Abstract
The purpose of this paper previously published in the Journal of Business Ethics, is to describe a way of teaching business ethics using the creative arts, especially literature and theater. By drawing on these disciplines for both method and texts, we can more easily make the connection to business as a fully human activity, concerned with how meaning is created. Students are encouraged to understand story-telling and narrative and how these tools lend insight into the daily life of businesspeople. The paper describes two main courses, Business Ethics Through Literature and Leadership, Ethics and Theater, and the rationale for each. We begin by suggesting three main leverage points that the courses engender. We then rely on the words of students who have taken the courses for insights into what they learned. We then critically assess some of the principles that have informed course design over time. We conclude by suggesting that paying attention to the creative arts gives rise to a rather different approach to business ethics, one grounded in the pragmatist tradition in philosophy.
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Notes
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There is also a 6 week version of the course. The following website is a resource about the course, and there is a documentary that focuses on what the student experience is. See: http://it.darden.virginia.edu/leadershipandtheater/
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Acknowledgements
This is a reprint of an article previously publishing by Springer Science+business Media Dordrecht in the Journal of Business Ethics (2015) 131:519–526. DOI 10.1007/s10551-014-2479-y.
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Freeman, R.E., Dunham, L., Fairchild, G., Parmar, B.L. (2022). Leveraging the Creative Arts in Business Ethics Teaching. In: Dion, M., Freeman, R.E., Dmytriyev, S.D. (eds) Humanizing Business. Issues in Business Ethics, vol 53. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_26
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_26
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