Signatories
Details for School of Economics and Business
Communicating Participant
Type of Organization
Business School
Type of Education
Undergraduate, Post Graduate, Doctoral
Institution is part of
Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg
Location
Halle (Saale), Germany
Website
http://www.jurawiwi.uni-halle.de.
Sign up Date To PRME
01 Apr 2008
Last Sharing Information on Progress Report Submission
21 Oct 2011
Sharing Information on Progress (2010)
COP 2009 and 2010 - View Report
This report summarizes the PRME progress of the years 2009 and 2010.
Sharing Information on Progress (2009)
COP 2009 and 2010 - View Report
This report summarizes the PRME progress in the years 2009 and 2010!
Sharing Information on Progress (2008)
Sharing Information on Progress (2008)
Achievements Curriculum Integration in the Field of Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability
The Curriculum and Academic Life
Traditional business education is concentrated on exercising maximization techniques. In addition, training the leaders of tomorrow must concentrate on teaching competencies how to shape social processes. Optimizing the moves within a given game must be complemented by learning how to improve the rules of the game. This, however, demands skills in analyzing social structure and semantics. With regard to the social structure, executives must at least learn the basics of a rational-choice based analysis of the incentive effects of institutional arrangements. And with regard to semantics, they must become familiar with the central concepts, and the (normative) thought categories on which they are based, with which social conflicts in society are perceived, described and evaluated.
This innovative concept for Economic Ethics and Business Ethics is introduced in many areas of research and teaching in our current academic life. The lectures listed below follow this structure and address intensively the issues of Sustainability and Corporate Citizenship.
Achievements Research Development in the Field of Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability
At MLU, we have developed three theses concerning new structures that will enable an effective implementation of the PRME into academic life.
((1)) Properly understood, the PRME aim at educating corporate executives, and – more broadly – “social entrepreneurs”. This suggests that lessons in Business Ethics and Economic Ethics should also be made available to students from other fields (law, political science, sociology, etc.). At any rate, it would not hurt if future managers of government agencies, political parties, and civil society organizations as well as leaders in the growing area of the third sector were equipped with some basic knowledge of how a market economy works and how companies function.
((2)) Education in these competencies should be integrated into the bachelor and master programs, not with a separate degree for “ethicists”, but as a possible major within classical management education. Unlike in the US (with its Sentencing Guidelines or the Sarbanes-Oxley Act), German legislation cannot be expected to create massive incentives for a new profession of “ethics officers”. Therefore, especially in Germany, Economic Ethics and Business Ethics must choose the path to strengthen general managers’ education in the area of “strategic management”.
((3)) In general, students who see themselves as future managers will develop an interest in courses that help them gaining a better understanding of markets and competition, corporate action and the profit principle. Therefore, new courses in the field of Economic Ethics and Business Ethics can support the mathematics-oriented field of economics. With this additional input the students are able to assess the fundamental working properties of business in competitive markets.
To comply with these proposals, the Division of Economics at the Martin-Luther-University has started to integrate lectures with a focus on topics like Sustainability or Corporate Citizenship into a number of academic programs. These lectures are accessible to the following programs of study within the Faculty of Law, Economics and Business:
- Legum Magister (LL.M)
- Master of Business Law and Economic Law
- B.Sc. Information Management
- B.Sc. Economics
- B.Sc. Business Economics
- B.Sc. Business Studies
- B.Sc. Economics
- M.Sc. Information Management
- M.Sc. Economics
- M.Sc. Business Economics
- M.Sc. Business Studies
- M.Sc. Empirical Economics and Policy Consulting
- M.Sc. Human Resources Management
- M.Sc. Accounting and Taxation
- M.Sc. Financial Management
Moreover, further efforts have to be made to successfully integrate the visions of the PRME into “Everday Academic Life”. Point ((4)) sheds light on the efforts to come:
((4)) Competence development in analyzing the interdependencies between social structure and semantics requires new teaching forms. In the innovative filed of Economic Ethics and Businesss Ethics, instructional formats must be interactive and interdisciplinary. Co-teaching and group work, including role-plays, strategy simulations and practical projects, are conducive to helping students see with their own eyes how conflicts can be structured and how consensual conflict solutions can be thought up and implemented.
