Business Law Prof Blog
Saturday, June 4, 2022
Business Ethics in a Pandemic
Recently, I published a short piece for the Nashville Institute for Faith and Work (NIFW) about Business Ethics in a Pandemic.
As mentioned there, I have found teaching Business Ethics courses extremely challenging, but important. While law can be unclear, the boundaries of business ethics are even more vague.
Perhaps it is simply because one of my younger brothers is an English professor, but I have been increasingly drawn to using literature in the teaching of business ethics as a way to grapple with the lack of clarity.
So far, I have used the fiction and poetry of Derrick Bell, Wendell Berry, Octavia Butler, Anton Chekov, Ross Gay, Ursula Le Guin, Cormac McCarthy, Mary Oliver, Ranier Maria Rilke, May Sarton, George Saunders, and Leo Tolstoy. Admittedly, this is a bit of an odd mix, but I think each of these writers have something important to say, even if I do not use each of them every semester.
I remain open to other suggestions, and I plan to rotate in other authors as I continue to teach our business ethics course. (I also hope to write a few longer pedagogy articles in the law & literature and ethics & literature space).
(Photo of Bass Lake in Blowing Rock, NC, which is perhaps my favorite place to read).
