How to tell right from wrong: join a book club

I can't help feeling that it shouldn't be hard for people to tell right from wrong at work, or indeed anywhere else, but it seems that it is; European Business Forum devotes 13 pages to a discussion of businesss ethics and cultural sensitivity in its winter issue, for example.

EBF's contributors tend to support the idea that it is entirely possible for organisations to apply the same ethical code to all aspects of their business, regardless of the country in which that business is being conducted. They don't have any time for the argument that, in some regions, bribery and backhanders are a part of doing business and should therefore be considered ethical, or at least acceptable.

But Knut Ims, a professor of business ethics at the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, takes issue with the whole idea of ethical guidelines regardless of whether they're universal or culturally specific. He wants to see individuals take responsibility for ethical dilemmas by confronting them, reflecting on them and then taking action based upon moral intuition and "the best ethical competence available"; he argues that relying simply on guidelines allows people to avoid taking responsibility for their ethical decisions.

This brings us neatly to Harvard Business School and its literature class. Sandra Sucher, a lecturer at the school, uses novels such as Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day to teach MBA students how to reason their way through moral challenges. She also suggests that firms create executive book clubs for managers who regularly face moral and ethical decisions, as it's discussion of the issues raised by such books, and not the books themselves, that is particularly valuable. "It is in the exchange of ideas about these books that people come to understand how their moral codes constrain them," she tells Harvard Business Review. "Most of us believe that our moral views are self-evident. Hearing people present arguments you had never thought of is one way to strengthen your own moral reasoning skills."

See a list of her recommended books at sucher.readings.hbr.org