Ethics, Globalization, and the Role Educators Play

This paper questions the role educators' play in sustaining, promoting, and teaching the globalization business model in spite of the uneven privilege and distress that accompanies associated practices. Proponents of this business model claim it is based on democratic and capitalist principles promoting individual freedoms and equal opportunities. As teachers of the next generation of business functionaries we need to seek ways of engagement that extend us beyond harnessing extant flawed business models devoid of teleological ethical theory into mainstream management education. We argue that as educators we are implicated in maintaining a system that has a built-in willingness to tolerate sacrifice and distress of the most vulnerable of our world's citizens. It is a system that is feeding the growing disparity of wealth and influence and ultimately exists to serve the interests of the minority elite. We suggest that one way to address the "dark side" of globalization is to have ethics and ethical awareness at the forefront of what we teach our business graduates.