Religion and Fences: A Look to the Past for a Current Solution

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Abstract

Business scandals and unethical practices reflect business students’ and professionals’ declining ethical awareness and decisions. We propose that these scandals persist primarily because self-interest often overwhelms social interest, and that additional regulation by itself cannot overcome the primary focus on profit maximization. Religion has long helped to transfer values across generations, but its lessons are lacking in today’s business arena. Fink (2003) states that student learning depends on the ability to examine and know their own values. We suggest that business educators can incorporate both religious-based business ethics and a temptation-reducing fences concept to instill a sense of social responsibility in future business leaders, changing the focus from themselves to their communities. This paper explains how three major religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—integrate social goals into business ethics and use fences to minimize temptations and to reduce wrongdoers’ opportunities to rationalize their actions. These approaches strengthen students’ awareness of ethical issues, turn their focus toward social goals, and provide them a basis for behaving ethically.

Authors

• Alan Reinstein, Wayne State University

• Eileen Z Taylor, North Carolina State University