today and what is their connection with the various stages of development of the world economy in the 20th century. The second part of the article aims to outline some nuances of the emergence and development of corporate universities, to show why their influence on the modern economic education increased and to point out the corresponding reasons to be ethically concerned. The article analyses some problems of modern business-schools and also considers corporate uni-versities as an alternative to traditional business education.
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