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

Katrin Seele; Peter Seele

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Standalone, Curricular Infusion or Generic Skills in Business Ethics Education? An Overview and Evaluation of Extracurricular Studium Generale Programs in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland

Peter Seele

University of Lugano (USI), Switzerland

Katrin Seele

University of Education Berne, Switzerland

Volume 9: 2012, pp. 145-164: ABSTRACT

This paper discusses studium generale programs as an extracurricular alternative for stand-alone courses in business ethics. Studium generale programs were introduced in Germany after World War II by British and U.S. authorities for "re-educating" the Germans based on the view "that German academics' failure to resist National Socialism was largely due to their having been excessively hidebound by their respective subject disciplines while lacking general and political education" (Huber 1992, p. 286). In the empirical study 41 website publications of existing studium generale programs from Austrian, German, and Swiss universities were content analyzed with regard to their a) curricular status and b) institutional setting. Our findings: only 14.63 % (including the two German universities of the federal armed forces) show a distinct and professional studium generale program providing training in generic skills by specialists based in an independent organizational unit. The authors argue that insufficient programs might harm rather than support students' individual commitment to ethical reflection. However, with regard to business ethics education, extracurricular studium generale programs can be seen as a helpful addition to existing standalone courses in business ethics.